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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.
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.
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
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...
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
And some managers see it that way, however there's always the war between HR & new candidates to pay as little and for as much as you can and visa-verse, and in my experience this usually leads to scraping the bottom of the barrel for rough diamonds unless strict requirements are set for competency.
...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 someday hope that "software engineering" will be a real profession -- but on the other hand, that has legal and professional consequences (e.g., state boards, state licensing, risk of malpractice) that I suspect most people in IT wouldn't want to touch.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
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)
That's why a lot of places have a backwards attitude to promotion. You shouldn't get promoted to do something new. You should get promoted because of what you're doing now.
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."
Doing all of that, and doing it well, still doesn't make you an engineer. A good craftsman, yes, an engineer, no. And, yes, I raised my hand, and I call myself a software engineer because it's the common term, but I don't think what we do is disciplined enough to really be called engineering, yet.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
True engineers have much higher responsibility/accountability attached. Nobody cares if your program crashes (hence bug reports, new version, etc) but god help you if a bridge collapses because of a stupid mistake, and you're the engineer that signed off on that design. At a minimum, you'll lose your license, and have to find a new line of work. Now that I think of it, that would be good for some "software engineers" I've talked to. Most real "engineers" have the knowledge that screwups will kill/hurt people.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
To summarize the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
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Maybe you work for the last american business that offers a pension plan or something, but if I were you, I wouldn't count on that either.
The biggest reason to be an employee rather than a permatemp is usually medical insurance.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
So there's no room in your philosophy for being able to love more than one thing.
(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.
But if you really love your craft instead of "the job" where you practice it, and seek out new technologies and live "the bleeding edge", growing your skills, do you not risk harming your employer in the end? For instance by introducing unproven tech in a project because "it's cool and new"? Or by effectively sabotaging teamwork because your dedication to the craft grows into an arrogance. What if they enjoy other things in addition to work? Exclusive focus ("commitment" in your terminology) on one thing to the exclusion of all others can be a sign of a mental disorder - perhaps a mild form of autism which some claim is prevalent in the IT industry...
It is possible to have more than one interest in life. So it seems the complement to your dismissal of "9-to-5'ism" is "socially-inept'ism"...
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.
Just curious, but do you have kids? If so, which do you love more, your job or your kids?
For many of us, a profession, no matter how interesting or worthwhile, simply can't demand the same amount of "love" as our families. Of course, you can devote yourself to your job and let "the little woman" (and it's almost always a woman in these situations) be in charge of the family. You and your children will both have reasons to regret that decision in a decade or two.
"9-to-5-ism" as you put it represents a healthy acknowledgement of the fact that humans have many different needs besides fulfilling employment. And, often, people who love their jobs as you describe end up being exploited by their employers.
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.
Programming as a job? Is fun... part of the time. Oh, there are probably even rare jobs where it is fun most of the time. If you have such a job, cling to it like a life raft, because you will understand how lucky you are when you change to your next job. (The last time I had a job like that? Well, let's just say a sock puppet had a Superbowl commercial. Those were great times to be in IT.)
At most IT jobs, the fun will be less than 40% of the job, sometimes considerably less. The parts that aren't fun? Those parts still need to get done, even though they aren't fun. This is the reason why programming and related IT work are compensated better than actual fun jobs. It's hard work to get the credentials you need to do IT work, and then the actual job is hard work. Oh, and if it isn't hard work, if it is really just fun and diversion as many of my colleagues have asserted on Slashdot over the years? Well, then the fact that you are putting in all those hours is no credit to you. Give up what I like to call "IT machismo." Since doing IT is like having an orgasm for you every minute of the day, why should we be impressed by the hours you are putting in? That's the paradox of these kinds of assertions.
Really, what we are supposed to gather from these kinds of assertions is this, "My faith in the IT gods is far greater than yours. I'm willing to take vows of silence, poverty, hardship and chastity (especially chastity!) because my love for the IT gods is so great. However, despite my love of my devotions, you should also understand that they are a hardship. My disgust with you is because of the fact that your faith is so small, that you are unwilling to take up the IT cross joyfully."
Believe it or not, other professional jobs are just as much fun as IT. For example, there's a reason why there are TV shows and video games about lawyers. It's because we all know that there are fun aspects of being a lawyer. Ever hired a lawyer? They expect to be compensated for the hours they work, and they don't work for the hours they aren't compensated for. Oh they may be dedicated, and they may live for the job, but for most of them that doesn't extend to uncompensated work.
Now, to be realistic, in the modern IT workplace, a certain amount of your time is expected to be uncompensated, mandatory unpaid overtime. This is simple reality. Also, if you grumble about this mandatory unpaid overtime, you are branded a "9 to 5er." (Which is some sort of evil beast to management and the parent, sort of like a basilisk.) The best way to look at it is that an unknown amount of mandatory unpaid overtime is part of what you are expected to do in order to get the compensation package when you get hired for an IT job. Hopefully, you have an idea of what that's going to be before you take the job. In other words, hopefully you don't sign on thinking the unpaid overtime is only going to be during crunch time, only to find out that crunch time is "every day, including weekends and holidays."
I know going into any IT job that if I don't put in some unpaid overtime, I'll probably be made to feel uncomfortable. So, I try to remember that when I have to, like this evening when I'm doing my mandatory unpaid overtime, and not grumble. I'll do the job, but what I'm doing isn't "fun." It's work... and that's why we call it work and not fun.
This is an economic problem that extends to large parts of the economy, not just IT. Ask a Wal-Mart worker. At least we are currently still making more than them, poor bastards.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
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.
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.
But if what you "love" doing at home benefits your employer without you getting paid for it, you are just really being a company lap dog, a wage slave that does not realize he is a slave. You "love your job" in the same sense a dog loves his owner. And as many employees eventually discover, that love is one-way only: You employer does not love you in return.
That is perfectly true, but none of the above matters in the slightest if you truly love your job. Love isn't conditional like that. (Heck, love isn't even rational at all, but that's another subject.)
In fact, such an occupation is not even "work" in the normal sense, but far more like a preferred hobby, since it's what you love doing most, and what you often continue doing when you get back home. The fact that somebody is paying you to do it when in the office is pretty amazing --- clearly you've made a great choice of career.
Not everyone is so lucky. In fact, very few people are. But they do exist, particularly in academia and most relevantly here, in computing. We're lucky.
It's also fundamentally about being able to use, leverage, and dispose of a labor force at will without worrying about U.S. labor laws. That is the single biggest attraction to outsourcing. The costs are rising and the quality has always been marginal. The only real remaining benefit is the ability to treat workers poorly with impunity.
Any arguments to the effect of "You have to stay relevant" or "The beset have nothing to worry about" mean nothing against the ability to say "Hey, let's just fire this crew and hire some cheaper guys tomorrow" with ZERO backlash.
The company I work for outsources some of its coding and I can assure you it is not about quality or speed.
-- Posted from my parent's basement