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Cyber Command Will Miss Friday's Operational Deadline
techinsider writes "The U.S. Cyber Command won't be fully operational by Friday's October 1st deadline. A major challenge appears to be staffing the command with qualified personnel, of which it will need over 1,000 skilled employees. General Alexander told Congress his leadership staff was in place but acknowledged there were challenges in bringing in people to the rest of the organization."
Why would any self-respecting geek want to work in a place where there is no possibility of being management, and all the management is, self-admittedly, not 'qualified' to do their job?
I'm sorry, but I've never been able to respect a manager who could not have done my job, and has done in previous years. Now that doesn't mean everyone up to the CEO needs to be a programmer, very quickly managers stop being programmers and their day focuses on other things (read: meetings and bureaucracy).
So by my example, a dev manager should be a former programmer, his/her manager should have experience leading a team of tech people, his/her manager should have been a manager for other tech managers before, etc. In other words, each level should have experience doing the day-to-day job of the level below.
And what about career advancement - it sounds pretty lame when all the management positions are pre-filled, so the only way to move up the chain is for someone higher up to retire, or get dishonorably discharged (I assume the guys in management are career military, not doing a tour).
Having seriously considered the positions in question from their open job postings, qualified applicants stand to make somewhere in the mid-$100k range in the private sector anywhere in the country, and closer to the $200k mark in the DC Metropolitan area (the 2nd highest cost of living allowance area in the country, right behind Denver, CO). Salary ranges offered are in the $60-83k starting mark. Offer a competitive wage, and you may just get qualified applicants.
The root of the problem is that "something" is suppressing IT worker pay and that fewer people are interested in doing that sort of work for the rest of their lives. How did that happen? Just gotta follow it all back to see where it started. There was a time when IT was well paid. It could have stopped if the government took a firm stand on the H1B issue. It could also stop if the government interrupted the flow of foreign students here.
We have a serious problem with our final superior asset in that it is pretty much GONE already.
We don't have strong R&D because current business philosophies see it as a waste of money when this quarter's bottom line is at stake. The mentality of business is breaking the long-term outlook on business, employment and the general economy of the U.S. They managed to sell out the entire nation while the government who should have been preventing this was busy taking "contributions."
I also find it hard to believe, with 10% unemployment, they can't find engineers/software people who are desperate for jobs.
National unemployment for Americans with a bachelor degree or higher is currently 4.6%. Certainly there are plenty of unemployed engineers/software people out there, but not as many as you might expect.