Tech Turnover Rate Lowest Since The 80's

cimmer writes "USA Today, the San Jose Business Journal and the suspiciously captivating monitor thing in the elevator are reporting the results of a survey conducted by Aon Consulting that states voluntary turnover in the tech industry is at 8.9%, 'the lowest in the history of the surveys, which date back to the mid-1980s'. Given all of the talk about an economic turnaround, are we looking at a potential tech turnover spike as individuals leave positions they have stayed in only because of a dismal job market? Aon seems to think so. Interestingly, the results of this study are released just as CNN.com reports that personal income growth is at its weakest in two years. Also of note is a discrepancy in the reported sample size, with USA Today stating the results are based upon input from 595 companies while the Business Journal reports that over 950 companies participated."

Comments

Raw Numbers?

[ackthpt]

If I were a spinmeister I would love percentages. What you don't see is the total number of people in the field.

Where once great herds of IT professionals roamed the valley, only a few clusters remain here and there, each skittish any remote lightning flash of resource realignment or rumble of offshoring.

It is worth considering tho, that Information work is a relatively new thing and where many businesses once spent nothing on it they now would have a staff or contractor responsible for making sure all their technology continues to go and many businesses are still getting a grip on what the right size of commitment should be for their IT needs. As long as staff have improper technology for their particular function thanks to poor assessment of need, there will still be wiggle room for more (or less) tech staffing.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[ackthpt]

The article doesn't make it sound like the survey was just Silicon Valley companies. It seems to be the industry as a whole. So, percentages really do matter.

Yeah, but the Valley is what I know and the entire Bay Area accounted for a lot of businesses on the leading edge of IT deployment.

Raise your hand if your boss doesn't have the most powerful PC in the place on his desk, while the people who actually perform the critical day to day fuctions make do with a clunker.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 2 2ghz boxes (one intel, one amd) while my boss putts around on a 300mhz p2.

*raises hand*

Dosen't make the company or its business decisions any more stable or rational... if that's what your implying.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[AKAImBatman]

Where once great herds of IT professionals roamed the valley, only a few clusters remain here and there, each skittish any remote lightning flash of resource realignment or rumble of offshoring.

Great herds? Yes. Professionals? No. Previously there was 1 true professional for every thousand "get rich quick" kids. Now the ratio is a bit more like 10:1.

On the bright side, these kids are off to something far more enjoyable. While they were in Technology, they worked long hours for little reward, and were often mistreated and stressed out. Now they work in jobs like construction or plumbing where the hours are fewer and the work more fulfilling. Let this be a lesson: never enter a corporate field unless you're SURE that's what you want.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[ackthpt]

Call me a "spinmeister", but expressing turnover as a perentage seems far more informative to me than comparing the total number of individuals changing tech jobs in 2004 compared to 1984. Unless you own a moving company or a cubicle nameplate maker.

A smaller pop will have more radical swings with change. There are fewer positions to move among.

Back in 1997 there were so many positions and so many IT people (including pseudo IT people, those with arts degrees who self taught themselves html and such) they changed employers frequently. It was exciting and sad (sad because I saw so many friends leave the company.) Now there are fewer shops and most have much leaner staffing levels.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[AKAImBatman]

Personally, I didn't find Office Space very funny. However, it was prophetic in a way that most people should have listened to. Did they? Nope. Took an economic downturn to beat it into people's heads.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn the innumeracy! 1000:1? 10:1? That's complete bull.

However, I totally agree with the concept he's passing on; it's just the bogus numbers I disagree with.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[Nept]

This WILL come back to bite them hard in the arse.

Why? According to a recent study by the Institute for Policy Studies (here, and in my journal) CEO pay overall was 301 times higher than the $26,899 earned by the average production worker. Maybe we can assume the average I/T professional makes twice this much, and thus CEO pay overall is ~150 times higher. (Also, these measurements are for the U.S. only.)

But, CEO pay overall was 1,300 times higher than the average Indian Programmer or 3,300 times higher than the average Indian Call Center employee.

So, no matter how much the CEO reduces wages of I/T staff, they can save even more by going overseas. Our workload can be increased even more than this for the same wages or even less - and the corporations that have the ability to outsource don't need to fear a backlash.

Almost 40% of the IT departments around the country that I have contact with all feel the same way

I'm in a large company, and all my contacts in large companies feel the same way as well. Perhaps it's only the smaller companies where the salary disconnect between Employer/CEO and Employee is not so high that things are less dismal.

Re:Raw Numbers?

[Lumpy]

you CAN NOT outsource Idea employees. I came up with the last 5 "great ideas" they had this year, you cant hire a company in india that can come up with a better way of managing company specific data to increase the sales force productivity. These "Idea" people are the ones that are very marketable and employable and they are the ones I am talking about because the IT department has already been gutted and the "useless" jobs already exported overseas.

The CEO, CTO, CFO and EIEIO are not the idea thinkers that make the back office work better, smoother and smarter. A simple Idea like giving the sales people Thumb drives so they can get from the clients graphic logo files and other LArger files effortlessly was not though up by any member of management in my company, it was though up by a lowly IT worker, same as any other proceedural changes that really do make a difference and make things easier, faster and more profitable. Those ideas NEVER come from the Division Manager with the Business Masters and has zero clue as to how his office really works but from the sales guy on the floor that has his GED and a knack for finding better way's of doing things.

you CAN NOT outsorce that. I personally have invented 5 things in the past 5 years that did not exist in my industry, and my counterparts throughout the country have invented and implimented countless more that have increased productivity of the entire company.

What Indian Outsource firm can do that?

That is where it will bite them in their arse... the back office secrets that give them the edge WILL move with those idea employees to their competition silently and remove that edge and advantage while giving the competition a significant advantage cince they dont have to wait for testing cince it was tested in your company for years already.

You can't detect and fight the real software and ideas that drive a business, because they are hidden and secret to the public. Not paying the keepers and creators of those secrets is the number one stupidest thing any company can do.

voluntary turnover

[Safety Cap]

Yay, voluntary turnover is low.

Hey, what's this pink piece of paper stuck to my paycheque?

Geeks

[TheRealMindChild]

I attribute this to the metaphorical "settling of the water". In the 90's people with absolutely no interest in computers, as well as those with no skill, started saturating the market to grab a quick buck. It the past few years, even those with skills have trouble finding employment, and most find themselves working helpdesk at a telemarketing firm, or as a webmaster/designer for a porn site. Those who are still here are the ones that do it more then just for the money... because it is what we were born to do.

Re:Geeks

[erroneus]

I've been singing that song for a long time now and I'll keep singing it with you brother.

Funny (ironic) thing is that the buy who left the position I accepted recently was not a techy guy himself. He's an executive for some weekly paper in a neighboring city.

I hope you're right about the "people with tallent and skills" finally getting what they deserve. All those damned paper MCSEs out there spelled doom for a lot of us.

On an unrelated note, during my long period of unemployment, I watched a LOT of TV... a LOT of commercials talking about "hot new jobs in the tech sector! get training at 1-800-blah-blah-blah..." All I could do was sit and grumble about it... those bastards are still trying to turn out tech-job hopefuls at a time when people were losing their jobs at record-high rates. Simply remarkable.

Re:Geeks

[loqi]

even those with skills have trouble finding employment

To me, that seems to bolster TFA's point more than it does yours. If it's that hard even for skilled people to find employment, it means that people in this industry will probably be clinging to their jobs with tooth and nail. I see no reason why "pseudogeeks" would be much more eager to give up their tech job than "real geeks" would. A paycheck is a paycheck.

Re:Geeks

[TheKubrix]

Not just the 90s. I still see kids going for their CS degree who strongly lack any skills to make it in the real world. Its now a kill or be killed industry, but the popularity is still growing. Kids of a few years ago who enjoyed IRC, IM, and Half Life, now think this luxary can be a career. Boy will they get a rude awakening when/if they graduate and realize they are far behind all the true computer geeks out there and have to fend against script kiddies. :\

duh.

[big_groo]

Who really wants to leave a decent paying, *secure* job these days for a place that offers a bit more money - and you don't know if you'll even *have* a job in 6 months at the new place.

People are staying put until the market sorts itself out. Nothing to see here...move along.

Another possibility...

[RsG]

...is that the low turnover rate indicates seniority positions that survived the crash. More recent tech graduates are likely flipping burgers (or worse), whereas most of the older technical guys I know are still gainfully employed. All the young 'uns got burned in the startup business, whereas the geezers are mostly in much more stable tech environments, thus the turnover is low (since in this business "old" is still well before retirement age). Of course, this is just MHO, I could be missing something obvious.

I'm not quitting

[erroneus]

I really should update my signature...

It took me a VERY long time to get back into IT. Prior to this, I worked two other non-technical jobs only after unemployment and the two extensions ran out. During the period of unemployment I can't recall ever actually getting an interview. The crap-job I took at the airport let me to another job less crappy. During that job, I interviewed only a few times. Almost two years later I get this one. It's not the best paying IT job I've ever gotten but it's with a good company and it's stable. I'm not going ANYWHERE. That's the lesson I've learned from my previous years of job-hopping...

anecdotal intellectual capital

[spoonyfork]

Where I work, it was mostly contact worker 70% to direct hires 30% on the order a couple thousand people. They decided to retain some of their intellectual capital that was running in and out the door (sometimes to competitors) and swap the percentages contract 30%, direct 70%. Direct employment is more stable here, better benefits/job security, etc. Something like that as an industry trend may contribute to lower turn over.

Business Leaders Can't Be Trusted

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Basically, I don't trust these numbers because of who was polled. This was a survery of businesses- and if this recession has taught us anything it's that prvate industry can't be relied on to tell anybody the truth about employment- or even actually the truth after they hire you. My suggestion to anybody taking advantage of growing employment in the tech industry is make sure that severance pay is written into your contract and that it covers at least 6 months of job searching level lifestyle.

Makes sense: people feeling less secure

[MarkWatson]

In the U.S., the economy is might get really bad in the next year or two. Sure, too many people are still sucking the equity from their homes and otherwise increasing their debt for the good life of crass materialism, but most people are starting to see the light:

• Dependence on Chinese and Japanese foreign banks to prop up the dollar - how long can ths go on?
• reliance on non-sustainable consumer debt spending - how long can ths go on?
• realization that our great material life style will naturally slide a bit as third world countries out-compete us in some areas

That said, I am an independent consultant, and it seems to me that business has really picked up in the last year - so I don't think that it is all doom and gloom on the economy - it is just that things might not be as great as they once were.

-Mark

Re:Makes sense: people feeling less secure

[Bill Dog]

In the U.S., the economy is might get really bad in the next year or two.

Or it might just do nothing. For a long, long time. It's a possibility.

How long has Japan economically been in the doldrums?

Re:Makes sense: people feeling less secure

[deebaine]

This post seems a bit mired in the media's understanding of economics--and their reporting of it.

First of all, it is difficult to argue that Asian banks prop up the dollar as an act of goodwill. Rather, they do so as they have incentive to--dollars and dollar-denominated assets continue to be reasonably stable investments over the long term. The US government still ain't going anywhere. Moreover, a US collapse is inconceivable without the rest of the world following, at least until China has had another couple of decades to dramatically increase its domestic consumption. Where are Japanese electronics and autos being sold if US dollars can't buy them? Where is the foreign investment going to come from in China?

The second point is redundant; non-sustainable (sic) spending is by definition unsustainable. The only problem is that so far the unsustainable spending has been sustained, and it shows no signs of slowing. I don't hear many claims to understand why the US economy has thrived for decades, often with a *negative* average consumer savings rate. Recently, however, it is conceivable that the benefits of low rates in the past year-plus might be offset by the encouragement to finance additional debt while the rates hold. Thus consumer debt might be a lagging indicator; a flurry of low, fixed-rate mortgages would appear to be a harbinger of doom, for example, but could easily be advantageous in the long run as consumers stretch now to build equity that will bring them benefit later. (Disclaimer: I haven't really looked into this in any depth, but there are a number of possible explanations that need to be assessed before we declare the sky to be falling.)

The third point ignores that convenient economic x-factor, namely productivity. While tech explains some of it, McKinsey research, among others, suggests that much of it is "real," that is, process and product improvement that is sustainable into the future. I often view productivity as a convenient fudge-factor for exonomists. Lately, though, I've been reconsidering...

In the end, the US (and global) economy have some troubling characteristics (even more troubling to me is the fact that neither of the two real candidates for the Presidency has any realistic plan for addressing the issues). Time and again, however, we and others (Asian tigers, Europe, etc.) have proven that even severe impacts can be managed over a reasonable timespan. This is not license to ignore the problems, of course. Then again, I don't expect soup lines anytime soon.

-db

Re:Makes sense: people feeling less secure

[TheWizardOfCheese]

First of all, it is difficult to argue that Asian banks prop up the dollar as an act of goodwill. Rather, they do so as they have incentive to--dollars and dollar-denominated assets continue to be reasonably stable investments over the long term.

It is the central (government) banks of Asia that are buying treasuries; they are not investing in dollar assets, they are selling their own currencies against USD in order to keep their products cheap for export. Yes, they perceive this as self-interest, but it is debatable whether in the long term this is truly so.

There is something in the theory that they cannot afford to sell these bonds, because doing so would cause an economic catastrophe in the US that would engulf their own countries. However, even if they just stop buying more, USD interest rates will skyrocket - unless the current account deficit can be closed.

The only problem is that so far the unsustainable spending has been sustained, and it shows no signs of slowing [...] a flurry of low, fixed-rate mortgages would appear to be a harbinger of doom, for example, but could easily be advantageous in the long run as consumers stretch now to build equity that will bring them benefit later.

A bubble always takes longer to burst than you think. Mortgage refinancings have in fact declined, the ratio of variable to fixed mortgages has increased, and the "equity" that consumers are "building" is vested in dramatically over-valued property. In short, the US consumer is on the hot rails to hell with his foot on the gas.

The third point ignores that convenient economic x-factor, namely productivity.

No, the third point ignores that economics is not a zero-sum game; as other countries "catch up", the market for US goods and services will increase. It is only in relative terms that the US economy will decline.

Low turnover = low wage growth

[bcarl314]

Doesn't it make sense that a low turnover is correlated to a low wage growth?

I don't think it's common place to get big increases in salaries without moving on to a different job. Seems to me that most employers sqwauk at giving out even miniscule inflation raises (2 - 3%) where as, often times I find hiring employers are willing to pay more "for the right person", who will usually only leave their job if they get a better deal.

I don't know many people who would leave for a lower paying job, unless there is some esoteric reason, or much better overall compenstation package (i.e. health benefits, private yacht, etc).

Which gets back to my point, the only way to get large raises is to move around. Remain stagnant, and your raises will too.

Re:Tech market looking up

[Zed2K]

Salary may be nice for what you are going for but wait until you see how much the cost of living is there. The salary won't look so great after the realization hits.

This will be a HUGE EXODUS I think

[melted]

Basically all the disgruntled folks will pack their shit and walk (that's another side of fire-at-will contracts, I can just pack my bags and go if I want, too). This is great for everyone. Senior people will get more interesting jobs, low level people will regain the opportunities to get to senior level (hard thing to do if senior people don't go anywhere from the team). People who are in IT by mistake and who managed to survive layoffs will finally find other jobs. Everyone will get better salaries, bonuses, you name it. I don't expect anything dramatic, though. But any bonus is better than NO bonus.

All of this, of course, assumes that the economy really picks up, which is something I'm not seeing.

Re:This will be a HUGE EXODUS I think

[elrick_the_brave]

Bang on.. and then the Directors and Managers will begin to realize that.. oh.. all that IP and knowledge transfer they thought was going to happen didn't.. and now no one knows what to do. Ripe for the time when something goes down and a head will role. I love it.

Geeks-Survival instinct.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of BS.

The 90's people have already left. It's now 2004 Are you still going to use them as an excuse for world ills when 2007 rolls around?

"Those who are still here are the ones that do it more then just for the money... because it is what we were born to do."

People aren't "born" into their professions. Another reason has nothing to do with "love" and more to do with the choice between no job, or hanging onto the one you have. That's not "love" that's survival instinct.

H1-B , L-1, Outsourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup folks, the musical chairs is over. If you get up, you risk being replaced very easily. The big bucks, billionaires for Bush types are calling the tune, and the workers must dance. American labor mobility will return when there are restrictions placed on America's wealthiest companies abilities to import special "indentrued servant" style labor.

I ain't leavin'

[bigman2003]

This article pretty much states the obvious for me-

I'm in a job, working for a fairly stable place. I've had friends who had 5 or 6 jobs in the past 5 years. They've gone from the high of "wow, I'm makin' a shitload of money!" to the low of "damn...unemployment won't even cover my car payment".

Until things get really good, I won't be leaving my SECURE job.

So nobody else will be sitting in my chair (turnover) until you pry my sweaty, greasy ass off of it.

Re:I ain't leavin'

[LookSharp]

That is uncanny! The HR department at our company, faced with complaints about salaries, launched a "Total Compensation" intranet site to show people how much better the retirement plans and benefits were when considering the "total compensation." Look, you can give me lies, damn lies, and statistics all day. When I can walk out the door for a 20% raise, you matching 2% more on the 401K doesn't mean squat.

Ironic aside: my co-worker with an MBA and 12 years with the company left today for the SAME JOB at a different company for a 40% raise!

Some turnover

[Ixne]

It's hard to be impressed by "lower turnover" when there so many people not eligible for turnover because they're still unemployed...

Re:Tech market looking up

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to do the math before you spout. If you make 25% more in cali than any where else than you can buy a house even if its $500,000. The real estate goes up 17% per year on average in the state of California - I am not saying that other parts of the country don't do that but if they do then please elaborate. Now lets do the math. 25% pay raise on say 500k - 150k house price difference. Now a 25% pay raise wont pay for that difference but if you get a balloon 30year note than your making money buy borrowing 350k @ today's rate of 6% on top of a 17% growth plus the 25% pay raise. You are always shocked going to a high market area and it is easier to move to a lower. So, go to the higher area living on pinto beans for a few years than move and make a bucket load. I have done this and it pockets a bunch of money and yes gasoline is $2 a gallon out there; I'm paying 1.75 so that isn't an argument...

Don't scare the guy trying to get a job.

many jobs after boomer retirements

[peter303]

Just like another urban legend that many jobs will go unfilled as the aging boomers retire and insufficent genX and genY follow. Well, boomers are going to hang on forever as their pensions, social security and health insurance disappears as well as everyone elses.

Re:Quick picture

[tgd]

If you're making 50% less than you were three years ago, the odds are you were making twice what you should've been three years ago. People aren't being underpaid now, they were being overpaid during the .com boom.

Pleanty of us are making more now than three years ago. Not a lot more, but enough to be just at the edge of insulting.

If you can barely make your house payments, thinking about what your real opportuntity to double your salary again really is might be in order. Because barely making house payments at the top of the real estate market is better than at the bottom.

I doubt this change in the hiring market will affect anyone but the fairly senior people. Thats what I've been seeing lately -- an explosion in the number of available jobs for senior people, to the point where probably 75% of the senior or principal level engineers I know are actively looking for new options, and most are turning down offers on the path to finding one they really want.

The only way it'll impact lower level positions is if the software industry really takes off and companies need a lot more grunt labor, but I'd bet thats a year off, even if things stay improving, or if enough of a shortage of senior people happen that companies get agressive promoting from within -- but you run the risk of ending up with an underqualified development team just as most companies experienced in the late 90's.

I'll probably leave

[lewp]

It's just a matter of time anyway, but if the economic picture gets that much brighter I'm definitely out the door. I love my job, but I'm tired of living where I do. I know well over a dozen other geeks who either had to relocate somewhere they didn't like or indefinitely postpone plans to go elsewhere. The poor economic conditions made a dislike of the location seem like a silly reason to leave/not take well-paying jobs.

Pretty much all of us still want to be wherever it is we wanted to be when everything went down the crapper. If the opportunity knocks, I'm sure most of us will answer.

continuing

[twitter]

Also, the 25 year shift to a "service economy" continued as manufacturing, engineering, transcription, and even high quality service jobs were all exported. Construction teetered on the brink of the collapse that will inevitably come. Training for your next job is memorizing the question, "would you like fries with that?"

Re:involuntary turnover

[Trevin]

That brings up a question: they say that 8.9% is the lowest voluntary turnover since the early 80's, and that the involuntary turnover of 11.2% is lower than it was in 2001. That's hardly a fair comparison, since the 2001 number would be the highest rate (or nearly so). What I want to know is, what was the lowest involuntary turnover rate?

Outsourcing = Low Turnover

[Spectre]

The more projects my company outsources, the more they find they NEED the techies in house ... We have the same number of techies, but mostly we oversee outsourced projects ... and the company isn't going to let go of the only people who understand the technical processes and who can communicate with the contract workers what is needed.

Re:And all at once

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? That's interesting.

Of course.

[tarsi210]

The old axiom back when I was in college (96-00) was, "If you don't change jobs in the tech field at least once every 3-4 years, you won't move up." The idea behind it was that after 3-4 years on a particular job, your skills should have increased to the point that the technology sector deemed you 'worthy' of a higher-paid, higher-responsibility job.

Of course, this got blown out of the water in the Burst Bubble(tm). Techies like myself have hung onto a job (if we have one) if it's stable and provides because there aren't any other options open sufficient enough to make a logical move. I've seen a few jobs that look more interesting than mine but the pay rates still aren't in the neighborhood of what I would like to have to make a move (pay or benefits, for that matter).

So, the economy comes back. Businesses level off and then start expanding again, hopefully this time at a bit more controlled level. Jobs will start opening up and depending on the saturation of the market, wages will go up for techs. The offshoring of tech will only continue to a particular point; it'll become part of the factor that will control wages and job availability, so it's less likely to bounce back quickly. But the time will come when jobs will open up that are at a pay level, benefit level, and stability that sensible techs who have been sitting tight will feel OK to make a move.

And they will. I just don't know as though you're going to see a large rush of this happening, as most of us are gunshy and are unlikely to follow in mad chaos on the latest trend again. (I said most...there'll always be the few oddities.)

Re:Of course.

[tarsi210]

I base my predictions on the economy based on history, which shows that markets have an up-and-down cyclical nature. Although the market is never the same on the micro level, at a macro view it's generally the same idea.

And I acknowledged that in my above post -- I said that things would likely be quite different with the great push towards outsourcing; it'll significantly change the job market and the way the economy works. There's likely to be other factors as well -- new technology, legal precedents, world happenings, etc. Though these are macro-level events to some degree, the overall view is still that the economy will improve or degrade or stagnate (a rare occurrence).

Perhaps it's a bit of optimism but I feel that my prediction that the economy will recover is well-based on previous trends in the history of econ in general. Most financial advisors will advise to stick out investments in hard times because the market will recover -- it always does -- and I don't think this is an exception. Will it be the same? Of course not. But in a lot of ways it'll be similar because history works like that.

Your paleolithic ancestors are lauhing fit to bust

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel truly sorry for anyone desperate enough to be suckered by their spiel about how, with their training, "anyone can land a well-paid job in IT".

I myself feel truly sorry for anybody who can watch those commercials without realizing that somebody there is making a buck -- and that you can do the same, if you'll just get out of your rut and chase the money down like a man.

Nobody has a divinely-guaranteed right to keep on doing the same thing in the same job at the same salary (adjusted for inflation) until Hell freezes over. What makes you think otherwise? Jesus, 10,000 years ago, people had to KILL ANIMALS if they wanted a square fucking meal! You have NO idea how easy an unemployed web-monkey's life is compared to the lives of his distant ancestors. They NEVER had the option of showing up at 9:00, going through the motions until 5:00, and then sitting on their fat cro-magnon asses in a bar until closing time. They had no welfare, no National Health, no retirement fund, no defense establishment, no cop on the beat, no nothing. Just raw balls and a pointed stick. Yet still they conquered. Compared to any sort of absolute baseline, the risks you're required to take and the struggles you're required to engage in are nothing, they're kids' stuff -- and you're still complaining! Well, that's bullshit. You are a human being, evolved to struggle like a motherfucker against the forces of nature and the morons in the next cave just to stay alive. You are the heir of thousands of generations of brutal, remorseless killers, filtered by the magic of natural selection to be more brutal and remorseless every generation. It is well within your capabilities to go out and wrest a living from the world. So you have to learn a new skill, be it forging checks, peddling your ass, teaching worthless "skills" to hapless dole-suckers, or whatever -- so what? Would you rather learn a new skill, or take on a cave bear in your skivvies with nothing but a stone axe? Given that you are DESCENDED from people who DID take on that cave-bear AND WIN (we drove those toothy fat fuckers into extinction, did we not?), should the former option really be all that intimidating? No, dammit! NO!

To sum it all up: Getting ahead may require a little more effort and thought than it did five years ago, but by any sane standards, the amount of effort and thought it requires has merely increased from "zero" to "microscopic". BFD.

So quit whining like a little fucking girl and GO OUT THERE AND WIN! WIN! KILL! KILL! KILLLLL! Holy shitcocking fucking cockshitter, you fool, in the paleolithic EVEN LITTLE GIRLS HAD TO KILL TO LIVE!

Job Creation, Wage Stagnation

[4of12]

Discussed in this recent article.

My experience has been that people with IT jobs that pay anything tolerable are glad they even have a job.

First, the .com and telecom overcapacity meltdown that led into the 2001 recession, then the growing outsourcing trend.

Meanwhile, "do more, better, faster, cheaper" mantra still plays with management and has continued to load too many additional chores onto people with no reasonable alternative in job choice. People have complained about the workload to a management that is completely out of touch with the problems and concerns of their employees.

As others have noted, the pent-up demand will lead to a spike in turnover if the economy ever gets into more than first gear.

More importantly, though, is what's happening right now.

• Job stress, life stress
• low morale, depression,
• anger and resentment.

Not a pretty picture.

If I were a CIO I'd be looking to make my org a nicer place to work right now so that my reputation for attracting and retaining good people would be in place when the herd starts to stampede.

Re:And all at once

[cayenne8]

"Somehow I get the feeling that they don't count the massive # of IT people forced to start contracting with a huge turnover rate."

I'd have to say, this isn't really a bad thing. I mean, the days of a 'lifetime job' have really been long over for quite awhile. Your employer hasn't been rewarding a loyal employee with loyalty for years now.

I figured, if I was just as expendable as a straight employee as a contractor, hell, I might as well enjoy the benefits of contract employment!! You might as well get the high bill rate....(if you're making $50-$100/hr, $3K a year for insurance if single is nothing)...you might as well get PAID for the OT hours they ask you. And...generally, you don't get stuck at one dead end job all the rest of your days.

Yeah, I know it is more secure to have a perm. job...same place...etc. But, I put it to you...those days really have been long gone. And as long as you now have the instability and insecurity of a contract job...you might as well bet paid at the contract rate..

Re:And all at once

[Cat_Byte]

True...but not always. In my area of the country there were so many unemployed IT people that the pay was "decent" at best. Time between contracts sometimes reached several months so the overall pay rate ended up somewhere around minimum wage without benefits.

Re:Job Cycle.

[wjeff]

In my experience this is how most large companies do it:

1. Post ad
2. HR filters out all the really capable and honest people using unrealistic requirements lists (e.g. 15 years experience with Win NT in 1999) and/or requiring certs that only people with no real work to do, have time to get.
3. Only people who lied on their resumes get through the screening process
4. Pick the best of the lot
5. New employee turns out to be a flaky incompetent, shuffle him to make work
6. Tech manager hires knowledgable worker on his own, with out going through HR to do the flakes job
7. Company goes through layoffs, and the knowledgeable guy is let go first because he is not on the official TO&E
8. Flaky guy takes over knowledgeable guys projects and hoses them up
9. Tech manager quits in disgust
10. Flaky guy is promoted to tech managers job

I have seen this exact sequence carried out at least four times.