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The Dead Sea Effect In the IT Workplace
Alien54 notes a blog posting by old hand Bruce F. Webster on the current state of affairs in hiring in IT, focusing on what he calls the Dead Sea Effect. "Many large IT shops... work like the Dead Sea. New hires are brought in as management deems it necessary. Their qualifications... will tend to vary quite a bit, depending upon current needs, employee departure, the personnel budget, and the general hiring ability of those doing the hiring. All things being equal, the general competency of the IT department should have roughly the same distribution as the incoming hires. Instead, what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave -- to evaporate, if you will. They are the ones least likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems that plague large organizations; they are also the ones most likely to have other opportunities that they can readily move to. What tends to remain behind is the 'residue' -- the least talented and effective IT engineers."
When employers all threaten everyone with the same outsourcing when/if the salary budget gets too high then none of us are better off. No one leaves and instead of a Dead Sea you have an algae pond that clogs and festers.
It shows up in layers, bottom up - the new folks layer in on top, the older tenured employees at the bottom. It's very difficult to improve your lot if you're seen as an expert; it's not so much that you're seen as less intelligent, just more embedded - nobody wants to disturb a working ecosystem by promoting what are seen as essential roles. The result is that the experts sort of decant, and end up on the top layer somewhere else.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This just in, smart people find dumb people dumb. Film at 11.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
Not that I completely disagree...but these people do go somewhere. If you start with the assumption that the distribution of the talent is uniform across the marketplace, then the migration of talent from one shop to the next obviously doesn't change that.
"What tends to remain behind is the 'residue' - the least talented and effective IT engineers."
It must be late, because I read that as "What tends to remain behind is the 'residue' - from the least talented and effective IT engineers."
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
except for the IT workplaces where these talented and effective IT engineers go to. :P
There needs to be a better salary distribution. Good network administrators are like world class composers.
Smart people with better options leave. wow who would have thought that would happen. next on slashdot, all about how water is wet.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The real nerds are busy doing math and science somewhere, while the fake ones come here to talk about video games.
I suggest you read Slashdot
How is this different from any organization, anywhere, ever?
ACS is sort of like a long term contracting company that provides entire IT teams to hospitals. I worked at one for another contractor for a short time. Most of the people were crazy dumbfucks. And guess what, the hospital fired ALL OF THEM (well they kept like 2) and replaced them with IBM people cuz they sucked so bad. Other places with permanent, directly hired IT crews just wish they could do that I bet lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
This tends to happen when companies don't focus on keeping their best talent, and don't regularly get rid of those who have no desire or ability to learn or do their job better. There are two types of employees - the guys who love their job and would spend time at home (for free) to learn more.. and those who show up, do their job, go home and don't give a shit. Your company is only as good as the people who work for it.
This is certainly not restricted to the IT industry.
In my experience working in a large petroleum company I have seen the exact same thing - high turnover of good engineers, with a few competent people who stay on dotted around the organisation, but also a lot of dead weight.
However this is not news. This is just what HR battles every day in large orgainisations - balancing pay, benefits, career advancement etc. against turnover rates, to try to make staying on more attractive. Which is hard because the grass is always greener...
Depending on where you live there aren't always easy options. I feel like I'm in the same situation as described above and there are almost no IT jobs in my area unless I want to work in (and commute to) the big city (Chicago). I don't! I have never worked in an IT shop that had competent management and that often seems to be the problem from what I've heard (from other IT employees).
I don't want to bust this guy's bubble, but let me give it a try anyway. The problem that he describes is part 'peter principle' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle and part of the culture of bad leadership that infests (at least western cultures) big business.
The trouble is not what you think. Modern western businesses are generally run like the military, at least in form if not function. This puts too much control in the hands of those who are not proven fit to lead. The problem of good people moving on is prevalent in ALL industries, including the all volunteer military, forklift drivers, plumbers, restaurant managers... on and on and on. It has nothing to do with IT other than its affect on IT.
Bad leadership is the problem, and it spills out of corporate offices like stink from a blocked sewer pipe of grand proportions.
Hiring decisions are effected via budget restraints and leadership decisions between what amounts to two basic waring factions within the company: The IT shop and the HR group.
When you start to think of modern corporate businesses like armies you can see how things go wrong. It only takes one bad lieutenant to totally fuckup the battlefield. With field promotions, that Lt. gets to a spot that s/he doesn't belong and it becomes more short term pain to replace them than to let them carry on fucking things up.
Bad leadership chooses to avoid short term pain. If sports teams were run the same way they would never win anything (sorry NY).
The problem is bad leadership. end. of. story.
With good leadership, all the other problems can be mitigated or removed.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Oh f*#k that's why I still work here ... :(
This effect isn't simply true for 'certain' companies. It is the general case for IT staffers in general. They either move into management, or remain 'data janitors', the modern equivalent of file clerks, for their whole career. Or they get an engineering or marketing job. IT is an 'infrastructure' job, like the dudes down on the loading dock, or the security guards.
The real problem is that most people are stupid. And in an industry where you're somewhat expected to be smart, I really have a hard time believing there are as many morons trying to make a living doing it.
How do people go home at night and sleep knowing they are completely clueless about their job? Or is the better question: Do they even REALIZE they are clueless?
Most importantly, am I REALLY as smart as I think I am.
Probably.
Where do the more talented and effective ones go? Google?
...at least from what I've seen in the several IT jobs I've had in as many years: What I've found is that I am often hired into an environment where the "old guard" aren't exactly technically proficient, but they remain thanks to their collective knowledge of the domain. Which isn't exactly a bad thing: All things considered, domain knowledge often trumps technical proficiency when it comes down to getting the job done.
Still, it's quite frustrating to join a group with a collective level of technical knowledge below one's own. Groups such as this are often resistant to suggestions from the new guy, and it's been my experience that it's the new hires that end up leaving.
I have witnessed this first hand. When I started my new job a couple years back, the "youngest" of the bunch had been there 10 years already, while the eldest was sitting at 25. There was very much the attitude of, "Don't rock the boat", and consquently too many things that should have been done years ago hadn't even been looked at. Further, everyone had a paraniod "don't tell them how it works" attitude, in case someone might want to replace you. Which made learning the job 10x harder than it should have been. Documentation? Are you kidding? You write down what you know, and they can replace you that much easier. It was, and in many ways still is, unreal.
Since I started, I have increased efficiency dramatically by doing simple things like labeling devices ( computers, routers, ect... ), documenting passwords and usernames for network devices, and implementing document storage. And I am a peon, front level line worker. I still have to motivate my "peers" to get off their asses and get something done, elsewise it would be ignored until it blows up in our faces.
Your war story here. Thanks for playing.
"IT engineers." Amazing how worthless the word engineer is these days. Can't wait until high school teachers are calling themselves doctors, because hey, they technically are!
Dammit, if only there were some way to entice the good people to stay... like... pay rises? Promotion? Perks?
That's why I'm still where I am.
Errr, either that or... um... nah, can't be that.
RTFA? Moi?
I prefer stable business hours work, but find the general opinion of managers is that because you are a drone, you must be not so good; if you were good you would be out consulting and making the big bucks. So you get treated like shit until you leave and go out and make the big bucks.
Fuckem.
I was an IT manager for about 5 years at a K-12 and I can tell you that's exactly how it works for both the IT departments and the teachers at K-12's.
Copyright Reform!
Thank goodness for this phenomenon, it keeps me employed. I look good compared to my coworkers.
Thanks for insulting my only means of feeding my children, you insensitive clod!
Hey! Look a Distraction!
It's not just "evaporation" at work in those places, there's also a filter that actively excludes "fresh water" from the lake.
Consider the position of the talentless drone who's achieved a position of junior management by virtue of being the longest-serving talentless drone in the room when the previous manager left.
Is this PHB-in-training going to hire the best and brightest?
No way, s/he doesn't want underlings making him/her look bad, so s/he'll be careful to only hire other talentless drones.
There's an additional benefit (for the PHB) here, as it requires 2 or 3 talentless drones to do the work on one talented geek, and a managers prestige and remuneration are proportional to the number of people s/he manages.
So only "brackish water" ever flows into the lake, evaporation then acts to make it even worse.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Something else is happening in the Dead Sea. Those who are left behind have an easy time assuming that they are the right ones to inherit the kingdom and will be looking for more like themselves. This may be very appropriate for a time and place so they may not be just 'residue' but it bodes poorly for flexibility. This culture builds until it is the only acceptable culture and the "way we have been and will always be". There is a building self-fulfilling prophecy that can blind a company to other options and stifle the ability to adapt to changing situations. This is fine if the market is on the upswing, but deadly where there is a "self-correction".
The Dead Sea effect is not really wrong, but I believe it's swamped by larger effects:
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I agree that such talent retention problems occur across the board, but I still think the problems are magnified in IT relative to other departments because of the seemingly larger variance in productivity/output in IT. It is common that some people in IT produce several _orders of magnitudes_ more in output than others. Such variability is less common in other fields and certainly it not reflected in compensation. But I do believe that in general variability in talent/ability is much higher than people intuitively believe, because we are all accustomed to prize "equality", perhaps sacrificing cold hard truth along the way. In the future as more traditional companies begin to exploit this in the manner that Google has (Google recognizes talent, is willing to pay for it, and is enormously successful as a result..) an employee's total benefit of working for a company (which includes salary, happiness, intellectual stimulation, pride of work, etc.) will more accurately follow talent and subsequently the Dead Sea Effect will subside.
My company manages all that without being large (~300 persons). Are we sure we aren't talking about every company where the CEO doesn't know all the people working for the company? I can talk to the CEO on first name bases, most of us can and may do that, but he wouldn't necessarily know what's going on and how frustrating the working space can get.
Please!
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
From my recent job hunting recruiters can hurt more often than help with landing a position. A placement fee of 10-15% yearly salary makes managers reluctant to take any risk. They worry about making a decision that will result in a 3 or 6 month hire regardless of the payoff. Better safe than sorry.
Managers want to hire someone who will make them confident in their decision and will stick around for a long period of time. Not necessarily the persons ability to do the job.
Yeah, I've seen this on more than one occasion.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
towards getting the best people out there is to stop calling yourself an 'IT shop' and give it a name that doesn't sound so bad with a perpiratory prefix. e.g. sweat consulting firm...
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
The best move on to greener pastures, the worst are fired or forced out, and the mediocre float to the top.
As another poster mentioned, this is nothing more than a restatement of the "Peter Principle", which was a pretty big book not so many years ago. This reminds me to wonder why so many modern "leaders" seem to be so unfamiliar with such influential works of the past.
This has been said many different ways, but its basic truth remains: When people forget the past, they are doomed to repeat it.
I just get angry and depressed when I see so-called "leaders" doing stupid things that other leaders have done and failed at before... for reasons that are obvious in hindsight. There is no reason for this... unless it is simply lack of education in those same "leaders"... which would imply that they are not fit to lead anyway.
Those who are crap at their job, turn up late but keep their jobs because they are Golfing buddies with the Boss.
Then these get promoted and become even more crap managers who then fire anyone who they think might expose their 'shell game' and them them fired.
Seen it, Been there, got the sack.
Then I watched the once profitable company go down the tubes with the golfing Clique still there at the 19th hole while the ship sank.
Now they are out of work or earning far less than before.
I'm my own boss and earning far more than I could have at my former employers even if they still existed so actually, I should be thankful for them really but Nope, I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
And no, I don't play Golf (or Computer Games for that matter).
What a bitchy summary.
The author is going to be perpetually disappointed as long as he expects new hires to have the exact same experience as himself. It should come as no surprise to a professional that, well, other people do things differently and have different backgrounds, to offer, to learn from.
No employee will be 100% the perfect match; your task is unique, people are different, deal with it.
Have you worked in a IT department in the last couple years? The workers left are there because they make no attempts to stay healthy or have tolerable hygiene... in fact it seems they try to catch as much diseases as possible, stay on medication, and then rub boogers on your keyboard, spit in your eye at meetings, and in your food at lunch
What about those of us who love our jobs and love to excel in them, but don't want to make work our entire life?
That suggests to me that you've chosen a job that you don't *really* love, since you see a clean break between going to work as a necessary chore and returning home to enjoy life. That's not uncommon: it's called 9-to-5'ism, and it's the bane of company life because it creates shoddy, uncommitted workforces full of people whose main concern is leaving the office.
If you truly love something, then you *DO* want to make it your entire life --- it's part of the human makeup, to seek to maximize what you enjoy and to minimize what you don't enjoy. If you truly loved your job then you would give it unlimited attention, and multiplex it with other things that you love (eg. sleep, eating, family) as best you can, flexibly. That means sitting at the job's bedside for 48h non-stop when there is trouble, just as you would sit at a beloved's bedside non-stop when they are in trouble. No 9-to-5'ism, no treating the job as second best.
From your description, it seems that you don't place your job in the same category as your home life. This contradicts your statement that you really love your job, and it casts a doubt on your claim that you love to excel in it, since your level of committment to it is limited. You may "love to excel in it" as you say, but only on your own terms, as a secondary, less-loved interest. It's still 9-to-5'ism, and it really isn't in the same league as working in a job that you truly love.
Incidentally, the tell-tale sign of really "loving your job" is continuing to do it when you get back home after office hours are over, without getting paid, when there are no other issues of higher priority to attend to. It's part of our natural desire to maximize those things we love. If you don't do that, on principle, then you're actually deluding yourself about loving your job.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Google is just smoke and mirrors for their success.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
All the great and creative guys get new jobs and we keep getting the fat, lazy, useless, nerd blobs as "replacements", the guys nobody else wants maybe. Things aren't going well right now. But in the end it's a management problem, and at one point it will sort itself out or the company will die.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Perhaps they go and start their own shop? It's something I see in the Mac business. Lots of people leaving larger (thinks Apple) or even semi-large (think Omni Group) companies to start their own software companies. It's easy for us developers to do so, since one developer can produce a full, finished, sellable product within a reasonable timespan (like half a year) with minimal outside help (some graphics design, some translation, probably some money and law stuff).
As a developer, if you can put away enough money to survive half a year, you can start your own company with minimum risk.
Instead, what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave -- to evaporate, if you will.
Well, they don't just disappear off the face of the earth. And although a bad IT job may make people want to jump off a cliff, as a rule, they don't. So where do they evaporate to? To companies that treat them better.
So, the companies that treat their employees badly end up with the bad engineers, and the companies that treat their employees well end up with the good ones.
Seems to me the job market is working the way it should.
(I'm not a CEO)
"I don't care about individual talent, that's crazy. Programmers are like plumbers. I run a company with 1000 plumbers. There's a turnover and a general skill level, I won't bother beyond that. Of course every plumber thinks he's a star plumber, which is funny, considering how replaceable they are. Let them scream, let them whine, let them hate the management, let them move on. They are just another commodity. The numbers are fine. Now please excuse me while I collect a huge bonus."
I think it's a bit naive and too easy to think that companies fail to hang on to star programmers because of bad management. The management doesn't care by design, as a professional choice.
> What tends to remain behind is the 'residue' -- the least talented and effective IT engineers."
Dammit, I resemble that remark!
Mark Edwards
--
Proof of Sanity Forged Upon Request
"In addition, the companies with the best programmers will tend to do better in the marketplace, meaning they can afford to treat the good ones better and fire the bad ones."
They just post on Sourceforge.
"They can also be pickier about picking up new programmers and will have to hire people less often because they have a core of talent that they tend to expand instead of constantly replacing workers that get fed up."
OSS has a high turnover rate.
"Talent tends to clump just like matter in space, leaving a vacuum where it's hard to find the talent that they need."
1-800-Free-Code.
I think the (root) problem might be with the modern public stock corporation. This has caused a real split in the company's "brain". The owners are now fairly isolated stockholders. The company management is hired & fired like any employee (VPs, Pres, CEO) with their real income based on short performance (stock options instead of a cash bonus). And the watchdogs (board of directors) who are suppose to both represent the interest of the owners and have strategic vision for the company aren't doing much of either. This creates kind of a perfect storm for short sighted decisions.
This is no different from any other profession. Talented fry cooks move up in the world, leaving room for the talented dish washer to be promoted. But fry cooks and dishwashers wouldn't make it into ./, I guess.
Hey! That explains my workplace!
This makes me feel a little better about the fact that I'm thinking about quitting after only being at my current job for 8 months.
Hiding behind the cowardice of anonymity as I wouldn't put it past them to find this post and work out it's me.
This is not only true of IT shops.
That's the whole premise of privatization in government. The idea that an outside company can do the required job cheaper than in-house is a fallacy. And then they wonder where their budgets went at the end of the year. Most government services are services that the private sector can't or won't provide either because of legal requirements or profitability. To somehow assume that the private sector can do better for less when they have already shown they can't is astounding.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I wouldn't want anyone to think I was one ;)
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
.... is the exact reason (of course, put much better) my five year stint with my current employer is ending in about an hour and a half. Well that, and I'm sick of working graveyard shifts on weekends.
The company I worked for was bought out just over a year and a half ago. I decided to give it a year from the date of my last review. For the sake of being concise, let's just say it went from working at Columbia Internet to Initech around here fast. The final straw was when they pushed reviews (and no mention of raises) to December. Mine should have been about three weeks ago. They got my notice that same day.
Why do writers feel the need for using poor analogies to coin terms that add nothing to discussions because they have to looked up somewhere before people know what they're supposed to mean? The topic being written about has no parallels whatsoever with evapouration because it's entirely the result of conscious decisions by people, so this particular term (like so many others) obfuscates meaning instead of clarifying it.
Here's my term for the point the writer intends to make, together with its extremely short yet all-encompassing description:
The Law Of Progessive Incompetence
A system that rewards incompetence will always attempt to reach an equilibrium point where all vestiges of competence have been eliminated from it.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
... he was an early riser?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
This is a corollary to the Peter Principle. If there's no way to get from the technical track to the management track, how do you promote people sideways out of the way of the people who haven't yet reached their level of incompetence?
In the old ACE team in Toronto, the general rule was that you could recommend anyone who was better than you at something.
This didn't prevent some of the good folks from wandering away, but it did keep the average goodness of the shop headed upwards.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
What a great study! It restates the economic principle of 'adverse selection' where candidates with no better options remain at a certain position into perpetuity and those that can do better eventually do.
It might be new to some, but really just restates things every hiring manager should already know.
Thanks for all the great comments, though I suspect many of you didn't ready anything more than the brief extract posted here at Slashdot. :-) Because certain themes keep coming up again and again, I thought I'd address them in a single post (I also posted this over at my website).
Here's a response to the main themes that I see coming up there.
The Dead Sea effect isn't unique to IT. True enough, though I could say the same thing about just about any project management issue regarding IT. What is unusual about IT (shared with other engineering disciplines) is the degree to which individual talent and other factors affect productivity and quality. And what is unique about IT (as opposed to, say, civil / mechanical / chemical engineers, architects, etc.) is that there is no standard (state-run) professional certification, so there is no assurance of minimum education and competency.
This is obvious/common sense/trivial. So are most of the problems in IT. Fred Brooks and Jerry Weinberg pretty much nailed down all the essential issues in IT project and personnel management more than 30 years ago; yet, amazingly, the problems haven't all gone away! There is a profound lack of professional and institutional memory in IT; almost everyone who writes about IT project/personnel management (myself included) is looking for new ways to cast or explain the core issues in a touching hope that maybe this time someone will actually listen and fix them.
The Dead Sea effect is just the Peter Principal (or a corollary thereof). No, it isn't. The Peter Principal is that a given person rises to her/his level of incompetence (I'm actually old enough to remember when 'the Peter Principal' first came out). This has nothing to do with promotion within the IT organization; it has to do with self-selected removal from that IT organization, not due to a lack of promotion or opportunity, but just because there are greener pastures elsewhere.
Not all IT shops are like this . I would certainly hope so. In fact, there are IT organizations where just the opposite occurs; the quality of the IT engineers is quite high, and engineers who are mediocre or disruptive either don't get hired or don't last long if they are. I worked in one such IT group (Pages Software) for five years. During that time, we had only one voluntary departure (the network admin); we had two others who were dismissed due to problems, and a few others who were (painfully) cut in downsizing.
Not everyone 'left behind' is incompetent . Again, this syndrome doesn't apply to all IT groups, and it doesn't apply to the same extent to all IT groups. Turnover in IT personnel is common (though it can be reduced by intelligent management), and just because good engineers have left a given IT group doesn't mean that the rest are, in fact, residue. What I'm talking about here is a very real syndrome, typically found in large corporations and government organizations, but it's certainly not universal.
The IT hiring process is broken. Amen. Not only is the IT hiring process broken in many organizations, the entire approach to IT is often broken. It is rife with empire-building, 'heroic' project management, and an 'interchangeable code monkeys' mindset. As mentioned in the comments
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
If you promote people into IT management because ... they stick around for a long time AND talented people do not stick around for a long time....
Well incompetent IT management is to be expected.
The solution is to have different color schemes on the employee ID badges. The color of your badge reflects your percentile ranking in your most recent performance appraisal and your salary. People will strive to "make level" to get the gold badge instead of the brown badge. A dozen or so designs should do the trick.
And never forget that the contract employees always get the yellow badge. That way, the full-time employees, who happen to do the same job for 1/2 the money, will feel good about not having to wear that Yellow badge.
While I don't enjoy introducing buzzwords in to conversations just to do so, I'm not sure there's a better term than 'social media'. I'm not sure that you necessarily have to go 100% democratic, though in publicly traded companies perhaps this is more plausible.
:)
Consider 'traditional' companies' approach to information dispersal - very limited, 'need to know' basis, and so on. The introduction of intranets has made it easier to move information around, but it tends to be buried in silos - still a 'need to know' basis. And the information is still mostly 'one way' publishing.
The introduction of 'social media' type principles to information in companies would be very un-military like, but not really be 100% democratic either. Giving people more tools to see what's going on at multiple levels of the company and to talk amongst themselves at multiple levels would ideally foster a more collaborative spirit between departments. Being able to track the relationships between people also gives a 'Big Brother' flavor to the whole affair.
creation science book
I'm not sure this effect does not have some benefits. In particular, large corporations typically have competitive advantages due to their superior access to financial capital. So it's nice that this advantage is partially compensated for by the bureaucratic inefficiencies and lower quality IT staffs endemic to larger corporations. This just makes it easier for start ups and smaller companies to succeed.
Of course, few people believe they lie in the bottom half of the IT competence scale, obviously half of all IT people do.
Mod parent up!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I also agree that demoting managers who screw up is a good idea. It encourages them to learn to be better managers and make better decisions. When there are no consequences for people's actions, organizations go to hell. I've seen it too many times.
But all consequences need to be managed properly. A demotion really needs to be well deserved. Incidents need to be documented, and people met with to discuss problems before issuing a demotion. But where it is warranted, do it. Where a firing is warranted, do it. The impacts on morale, when such issues are handled properly and fairly, are positive.
But then again, this is why Dilbert can be such an accurate and funny comic strip.
A new, exciting project comes along. Senior staff have the background and experience to implement it. Does management offer these projects to senior staff? No, they hire inexperienced monkeys to try to implement a critical project while relegating senior staff, some of whom are very talented to the grunge projects. Tell me why I should stay when I can leave and find more motivating projects to work on elsewhere?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If your company's IT department is in big trouble -- to the point where you're calling in management consultants to fix it -- everyone in IT is looking for another job, not just the talented ones. The reason they get hired elsewhere is because...
they're talented?
I call this the "NOthing to See Here in IT" (NOSHIT) Principle.
body massage!
That's what I used to think. But in reality, when you travel for work, you get to see the inside of airplains, hotels, the client's office, and a taxi, and very little else. What you don't get to see a lot of is friends and family.
Better offers pulling away more talented engineers is only one term in a complex rate equation. There are probably a dozen or more competing effects which might cause good talent to stay and lesser talents to leave. I'm sure one could find specific anecdotal examples that supported any funky configuration of these various evaporative rates. Also, based on the evaporative cooling analogy, you get a weird kind of paradox in the steady state that says no talented IT person is employed and if you are employed, you are untalented. This is obvious nonsense, but it does start sounding like a form of apologetics for being trained in IT, but not working. In some sense, it also may be too specific to Webster himself, who is obviously a very talented IT expert, but who has had a rather unconventional career in IT.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I've heard similar situations described as "lowering the fences", as in: Company/Management creates a less than desireable working environment (various issues with mgmt-style, training, hiring, wages, operating processes, etc, etc, etc) that tends to lower the fences just low enough so that their strongest horses can jump over to greener pastures. That leaves the company with the low performing nags who can't clear the fence. Variations on a theme, I guess... -JD-
Where is the evidence?
What I have found is that most of the IT organizations I have worked for are dysfunctional. I prefer to stay in an organization I know as opposed to the thinking that the grass is greener somewhere else.
And how do we not know that the engineers that leave departments are not because they are stellar, of which there are probably a very small percentage, but because they are uppity and sophomoric. These guys are making 100k+ and it goes to their heads. Go work a restaurant or other unskilled job and see how much you appreciate getting paid 100k. Most of the people I have worked with in IT have never had a job aside from their current IT job. It seems to me it is a matter of the spoiled child then it is that talented engineers leave.
... the "Dead Sea Effect" has been ongoing in the corporate world in its entirety as things have changed from a career-based relationship to a body-shop environment.
The old "relationship" between employer and employee, with bonds of trust and commitment (however false or unreliable those bonds were) and things like pensions and health care coverage, with a corresponding commitment to the employer and career, that relationship is gone.
The current relationship is one that is a good deal more volatile, and entirely temporary. Employees today regularly switch employers and even careers.
So what have you done for me today?
This leads directly to the Dead Sea Effect, and exists not just in the IT industry, but in every walk of life.
Get over it and move on.
Yes, mod parent to +5.
"It's NOT about making things better..."
It's about non-technical managers outsourcing so that they can say that technical things are no longer part of their responsibility. It's about avoidance of responsibility, and has nothing to do with improving anything or cutting costs.
The manager who outsources can blame someone else when projects fail. If things get really bad, the manager just goes to another company.
talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave -- to evaporate, if you will. They are the ones least likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems that plague large organizations
I see the opposite. Those who can tolerate, navigate, and even thrive in dysfunctional bureaucracies are the ones that make more money. Tolerating and navigating corporate stupidity is a sought-after skill. The rest of us sacrifice pay to find relatively normal projects in order to keep our sanity. Capitalism tends to reward people who are both skilled and good bullshitters over merely skilled.
Table-ized A.I.
I was the senior architect and manager at a major Fortune 30 company ($50b in size) that hired in a new CEO who had been one of the Jack Welch proteges. As with nearly everyone of his sycophants, this new CEO brought both the Six Sigma and HR ranking methods with him.
During review time our managers had to rank everyone from 1 to 5 and were suggested(not formally written as required, as HR liked to point out) to have 10%-1,5 20%-2,4 40%-3's within your group.
Now my team had been composed of the strongest developers and architects from the various other units, specifically to provide guidance to the entire organization and be available in a matrix model to assist any project team that needed it.
So review time comes around, all my team were high performers, all had through out the year been involved in fixing critical issues, helping projects get back on track, etc and I had given them all 4 & 5 (3 was shows up a does their job satisfactorily).
HR told me I had to change some ratings, though they always insisted there was no required distribution, I was pressured to change them. I refused, pointing out that when compared to the organization as a whole, these were the most senior, most productive people we had.
My VP over ruled me, changed the ratings herself so that I had 1-1 (performance plan required), 1-2, 1-4, 1-5 and 3-3's. They also re-organized and took the team away from me. The excuse was that our bar was higher than everyone else, so we had to be ranked against that.
Within 6 months, all but 2 of us were gone. We all took different jobs elsewhere that didn't have this garbage.
The HR ranking model had been pioneered at GE manufacturing plants which employed union workers. In order to be able to get rid of true dead weight in a way the union leaders would agree with, they came up with this ranking model. Classify a bad seed a 1 and you can get rid of them.
The big problem with this is after the first year or two, the dead weight is gone, and the process is now cutting out good people. The other problem was the good people would stick with a particular team where they knew they would come out on top instead of offering to move around so they came out at the top of the curve.
The Dead Sea effect is something that I think is more endemic to very large population centers where competition for employees is low because management has a skewed view of the supply.
I have worked in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, for varied companies from extremely large super-conglomerates to relatively small movie studios. The Dead Sea effect was usually only seen in places that observed the supposed glut of IT people as a reason to lower their valuation of those positions. Unfortunately for them, they were way off and they ended up losing anyone of talent that wasn't approaching retirement. Otherwise, it seemed more like a flood plain, in the spring it get flooded and new silt would be deposited resulting in an excellent couple years of production. Then the drought came, frustrations with budget constraints or management issues dries out the talent until it blows away. Another flood soon brings new silt.
Here in the Mid-South of the country, most of the employers have figured out that outsourcing sucks. I currently work for a Fortune 10 company and I am currently being propositioned by several large and profitable companies. However, I am not considering leaving owing to a great benefit package and a great management team. I am currently working with some of the most talented people I have ever worked with. They were collected by a very bright manager. There are pockets of incompetence but that is an area controlled by the mid-level manager assigned to the team... not a corporate culture as a whole.
Comparing the two, the West Coast and Mid-South, I find that the expectations and treatment of the workers is vastly different. The Mid-South companies seem to place a higher value on the contribution that a healthy and happy family can make to the worker's outlook and productivity. The West Coast companies seemed to think that the worker was there solely to fulfill the needs of the company, and if there was time left for the family... good for them.
As someone who was "between positions" for nearly FIVE YEARS during the Bush Depression, let me note that a lot of that is HR people, who have *no* idea what they're hiring for, and have no interest in learning what it is: all they care about is "give me some acronyms, and that's how I'll decide who's resumes the hiring manager can see".
Literally, I had one asshole headhunter tell me I "wasn't fresh", and didn't want to even put in my resume until I said to her, "look, if you, personally, took a year off to have a kid, does this mean that no one will ever hire you again professionally?". She had the grace to be embarrassed, and put me in.
Upper management's the same - they don't know, and don't care. They want cheap, and they want letters. Oh, and 60-80 hour weeks.
mark "but we don't need unions...."
I don't see a solution to the problem of promoting incompetence and alienating talent without some kind of objective measure of performance.
I haven't noticed any correlation between the best managers I have had and their knowledge of the technologies that I was working with. Instead, they focused on making sure that I had the information and resources needed to do my job optimally.
That relationship works great as long as we are both good in our respective roles, but it does not equip management with the best perspective for judging my competence. Sure, if the projects fall apart that is a clue, but I all I really need to do to appear competent is to do just well enough.
Meanwhile, the worst managers I have had interfered with my role based on their perception of their own expertise rather than doing their own job well.
If the responsibility of judging performance sits with managers, either "just good enough" is the most you can expect or you likely have managers who have been promoted above their own level of competence (i.e. good IT people who have been promoted to managerial roles based on time-served rather than applicable skills and experience).
The question (to which I don't have an answer) is how to have staff filling a certain role judged by other staff who's core competency is in that same role. In the typical hierarchal organization, this never happens. Instead, personal predjudices, jealousy and fear are more often the basis for making. Some kind of system whereby engineers evaluate each other would be vulnerable to the same negative aspects of human nature, but it might provide for better decision making, if not the best.
People choose to stay or leave primarily for economic reasons. All environments have a variation in skillsets and work ethics. Any place that that has seen the majority of their "better" workers leave has failed to compensate proportional to value . There are exceptions (work places so undesireable that any who can leave does) but they are significantly less common.
Wow. "negative programming skills"
Negative management skills: The manager lowers the value of the company, but gets millions of dollars in pay and bonuses.
That should be "the Peter Principle", not "the Peter Principal". Sorry about that; "Principal" happens to be my own job title, and that spelling is sort of hardwired into my fingers. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
I was working IT (unix,SAN) and got my fill of the stupidity.
After a relaxing multi-year vacation(motorcycling), I bought a business.
A small town bar ! ( I am a very light drinker)
Now, The impared judgement rambling is from my customers, NOT my bosses !
And when they have had enough, You call a cab.
Not many small towns have an internet cafe/bar with onsite computer consulting...
Might be a trend setter, but probally not.
And what can I do for you ?
Beer, whiskey, or a system rebuild ?
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Management is hard, let's go hacking.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
This is true in every industry. It's human nature that produces crappy management in every enterprise. The rest follows naturally.
How many hospitals have problems retaining their best nurses and doctors? Probably the same effect there, worsened by the fact that you're dealing with sick people, not just computers.
Until people own up to and learn to deal with the basic issues of primate hierarchical social behavior issues, or better, adopt different models of social interaction, nothing will change.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Now I'm just waiting for at post about that sometimes politicians don't tell the truth...
Mundus Vult Decipi
good horses want good riders.......
good engineers/workers want good managers.....
and mostly good workers don't like to be manager
Disclaimer: I have not interviewed at Google, and what I've heard may not be true in a general sense.
(Google recognizes talent, is willing to pay for it, and is enormously successful as a result..)
A few friends of mine who interviewed at Google said that they actually would have to take a small pay cut (~10%) from their current jobs to work for Google. They seemed to have the opinion coming out of the interview/offer process that Google knew they didn't have to pay the best because good people would want to work for them anyway just because of who they were. (And at least one of those friends did.)
Granted, even if that's all (and still) completely true, Google's benefits are a lot better than most of the competition, so even with a lower salary they might well still have a better total compensation package.
It's funny to read all the anti-outsourcing comments here that end up blaming management for not knowing what to do. Guess what: most companies HAVE NO BUSINESS MANAGING information technology of any kind. If you work for a company that makes widgets or provides non-IT services and are surprised that your IT management is bad, then you are destined to be a victim. Companies that assess and focus on what they really, truly are good at are the ones that do best. If you need insulation from your own management, then you SHOULD be outsourced. This doesn't mean you are incompetent, it means you work for a company that has no particular skill relevent to properly harnessing your ability. SO DO LIKE THE ARTICLE SAYS AND LEAVE!!! You and the economy will be better off.
I hope that by comfortable backwaters you mean small rural towns where a job in IT means doing support for the PC in the local grain elevator.
There are a ton of IT jobs in the Chicago area but are all but inaccessible to many people who might want to take them. And that includes a huge number of people who live in the suburbs of Chicago.
I live in a suburb of the city and have a 21-mile commute to a nearby suburb that takes nearly an hour. So if I'm to be one of those "9-to-5ers" that another poster was complaining about I guess I'm supposed to be enjoying that perk of the two hours of "free" time I spend in my car driving to/from the office. (At least I get to listen to the radio, eh?) So, even on a non-eventful day where no major fires need to be put out, I wind up being more of a "7-to-6er" (seeing as how the last time anyone actually worked 9-to-5 was maybe forty years ago. It's more like 8-to-5, isn't it?). So on a normal day, I'm devoting 11 hours of my life to my employer. If I want to find another job in this area I can expect that two hours of daily commute time to increase rather dramatically. Along with the cost of the fuel needed to make the drive. Yes... there are trains that'll take you into Chicago. If you're well off enough to be able to afford a house in one of the suburbs that are served by the train lines; those suburbs have become the havens for the corporate execs who take the trains into the city. And, no, it's really not all that feasible to drive to one of those suburbs and then ride the train downtown; there's never enough parking to support those who try it.
As for it being a choice? You are obviously a single who's got no problem breaking their lease and jumping into the apartment complex down the street from the new gig you are in. Try that when you have a wife with a job, kids in school, and a house to sell. It isn't anywhere as simple as you seem to think. Relocation simply isn't a serious choice in today's market. The housing market is ridiculous. No companies are paying for any relocation any more unless you're in upper management. No one in their right mind would move from a suburb into the city if they have kids. (Or haven't you heard about the Chicago city school system?)
I think you're opinion will change quite a lot once you've actually made friends outside the workplace and -- it could happen! -- gotten married, bought a home, and had children. Life's a just tad more complicated than when you're young and can pull up tent stakes like a gypsy.
this is only true if your company sucks. the company i work for is on one of those '20 best companies to work for' lists - and it is a great company to work for. we have a great diversity of talent and it's a great place to work.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
The only problem I have with the Dead Sea effect theory is that it seems to me that the new hires referred to at the top must be the talented engineers who found it so easy to get another job when they got fed up at their last one. If those people aren't pooling at some fantasy company or leaving the industry altogether, then they must be moving from one Dead Sea to another.
I'm a solutions architect, highly educated, 11 years in the industry. I've provided IT solutions to many organizations around the world.
I no longer have the will to continue working and any thread of creativity I once had has been drained by an awful few years of (mis)management. So, I quit.
This Friday I will begin spending time with my young children, watch them grow, and be the best Dad I can. I've realized that spending hours at the office isn't what it used to be, and my threshold for management stupidity has long been exceeded.
Adeiu /. community, corporate IT, and corporate management. I shall squander my remaining years as a house husband.
I like the analogy. I've referred to the same effect in the past as the bad wine effect. The idea is that you pour bad wine into a wine glass and the dregs sink to the bottom. Periodically some of the good stuff is sipped off the top (or sloshed off during a corporate crisis). Then more wine with more dregs gets poured in. The dregs, unfortunately, have nowhere to go and just keep accumulating.
Something similar happened to me, but when I look at the work that my former company has to undertake I am sure they will not manage with their very enthusiastic but very junior staff in India (of course they are cheaper: they have no experience in the field, and it shows).
:-)
Actually as soon as the people in India get enough experience under their belts, guess what, they move on to better paid positions. In my former team 50% of my former Indian based colleagues moved on after just 6 months.
So what the company now has is 6 people, 3 of them (the experienced ones) with less than 2 years in the industry, the other 3 completely new, and now nobody around to teach them the ropes.
So guess which kind of people will come to sort out the mess? That is us, old timers. I am looking forward to short stints fixing stuff in the next couple of years, when the false economy of paying badly for junior personnel shows its disastrous consequences.
For the time being I am going on holiday for 4 months
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I can objectively say I am in the top of my field.
I was head hunted all the time, so actually I am just waiting for the right call.
But one has to have objective ways to assess this.
One's own opinion alone is not a good indicator of one's value in the current marketplace, I think we can all agree on that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Smart experts go on to become self-employed, those who suck a little become employees with better employers, and those who suck big time remain loyal to their first employer and after some years of service they are promoted to management. It is not a surprise that the balance sheet then goes downwards.
Specialist work cannot be trusted to employees as they are more likely technology newbies rather than experts. Companies that focus on hiring the best employees won't find any, resulting in them being filled with non-professional incompetent drones (and if your company is in the EU, you can't easily get rid of them). So, managers must stop thinking in lines of finding talent for hire (as employees) and begin looking for meaningful business-to-business relationships with professional consultants.
(disclaimer: I am such a man)