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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."
participate in a job market by providing incentives!
Economists around the world are stunned. Was Adam Smith right? Were there truly rational actors within an economy?
Ouch, I think I hurt my back laughing...
Have you read my blog lately?
For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level.
Hell, I expect to be put in charge! I'm just out of college! I know EVERYTHING!!!
WTF? If supply for something is less than the demand, of course prices will go up.
If a younger person wants, say, $60K for an entry level job and has negotiation power (i.e. another company that pays it), then that is the entry-level payment and it means that you're paying less than what they deserve to your existing employees.
This is one of the content-free articles.
I don't think an office is unreasonable for anyone. The industry took away employee's rights one by one when there was ample supply. Now it's drying up and the workforce is asking for what belonged to them.
If managers stopped "managing" people like they are a herd and became a part of their team, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to hold on to employees as long as the pay is competitive.
echo 'cat sig | sh' > sig
Irrational actors make good money too. Look at Tom Cruise.
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.
I am in my mid forties working in IT and I must say that my team members that are in their 20's really don't seem to have the motivation to learn the technology as I did 20 years ago, staying up all night on bulletin boards, spending every free moment tweaking my config.sys or netx stack for better performance. I see kids today that learn their core responsibilities but make no effort to progress further. I don't mind though, I have noticed several local fortune 500 companies are targeting "older" people for open positions, stating that the younger aren't seasoned enough or lack the skillset needed to be successful in the data center. Go ahead kids, keep on playing WOW and put your VMware books aside, that helps me stay relevant for the 15 years until I retire.
* 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.
Some of the younger programmers really don't want to work in an inflexible office environment. Absenteeism is pretty high where I am now, and that's a contract that pays pretty well. And they want their web mail, IM's and iPhones. Cut off internet services they want and you'll lose them.
They don't do office hours, don't like cubicles and want their toys. But if you can work with them on those issues, they are capable of producing some amazing work. The best project I ever worked we set up an office in the corner of a warehouse, walled it off with fence panels and white boards, collected old furniture and used shelf grates for desks. We had a basketball hoop, frig, microwave, satellite TV and our own DSL. Plus we'd stay late and play games after hours. No one quit on that project and we worked some long hours toward the end.
You don't really have a lot of options. You can deal with them or outsource to someplace that doesn't speak English as a native language and works in an office that's open in what's the middle of the night for you. They're not going to work in a cubicle so just deal with it and adapt. You're better off giving them an empty, unfinished room and give them money to punk it out to their own taste.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Using "one" in a sentence is a right not to be abused.
One might think one would choose one's words more considerately for other ones when reading one's posts posted from one's computer.
You win - I've been "one-upped"
"millenials" are still in elementary school. You're "generation debt" - the one screwed by the boomers.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
How often do we here, "If you don't like your job - QUIT already!"
So we do just that, and the six and seven-figure salaries in management still feel violated.
I say f- them. Either pay more, or quit complaining about our right to leave.
I suggest you read Slashdot
by well-meaning educators, parents, and public figures for most of their youthful lives.
College is your ticket out of the ghetto, means a higher income, better work conditions, more freedom, more control over your career, more respect, blah, blah, blah. It's true in a way, but the way a university education is described is often as the opposite of blue-collar work. That is to say that many kids are told (I know I was, all the way up through the end of undergrad) that I was going to college to avoid certain things:
- Being poor
- Having to get paid for what I "do" rather than what I "think"
- Being stuck in a "dead-end job"
- Having to "flip burgers," "answer phones," "make copies," or other "menial labor" work
- Low pay (this is a biggy, and you hear it over and over and over)
Well... all of these things are exactly what you confront when you finish your bachelor's degree. I know it was a tremendous shock to me after having been goaded on for years to get good grades in high school, then to go to college, then to hang in there—goaded using all of these reasons for sticking with it—only to find out that college doesn't provide you with wealth, the ability to get paid for what you think, a way to avoid dead-end jobs, having to start at the absolute entry level, or getting paid nothing for all of the above... The only way up the career ladder is to climb it, from the bottom.
It's the "all kids must go to college" culture that we have—we even direct kids away from the things they're interested in in many cases using these kinds of arguments (which are really veiled threats in a way of what consequences await them if they don't go to college) and then they graduate expecting exactly the benefits that have been used as selling points for all these years.
I can completely empathize. It took me a good five years to come to terms with the fact that I'd essentially been had and would now need to choose between going out and starting up the career ladder as if I'd just graduated high school with essentially no advantage, or going to grad school on the other hand (i.e. school for many more years and at great expense) to gain at least some measurable advantage for myself with all the hard work I'd done.
I chose the latter, but I often reflect on the fact that I could easily have chosen the former as well... there was certainly a point in my life where it could have gone either way.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
No only isn't it "necessarily bad", I think it is a positivly Good Thing (TM). Moving around gives a graduate a range of experiences on both the technical level (develop skills etc) but also a range of experiences with various people and ways of working & doing business. All of this helps create a well rounded and skilled professional when then start to grow up and remain longer in jobs.
However, if you're an employer who wants to spend peanuts then you should expect to get either
- Someone with little experience (who will leave when they see they've developed skills someone will actually pay for)
- someone who can't get a better gig right now and promises to remain for ages (but won't)
- someone who can't get a job with better conditions because they are actually worth the little you pay, or maybe worth a little less
- A mixture of the above
Bottom line is - if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Some monkeys will develop well and you should treat their tenure as a bonus. The monkeys you wish would leave, won't; and then you've got to consult your local labour lawsIf young people do develop a sense of responsibility, they are still not going to take jobs. They are going to take over. It is every young generation's manifest destiny to take over from the older generations, eventually. But there are rites of passage. Those older guys know more than you do. They are tougher, meaner, smarter, more experienced, better talkers, better programmers, better negotiators, better strategists, etc.., than their younger colleagues. They are like this because they have been at it a lot longer. You will take over as they retire off and/or as you become experienced enough to outsmart and outcompete them. Again, there are no shortcuts.
So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren't yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff. You will know when you are up to the task, because you will take over. Until then, you are just flapping your lips. And no, you aren't worth the same amount of money as someone that has been doing the job for 20 years. In all likelihood, if you disappeared, they would hardly notice - as a green kid, the company is investing in you - you likely add very little value, so you are being payed more than they are able to extract in value from your labor. You are likely being trained, groomed and given experience in the hopes that your value will eventually increase past the point where their investment is, making you a profitable employee to have on board. If the 20 year veteran disappeared, the lights wouldn't turn on, the database would stop working, nobody would be able to get a new release out, it would start raining blood, cats and dogs would be living together and the company would go into crisis mood. But you wouldn't know about that, because you haven't experienced it...
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
I worked for a company that was bought out a few years back. The new CEO came to visit us to "pep talk" us, telling us that we were currently number two in the marketplace and that we wouldn't settle for number two: we had to be number one.
No one was enthusiastic in the slightest, and it wasn't because we were in a new company. No, we weren't pepped by his speech because it was clear to us that there was no advantage to us other than perhaps some prestige to being number one. All we would be doing is earning him and the stockholders more money.
We're told that we have to earn our place in society, but from many of our perspectives, there really isn't anything *worth* earning. What is the very best that most of us can hope for? A middle class position in an ever poverty-increasing society due to the tremendous shift of wealth towards a small number of businessmen? A marriage where we both work long hours in order to fatten a tiny number of people's pockets, coming home so exhausted that we're barely able to tend to the children's needs and much less to each other's, so we compensate ourselves by the accumulation of possessions? Some world we've been offered. I'm not sure that it will be worse off if we're a bunch of WOW playing crybaby slackers.
I'm frustrated that despite all of human innovation and technological advancements, I have to kowtow to an alarm clock that rings at 6:30 AM. Where are the promises that technology was supposed to reduce working hours and make our lives more pleasant? No, we're forced to work harder to compete with other organizations who also suffer the same fate as our own. I think many of us have realized just how much society *has* lied to us, about college, technology, etc. and we've grown apathetic and tired of the empty promises. I'd rather be a relatively poor slacker with time to myself to do what I want and to enjoy my family than a successful developer whose time is consumed with largely meaningless pursuits and whose life is filled with possessions.
I was once a disillusioned IT worker. I oft wondered why my ability and all my raw potential weren't being properly compensated as I struggled through the first half of my career. Further clouding my vision was an early payoff in consulting where I managed to bill out more than what was probably justified when I was in my early 20s. There was a distinct lack of IT talent in the community I find myself in and got a lot of business via word of mouth.
It wasn't till later on in my career I learned some humility and became easier to work with, and that's when the bucks started to roll in. When my can-do attitude started to shed the rampant contrarian in me. I see a lot of kids younger than me that go through this - I recently tried to give some budding superstars inside and outside my company some coaching in this regard; however, they didn't become open till they lost their jobs. It seems that this is a lesson the young continue to need to learn, and my dad had hinted to me that this would be my struggle with others as he saw me grow up to be a smart alecky know it all.
So if there's one thing I can recommend to the under 25 crowd, it's this: a little humility and willingness to learn from others goes a long way. You'll find that people that don't always have all the top technical answers at their disposal are useful in other ways: managing chemistry with team members, negotiating with clients, directing personnel in certain directions and managing crisis before they get out of control.
We've done our young people a disservice the past few decades....in schools and society, we've taken away anything that might hurt little Timmy's self esteem.....everyone gets an award for 'trying', and everyone is taught they are all equal and will be treated that way.
Parents who work too much....have tried making up for it...by giving their kids what they want. It leads to people coming out of this sheltered environment, and being shocked that they don't walk right into a job making the $$ their parents did....not instantly being a manager...and [shudder] having to work their way up from the bottom.
I'll admit...my generation (early X) had a great deal of this too...but, not quite as bad as it seems the youth coming into the workforce now have.
I'm not saying it is all of them...but, this attitude does seem to be rising. Unless you can start your own business....you're gonna have to learn that there is the golden rule...whoever has the gold, makes the rules. If you wanna work and make it...well, you're gonna have to sacrifice and work hard for awhile, pay your dues as they used to say.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
wow, really nice to hear that we are all the same and there is absolutely no individual variation for, say, folks like some I know who thrive in an open space environments, and folks like me who are 1000% more productive in an office with a window and a closed door.
Also according to the same yardstick we could also all live chained to our desks 24/7, we'd soon learn to tune out everything else and attend to what's relevant, like somebody handing out some bread & water, or somebody else whipping us if we don't produce enough LoC during the 16 hour workday.
Just because humans can adapt to abysmal environments it doesn't mean that we should be made to.
-- the cake is a lie
30-50 years ago, if you went to college, chances are your parents were blue collar people who worked their asses off to save enough money to give you that opportunity, and you probably had to work your ass off to get more money and scholarships to make it. Yeah, there were a few kids of rich parents, but they were the minority.
Now we have a LOT more people in middle-class office jobs. They don't have to pull double-shifts to get their kids into college. And their kids don't have to work their asses off for it - they can just get financial aid and student loans, WITHOUT having to join the army for 6 years. Yeah, there are still kids out there who work their asses off to get into and through school, but they're in the minority.
30 years ago most kids who graduated college were thankful they didn't have grease under their fingernails when they came home from work like their parents did. Nowadays, more of the kids who graduate college are from families who never had to worry about anything. If your parents always had enough money, why wouldn't you?
paintball
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 one hell of a different world than it was 50 years ago! America is not the place it was in 1958... Let's see, 1958: A college education was completely unnecessary for most well paying and secure jobs. This started someone in their career about 4-5 years ealier and saved them $30k-$40k in debt. In 1958 it only took 1 income earner in a family to provide enough to support the entire family. In 1958 most everyone could count on working for a big megacorp throughout their career and retire with a big fat pension to carry them through their golden years. Healthcare costs were a pittance compared to what they are today. Anyone could own their own home. Rents were also a pittance compared to what they are today. Anyone who thinks people under the age of 31 are too impatient are goddamned right because we don't have time to be patient, your generation has generously taken everything you could get for yourselves and left very little to us except your Medicare and Social Security debt. The company that wants to pretend it is 1958 without offering the same pensions, or unionization, without paying an employee enough to take care of the whole family on 1 income -- is being disingenuous to say the least. Talk about blaming the victims!
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
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. I keep hearing that story and I don't see it. I'm sure there's arrogance amongst the youth, that's always been the case. But this is not your father's entry-level job market these days. It's a fuck and chuck employment market. Sure, there's always been disreputable companies and bosses who want to keep taking money out of the business while never putting any of it back in. But these days it seems to be the universal rule rather than the exception. Every business is operated with the maximization of wealth as the sole goal, to the detriment of all else. Slash staff to increase profit, slash benefits to increase profit, cut corners on quality to increase profit, screw the customer and ream the employee, all in the name of making the top man on the totem pole as much scratch as possible.
Now I've been downmodded by the rah-rah business crowd for expressing these views before so fuck you in advance -- the man who said "the business of America is business" should be smacked. I'm traditional when it comes to these things: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. There you go. Nobody says you're going to get what you want wrapped up with a red bow and sitting on a silver platter, but if you want it you can get in on the chase.
What's more, no organization exists in a vacuum. Business exists in an ecosystem, the same as farmers and fishermen. You abuse the ecosystem that supports you, you suffer the consequences. A prudent farmer knows when to sow his fields and when to leave them fallow. Fishermen know if they take too much, the fisheries will collapse. The same holds true for the artificial ecosystems of American industry. The leaders these days are not satisfied with sustainable profits, they want to clearcut the forest and to hell with leaving anything for the next guy.
You want to know why people feel discouraged? It's because employers demand as much labor as possible and tell their employees that they're lucky to even have jobs. Hard work is seldom rewarded. And in today's economy it's a cycle of shifting jobs and unsteady employment. There used to be a time when workers could count on a lifetime of working for a single company and a pension upon retirement. We're paying into social security now with no hope of ever seeing any of it. I'm 30 and I know I won't get any. Employers are getting out of the benefits business, cutting down on health care with pensions becoming a thing of the past. Because turnover is so rapid, it's hard to accrue any seniority in a company and the ageism curse is looking to bite us in the ass as we approach middle-age.
Real wages are dropping, the government is lying about inflation, and parents today will be the first in the history of this country who cannot collectively count on their children being better off than they. With all these problems facing us, the presidential horse race is still about foo-foo bullshit issues. The media concentrates on superficial banalities and we continue on course straight into the shoals.
So, what's there to be positive about?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.