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Companies More Likely To Outsource Than Train IT Employees
snydeq writes "IT pros feeling the pressure to boost tech skills should expect little support from their current employers, according to a recent report on IT skills. '9 in 10 business managers see gaps in workers' skill sets, yet organizations are more likely to outsource a task or hire someone new than invest in training an existing staff. Perhaps worse, a significant amount of training received by IT doesn't translate to skills they actually use on the job.'"
Guys, seriously. Nobody wants to spend money on an employee they aren't likely to have around in a year or two anyway; and even if they did, it's easier just to phone HR and say "Hey, I need a dozen people with xyzzy skill." "derp derp derp" "Okay then! I'll see them on monday." The idea of the company taking care of you died in about, er... the 1950s. Deal with it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
A manager is insulated from the real costs of hiring a new employee, whereas costs for training for an existing employee show up nice and neatly on his budget.
Why? HR. HR ensures it's own existence by hiding the costs of new hires. Managers are happy to take advantage of this.
But I've received online security training by IT, ethics training by legal, harassment training by HR, business development training by BD, health training by our new insurance provider, all delivered by automated Flash apps voiced by a kindly sounding lady, after which *I had to get 80% on a 5-question multiple-choice test* to get my printable Certificate of Compliance! I have a hard time remembering which side of this keybored thingy to bang on sometimes, but by God I know company policies!
In my experience, the summary touches on the chief cause of this problem: If an organization can't train in-house then they have to look to 3rd parties to provide the training, and all too often those 3rd parties lack the skills and/or knowledge to effectively educate the employees in anything practical. And in most cases they're never held to account for their lack.
So at that point it simply becomes cheaper to outsource the job to someone who has to get the job done in order to be paid, rather than pay employees to learn worthless skills.
Make execs hold 20 year stock, instead of the year or 2 bs.
Part of the job is learning it on your own, volunteering for new things, and sometimes exaggerating your experience to get into new technologies. No company has ever spent a dime on my training, yet I've managed to build a killer resume just by never ever saying "No" to anything.
.NET experience. My coworkers are exceptionally good at Java and I know they'd figure out C# over a weekend, but nobody volunteered! Except me. I got a 12 week gig (with paid overtime!) and all the latest Microsoft buzzwords to add to my resume.
I'm working in a Java shop and the PHB sent out a group email looking for volunteers with
:wq
If they train an existing employee that only get someone who "knows" the material. If they outsource or hire someone new that can get someone who actually done it before. As anyone who has tried to get hired on the strength of a newly learned skill can tell you, companies only value skills that have already been applied at other companies.
If you run a small/medium business, it makes perfect sense to outsource your IT as long as you do it locally. Also, if you're an IT technician, then you need to start your own IT firm or work for an existing firm. Most small businesses don't need to hire an IT guy for $50,000+ a year just so he spends 8 hours trying to remove the malware from some unimportant employee's laptop. You can pay half the cost for a local IT company to proactively manage your network, provide remote and on-site support, and in-shop repair services. Not to mention, your IT firm can hire dozens of local IT techs and give job opportunities to many people. You make more money, and companies save money, and IT techs actually have the opportunity to grow and learn more about bettering the services they offer their clients. It just has do be done locally.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Absolutely. It's almost impossible to get anything but a helpdesk or (if you're very lucky) an entry level programming job at a small organization anymore.
And no, you can't "work your way up" to an administrator or "developer", unless it's truly a very small shop. There are no gradients, because everything between "able to speak english and put things under desks" or "someone who can speak english and debug things who won't progress" because everything between those and "senior admin" or "lead developer" have been outsourced.
I exaggerate a bit, but good luck finding anything below a "5+ years of experience" position with a larger organization anymore.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Those generalisations work both ways: I wouldn't want most SQL developers to go near real programming languages. To be fair, I probably wouldn't want them to go near the SQL queries either, though.
I have hired people like this, and found many of them less than desirable. I have hired people with anywhere from 3-10 years of experience in exactly what I am looking for. When they start working, I find their skill level much to be desired. They try to apply a method they used before, which is completely inappropriate for the situation at hand. I find them taking short cuts they think I won't notice. They argue with the standards we have in place, not because they point out why they are bad, but because they are too much work. Now, I have also hired great people this way. What I am really looking for is someone who works to understand the problem and can learn, research and develop a solution. Sometimes the guy right out of school is the best one for this. Other times it is someone we already have on hand who has no experience with what we are doing, but is very flexible and can learn quickly.
Try the opposite side of things. I am in what I thought is a good position. I am highly skilled both technically and in the soft skills. Yet all I see is hesitant businesses testing the waters. They pull the pin then pull back. Extremely frustrating. I would like to have a good full time job right now but the proper opportunity has not presented itself. It seems like barriers have been thrown up by business/HR to prevent normal discourse.
True, companies are not mentoring like they used to. This meant a lot to the continuity of the professions. It was a method of giving back and to everyone else. Businesses which don't mentor or give back are just consuming resources. You have to be the judge of that opportunity. I pray I don't have to make that decision to work for a questionable company.
I think businesses are way over thinking their various aspects. Too much analysis means over think. Over think gets you nowhere and wastes money.
Good luck in your search. At some point, if you have the proper work ethic and attitude, your worth will be accepted with open arms.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
If not, they would have been laid off!
I think that the Traditional College system is not the best fit for lot’s of jobs and there are better ways to learn and to show that you have skills.
Harvard Study: Too Much Emphasis On College Education?
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0202/Does-everyone-need-a-college-degree-Maybe-not-says-Harvard-study [CC] [MD] [GC]
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/02/harvard-study-hey-maybe-were-placing-too-much-emphasis-on-a-college-education/ [CC] [MD] [GC]
“It would be fine if we had an alternative system [for students who don’t get college degrees], but we’re virtually unique among industrialized countries in terms of not having another system and relying so heavily on higher education,” says Robert Schwartz, who heads the Pathways to Prosperity project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Emphasizing college as the only path may actually cause some students – who are bored in class but could enjoy learning that’s more entwined with the workplace – to drop out, he adds. “If the image [of college] is more years of just sitting in classrooms, that’s not very persuasive.”
The United States can learn from other countries, particularly in northern Europe, Professor Schwartz says. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland, for instance, between 40 and 70 percent of high-schoolers opt for programs that combine classroom and workplace learning, many of them involving apprenticeships. These pathways result in a “qualification” that has real currency in the labor market”
“It would be fine if we had an alternative system [for students who don’t get college degrees], but we’re virtually unique among industrialized countries in terms of not having another system and relying so heavily on higher education,” says Robert Schwartz, who heads the Pathways to Prosperity project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Emphasizing college as the only path may actually cause some students – who are bored in class but could enjoy learning that’s more entwined with the workplace – to drop out, he adds. “If the image [of college] is more years of just sitting in classrooms, that’s not very persuasive.”
The United States can learn from other countries, particularly in northern Europe, Professor Schwartz says. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland, for instance, between 40 and 70 percent of high-schoolers opt for programs that combine classroom and workplace learning, many of them involving apprenticeships. These pathways result in a “qualification” that has real currency in the labor market”
The issue isn't that companies have some sort of moral obligation to train their employees. They are free to train, outsource, hire, whatever.
The point is that it usually ends up more expensive to not invest in your workforce. It's one of those save a penny today. lose a pound tomorrow.
If you are not willing to move on and get another job, don't whine to everyone else about it.
Non-compete clauses prevent that for many people. The system is rigged in favor of the employers.
You can't get the skill on your own, because they want to hire someone with X years of experience. That means you need to have been working with that skill, professionally, for X years, to meet their requirement. So basically they want someone else to train you, or for you to train yourself and then work somewhere else at it for a while, and then get tired of your job there and quit so you can work for this new cheap-ass company.
If they just wanted you to have the skill, without the "X years of experience" bit, that'd be one thing and perfectly understandable. But the fact that they want you to be experienced, meaning having worked somewhere else, means that they want someone who's already an expert at it, and don't want to get any of their existing employees up to speed on that skill. Then, when they can't find that expert-level person (because their salaries are too cheap, or they want you to move out to bumblefuck and then give you a shitty salary because "the cost of living is low!" (nevermind that you'll have to move cross-country if this doesn't job doesn't work out), then they run around bitching and complaining that there's not enough skilled workers out there and that the government needs to do something about it.
I agree completely. That's why when my boss sends me travelling I insist on paying for the flights and hotels myself. They tried to give me a computer to use for work, but I wouldn't put up with that sort of nonsense and bought my own instead.
Heck, I don't even turn on the lights in my office lest my kind and generous employer have to bear that expense in the course of my humble service to them.
I'm curious, are you physically unable to use a period?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
This is why I prefer working at companies that use open source software for the core of their systems. You are able to teach yourself and stay up to date on what is going on, and maybe even give back. All of that documentation is out there just for you to learn. And you can set up any number of scenarios in your labs without having to buy licenses for things that likely won't work for you anyway. Let's not forget that we no longer have to deal with constant harrassment from sales droids, instead focusing on growing our own skillset while benefiting the company.
'Training" is for "consultants" working for places like the DoD. I've never met a group more dedicated to striving for mediocrity, including government employees and contractors alike. Your value is seen as what you've been trained in. The majority of those folks simply don't know how to think, only how to regurgitate feature sets of commercial products that the government is overpaying for.
If you are not willing to move on and get another job, don't whine to everyone else about it.
Non-compete clauses prevent that for many people who don't know that they're usually non-enforceable. The system is rigged in favor of the employers but people should find out what their options are regardless.
FTFY
blindly antisocialist = antisocial