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Flat Pay Prompts 1 In 3 In IT To Consider Jump
CWmike writes "Companies have cut salaries and training, held back on bonuses and piled more work on employees in response to the economic downturn. These tactics may well be pushing many IT pros to go job hunting, Computerworld's latest salary poll has found. More than one third (36%) of the 343 respondents to a recent poll said they are looking to move to a new employer in the next six months. And 69% reported they had not received a pay raise in the past six months. The poll was conducted during the last two weeks in September. For employers, the warning could not be more clear. As the economy improves, the most able IT workers may leave for something better."
I love a good fiction story.
I'm gonna become a farmer.
Most employers do annual pay adjustments, so asking if they received a pay increase in the past 6 months would, on average, get at least 50% saying no. The report was engineered from the start to get the result that they published.
I don't even get any raise, you insensitive clods!
Hehe.... I manage $10M in construction. I deal with contract disputes, State and Federal funding and regulatory agencies, local politics, you name it. Oh, and I'm a licensed engineer.
My pay is less than the guy who goes around wiping viruses off people's computers.
Go ahead and jump, IT. There's nothing on the other side.
Anyone who stays more than 3 years in a position is going to be very much left behind and facing increasing inflation in housing prices, cars, and eventually the basics as well.
Deleted
You could try polymorphism too: "WTF, I'm a chick today! Hey, this feels niiiiice."
Table-ized A.I.
Its not always about money. I recently (about a year ago) went from being a partner at an up and coming IT firm, to the number 2 IT guy for an agriculture company. Before, I was stressed out, always worrying about this client or that client, income, taxes, ticket systems, just in general had too much on my plate. I left due to business structure and strategy disagreements, but now I am working in a laid back environment where I do a good job, and can still take the time to study after hours. IT guys are far too often over-taxed, over-used, and under-appreciated. That is why I think there needs to be a shift in the work environment for IT people or else we will continue to see this constant migration to the always greener grass.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
IT really isn't all that hard for the most part. It's time to stop equating yourselves to engineers. Again, for the most part.
That's because you're doing it wrong. IT done properly, with change management, proper testing, business deadlines, purchasing, project deadlines, budgeting cycles, politics, etc. etc. can be very stressful and difficult. People who think its easy are likely not doing these things, or not doing them properly. Flying by the seat of your pants can be pretty easy most of the time, but most of the time it also gets you in trouble.
My concern isn't so much flat pay - I have more money than I know what to do with - but flat technology. I spend my days fixing idiotic bugs in legacy systems, with few prospects for learning anything new.
...laura
True for me. I made the jump this past January. 2009 my company said no raises for anyone (except executives, of course). 2010 they claimed the same thing, I declined, they offered me an insulting pittance, and away I went.
Cut my expenses to the bone, picked up some contract work, and now doing economic research most of the time. Getting ready to publish my first paper, if the vetting goes well. Also took some time to do my first fine woodworking -- produced two nice footstools(*), which I gave to my parents.
Damned fine thing. I strongly recommend it if you can bzip your budget.
* http://beach.traxel.com/img/footstool-ts/footstool-with-cushion.jpg
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
time for a union?
Mrs. Fiorina, Welcome to Slashdot!
Table-ized A.I.
True.... but its not entirely wrong, 69% is still above the expected 50% by almost 20%. We haven't gotten a raise in about 2 years here, with a hiring freeze. This resonates with me since, its exactly what I told a head hunter last night.... I am looking to leave because they haven't given raises in 2 years, and the group dynamic means that I can epxect to be waiting quite a while for a promotion....all the while being told "you are one of the senior guys"... even though I don't have the title.
That and, I know I could make more elsewhere.
Sounds like you should dust off your resume and look for a new job. You are the reason why people are underpaid.. You accept a shitty wage. Move to green pastures.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
I never once got a raise I was promised. All any employer ever did was blow smoke up my ass in the performance reviews. I never once got a salary increase that I didn't have to quit my old job for. Once or twice jumping ship for better pay got the rest of the team members *their* promised raises though.
It's not so much the CEO pay that concerns me as it is the ratio to everyone else in the company.
Yes.
However sometimes you must switch jobs for the 'tards in charge to realize that the salary offered is not making the position attractive to employees.
No amount of pissing and moaning will get me more money. Period.
On the other hand, if I can find a position elsewhere, I get to actually have a salary discussion. Whereas that's not on the table now.
I risk getting fired if I talk about money. I do not risk getting fired if I talk about money with a new company.
I can pick and choose where and when, and to a certain extent what I do with a new company. I get shit thrown at me to do extra at my existing company.
If companies don't like the brain drain, they can fucking step up to the plate to talk about salaries once in a while.
I have nothing to lose by talking to some other company about a job, that turns a 0% chance at a raise to a non-zero chance, with some slight risk.
Despite what fanatical libertarians around here may say, this is exactly the sort of situations unions are for.
Yes, it is above the expected 50% if the date of pay raises was random, but I doubt it is. My company is within that 50% for its date, but until a few years ago it wasn't. The question is plainly biased.
Further, saying that 36% are looking is a much softer threshold than saying 36% have submitted resumes or job applications. At least it wasn't the completely nebulous "considering" that they sometimes use.
That said, changing jobs is often the best way to get a pay raise, and I don't blame you one bit for trying for it.
Seriously. I want to see the result for the past year. Or better yet, the past two years. Not everyone in the private sector gets a pay raise every year, even in good times.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
nothing done properly is stressful.
if you're doing too much, you're doing it wrong. live with doing it wrong, find a boss that isn't bad, or be a better boss.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
According to my girlfriend's students they are all going to grow up to be big rich software engineers. They will all run their own companies and have no one to answer to. It's just the old neck beards that worry about the economy.
They work in an industry where 31% have received pay raises across a short span of time which likely doesn't intersect with the organization's fiscal year (e.g. did many run on Federal or Calendar years). [sarcasm] Oh, my - what a hardship.[/sarcasm] In such a climate as this - that sounds pretty good to me. You want to talk about flat pay - then make that time period at least a year, and compare it to other fields.
It and engineering pay has suffered badly because of outsourcing and visa abuse. According to Love to Know here: http://jobs.lovetoknow.com/Facts_and_Figures_on_Outsourcing It seems that if the Obama administration was to take job creation seriously and curb outsourcing of American jobs to cheap foreign contractor slavers it would save close to 1.5 million jobs for Americans. Most of those in IT are familiar by now with the visa abuse that takes place in the US. Many unscrupulous companies are playing games and pulling stunts to meet even the lax standards setup for foreign nationals to obtain work visas in the US. If the Obama administration were again to take job creation seriously then they could come up with almost 5 million US jobs by simply denying visas per the US State Department. http://www.travel.state.gov/pdf/FY09AnnualReport_TableXVII.pdf
Perhaps, but when they want you, they're willing to play ball at least int eh short term.
You are a company. You have a sys admin. He does shit. you don't really know what kind of shit, but he must be doing some shit because the computers mostly work. He wants more money and keeps talking about needing some training and upgrades. Fuck him... you don't even know what he does and the computers mostly work.
You are a company. Your sys admin left a month ago. The computers have stopped mostly working. They now often don't work, and sometimes threaten employee's children with things that you're almost certain will get you fined. You have found a person with a pretty good resume who appears not to be a Troll. He says he can get the computers to mostly work again. He wants more money than the old guy, but he says he can get the computers to mostly work again. He wants a training budget, but he says he can get the computers mostly working again. He says you need to spend some money on infrastructure upgrades, but PLEASE GOD GET THE COMPUTERS WORKING AGAIN.. Ahem.. sorry... yes.. we can probably pay that.
You see. There's a difference. In reality land probably not quite such a huge difference, but companies are always more willing to negotiate and play ball with a new hire into a "need to fill" vacancy than they are with a current employee.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
It's pretty clear how most companies work today. They hire kids from the local community college that are half way to getting their 4yr degree and little more than they could make at McDonalds and then don't give them raises with the clear intention of driving them away so they can rehire other students even cheaper. Most places only have 1 or 2 people with any real experience. Usually those are the ones too lazy to go looking for something better.
hah, that's hilarious, screw the old guys because I'LL NEVER GET OLD
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Doesn't matter. It was like this even in good economic times, and hasn't changed at all; the only thing that's changed is how much hiring is going on.
Companies don't give substantial raises, period (except to executives, of course). They give paltry raises, and that's it, and that's only in good times. However, they'll pay "market rate" for new hires, regardless of the current economy. So if they want a guy who has 10 years' experience, they'll generally pay the current going rate for that position with that much experience (what the going rate is can be easily found in salary surveys, which there's several websites that specialize in). The companies do this, because if they don't pay going rate, they won't fill their open positions at all, and the time and effort spent interviewing candidates is significant and costly, so it's not worth it to interview a bunch of people only to have them reject your offer for being a low-ball.
However, for existing employees who are loyal and don't jump ship for the next higher offer, companies don't bother much with raises. They might give you a 1% raise here and there to keep you happy, but that's about it. It doesn't match the market rate, so if you stick with a company for 10 years, you'll find that the new hires (with the same experience level as you) are getting much higher salaries than you are, for the same job.
The only answer is to change jobs every few years. Don't be one of those suckers that stays at the same job for 15 years; it's a rare company that actually keeps your pay in line with market rate (if you found one of those, and you like the job, then great! Stay there.).
Why do companies do this? As best as I can tell, it's because of the aforementioned suckers that are too lazy, afraid, or whatever (perhaps overspecialized?) to change jobs. The companies are happy to exploit them and their fear of change.
Personally, my "secret recipe" is to make sure you have skills (and take jobs that require and use these skills) which are in high demand, keep your skills up and constantly improve them on-the-job, and change jobs every 2-3 years. Changing jobs too often looks bad (under 1 year is very bad), and changing too slowly means you're missing out on a much higher salary. Also make sure you live in an area where there's plenty of competition for your skillset; don't live in some podunk town where there's only one employer that needs your skills, because they'll take advantage of that, knowing that you'll have to pack up, sell your house (good luck!) and move long-distance to get a higher salary. I've also found it's good to stay at one (probably large) company for a longer time; I have a 7-year stint at a megaTechCorp that looks great even though my subsequent jobs were much shorter. One long term will balance out any short terms. This can also be helpful if you find yourself in a job you really, really hate and need to leave early.
So no, the new company will NOT "funnel those same pressures on to you", at least not until it's time for a raise (1 year). They'll pay the going rate or else you won't take the job, and they know it (well, there are a few companies that are rather clueless and give low-ball offers; pass these by). And when it's time for a raise, it doesn't matter what the current economy climate is. In a great economy, you'll get a paltry-to-mediocre raise, and in a poor economy, you'll get a zero-to-paltry raise. There's not much difference between the two; $1-2k/year difference really isn't very much money. Just put in your time there, and after you've been there between 2 and 4 years, start looking at new jobs.
Oh hell... C*O salaries are set by boards, which are populated by other C*Os. No bargaining involved; "you give me $100M today and I'll give you $100M tomorrow." No bargaining involved.
Unfortunately for most of us we have other people who are all too willing to take the job at a lower pay scale. No bargaining involved; "you take what we offer or we go to teh next guy in line."
The companies never really figure out what's going on. Your lead or immediate project manager may have a clue, but their management (all the way to the top) just doesn't get it.
Ironically, the argument for the huge CEO bonuses, even during the bailouts, was that "we have to pay this much to retain our 'talent'" (talent being the executives who brought the disasters upon these companies).
Face it. US styled (quarterly earnings per share centric) capitalism simply doesn't work long term.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
If you haven't noticed, there's a recession on. Construction has taken the brunt of lost jobs, stagnant wages, and wrecked careers.
It's taken me 2 years to get a call back on a resume. In the meantime my shitty wage feeds my family.
My point is that many IT people still expect the salaries from the 90s, when simply knowing how to spell IT was a guarantee of a high paying job. It's changing, and not for the better.
Yeah, it's hard for me to stay motivated when our CEO makes 204.76 times more per year than I do. (real number, I just did the math)
Especially after sitting thru a mandatory video conference that he presented yesterday.
What exactly is it that he does again? I couldn't really tell from that meeting.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I agree with the sentiment in theory, but voting with your feet is not as easy as you make it sound.
The extremely large company where I work just fired, well, had a layoff of one, of a guy whose next prospective employer's HR department called to check references. Last I heard, this guy has been unjustly tagged as a malcontent by the boss, and he has not found a new job. HR is giving a very dour and tight-lipped "name and dates of employment only" response that, while skirting the law, makes it very clear the company considers him a horrible employee. It's a small industry, and looking around carries the risk of getting prematurely helped out the door. It can absolutely be done, but the risk is not zero.
Secondly, health insurance. One of the guys I work with has a chronic health problem with one of his kids. Every time he changes jobs, he gets to start the fight anew to get the kid's medical issues covered. It is not trivial, it frequently gets right up to the lawyers, and each time his kid's medical care is interupted, there's a small but real risk that his child could actually die.
Employment has so much "friction" it might as well be considered a market failure. If McDonald's screws you over, Burger King is across the street. If your employer screw you over -- and unjust poor references seem to be the weapon of choice -- then an uphill legal battle lasting years and costing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars might be your only rememdy.
Don't kid yourself. "Voting with your feet" isn't nearly as safe and effective as we would like it to be, or as it should be.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It really depends on the IT position:
If you are an operator, it is fairly easy. Look for lights on servers that glow differently from others, run a script or two, clean packets dropped on the floor by the N5ks and N7ks, pass any complicated stuff to L2, and dig out a good beer from the stash in the CRAC's cooling duct.
If you are a junior admin, it is easy to hard, depending on how much stuff falls on your plate. On more staffed places, it might be just basic system maintaining and pushing out profiles, and handling calls from users.
If you are a senior admin, or an admin at a small company, your job requires as much as any engineer. Capacity planning, security (physical or network, internal or external), risk in general, disaster recovery scenarios, automating tasks, having a real time alert system in place, future expansion, dealing with other departments like development to make sure it is budgeted not just what they need now, but down the road, offsite disaster recovery centers, log management and archiving, handling motions of discovery, infrastructure planning, and so on. So, because of all the knowledge picked up (and this is NOT stuff you can learn in college for the most part), a senior IT admin is on an equal footing with engineers most of the time. Don't forget trying to do all of this while in meetings.
My wife is a nurse with 25years of experience. The local colleges crank out nurses at an alarming rate, all with no experience and willing to work for peanuts. The hospital knows this, and this is why my wife has to work on Xmas and New Years.
There's certainly an element of that in there, but I think it's more thought out and planned than you suggest.
If a company has 100 staff, all being paid 20% below "market" rate, it'll cost them 20% more to bring all their salaries up. By leaving your pay where it is, they're calling your bluff and assuming they'll get it right most of the time.
If they give you a payrise, then their line that no-one's getting pay rises this year won't stick so well, and they'll need to give more people payrises.
If 20% of people leave because of the pay, and they need to hire replacements at market rate, increasing the total salary costs by a whopping 4%.
Sure, *we* know that the productivity of new hires will take ages to match those they're replacing, but try telling a manager that a 20% increase in costs is better than a 4% increase.
I say this after being on both sides of the table. Most people out there are bordering on a waste of oxygen - taking valuable time from the useful ones to solve inane problems. About 10% of workers are truly talented, and can solve problems independently - those are the guys you want. The next 10-15% are good - not really independent problem solvers, but reliable and honest, and would prefer a productive work day to being bored 'cause there isn't enough to keep them busy. Everybody else is just killing time for their meal ticket. An, honestly, I was a combination of the first and last groups for a lot of years. I sure as hell wouldn't have given my former self a raise of any significance. In the past three years I've been asked by several people to join their staff or lead a new department - but I've also got 8 years of running a very successful firm (~30-40% growth every year for 7 years, we'll probably drop back to about 20-25% year with the recession).
If you're not getting a raise, one of three things is happening:
1) the company really is on hard times - they're keeping you, perhaps at a loss, because you're valuable.
2) you're boss is not giving you credit for what you do, or nobody with decision authority sees your brilliance and work ethic.
3) you're in the 75-80% of people who really aren't that good.
If you're in the rare #2 slot (I'm going to put that at less than 1%; good odds are that you're really a #3), I feel for you, and you definitely need to find another job. If you're #1, you have to decide if it's worth bailing on the company who is keeping you employed. If you're #3, good luck. You'll always be disappointed.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I work for one of the large IT companies. Pay isn't my concern. I'm pretty happy with my salary.
My concern is job stability. They've been laying off people simply to prop up the stock price. Year after year, its round of layoff after round of layoffs despite near a record high stock price and record profits and revenue. We got rid of the low performers years ago, yet the layoffs keep on coming. They've even laid off distinguished engineers. That tells me that even if I perform so well in my job that I reach one of the highest levels for an engineer, even that's not going to keep me from being laid off. So what's the point? If I stay, I risk being laid off when I'm 50 when it's going to be even more difficult to find a job.
I'd be willing to take a $10k-$20k cut in salary for a more secure job...one that isn't going to lay me off unless it at least has good reason to.
dude... if you're envious of a $50K salary.... and you really are a college grad (with a relevant degree for IT work).... you're seriously, seriously underpaid. Move to another company NOW. And if there's not another good company in your geographic region... move to a bigger market (recent college grad... should be willing and happy to move).
"If the same HR department showered some employees with glowing praise and was neutral for others, then we'd have a problem."
Which is pretty much the standard operating procedure these days.
"Hi, I'm from XYZ Inc, calling to check Bob's references..."
"Bob? *sigh* *grunt* Yeah, Bob. Bob used to work here for the past couple of years. That's all I'm going to tell you."
"Can you tell me if Bob was a good employee?"
"Bob used to work here. Now he doesn't. That's all I'm going to say. Understand?"
"Yes, yes I do."
And this is how Bob gets torpedoed, in a perfectly legal way...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
He deals with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. He has people skills; he is good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
If you have been in IT a while, you learn things that you never thought of when starting off.
When you start in IT, you think on a tactical basis. You need a server up, so you reach for the RHEL media, install it, make sure RAID works, install all patches, set users, put the application on it and go to your next project.
As times go on, you start thinking on more than just that level. You learn to start thinking strategically. You know that the default filesystem may bring the box down, so you do a custom filesystem so if /var fills up, it won't cause things to grind to a screeching halt. Or, you figure out a standard imaging process so each box, be it Linux, Windows, Solaris, or what have you has patches, security profiles and other items that differ from company to company built in. As you gain experience, you don't just rush out and build an x86 box when you need another server. You install VMWare on the hardware and install the box in a VM. This way, when your boss decides to move to blade enclosures, it is a matter of just a move of some VMDK files as opposed to major brain surgery with a production application.
None of this stuff is immediately apparent when starting in IT. You learn from mistakes. You think a firmware upgrade of some disks can be done in 5 min + a reboot, only to find that it caused the machine to kernel panic on bootup, and have to back the changes off. Or you might have tested your disaster recovery plan with tons of restores... but forgot to back up the license keys for the backup server, and find that everything is ground to a halt with trying to get data pushed until the maker of the software ships new keys... and all the while the clock is ticking. You take the molly guard off the big red button to get enough clearance to get a server by... forget to put it back on, then some junior admin's derriere EPOs the data center.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/08/political-party-democrat-republican-stock-returns.asp
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Really? When was the last time you called a company that has engineers on the payroll and got the CEO?
He farms the customer service out to Bangladesh and pockets the money he saves on that. Then he keeps Engineer pay flat while turnover continues to lower average salary, pocketing the money he saves on that, even while introducing new products the Engineers developed, which improves his bottom line, and he pockets a fat bonus that's negotiated into his contract because of that.
They chose the perfect time to do the survey, most companies I have ever known someone at would do it in Dec/Jan for Calendar year, Mar/Apr if their fiscal year ended then, or Oct/Nov if their fiscal year ended then. So in my view it is an expected 66% NO. I hate it when information like this flows around. 100% of people agree**
** - Survey of 10000 people with 1 respondant
He actually understands what the hell is going on (and what should be done about it). The increase of moral hazard of supporting bad creditors is much less bad than the economic certainty of a depressed economy for the next twenty years if nothing is done.
That is all.
That's a good point - university tuition is the next bubble. The entire system makes no financial sense these days (except community college, which hasn't gone over the top yet).
The economy has been pretty flat for a decade or so, no doubt. The same thing happened in the 70s, mostly as a result of the gold shock and OPEC coming of age (but that was followed by 15 years of solid growth). It's harder to pin down causes this time around, but absolutely retarded levels of government spending can't possibly be helping.
My point was that you can't really compare "owning a car" today with "owning a car" 50 years ago: they are two very different pieces of equipment, and if we returned to the sort of car made in the 50s, they'd be quite cheap. Many things we take for granted toady were wonderful luxuries 50 years ago. Over the past 30 years we've moved from houses that on average had fewer rooms than people living in them, to today where there are on average more bedrooms than people living in the house.
But how things would look if we (including our government) were spending less than we made and paying down that debt? I think it's likely things will get much worse, as the money borrowed to support those lifestyles of 25 years ago comes due, with brutal interest.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh
Go watch Office Space then come back and re-read his comment in proper context :)
I'd be cautious about showing another job offer. To many employers, that's a sign that you're ready to jump ship (maybe you are), and although they may make a compelling counter offer for the short term, in the long term you may find you're a marked man.
Absolutely. "I've had an offer from somewhere else, can you beat it" is the Joker, and you can only play it once. Depending on your situation, it might be worth it - but you need to be damn sure before you embark on the process and you *have* to be prepared to carry through with it (which is generally in direct conflict with why you might want to stay).
It's much better to show evidence of what the job market supports. IT Salary Surveys are a big way to do so, and so are anecdotes: "My old college buddy who has pretty much identical experience to me just took a job for $X," rather than, "I've been interviewing around, and I can make $X at this other company, they've extended me a job offer." You only do that if you really are ready to jump ship, and the counter offer had better be damn impressive to take the risk that you'll still have a job there 6 months later (when they have had time to find a replacement for you).
I've never worked for anyone who puts any stock in Salary Surveys when determining raises. They will do it for new hires (though not the kind of Salary Surveys you can find online, the ones that HR departments get), but never for raises. This often goes hand-in-hand with a "I'm never giving anyone a raise of more than X%" attitude, even though the salary being offered new hires is significantly more than X% over existing salaries.
Of course, this ends up with a ludicrous situations like the following (happened to me earlier this year trying to keep/hire staff):
Employees A and B are earning X while working in location P. Said employees have a great record and reputation in the company, and have been with it for 3-5 years (thus meaning they also had extensive experience with how the company operates and its environments). Company moves corporate headquarters to location Q. Employees A and B have to move because policy dictates that any employee must have a direct supervisor in the office they work in, and my job was moved to location Q. They are told they have to move as well or new people will be hired to replace them.
The budget for the new hires in location Q is approximately 1.6X - 1.9X (partially because the existing employees were underpaid and partially because location Q has a higher cost of living). However, I am told in no uncertain terms that I cannot offer employees A and B a raise greater than 1.15X (and even that was a struggle), even though I know (and have explained) that both would happily relocate for a new salary of 1.5X, plus relocation assistance totalling about 0.1X.
Thus, I was forced to let two extremely good people go, along with all their acquired knowledge, and spend _months_ short-staffed while trying to hire replacements (couldn't believe how hard it was to find decent people - recession my arse) who ended up being paid ca. 1.8X and with the associated losses in productivity due to a) aforementioned period of being short-staffed and b) the new employees taking the normal couple of months to become really useful.
The root cause of this madness seems to be the unerring and genuine belief that basically all employees are trivial to replace and there is no productivity lost during both a) the short-staffing period after people who couldn't get raises decamp to other employers and b) the 2-3 month training period before new employees become genuinely useful.