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Young IT Workers Disillusioned, Hard to Retain
bednarz writes to mention that NetworkWorld has an interesting examination of young IT professionals and why many make unreasonable demands for their services. "'The issue managers are facing is with retention, not hiring. That means the work environment is not living up to the employee's expectation,' he says. For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level."
It isn't just IT, it can be seen in many other industries as well. It believe this is just one more example of what my generation is facing (19-30), the "something for nothing" problem.
Many of my peers expect to graduate college and start off on the same level their parents are (who have worked for 30 years). I see this both in all my peers, from the construction workers to the computer scientists. I don't believe it is unique in I.T.
* Could be that we got out of college and started jobs at or below entry level salaries given the economic downturn immediately after 9/11.
* Could be that 5-10 years later the market has changed so dramatically that it's unusual to even find a company with an "IT department" anymore. It's all been outsourced.
* Could be that most IT workers are tired of seeing executives get 20% raises and stock options year after year while we get flat 3% annual - or no raises at all.
* Could be that with all this automation we're still checking our Blackberries at 3 AM and rebooting servers. We're always on call (like doctors) but we don't paid like them.
* Could be that the "fun" of this industry left long ago. It's no longer hacking away at circuit boards. It's watching server farms blink.
* You want to know why employers are having a touch time retaining us? Could be that we're smart enough to realize the "traditional" career of an IT professional is all but gone and the only real career paths left are through management (hence folks skipping the certifications and going for the MBAs). Alternatively, consulting still proves lucrative. But to chide us because we know that the "IT professional" career is dying is silly.
One thing that matters very much is location. There are universities across the U.S. in places where there's very little call for the graduates they produce. That's the situation I was in when I got out of undergrad—and it was several years before I got smart and headed for the coasts.
I think for undergrads at the top of their class in NYC or DC there is always something to do. For undergrads at the top of their class in New Mexico or Montana or Wyoming or Utah this may not be the case, especially for undergrads in very clearly "academic" fields like the humanities or the social sciences.
It's yet another thing we should probably be warning kids about: "You realize that if you get a college degree and want it to help your career, it basically means moving to one coast or the other for at least a decade or so, right?"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
You may have little patience for people who demand more than they are worth; but this generation has absolutely no patience for companies unwilling to engage them at market value.
It's simple economics. If a key employee thinks that he is worth $X salary, you evaluate whether or not he's worth it. If he is, you pay it. If not worth it, you don't. That's it. These people are not quitting to go work at McDonalds, they are finding other work that pays them what they want.
The 'retention' problem is not because this generation wants the kitchen sink; it's because these companies don't have any money to buy kitchens.
- DaftShadow
This is not the first time entry-level people have thought times were tougher on them than the preceeding generation.
In the mid-1960s my father worked for a contractor on the Apollo space program. Realizing that once the moon rocket design was substantially complete, engineers would be superfluous (a Briton would say redundant), in 1968 he transfered, within his company, out of the space program to a group in another state designing time-shared mainframes for business applications. It was the best decision of his career, but one that was very controversial at the time ("you're leaving the space program?!?").
I will carry the memory of the period that followed to my grave. Some time after the transfer, the NASA cuts began, and we started getting phone calls (at home!) from my father's former coworkers, looking for work -- any work, any where, in any field. More than 20,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians in the state of Florida alone -- and probably 100,000 or more around the country -- were laid of as fast as the mimeograph machines could reproduce the pink slips. Engineers were driving taxis and bagging groceries in the towns around the Kennedy Space Center.
The ultimate was when my father returned to the dinner table from another call to announce that the caller had been his former boss's boss's boss, looking for any work -- even a drafting position (six levels down the corporate ladder, and one that did not require a college degree). Like all the other callers, he had a wife, x young children, and a mortgage to support. (Homes were essentially unsellable in the areas around the major contractors' plants; the mortgages were greater than their market value, so foreclosures were the norm.) I hope I have sufficiently expressed the desperate nature of the situation.
And yet...
No university dropped its engineering program; freshout engineering graduates appeared, just as they always had, at the end of every semester. And all of them needed jobs. Entry-level jobs. All of these people entered school at the height of the space program, only to find when they graduated that the job market was considerably more difficult than they had expected. Having a difficult entry-level job market is not a new thing.
One of the pleasures of age is that one sees the world as dynamic, rather than static. A young person sees a constant world, for it's the only one he's ever known. With age, however, one sees things change, and can evaluate, say, the first derivative of the world function. With greater age, one can see the rate of change change, and appreciate the second derivative; at that point, one can begin modeling the dynamics of social structures.
The shortage of engineers in the 1960s led to the glut of engineers in the 1970s. However, because of the 4- to 6-year delay between entering and completing engineering school, the system is not necessarily stable; the glut of the 1970s led to such an engineering shortage by the early 1980s that separate, higher, salary ladders were established at major corporations for entry-level engineers (creating salary compression that demotivated experienced engineers, but that's a different thread). The system continues to oscillate today; the point is, it's oscillating through values we've seen before.
I'm not going to disagree with you at all. If I'm allowed a small addition, I'd add why that's even a good thing.
See, the whole idea behind capitalism, going all the way to Adam Smith, is that it essentially optimizes using the resources we have, to create the things we actually need. You have X million people, Y million acres of land, etc. You also have these needs that the population has. The "wealthier" nation will be the one which uses them to produce more of what its people need, and less of what they don't.
If it's more profitable to raise sheep than make wine in England, there's probably a good reason why, and you're doing all of us a service if you raise sheep. And if you raised sheep anyway, and France pays more for wool than you'd get in England, then by all means, go sell that wool in France. Then buy the wine where it's cheap and good quality with that money and sell it back in England.
Or if you want to sell your land, and there's this peasant who can only pay you 1000 pounds for it, while another one would pay 2000, then by all means sell it to the latter. Probably he has a better business plan, knows what and how to raise there that's more profitable, and in the end it's better utilization of that resource and makes us all better off. Right?
So then the same applies to the workforce. If another company can pay you more for the same work, they've probably got a better business plan and can make better use of that work. It's making us all better off if you quit your work at the one who pays less, and take the job that pays more. The same resources produces more for society, right?
That's been the theory of capitalism all along. Self-interest is what makes Adam Smith's "invisible hand" work. I mean, right?
At any rate, that's the kind of a theory that apologists of all-out cut-throat capitalism love to wave around. And it's surely used, in one way or another, when they have to justify doing something for _their_ self-interest. So then it's _weird_ to see them turn around 180 degrees and moan about these ungrateful, disloyal graduates who'll leave at the first opportunity to get a bigger wage.
You'd think they'd be _thrilled_ to see the younger generation apply the same kind of capitalism all the way. I mean, surely, if cut-throat capitalism is good for us all, then people using the same principles in their job hunt are, well, nothing short of _patriotic_, right? And if the role of the corporation is solely to produce money for the shareholders, then it's _good_ to move to a corporation which has a better plan for your work and can afford to produce more with it. It's probably producing even more value for its shareholders, then.
Well, ok, that was partially tongue-in-cheek and partially taking the piss, but still... it never ceases to amuse me when people go "capitalism is good! we only have a duty to maximize our profits!" when it excuses their own actions, but demand the exact opposite (e.g., unconditional selfless loyalty) from their employees. I wish they'd make up their mind whether they want one _or_ the other.
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