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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."
Actually, the problem I'm witnessing personally at work is that when one gets promoted within the same department, it isn't as clean of a break from the old job responsibilities as you might think. If the people who are doing your old job don't step up - and you're still in the same general area (even if your title/job duties change) - the old stuff comes with you, and it's your responsibility to make sure others grasp your job.
Granted, I am not complaining, as sometimes there's really no other way to do this. However, my personal grumble is that the others don't truly seem like they have the time - or the initiative - to step up as I did......
But they still complain about not being promoted. I can lead a horse to water with the best of them, though...
Karnal
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".
That is why one of the keys to being promoted is never allow yourself to become indispensable in your current job. As another reply stated, always be training your replacement. Its common advice from hundreds of "career help" books, and it makes sense precisely because of what you described.
_sig_ is away
Yes, ultimately bad management is the issue, but outsourcing and layoffs are some of the few things good lower management can't screen you from. A good manager has a large bag of tricks they can and will dig into to shield their groups. But outsourcing is one of those decisions that's made in secrete on high, and often your manager finds out the same day you do.
I'm in the same boat as the grand parent. For the last 8 years I've been employed by one of the top 50 in the fortune 500. I'd say there is a lot of truth to the article.
So why have I stayed for 8 years? Because for the first 7 I had a very good manager. She shielded us from a lot of the corporate bullshit. Because of this she was able to hold together a group of fairly skilled people. I enjoyed working with them, and that's why I stayed so many years even with the ever increasing corporate stupidity. But, last year she pissed off someone higher on the corporate ladder (fighting for us). Our team was disbanded, and she was tricked into leading a group that had already been selected for outsourcing.
I should have quit then. But, one of my former teammates convinced me to join his team on another application (he's just a team lead, not true management). I've been regretting that decision ever since. The distribution of skills in the new application follows that described in the article, and there is little shielding from the corporate bullshit. I've spent a large part of the last 6 months trying to push through a small tool that took around a week to write. In my previous group, it would have been a small side project that would have been handled outside of the usual process (it's just a small tool to aid the test team). I've held on as long as I have because my old teammate is a good friend, and he was convinced he could change things.
But, there have been rumors flying around for a week that upper management is looking to replace our application (actually longer, but there's been more substance lately). And now I have a meeting request on my calendar from our manager with a subject so vague there can't be any doubt about it's purpose. That's it, I'm out. I have my resume open in another window, time to get back to work.
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.
You should be. I spent the better part of the past 9 years developing the IT department from a 1 person shop (me) to a 37 person team spread around the globe. We managed to bypass the HR department to do our hiring (in other words, we hired based on actual ability rather than some standard that HR used to filter resumes before we got them) getting the people with the skills that we needed to build the strongest team possible. And we spent a good portion of our time developing relationships within the company that helped us make sure that we were doing the right things at the right times for our end users.
During that time period, I managed (and managed is just another word for led - we were all hands on) and trained 3 different teams in our IT group - server engineering, network engineering and one of our coding groups. I also worked two full time jobs for over a year in the company, starting a new division from scratch with only two other people to help. When the facilities department was gutted, I picked up the slack, spending nights going through facilities contracts with another IT director to save the company millions of dollars. All the while having the highest retention rate of any department in the company (we didn't have anybody leave the department for over 4 years).
But then management starting making even more brilliant decisions than usual. First they decided that with all the free time that IT had (first clue they were in fantasy land - they didn't even know were the IT offices were to have this discussion), we should be made into billable staff and start doing work for outside customers as well as our normal jobs. Then the company changed direction from commercial clients to government and started acquisitions. Which meant that we needed the person leading the IT department to come from a government contractor so the made the lead IT person from our first acquisitions (3 person IT department, 65 employees total) our CIO. That decision was rapidly followed by divesting the commercial entities. At this point I was among the longest serving employees in the company.
And then it happened. The last commercial division was sold, even though I was corporate I was included in the sale along with my senior server engineer and a senior support person. The new owners decided that outsourcing everything (and I mean everything - engineering, support, end user interaction, etc) to a datacenter was the way to go. For the 6 months that I worked for the new company I was basically tasked with how to migrate 400 people to a new network/domain/phone system. During that time I only dealt with consultants, never actually meeting my boss. Heck, I didn't even know who my boss was. As soon as I said something about what a mess the consultants were making to the head of IT of the acquiring company, I was terminated for failure to produce results (ie - I was termed because they didn't listen to me and continued to futz around with their $250/hr consultants who, for some reason, were unwilling to hurry up the transition). That was in November of last year.
Since then I've been unable to find equivalent work. I've now got my own startup going, but am still not making money. It's ugly out there for qualified people demanding a salary right now. Sure, I could pickup entry level positions somewhere, but those positions really don't pay the bills when you have a family with two very young children, housing prices that are so overinflated that people are burning them down so they don't have to pay their mortgages and gas prices that make it an extremely expensive proposition to commute any distance to work.
And I'm not looking for jobs in one of the "slow" markets, I'm in Seattle.
Don't be too cocky - I was and have now ended up at the bottom of the barrel believing that anything could happen to anyone.