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IT Positions Some of the Toughest Jobs To Fill In US
coondoggie writes "Forty-nine percent of U.S. companies are having a hard time filling what workforce management firm ManpowerGroup calls mission-critical positions within their organizations. IT staff, engineers and 'skilled trades' are among the toughest spots to fill. The group surveyed some 1,300 employers and noted that U.S. companies are struggling to find talent, despite continued high unemployment, over their global counterparts, where 34% of employers worldwide are having difficulty filling positions."
Maybe they are hard to fill because they dont pay enough?
Perhaps if there was a better compensation model this would not be such an issue, but wanting somebody with 5 years of sysadmin experience running Windows 2003-2008R2 and RedHat and LAMP and JBoss for $50k may not be realistic...
...when you just fill the positions with H1B visa holders. Large corporations have figured that one out - just barrage the US government with applications and hire people next to nothing. Can't fill positions if you want them to speak 10 different languages, write code in five different programming languages, and be willing to do it on $20k USD a year - unless you import a 'hired gun'. The fix is in...
Generally it's not the case they can't find them at all, they abound. They just can't find them at the substandard price and unreasonable work hours they used to. It's like the girl who gets hit on constantly by good but average guys and complains "why doesn't anyone hit on me?"
From the article the 3 reasons why they can't find people:
1.) lack of available applicants
2.) applicants looking for more pay
3.) lack of experience.
I'm willing to bet that all 3 reasons are related to #2. Post a job listing online, looking for 20 yrs experience in Java and offer 40K/yr. Lets see anyone reasonable come try and fill that job post without asking for more money.
"IT positions some of the toughest jobs to fill in the US...because employers can't get enough cheap H1B foreign labor." This is not about finding Americans with enough technical expertise, of which there are plenty--it's about employers who aren't willing to pay for it, and want to hire cheap labor from India/China visa holders.
I am sick of seeing these garbage stories, proliferated by greedy companies, who just want caps on immigrant workers lifted. There are plenty of qualified staff available, if you are willing to pay the market rate.
If you are an intelligent person, with good skills, you are not going to stay in any occupation that doesn't suitably reward you. Companies have to realise that.
To be clear: we're not struggling to find *people*, we're struggling to find *talent*.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Working in IT in most organizations is soul sucking.
Having been a UNIX admin for over 14 years, I was laid off from a contracting company but after updating my resume, got 3 calls a day and an interview following week and hired when my 2 week was up.
No joke, a DBA friend who also got laid off with me also found a job after 3 week.
IT positions are hard to fill
Translation: We can't find anyone to fill these positions at wages slightly above minimum wage. Please give us more H1B visas so we can import workers willing to work for slave wages.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
1. Americans bailed on the sector when the first big bump in 1998-2000. This left a gap that new trainees never really came in to fill.
2. H1Bs go home. This means the insane over-recruitment of H1B employees had a cost at the end of their terms.
3. There has been, up until 2008, and attitude in the U.S. that any college degree is good enough. My state only graduated 40,000 people from community colleges/trade schools this year. Everyone with higher aspirations just went to a 4 year school. To do less is to view oneself as a failure(and employers do too).
4. Combine that with a culture with a slight distaste for mathematics and science and that's more than enough basic features to explain a discrepancy of this level.
They just need to up their offer. Go invisible hand!
If the salaries for those positions were acceptable to the people with those skills, they would have no problem filling the positions.
I get weekly emails from companies wanting me to do contract work, all senior engineer level work, as a contractor (no benefits, 1099 work), and the hourly rate is pathetic. Then they cry about not being able to hire engineers, and how we need to outsource/bring in H1Bs. Let them struggle.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
people that can write a job description and match job seekers to the jobs.
And are surprised when they get monkeys. That and it might reflect a complete failure in HR practices.
Either way, it's clearly time to open the H1-B etc floodgates to mitigate the above two failings.
IT is kind of a nebulous term. Going by the common definition on the street, I'm guessing that "IT Staff" means "On-site computer support people willing to work for just over minimum wage and oh yeah, can you carry the duty pager tonight?"
To do well in IT you just have to have a certain problem solving ability. I don't think it is something that can be taught, or at least I can't tell you how to teach it. It isn't about knowing a lot about computers, it is about being able to process novel problems and find solutions to them, expediently preferably.
That's what we look for when we hire students (I do IT work for a university). Finding students with experience is hard since, well, they are students of course they don't have experience and that aside the kind of things we do, almost nobody has experience with. That's ok, what we are really after is someone who is good with problem solving, particularly the kind of problem solving you need for computers.
I've encountered more than a few people who are not very qualified/competent in IT. We've hired a few people since I've worked here and I've sat on their hiring board (the IT manager, my boss, usually has 4 other technical people with him on the board for interviews). The only people in interviews already made it past HR's resume filtering, and then were the best resume's from the bunch we got. Still, many have been totally unqualified and it becomes readily apparent in the interview process.
Sucks for most, but the skilled english speaking talent will have no problem at all getting work.
In transition myself to a new job (I hate microstrategy, and no, I have no interest in learning it) - be reasonable, a little animated, somewhat excited about solving problems and you will do well.
The flip side is the negotiation cycle - folks think that just because the job market is weak for most, that the skilled set will make massive concessions on salary. Its about the time I start asking for massive concessions on work environment (aka telecommute). For some reason, everyone is still afraid of remote work.
As someone who recently sought to fill one of those openings, I have some advice for companies looking to hire: Let your existing IT people write the job listing. A disturbing number of the listings I came across were ridiculous.
5 years experience required, for an entry-level position at $25,000 salary with weekends on-call? Nope. I might be unemployed, but I don't want to lose money on a job.
Looking for someone A+-certified with mainframe maintenance and 15 years of Java programming experience? I'm close to qualified, but now I'm scared.
Five programming tests and two phone interviews, and the face-to-face interviewer doesn't even get my name even close to right? I don't think the epitome of "faceless corporation" is the right fit...
Look, I understand that there are lots of IT folks out of work, and you think that if you ask for the world, you'll get it from them. You might meet some success, but is stripping your employees of dignity really the right way to get a productive workforce?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"the most common reasons employers say they are having trouble filling jobs, including lack of available applicants, applicants looking for more pay and lack of experience."
Really? Do businesses not understand the laws of Supply and Demand? When supply shrinks or demand goes up the price you have to pay to get the good also goes up. Either you pay more, you do without, or create more supply (I.E. hire noobs and train them).
Seems like in addition to the low pay, mediocre benefits, and high expectations for years of experience, most companies are unwilling to train new people which pretty much fails the Cheap/Easy/Fast triangle. Try the cheap/easy route of a new person fresh from school - you might even try hiring them before the last person leaves - but that would require forethought.
Actually, there are plenty of people to fill these jobs. They're just Americans, who apparently aren't worth hiring, and obviously have no political voice or politicians would be courting them. They're not, which tells you what side their bread is buttered - corporate interests. The last 30 hires I've seen go by at my company are all from India and China. One in my group is an "intern". Actually, the person graduated and was offered a regular job, but had visa problems - stupid H1B limits, the person says indignantly. So rather than hire an American, they just brought the person in as an intern. There are no "critical" skills. This is just a recent college graduate. Nothing special or high-skill. No relevant training, just a smart kid like all the others. There's a critical mass now, and a definite descrimination bias against Americans. It's actually a fascinating turnaround from the old America, when it was impossible for immigrants to find work. Unfortunately for our politicians, those people can't vote, because they're not citizens. That said, American tech workers have been sold out by both sides of the aisle for corporate money. Every single person in my team is from another country. And all will likely go back home when their visas run out, to work in the Bangalore or Shanghai offices at the same job.
I know how hard it is to find experienced IT staff. Especially when I see job postings for people who have "at least 5 years experience" with tech that only became available 3 years ago.
This is the same whining we hear year after year. It's been going on since at least the early 90s, if not earlier. With few exceptions, there are people out there willing to fill these jobs but employers are unwilling to hire them because (jumping on the bandwagon here) they don't want to pay these technical people what they are worth and will not accept anyone who does not meet the exact, cross the T, dot the I experience they think they want.
Employers have essentially pawned off all training on schools, completely unwilling to offer even the barest training to bring people up to speed. They now expect you to know the intricate details of their organization even though you have never worked for them before.
Employers have brought this upon themselves and are now acting like spoiled 2 year olds, stomping their feet and holding their breath until they get their way.
You want to know how to fill these positions? REDUCE the number of H1B visas and force employers to hire those unemployed IT folks who have applied for these positions but were rejected because they didn't fit the bill 100%.
When I see the same job postings from the same employers month after month, entry to mid-level jobs, not the high-end, ultra technical positions which legitimately could have a shortage of workers, there are only two conclusions to reach: either no one is applying for the positions (for whatever reason), or employers are rejecting everyone because their standards are too high (and their heads are too high up their asses to figure it out).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You betcha, yaaaaah shoooor.....we only learned about it in an off-hand business report published in 2005.
The next time your kid says the college advisor told him/or her about the great careers awaiting Western Civ graduates, smack the crap out of him/her and MAKE them go to engineering school!!!
I noticed lots of employers don't want to train their staff or offer some kind of investment program to their employee's or any type of training from the other staff as well. In other words, they want the new guys to perform at 150% on the minute they are hired and they are very impatient on that. It's either they perform top notch right away or they get out right away. Lots of boss forgot that those IT Staff are humans and not computers or robots.
The problem is that all these employers are looking for $10,000 Ferraris and bitching because they can't fill the niche. That way they can go out and cry to the Labor Department for an H1-B so they can get somebody on the cheap.
It's not that the IT folks are asking for big money, but a decent living wage and employers are tempted with the H1-B rules to go out and leverage the crap out of them. Also there is a trend, in general, to have requirements so specific that the HR folks or the dreaded Taleo bullshit will filter out candidates who meet 70 to 80 percent of the requirements. I realize that's the situation we've been in for years but for all these employers who are crying I say that there are people out there who can work for them if 1) They're willing to pay at least the market rate for some of these positions rather than trying to drive the prices into the dirt and 2) Taking a look at their requirements and matching their candidates objectively, not allowing some fucking acronym matcher determine if a person is suitable or not for a job. Yeah, I know
maybe that's too much to ask but considering that the information is coming from an HR temp staffing firm, which is another big, big problem with the IT industry but that's another kettle of fish.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Companies (and HR departments in particular) are bad at hiring someone to grow into a job. They want someone who is in the top 20% of their profession and can do the entire job starting right away, but then they base their pay scales on the 50th percentile.
Headhunters also do a bad job, at a high price.
If there were people who could actually be trusted to do a good job at filling positions, lots of people would benefit.
I disagree with that.
I think it is easier for the hiring managers to evaluate "interpersonal skills" than it is for them to evaluate "technical skills". And since it is easier for them, they value those skills more.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
http://thedailywtf.com/
You misspelled your sign on dood, I believe you meant: "J Shillman"
I know what you mean. I routinely get messages asking me if I'd be interested to work in Bentonville Arkansas. NFW am I working for Walmart even if it is in IT!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The original article listed the 3 reasons the slots were hard to fill, "including lack of available applicants, applicants looking for more pay and lack of experience"
So in other words employers who don't recruit, don't pay much and aren't willing to train are having trouble. Well good.
Maybe if they stopped asking for 5 years of Windows 8 experience, they'll have better luck?
1. Relatively low pay for a job which requires constant training, certification, and work experience.
2. Almost no time to get the training or certification while maintaining work experience.
3. Constant complaints about the quality of job they are performing even if they aren't responsible for incidents at work.
4. Needing to be on call 24/7.
5. Having almost no job security as people keep talking about outsourcing your job.
* Note that I am an engineer who tends to have lots of friends in the IT industry. Personally, I try to do my own computer maintenance when possible at work and try not to complicate their lives any more.
Management are finally discovering what experienced IT staffers have been warning them about for years- failure to invest in training and mentoring entry-level staff will result in shortages over all levels of skill in the future.
Skilled staff are not a commodity. They are not widgets that can be easily replaced. Moreover, the attrition rate for the IT field is high- I am one of 4 people I know among my extended group of friends with more than 20 years in the business who are still working as non-management. Everyone else has either changed professions to something else, or is in management.
The unemployment rate for IT staff in my region is less than 3%. I stopped trying to get requisitions for new staff to train up years ago when I realized that until their pants are on fire, management at most companies simply won't understand that it can take three to five years to train up a good IT staffer, provided the will and funding are there to do it. So, this new "news" is not a surprise to me, and I've taken a more laid back approach as I've realized that there isn't any purpose to changing some peoples' minds about the growing staff shortage. As of now, I'm enjoying the ride, letting people call me and determining where I'm going to have to argue least about pay.
Again, when you can buy your own laws the market is warped. This is what is happening.
There is plenty of talent and plenty of people if you just follow the rules like you did in the good ol' days. This is one of those situations where the good old days were ACTUALLY good. Businesses had to compete for skills and didn't go crying to their favorite senator with money in hand when the market didn't go their way.
I heard that James Gosling is pretty excited. 3 years from now, he'll finally have enough experience to apply for those entry level Java programming jobs!
testing out my trending skills
Don't forget the ageism thing. Shocked no one mentioned this.
Must have 25 years Java experience... and the unwritten rule is be under 30.
Sometimes ageism shows up in ridiculous combos, where the only way to get that combo is to already have that specific position, or be about 60.. and they only hire kids under 30.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This confirms my experience as an IT Manager that it's hard to find good people, even in a recession.
What if drivers were hired like software developers?
Job title: car driver
Job requirements: professional skills in driving normal- and heavy-freight cars, buses and trucks, trolley buses, trams, subways, tractors, shovel diggers, contemporary light and heavy tanks currently in use by NATO countries.
Skills in rally and extreme driving are obligatory!
Formula-1 driving experience is a plus.
Knowledge and experience in repairing of piston and rotor/Wankel engines, automatic and manual transmissions, ignition systems, board computer, ABS, ABD, GPS and car-audio systems by world-known manufacturers - obligatory!
Experience with car-painting and tinsmith tasks is a plus.
The applicants must have certificates by BMW, General Motors and Bosch, but not older than two years.
Compensation: $15-$20/hour, depends on the interview result.
Education requirements: Bachelor's Degree of Engineering.
While you MIGHT get extremely lucky and find one of the few techs who (for whatever reason) needs a job at any salary while having all those skills ...
You'll pretty much end up with two situations:
1. That person will be gone as soon as they find a better paying job. And you will have to start over again.
2. That person really does not have those skills and is willing to learn them "on the job" while making all the mistakes a novice would make. And then leaves to find a better paying job.
Either way, you pay slave wages, you get slave labour.
I have noticed that while searching for an IT job that 99% of the listings I come across (at least in my region) want someone with 3-5 years experience and a degree, or you have to be certified in like 4 technologies. I have an associate degree in computer and communications technology and am about to get my cisco CCNA certification. Even with the certification, it seems everyone wants experience. Where are the companies looking to hire intelligent people who are willing to learn and have a strong base from which to build? Or is that not a viable option because no one is willing to pay them enough to stick around?
Since career managers are experts at interpersonal communication (how do you think they got there?), the easiest "solution" is to evaluate people based on interpersonal communication.
Who would have thought?
This is a link from Slashdot, to blog spam, linking to a press releases, which is an advertisement for a company that specialises in supplying solutions to the problem in the press release.
"Study: It's hot outside, you should hydrate." - Coca-Cola Bottling Co.
10 years C++
5-7 years Java
5-7 years HTML and CSS
2-3 years SQL
2-3 years Ruby
1 year JQuery
1 year COBOL
Familiarity with VHDL
Must be a Team Player
Must be willing to work 60 hours per week
Must know ballroom dancing
Must speak sloth
Salary 40,000 per year
I have no idea why they are having difficulties....
This is just a scam to hire more H1Bs. This has been going on for decades. Businesses try half heartedly to fill a position, fail to do so, then use that as justification to hire H1Bs. I do like the H1B visas program because I have some friends who started here on that program, but at the same time I acknowledge that many companies in the tech industry abuse the program.
It doesn't help my anti-H1B visa rant given that American students are shitty at math and science.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Somehow I have a feeling that a lack of filled positions in those areas aren't particularly hurting anything.
If you don't want to say which city, just tell us which state.
What is this "minor software development"?
Scripting?
Or is it "knowing how to code in C or C++ or Java"?
How much training/education are you willing to pay for for a candidate that has the network skills but not the "software development" skills?
Or "software development" skills but not the network skills?
How intense is the security clearance you're looking for? Credit check? 10 years previous legal problems? Top Secret?
2 of the 3 should be difficult but not impossible for the right price.
3 of the 3, without a willingness to pay for education is going to be VERY difficult. The people writing code for network security ALREADY have good paying jobs.
I've found many employers want Rumpelstiltskin workers. i.e. someone who can do anything and everything, but they don't have to pay squat. I've even worked places where they found them, i.e. in the University town, you can hire students and spouses of grad students that have enormous skills, but you don't have to pay them much more than minimum wage, because supply outstrips demand.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
First of all, 1,300 employers Doesn't seem like that is an accurate representation of 49% of the entire US IT workspace. I wonder who funded the study, Koch Bros?
FTFA: "Forty-nine percent of US companies are having a hard time filling what workforce... The group surveyed some 1,300 employers" um, wtf?
What's more:
The Skilled Trades left the workforce when the USA shipped all of it's manufacturing tooling processes overseas in the mid 90s. The Engineers and Machinists had to find other ways to make a living. I'm not surprised you cannot find anyone to do it now.
IT Staff, Secretaries, Sales and Accounting were some of the first jobs to be cut following the housing/banking crash in mid/late 2000's.
Teachers rely pretty heavily on Unions to make their jobs worth the pay. No, I don't mean the Scott Walker 6-figure income district vice-superintendent pencil pusher, I mean the first grade teacher making $40k/year with a class of 20 kids. Tea Party is putting an end to the unions, so don't count on good teachers being available any time soon.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Most tech fields except computers science and IT are 40-60% female. CS & IT are 20% or less. So we should expect there to be a shortage since we are missing 20-40% of the work force. IT is in the top 10 worst fields for percentage of women working in it. The shortage of workers is not a surprise -- its a symptom of the cultural problem.
Competition from Social Security, high cost of living (medical insurance), minimum pay, and burocracy create a HUGE GAP (lack of entry level positions) that can not be fixed by INSANELY EXPENSIVE EDUCATION. Thus, how those candidates can gaind experience and skills requested by employers?
Maybe if they stopped looking for people who spoke C, C++, Java, JavaScript, "Active X", DOS, Powershell, BASH, Windows, Linux, MacOS, and were certified as MCP, A+, N+, MCSA, MCSE, N+, Security+, OS/2, and who could change lightbulbs, repair a power socket and had a WHMIS/safety awareness certificate so they could perform building maintenance - All of that, and instead employed more people to delegate duties based on their specialties, finding workers would go easier and it would be easier to get workers working.
Somehow they think that magically making physical servers disappear into VMs means that there's less work which requires fewer people. 80 computers is 80 computers, even if you don't have to walk to them.
I can't find work and I'm leaving IT. It would cost as much as a college program to re-certify, so I might as well do a job with some measure of dignity and room for growth. Like make balloon animals.
Our profession is the bottom twenty of gender parity and we wonder why we don't have enough employees. Unless the lack of women makes it super-extra-appealing to men I'd assume programmers would be about 20% rarer than other similar professions with 40% participation by women.
Perhaps I'm starting to get old, but I seem to remember the good old days when companies were less concerned with skills and more concerned with hiring honest, hard working employees, and then TRAINING them. Not only did you end up with employees with the exact skills you needed, you also got employees who were loyal to the company and weren't going to leave for greener pastures at the slightest drop of a hat.
I suspect that the business executives knew all along that this was going to be the long-term outcome when they replaced lifetime career employees with "fluid players". But the short term monetary incentives were just too much for them to turn down at the time, and nothing beyond next quarter's numbers matter to them anyway.
I am a sysadmin and I get contract to hire stuff all the time. Problem is I am currently full time employed....no contract and I have full benefits. Now TELL me why I want to leave for your pathetic 2 year contract?
Offer me:
1. More than I make now.
2. Permanent...with bennies.
3. Better working conditions (competent project management and not constantly being asked to perform a miracle in a week).
Then....ONLY then will I consider even applying for the position.
Another mistake they make is asking for God like qualities in a technical position. Qualities like:
1. 10 years experience in a tech that has only existed for 5.
2. 365/7/24 On call (Bullshit)
3. That you can be a DBA, Sysadmin, Project Manager and chief cook and bottle washer.
I've seen that in MANY postings and it's impossible to fill because they ask the world and expect to pay for the city. That doesn't jibe.
Gorkman
"IT Positiions Some of the Toughest Job to Underpay People in US"
or maybe
"Companies over specify jobs, find no one matches."
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'm not a hiring manager, but I am involved in the interview process and hiring decisions. Biggest issue that I've experienced is related to employer expectations.
Most of the sites I work at have small IT teams; 5-10 people. These sites generally seem to be looking for a small group of fairly Sr. level people. The pool of Sr. level guys is fairly small, so demand is super high if you have 10+ years of solid IT experience. It's hard to fill positions. Most of the people we've hired have been in the industry since the late 90s. The talent pool really doesn't appear to have grown much in the last 10 years, and because companies aren't willing to hire Jr. level admins, it really doesn't seem to grow.
Benefits and pay are great if you qualify for positions. If you're mid level to Jr. level, it's hard to get hired, and pay isn't enough to support a family, in the bay area.
The situation appears to be even more difficult over-seas, based on my observation. On the plus side, it means that IT is a skill that can get you a job pretty much anywhere in the world.
I think the small team mentality is getting worse with the move to VMs. Less hardware and better tools means that less manpower is necessary to manage large networks.
The path forward, IMO... Is for Sr. Level people to move towards a role of designing and building systems that the Jr. and mid level guys can operate. If you have a team of Sr. level people making routine changes (building VMs, DNS changes, monitoring hosts, etc.) then you are wasting a lot of money.
What's your standard reply? I like $400/hour, 4 hour minimum + expenses, but that might be too low for you.
My dad worked for the government for years. One of his buddies was talking to a recruiter, when the recruiter asked, "What will it take for you to come work for us." The guy answered something like 3x his current salary. Later the guy came back with "How about 2.8x salary?". He took the job.
Always have an absurdly high number available. If the fish bite, reel them in.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Yeah, I said it. We need a trade union for IT workers. I know a lot of you have an inflated sense of self worth and will rant for days about bootstraping self reliance startups and other nonsence
Sure, unions aren't perfect but we're seeing the end result of being a disorganized group "Self starters" with no representation and no voice. If we can form a union that's more like the "original" intention of a union, which is to have a collective political and social representation we'll be a lot better off.
It's really not surprising that we're being pushed around by laughably stupid HR drones demanding 5 years of experience in product 2 years old, and seen as an unnecessary expense by middle managers that want to cut your job so they can get a bonus. We're easy to marginalize because we don't have a voice. Members of older professions just look at our plight and chuckle.
Look at engineering. Being an actual engineer means something, and you have trade bodies with real respect to back it up. Would it not be desirable to be considered an expert in your field, and be vetted by a respectable organization? To receive pay as such?
I know that there are going to be dozens of people jumping on this thread saying "Oh I'm blah blah blah and I have a million contracts up the wazoo and I pick my jobs" Well, that's nice for you. But for every single one of you there are thousands, tens of thousands of hard working individuals that support the underpinnings of your high-level work. Those people also deserve respect and fair pay for their hard work.
Didn't we just have an article some months back where big tech companies were caught colluding to not compete for each other employees in order to keep salaries down low?
Ya know, I've been in IT all my life, either software development/engineering, LAN admin, or so on, and I can categorically state that the reason positions aren't being filled is because of BS "job requirements". You want Help Desk people or LAN Admin with a batchelors degree? Are you friggin' serious?!?!?!
It seems to me that employers set the bar really high, then complain that people do not fit their arbitrary requirements.
One of the most frustrating things for me is trying to move up the ladder into more mainstream (and better paying/more potential) development work. Since I don't have years paid/professional experience, I get passed over. On the other hand, I have heard of people who have 10 years of quality experience, but no degree, being passed over.
I fear that we are only pigeonholing people into one very specific career (i.e. you will only be a Java programmer).
In summary, I think there is no talent shortage. There is a shortage of HR/Recruiters/Managers who realize that anyone worth hiring should be able to pick up the technology in a reasonable amount of time. And they don't realize that if you want globs of experience you need to pay for it somehow.
What The Fuck?!?
Bullshit.
Shouldn't you be head-hunting the people with those skills and clearances at the other security firms and paying them the 6 figure salaries that they'd demand?
Sure there are. It's just that they've already got jobs where they're pulling in massive salaries and you'd have to top those salaries / benefits in order to pull them away from that.
They want someone who has certifications in "Veritas Cluster Manager 6.03.5.3.1" but if you have a cert for "Veritas Cluster Manager 5.9.48.49" they put your resume in the "round" filing bin.
They don't want to train people, they want ones who already have work 5 years of work experience using the exact version of the software which they currently have. And woe to the applicant which knows a competitor's product which does 95% of the same thing using the same concepts which a little hands on experience would fix within a few weeks (less than the time it would take for that person to figure out the network and system layout).
But that is just my take, maybe others have had different experience. From my looking around most job postings essentially state to not bother applying if you don't have those exact things on your resume, which creates a whole new issue with resume padding, something even CEO's are guilty of doing because they too would have been files in the round bin.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Well America. Maybe if you pay your "IT experts" decent wages and offer them decent benefits like the rest of the world does people would be willing to work there.
Recently I had an offer at a very well known vendor in the US. With 12 years working experience plus a few important industry certifications under my belt I felt I would get a decent offer. They (HR at this company, I felt like I was talking to a wall) wanted to offer me coming from Europe, 55k USD/salary yearly, 10 days vacation a year, some crappy health insurance plan, no relocation, no yearly bonus, no overtime pay.
I told them what I make here in Europe plus benefits and the HR lady almost fell out of her chair. "Saying we cant do that." Career wise would have been an excellent opportunity. Although, the pay and benefits would have been a step back into the dark ages. I told them thanks for the offer but no thanks.
Sorry for the anonymous post, but since I'm talking about our hiring practices, it's best I do so without logging in.
We pay well. I think very well. There's some awesome benefits. We get twice the number of company holidays than most folks at other companies get. We get more vacation than standard. Our department at least is extremely flexible about working hours and telecommuting. I'd wager all if not close to all of the senior engineers are paid 6 figures. I'd honestly be very surprised to find a senior engineer/developer here paid less than a 100 grand a year. And when I say senior I don't mean some super system architect. I mean just a very experience software engineer with some design responsibilities. My group has a number of engineer positions open we've been hiring for. Our junior guys get paid more than I ever thought I'd be making when I graduated college (I was given very realistic expectations). In the past 3 months, we've found only 1 good candidate. Just one. What I commonly see are a myriad of 20 page resumes (only a slight exaggeration) listing every skill under the sun. When we bring them in and interview them, they don't know the basic fundamentals of simple OO and simple relational database concepts. I ask a series of really easy questions in the tech interview. The questions only require a basic understanding of OO; they aren't your typical crappy "memorize some definitions for terms" questions. The first time I asked a candidate these questions I felt a little embarrassed to do so because they are so simple. That is until he completely failed.
It seems like there's an entire generation of folks writing code who only know how to work within certain specific APIs and only know how to do exactly what they are told. These folks can't design their way out of a paper bag and have no understanding of the basic fundamental concepts every developer and software engineer should know. Unfortunately that means they know enough to pass a phone screen but not enough to get the job. They waste our time and frankly we're wasting theirs. Personally I think a lot of these folks just simply aren't cut out to be a software engineer.
I'm sure there are a bunch of companies not paying enough. But it's not all about that. There are a metric crapton of crappy "software engineers" out there that know only enough to pass a phone screen and it's making it really tough for those of us on the hiring end.
And don't even get me started on offshoring and what a horrible mess that is anytime it's handed to us from on high.
Must have at least 5 years experience in each of:
Java Swing, JavaFX, JavaScript, EJB 2.0 and 3.0, Oracle 9i and 10g, MS SQL server, SOAP, XML, CSS, XSLT, Struts, JAX-WS, RUP methodology, UML tools, Eclipse plug-in development, Unix shell scripting, Ruby on Rails.
Help! Why can't I find any qualified applicants?
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
There lots of IT jobs where everything you need to know on the can be learned on the job and from a few classes.
But a 4 year + (mostly class room only) degrees does not give you the right skills needed for the job.
How many people do you know that are actually good at what they do, and are unemployed?
Because the situation you describe would only result (if they changed the wage) in your company now missing a person.
Unless there is a wealth of unemployed talented tech people around (hint: there isn't) then it isn't a wage issue. They aren't managing to poach employees from other companies due to lower wages, but that isn't why they can't find someone talented full stop.
You wont find talent when you pay nothing and treat your workers like shit.
Remember that old phrase "a happy worker is a productive worker"?
Neither do i. :(
Most of the jobs they're talking about require years of experience to qualify while at the same time there isn't nearly enough lower level work to supply that higher level demand with labor.
By outsourcing all the lower level jobs they've made it impossible for domestic labor to get the experience.
So then the companies have to import foreign skilled labor that are only skilled because the job was outsourced in the first place. Ultimately this makes it more efficient to simply outsource the higher skilled levels as well... etc. all the way up the chain eventually.
The whole outsourcing craze has been generally ill considered.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You sir couldn't be more correct. It is simple economics.
you can't get a security clearance on your own or it's very hard. You need to be willing to sponsor it.
As someone who's applied to these "hard to fill" positions, there's one huge reason why they can't fill them.
Unrealistic expectations.
These companies usually demand several (5 was a common number I saw) years experience, and the amount of pay they offer makes even a novice in the field think twice.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
for a product that's only existed for 8 years. So apparently, they are only willing to hire that product's QA testers, or maybe only that product's programmers or design team.
I remember looking for a job back in the old days of DICE and MONSTER -- and let me tell you, they were seriously asking for 5 years experience in Windows XP, something, which at the time, was only in existence for 2 years. Plus, Microsoft Office, Veritas, Networking, virtualization, Adobe products, HTML and Javascript coding, NT Domain controllers, Cisco routers, Windows Administration, Linux, Unix Administration a plus: Salary: $15,000+ commission if you also do sales.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
American businesses cannot find the people they need because they have stopped looking. As has been mentioned here before, many HR departments are now dependant on robo analysis of electronicly submitted resumes to do their inital vetting. If you don't meet the robo criteria you don't get past square one. This results in many qualified candidates being passed over and under qualified candidates getting through because they know how to game the system.
I have personally seen several examples of both. In one instance the guy filled out an online resume form (you were not allowed to just upload your pdf), hit enter, and within a minute got a reply email saying "Thank you for applying, but after careful consideration we have determined that you are not qualified for the position." Careful consideration? Hardly. Needless to say his opinion of this particular company is less than what it was before he applied.
In another example, a guy who could not get past HR finally had a friend hand deliver his resume to the manager who was hiring. HR was furious for being bypassed, but the guy got the job.
Finally, a good friend of mine was pulling her hair out trying to find a good sqlserver admin. It seems that the only candidates that HR passed on to her happened to come from the same contracting company, with almost identical resumes, and all admitted in the interviews that they were actually programmers, but the consulting company thought they could do the job and had "tweaked" the resumes to make them look competent.
Companies that take shortcuts in the hiring process will pay for it in the end. A good HR department has to be willing to put in the effort to find good candidates.
Cheap, fast or good. Pick two.
-Xanthos
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
At least in new mexico...
- We want someone with people skills:
Translation:
(a) We don't know how to evaluate your technical skills
(b) We want a neurotypical individual
(c) We want you to have a wife, kids, and house, so once you take this job, you are shackled to us by responsibility and debt.
- We want a programmer with 25 years of Java Experience
(a) We don't know this doesn't exist unless your name is Gosling
(b) This position is intended to be filled by someone in Delhi who will lie on their resume
(c) If you apply and have the requisite experience, we will fire you for cause of lying on your application once the job is complete. But please do apply.
- Requires existing Secret/Top Secret Clearance
(a) This job pays a 10k premium
(b) This job description was written for a buddy of mine
(c) We will not pay for your investigation, and if we do, we will find faults in the background check until the only remaining individual is the person we have already selected
- Payment/Benefits include Stock Options
(a) We have no business plan
(b) We want you to sign over all rights and sign an NDA before the interview
(c) We will fire you or make the environment conditions insufferable one year before the options vest.
- We are seeking a junior to mid-level engineer
(a) We want someone with 3-10 years experience
(b) We pay 25% below market
(c) This is why we are seeking one. We can't find anyone we don't want to fire that is willing to work for two stddev below average.
(d) Our last crop of interns really screwed things, and we don't know how to fix it
- Responsibilities include completion of multiple projects
(a) Responsibilities include working from 6-8, not 8-6. Plus Saturdays, Sundays & Holidays.
(b) This job comes with a 5*N year long trouble ticket list, and N person-years of employees available for you to use.
(c) Our last crop of interns really screwed things, and we don't know how to fix it.
(d) We will give you enough supervisory responsibility to blame you for our predecessors failures. Please see apocryphal "make three envelopes" story.
(e) You will be personally responsible for two high profile projects from day one, one of which is due in a month and only 16 weeks behind schedule. Opportunity abounds!
And they wonder why they have problems....
I think part of the problem is modern recruitment is broken. The article here is a prime example.
The issue is that HR/Headhunters/Recruiters/Management get too hung up on "keywords" and "checklists" for rigid requirements (i.e. Must have 7-10 years exp. and a degree).
If you happen to be laid off, and have 12 years of Java, people won't consider you for .Net jobs or jobs that require 3-5 years of Java experience. Even though you'd take a reasonable pay cut for obvious reasons.
Not the answer I was expecting. Scripting is VERY different from C coding.
So a very real possibility of a very limited career there? The firewall market is already fairly busy.
That would make me even less confident. If the people writing the code for the firewall need someone else to tell them what the packets look like then there is a problem. And that kind of education is a couple weeks at maximum.
I wish you luck with that. I don't think you'll find anyone with those skills willing to take a risk on your project at the expense of their current job.
But I'm going to reiterate the part about getting some more education for your coders. Understanding network packets is not difficult. If they can write firewall software then they NEED to understand packets. This is NOT something that someone else can explain to them while they're coding.
Good luck!
They are very hard positions to fill. Think about what your typical company needs from its IT staff:
Meets all hard requirements ...So as anyone can see, they are just hard positions to fill. It isn't just that the companies whine.
Under 30 years old
5+ years experience
Never been laid off
Willing to work 60+ hours a week
Willing to put in a little extra during a sprint
A great communicator who can compensate for management's inarticulate expression of requirements
A great communicator who can compensate for management's inability to either understand technical requirements or admit they don't understand
Fits in with the company's "culture"
"Fits in" means belongs to an ethnicity that makes people the rest of the staff comfortable
Must be willing to work for a bit under market average wage, even though the other companies have trouble filling the same positions
Wait wait... Educate the rest of us... You told us the USA offer, but for comparison, let us know what you're currently getting....
If you're not willing to do that, what's the mean rate among peers, with perks? I cannot speak for every IT guy in the USA, but some of us *are* willing to relocate!
Besides, after watching Top Gear, I've decided Europe's roads are way better.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I saw a job posting the other day that said Entry Level Position but required a bachelors and about 10 years of experience in mainframes to perform the tasks. Build and maintain a mainframe, design and implement a new network and have 4+ years of Sybase, Oracle and DB/2 experience.
I don't think they know what entry level is.
The problem I have been running into is there are tons of helpdesk jobs that a trained monkey can do and tons of senior positions available but little to nothing in between.
So you get stuck in help desk cleaning malware out and swapping ink cartridges but never get any experience to get past that position. That is without going to school on the side or getting certs to prove you can do more than drool on a keyboard.
Yeah. The fact that you're here claiming that you cannot fill that position.
Knock off the cutesy, attempted implication but avoiding directly saying it, bullshit. Either you have an opening for X at $Y or you do not.
The individual skills you're looking for are not uncommon. You can probably find someone with 2 of the 3 easily. And fairly inexpensively.
But getting all 3 of the 3?
Those people probably already have jobs doing something similar to what you're pushing and you'd have to hire them away from those jobs.
So either you aren't offering them enough or there is something about the job or company that is scaring away the people with the experience you are looking for.
And even experienced people who don't trust the situation can be hired if you're willing to pay enough up front.
why do junior level jobs want years of doing same job as what they are calling junior?
I have seen junior Systems Administrator wanting any from 2-3 years of being a Systems Administrator.
Looking through job listings they want one person to do everything. No wonder nobody can fill the jobs.
Here's the right one: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/CSG-V3.pdf
Palm trees and 8
I look at job boards in Finance and see numerous firms advertising for very specialized combinations of skills and experience. For instance expert level C++ coders with several years of ultra-high frequency trading experience. Basically they want to recruit someone who's already doing the exact job they are advertising for. So it's no wonder these jobs go unfilled.
Unfortunately too true.
I had a respectable career in contract engineering (not IT) until we got a new VP. I found myself working six months then out of work the other six months. Was actually told I was shut out of other work because of my salary. The last time they brought me back they cut my salary by 20%. When I was let go from that return, I decided I would never work for them again.
Other friends I know at that company had the same thing happen to them. One of them got an offer to return but at half his salary and no benefits. He told them to shove it.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
needs to be more tech class NON degree with employers who are willing to take NON degree classes as well.
try BA of Engineering for body shop or car repair.
Is what a CS BA is to a tech school. High on the theory said but lacking the hand on skills. Also it takes longer and is a poor fit for ongoing learning.
Okay, I think that not only is the pay offered too low but the job expectations also require extra work that produces little to no value whatsoever. It is honestly more lucrative for an IT professional to be a consultant. Consultant's are generally treated with more respect than being a full time employee and they get to do work that has value without the mickey mouse extra crap that, in reality, contributes nothing but makes management look productive. Yes, I am a little sour today ......
colleges is the issue look at tech schools / learn on your own people. FOR IT JOBS!
Well put. I am a senior level coder, and I would walk right out of any interview that even mentioned security clearances. Unless I am paid considerably more than other work, it just isn't worth the hassle. If you are trying to recruit people for tech jobs, you had best realize that a security clearance requirement is a huge wart on your job offer and adjust the compensation and other benefits accordingly.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was hired at my current position 5 weeks ago. Since then I've interviewed 15 people. I gave the first 8 a programming test that I know isn't too hard because 8 weeks ago I was able to answer it without breaking a sweat. Even with major hints they were unable to get it and one PHD couldn't even understand the answer when I wrote it out for her! I went to a simpler programming test for the next 7 and none were able to get that one either. During the last 2 I asked them "Write a function that takes the head of a linked list of integers and sums their values" and they couldn't even define the structure. All I could think of is "If this is my competition, why did it take me over a month to find employment?!"
Sounds like one of the offers I recently got except it wasn't a contract position. It offered almost 2x the pay, but I would have to move from the midwest and go live in the D.C. area which would wipe out all of the pay increase and probably then some. Also I would have to live in the D.C. area which is not something I want to do given what I would have to give up. I have a reasonable sized house on a .5 acre plot that backs up to a nice city park. I have good public schools in the area that are part of the highest ranked district in the state. I have plenty of outdoor activities available to me within a reasonable drive, including fishing, camping, all sorts of hunting opportunities and just about any other out door activity one would want to do. I have a fairly specialized skill set which has a fair amount of demand so I regularly get offers and when I turn them down I let them know why.
Time to offend someone
So you have more than one project but you don't have the people to staff this project and that is because none of the resumes have the correct qualifications?
That worries me. Why aren't the other people on the other projects capable of handling this?
That's another problem. You expect someone who is a master to be able to explain the complex concepts to a novice in such a way that the novice can turn those complex concepts into code.
That does not work.
What you end up with is a master-level programmer implementing novice-level network concepts.
Because that is the level that the master-network guy has to use to communicate with the master-programmer guy.
And you refuse to bring the master-programmers up to a more advanced network level.
But you're willing to give a phone interview to someone who knows SCRIPTING?
If this was a legitimate job opening I can see why you'd have trouble filling it with anyone qualified.
Now TELL me why I want to leave for your pathetic 2 year contract?
I do ERP architecture and development work ... Most of the recruiters that contact me are looking for 6 months or less. One even sent me a position that was LISTED as a 20 day contract 1500 miles from my home. I don't even respond to those.
Sounds similar to my last job but I was asked what it would take to keep me. My former boss though long and hard for the next day but eventually couldn't match pay that I wanted to keep working there. I was asking more than my new job started me at which was still substantially higher than what I was being paid but to stay and continue using their proprietary IDE, language, and DB which the rest of my skills went stale would have take a substantial amount of money.
Time to offend someone
The troll modding of the parent comment is a joke ;)
If the US government made it easier for me to move there from Canada, I'd be applying for as many jobs as possible. I've got a lot of 1st cousins there to take me in, and a ton of IT experience.
Yes that what.
BA/BS required; MS or MA/MFA preferred
+ Intermediate to advanced knowledge of Macintosh Operating System 10.x. Intermediate knowledge of Windows Operating Systems XP/2000/Vista. Working knowledge of Active Directory structures and policies. Extensive working knowledge of computer peripherals such as CD/DVD burners, film and flatbed scanners, laser and inkjet printers, digital still and video cameras. Good working knowledge of computer maintenance and networking procedures. Familiarity with software such as Web, page-layout, animation, 3-D and video applications. Strong communication, writing and organizational skills. Teaching or training experience preferred.
Wal-Mart apparently invests heavily in IT, but no way would I move to work someplace where I wouldn't have OTHER possible employment choices. I like where I live, and while there are other places I'd consider moving, it's going to take some real incentive pay to convince me to do so.
Post a job listing online, looking for 20 yrs experience in Java and offer 40K/yr. Lets see anyone reasonable come try and fill that job post without asking for more money.
Given that Java has only been released for 17 years, you are basically asking James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, or Patrick Naughton to come to work for you for $40K/year.
-- Terry
I think a huge part of the "shortage" is that there are just so many people who want to move to NY/NJ, VA-MD-DC, Chicago, San Diego which is where 90% of corporate IT jobs seem to be. I would be hard pressed to decide between working at Harbor Freight in a low cost of living area of the country and having a midlevel job at a metro DC area consulting firm. You'd probably net more money at HF because the cost of living would be so much lower.
Love them or hate them, the NSA had the right idea, building their data center out in the boonies of Utah.
Besides, I thought with datacenter consolidation there were FEWER jobs now than ever - the big knock on Google, Facebook, etc is they make a lot of money and create almost no jobs.
Always have an absurdly high number available. If the fish bite, reel them in.
You are either going to bring reasonable value to the company, or you are not.
State the salary you want. If the company is not able to generate enough value from you to pay you that salary, then the company is probably messed up. Forget them and move on.
I interviewed for a company in the mobile satellite video industry. The interviewer asked my salary expectations, and I told him. They guy got all flustered and started yelling at me: "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? THAT IS A VP-LEVEL SALARY?"
I believe he thought he was going to cajole me into a lower salary demand. Which of course was stupid, if I then took a lower salary, I'd probably be looking for another job with a higher salary I actually wanted. And if I really was asking for a "stupidly high" salary, he just should have politely said "thank you" and showed me the door because I was stupid, rather than leaving me with a bad impression of his company.
Anyway, a few months later I became a VP, I make more than that original salary request, and the mobile satellite video industry is pretty much dead.
Plain & Simple, many IT employers want talented people but for wages that borderline minimum wages. The two are basically mutually exclusive except for the desperate.
The result is many employers are looking for excuses to offshore the jobs by claiming there is a job shortage. They lay off experienced expensive staff and replace them overseas with staff at a fraction of the rate, and more often than not, also a fraction of the talent.
Basic problem is too many companies are looking at ways of slashing hacking costs which in many organizations means wages, so as to increase the bonuses / stock grants / stock options of VPs and mid management. I have witnessed this in quite a few companies in the past decade.
The result is a failing IT infrastructure that is marginal at best.
As an aside, HR departments do an excellent job filtering out people with talent as they are most often least qualified to do a pre-screening of resumes & qualifications.
... and here it goes: having studied in any of the areas/courses/whatnots that qualify someone to work in a IT job doesn't make them any more talented than a theology graduate makes them god. Simple as that. That's why it's so difficult to find talent in IT.
Most talented IT people I know of and worked with weren't even from a course that we can say it has a "typical IT future": physicists. Granted, I'm talking about those with a lot of background in computer science, but physicists anyway... why? It seems they bring something to the IT equation with the background they get while _having to think for themselves_ in classes, on those tedious classes.... something about "critical thinking" and "abstract thinking" but not really going all the way towards "philosophy" (useless because it loses the pragmatic side). Go figure...
Why has this not been mentioned yet? A union will put an end to this unfair labor practice! Why is it our industry is permitted by congress to abuse the overtime labor laws that most other industries have to comply with? People, when you have had enough then simply start / create a union and force all IT professionals to join it. PFS (Problem fucking solved).
Take a closer look at your HR's resume filtering, and I think you will find the problem.
I see a lot of bitter complaints out there. We appreciate our IT staff at my company. Want to work for us?
I am looking to hire a Perl/Python/PHP developer in the Baltimore area, and have been for the last two months or so. Salary is competitive at or around 70k - 80k a year based on your experience. Relocation is ok, but you must be a rock star programmer to qualify for it. H1B is ok also, though again, you must be a rock star programmer to qualify for it.
If this sounds awesome to you, feel free to apply at the link below. I'll call you up and tell you about our company some more.
http://ewh.theresumator.com/apply/3JmJR4/PHPPython-Developer.html
Ok folks, I'm calling bullshit about people not being available.
I've been out of full-time work since 2007. Honestly, I didn't try to find a job again until 2012. I was having too much fun to bother.
I don't need the money, but if I'm going to give up my personal freedoms in exchange for a salary, I'd like a few small items:
* 6 weeks of unpaid vacation yearly - there is more to life than work for me.
* Some Travel - not 80%, but 3-6 overseas trips a year would be nice OR I'd love to work 6 months overseas to learn the culture and language(s)
* Interesting work - doing the same thing in a different shit hole gets old.
* ZERO on-call time. Been there, done that.
* I'm a contractor - paid by the hour - $200K take-home is ballpark, so I'm not very expensive.
* I've held sensitive positions previously, so working for a company from a country that isn't really friendly with the USA concerns me. That doesn't mean I won't work in unfriendly countries, just that I won't do anything that the entire world isn't already doing.
I have 10 yrs experience as a technical and application architect across a wide range of platforms, networks, programming languages. The last place I worked had 20K users on my systems daily, with most of those on sometimes-connected, wireless platforms tracked via GPS. These are large scale systems. Prior to that, I was a cross-platform C/C++ developer - lots of UNIX and Microsoft platforms. GUI and servers. Prior to that I wrote GN&C software for space craft. I know how to make systems that do not fail - ever. I'm agnostic to the platform, but prefer non-Microsoft when it makes sense. I could not be happy in a 100% Microsoft shop. Sorry, I just know better now.
I'm comfortable working with CxO levels and have designed and deployed projects from $500 to $50M.
I'm not a grunt anymore, but I do still sling code for fun. Perl is usually my tool. Perl-Dancer when I need a webapp. You probably won't hire me for perl or any other coding, however. Rather it would be for virtualization or the old server consolidation or if you want to stop sucking from the costly Microsoft enterprise solutions that aren't quite work in your situation and switch to F/LOSS solutions.
I do miss contributing to a team and the competition that business brings. When I'm working, I do not watch the clock. I'm task oriented and multi-task well based on business priorities. Staying late at work and coming in early is my habit.
My skills are more rounded. I'm not a specialist anymore. A chief architect or enterprise architect role at a mid-sized company is probably right.
Any chance of getting a job?
Probably not, since I don't fit some made up list of mandatory skills designed for an H1-b visa short-term contractors who lie to get the interview.
Who's having a hard time filling mission-critical IT positions? Perhaps the kind of companies that will not hire anyone over thirty? Perhaps the kind of companies that think that IT workers ought to be treated like part assemblers, warehouse order fillers or hamburger flippers — cheap and expendable? This is coming from the same kind of arrogant managers and executives who have been whining about programmers, developers, and IT staff for decades. Why do we keep bringing this crap up over and over again? Why don't we just tell those losers to just shut up?
--- Andy West http://andywest.org
They want one person to perform the function of three yet pay/comp for less than one. I don't know of anyone with three or more major disciplines out there willing to earn sub-par wages for a single one of them.
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
It's not unheard of. Their are people like myself with solid skills and years of experience who find themselves up against a wall of 'must have formal education of X level' in the entire local market they operate in.
While to some degree that always has happened, this is a bit different. I didn't need a bachelor's just to be a network admin 5 years ago before my last job, my associates degree and experience was just fine. Now they want a bare minimum of a bachelor's degree and want someone with a preference for doctorate or masters holders and it's starting to look like admin level work is now 'must have a doctorate or masters to get an interview'.
Even when I did get interviews the pay sucked and it was hard to get the company to hire anyone. For one job which was secondary admin work (under a primary admin) the business had three contenders and all of us where strong candidates with plenty of experience and had solid interviews. It went to a final decision at the C level for who to hire and the result was 'these candidates look to expensive for us, find quality candidates cheaper'. The very same job was back in the paper for the next two months and they wouldn't look at the three of us again. They couldn't find anyone who could meet their requirements and be 'cheaper looking' (they had never actually asked any of us what we were looking for salary wise) and they simply wrote off the job as being 'to expensive for them to fill'.
This was during a expansion phase where they needed qualified people because they were integrating a group of smaller businesses into their core business all of which had no real IT staff previously. At the time even $30k/year was ok with me as my unemployment was under that and no where in the US is $30k/year ludicrously over-payed for what would have been alot of work.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
You forgot to mention that since the H1Bs aren't coming in easily anymore, they've lobbied the US Gov. to allow them to deny overtime to anyone with a IT based technical skill regardless of pay level.
Unless you are, IT workers are already exempt from overtime pay; you are exempt IFF:
(a) Paid at least $23,600/year
(b) Paid on a salary basis
(c) Perform exempt job duties
IT workers fall under the "Exempt Job Duties - Professional" umbrella, just like computer programmers:
(a) Employees are performing exempt professional job duties if their work involves the application of advanced, usually specialized, learning or credentials of the type commonly associated with the "traditional learned professions" such as medicine, law, accounting or engineering.
(b) Computer professionals are exempt if they are paid on a salary basis, or hourly at a rate of at least $27.63
See here http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html and here http://www.overtimelawyer.com/areyouexempt.html to further educate yourself as to why you probably do not deserve to get overtime pay if you are an IT person.
-- Terry
there is a shortage because of the requirements.. Linux Admins are required to know how the internet was built, by whom, and if it is destroyed could you rebuild it but only take 1/3 of the salary w/ no overtime.
I second that. I always answer honestly on these questions, but add $20k to my expectation. I've been pleasantly surprised every time - if the employer thinks you are the right person, the difference between 120k and 140k per year isn't a deal breaker. I'm going for 180 next time :-)
You ALREADY have people who fit this profile and you are having trouble finding/making more of them?
That makes no sense at all.
Again, what you'll end up with is a master-network guy who has to dumb the concepts down to novice level to get it across to the master-programmer people.
But you already know that, right, because you already have TWO people with those skills who step in and look at the project.
And BGP? BGP isn't complicated. It's almost as easy as RIP.
I went to several dozen interviews and I was interviewed from people who don't know how to interview to people who wanted you to regurgitate the OS layer and all it's wonders to you.
It comes down what they are willing to pay you.
Windows Admin
Linux admin
DBA MS SQL and or Oracle
Backup admin
Network admin Cisco Firewalls, Cisco Routers and switches
Must know all protocols and have worked with them.
SANS
VMware
All other productivity suites
Oh and we only want to pay you 75k Be on call 24/7, work weekends and answer the Fing phone everytime the websites go down because (here is another fing tidbit) We get the cheapest programmers out there to sell our million dollar company's products.
That's where this comes down to, I am so sick and tired of this company mantra bullshit about not finding qualified people.
How much would you pay the person with the above skillset? Not to mention all the other softskills that go with it?
No company will pay a person with the above skillset 250k a year. I see a lot of IT salarys topping out arround 125k to 150k
After the dot bomb crash IT salarys went down the toilet. Progress has happened in the past 12 years and networks and programs are more sophisticated.
Companies still think it's 1998 and 65k is way to much to pay the company geek.
Could be that its the management culture in these organisations as well. Your default position as a contractor is not to risk falling out with management, particularly if you are looking to extend your contract or persuade the employer to give you a follow on contract. I should imagine that's even more the case if your visa is in some way linked to your work (and losing it might mean going back to a place where you can't get comparable paid work, and perhaps even have debts incurred to get you to the USA in the first place needing to be paid off). So contractors tend to come into organisations with their heads down. You'd be stupid to be seen to disagree with management if it will lose you your job and your right to stay in the country. Even if it is a discussion over some technical issue, and you as the contractor know your way is better than the management's idea, is it worth rocking the boat? Go along with what the big man believes and he can take the flak if it all goes wrong, you were just following orders (and will continue to get paid).
If management expect a compliant workforce, then I can see this will be self-reinforcing.
Maybe, I dunno, the ruthless elimination of entry-level jobs and the refusal to train anyone and the insistence everyone have 3-5 years of experience for an "entry-level" job has somehow backfired. Nah!
a) They don't want to pay for experienced people
b) They don't want to spend a penny for training for recent grads
c) HR departments
1) don't know what they're hiring for, and don't *want* to know
2) think that anyone who's out of work is "not fresh"*, and so not worth looking at
* In 2004 or 5, I had an idiot on the phone who told me exactly that, even though I was exactly described by the ad. When I asked if she took a year off to have a baby, if she'd no longer be "fresh", and so unhireable forever. She actually said, "I never thought of it that way". Yes, they really *are* that stupid.
mark, who, a year or so later, finally found someone desperate enough to hire in spite of me not being "fresh"
The salaries are obviously not sufficient, but neither are working conditions. In most companies they expect you to work closely with low skilled and usually poorly motivated visa holders and offshore teams. This means spend all day fixing and debugging a bunch of crap copy and pasted code, then you're still on the phone at 10 pm scrumming with the offshore team. That's no kind of life for an engineer no matter what they pay you, and companies wonder why they can't find 'good' engineers.
Should they get up before they go to bed?
Seriously, you claim to have an MBA but you're borderline illiterate.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No change in pay equals a continued shortage of skilled staff, assuming the shortage is real.
http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/Dice_2010-11_TechSalarySurvey.pdf
Sincerely,
ex-IT guy.
why do junior level jobs want years of doing same job as what they are calling junior?
I have seen junior Systems Administrator wanting any from 2-3 years of being a Systems Administrator.
Typically it's to avoid annoying the System Administrator who is already working there with the idea they are hiring a peer or over his head.
-- Terry
Go where you've made the experience available.
For the past decade, and then some, all entry level tech support jobs have been being farmed out because it was cheaper to contract it to someone earning minimum wage who could read a script, and got no benefits, or to someone working some place where minimum wage was even less than it is here in the US. So all of the people who have had the opportunity to learn your products from the ground up, are either have no confidence that you are looking for them (when is the last time you hired a contract support tech in house to provide that support for your customers and granted them benefits?) or have been job hopping in another country where all anyone gives them is a script to follow. (scripts don't tend to engender creative problem solving.)
Likewise for developers. Sure you can find companies that hire developers right out of school, or even before school is out. But if your business has been moving all of it's development work to places where you're paying $50 a month instead of $50 an hour, and you hire 40 of those developers to try to do as much as the one developer you replaced, why on earth would any developer even consider working for you in the states?
You never know...
The reason?
Most outsourced programmers will tell everyone what they want to hear. The language barrier and time differential allow them to kite deliverables almost indefinitely.
But this the very reason modern management loves them - Managers prefer you to lie to them .
Everything green? What a marvelous and upbeat go-getter you are!
Something wrong? You must not have followed my plan. (Why are you telling me this negative stuff? You're supposed to be part of the solution, not part of the problem!)
A while back I found out that you can bribe the staff at certain foreign universities with a modest sum and they will enter an entire curricula in the computer for you and hand you a diploma for a degree you never earned. After I heard that (from someone who attended said universities), it became clear why these guys can't get anything done.
You only communicate with 1 guy in a team of 6-12 and, oddly enough, you only get about one person's work out of the entire team. Management chalks it up to miscommunication or "we just aren't managing them right" (and by "we" they mean "you", the first-world developer/hand-holder).
I suspect that the entire outsourcing process is a huge scam:
1) National universities "graduate" people with an entry level class in all the mainline technologies.
2) Applicants look like wunderkin on their resumes(Look at all the buzzwords!) and work so cheap!
3) Global corporations gobble them up like popcorn (usually thru an intermediary like Wipro). A body, is a body, is a body - right?
4) The best 1-2 per dozen end up doing all the work and covering for the rest of the team. (payola system?)
5) The hiring intermediaries make tons of money supplying ignorant personnel to fat national corporations.
6) The nation gets a huge flush of money from tens of thousands of (relatively) high-paid citizens. See the incentive for #1 in the first place.
Do I sound bitter? Yeah, I detest waste and stupidity.
They are looking for under-29, preferably under-25, recently graduated PhDs with 15 years experience in _______, _______, ________, and _____________, dress like bankers, require no training, and will work 60+ hours a week for about fourteen dollars an hour. As independent contractors. From India. With visas that make them essentially voiceless indentured servants. In Bismark, North Dakota.
Not their fault that the talent pool is so limited.
http://www.manpowergroup.us/campaigns/talent-shortage-2012/pdf/2012_Talent_Shortage_Survey_Results_US_FINALFINAL.pdf
There are such things as 20minute engineering job? If it takes that long, that's technician work.
Yeah, the university I work for uses that model for hiring their IT people. We have people in high places with poor technical decision-making capabilities that prefer to make decisions based on which vendor schmoozed them the most, which vendor gives good "fringe benefits," or what company they have stock in. Our last round of Business Analyst hires brought us 2 years of utterly disastrous projects that caused an enormous amount of work to correct, caused an embarrassing admissions error, and hurt our division's reputation... but they had great interpersonal skills: they've still got jobs! Additionally, they used those stunning interpersonal skills to talk the upper echelons into outsourcing this year because of the cost overruns and excessive developer time they caused. This decision fell through, so now all the projects that have been on hold for the last 6 months (due to the expectation that our HRIS, SIS, and CRM systems would be outsourced) had to be fast-tracked. No time for thorough regression testing, just give it the once over, we've got to get this into production!
My observation over the years is that companies don't understand how specialized their requests really are in practice. They want somebody who knows X and Y and Z etc. However, there will only be very few actual humans who fit that bill.
I don't think they understand how such "and" combinations reduce the potential pool of matches significantly. It's not about lack of IT workers in general. They just don't grasp the probabilities of it all. It's almost as if they see "and" no different than "or".
Perhaps they needs to see it happen on a spreadsheet of sample applicants or something to appreciate the narrowing power of AND.
The work around for such narrow filters is to be more flexible, such as be willing to train or wait for a learning curve. Companies want instant plug-and-play employees, but that's just not possible when matching combinations of skills.
Table-ized A.I.
No offense, but if you saw the lousy job postings that are out there, you would KNOW why they go unfilled.
Most of the stuff that I've seen lately are 3-6 month contract positions out in the middle of nowhere. They only pay $25 an hour, yet still require 5 years of experience in new technologies, several certifications, weekend shifts, AND on-call support hours.
Yeah... thanks, but no thanks.
hard jobs are harder, and thus harder to fill.
There are such things as 20minute engineering job? If it takes that long, that's technician work.
See what I mean?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In Fortune 100 companies those are 3 different functions for 3 different teams that have to talk to each other.
A jack of all trades will get something wrong (normally security), but hey, his skills were broad....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am not a programmer. But I have potgraduate education which included enough programming information.
I do not have programmin in my fingertips, but when given a programming problems I can pick i up, look at manuals (and increasingly the interenet) and work out a program as required.
As long as companies don't understand that interviewing is not really assesing the qualities of the prospective employees they will continue to experience "shortages".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Lets say a DBA. I good DBA is an excellent asset to a company. They can extract data and find information that you didn't even know you had,"
you want a highly skilled Business Analyst (aka a Statistician) who happens to be a crack DBA. What you're really asking for (whether you realize it or not) is two for the price of one....
And the employers CAN get it. They get to work at global scales (H1B Visa that is). Workers function at the local level. It's very expensive for a worker to move (I know, I just did). You buy houses, sign leases, etc. You don't just up and move. But it's easy and cheap to bring labor in, especially when it's paid for by tax dollars, tax incentives, or the desperate worker trying to escape the hell hole that is his homeland...
But you're an MBA, so you knew all this, right? Sorry, sorry, I know that last bit's trolling, but after 40 years of plummeting wages and rising food prices I'm a little bitter. So sue me.
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Not only are USA jobs not secure, the tech head-hunters routinely inflate job requirements in order to fill IT positions with cheaper foreign workers. Compound this with new vetting processes dealing with security background checks, especially directed by the government, and there is a (surprise, surprise) shortage of skilled IT workers.
The only IT jobs available in my 'stomping grounds' have switched to requiring a TS security clearance, which can take up to 18 months and cost the equivalent of 2 years salary. Many employers are disinclined to hire new talent for a year or more before placing them into the IT slots that require a security clearance. At first, many of those jobs were taken by exiting veterans with preexisting security clearances. But after new stop-loss programs and recycling veterans through multiple overseas tours of duty, many of the unscathed survivors can make far more money working as military mercenaries through defense contractors.
Then there is the DHS largely unadvertised policy of black-balling people that arouse the ire of the Powers That Be. That is what happened to me. I made the mistake of publicly challenging the official fairy tale about the events leading up to and subsequent to the terror attack of 9/11/2001 by way of Letters To The Editor at the Washington Post. None of my letters were posted, but the PTB black-balled me from employment, basically anywhere.
I would contend that the hiring process stinks. Having personally been treated like total garbage on numerous recent occasions, often by small-minded twits seeking to protect their territory and make things difficult on purpose, for positions that i was over-qualified for, I have seen the gunk that is gumming up the machine.
the people doing the sifting and hiring are morons, technologically-speaking. when you DO find someone who thinks they know what they want, they have an eye out for a brain-dead person who only knows about that one thing, and thus has no breadth or interest in growth or learning of any kind.
the day that this diseased process actually turns over a new leaf and behaves like any other hiring process, is the day that IT will find plenty of smart people, that were weeded out by imbeciles intent on preserving a hegemony of idiocy.
i hope i don't sound bitter. i'm doing just fine now as a consultant, laughing at the slaves in the cubes...
Scott Walker has my solid vote on Tuesday, I love the man! I don't hate Unions but am firmly against the existence of Public Unions.
I used to work for Koch Industries, great company that treats their employees very, very well. I know you need a voodoo figure though so carry on my friend.
Watch the news Tuesday night so you can enjoy a Walker victory with me.
The 2 year contract can be a good gig, even without the bennies, but it has to pay well. If they're serious about the contract then the hourly rate will be at least $150 with 40 hours per week minimum and any day with at least one hour of work being paid at the full per diem (8-hours), whether there was work ready to do or not (i.e. don't waste my time) AND time + 1/2 for overtime (anything more than 8 hours per day) paid in hourly increments, even for fractions of hours. Finally the contract should guarantee the full 2 year term with penalties for early withdrawal. Otherwise, as you say, they can find themselves some other fool.
Same situation here in Germany, although worse because the IT-Lobby lobby (http://www.bitkom.org/en/) is solely cares about the needs of companies.
Ever since the formalization and introduction and of the two professions "system integrator" and "software developer" back in 1998, that lobby has been blaring about the lack of skilled professionals. I did start working in 2001 as an "non-professional" being paid laughable salaries, which did not stop me from working in the field.
With 10 years of experience with various web technologies (anything running in a browser and on infrastructure-level) I have been offered only shit jobs. I gave up working in the IT as an employee because I know for a fact that, no matter how good you are, much you work, little you earn, you'll always be an asset. In those 10 years I have seen 3 companies I used to work for fail, albeit having warned my bosses about the issues at hand:
- "Whaaat? You should have paid someone to keep your servers running... that's dangerouns" (Yes, all servers were compromised and all data on them stolen)
- "No, it's a bad idea to run a cracked w3k server as a domain controller" (The guy that installed that was never to be found again for the SA password)
- "No, I wont install cracked 3DS Max on the twelve workstations" (Roughly ~40k in license fees, no, no, no, hell no! I wont do that! Useless to say that the whole network has been compromised after the owners son installed a copy he got off bittorrent)
Nowadays I am working in the healthcare sector as an all-rounder doing anything from taking phone calls, making appointments, managing papers, handling contractors, sterilizing the instruments, cleaning the mess up. In the spare between tasks I do find the time to develop practice management SaaS that I will be renting out for a monthly fee later on, yay!
The salary is adequate and I have (almost) no overtime. Win-Win-Win!
i believe I.T. people are creative and technically skilled enough to band together and create their own organization, services and products. does it need to be a company? i don't believe so. think about it. in the "I.T. industry" the I.T. people, engineers, administrators or even plain I.T. grunts should be king and reaping the rewards of their industry not these suits who barely have a clue about what we are doing. don't we have enough brains, talents and skills that we require the suits (MBA, Managers, etc) to rule over us before. we can function? Zuckerberg shows how a geek can lord it over the suits, wear anything he wants like a hoodie while facing the suits and all they can do is complain about business ethics. Come on guys, why do we need the suits to organize ourselves? to come up with anything related to computers or I.T., the suits needs us more than we need them. we just need to unite and stop being cynical, sarcastic snobs to each other.
FTFA: they cite as one of their key problems: "applicants looking for more pay"
Not Lazy, Efficient.
We are probably the only people who intentionally automate their duties and tasks so they don't have to do them anymore. Most other people and positions would put themselves out of a job by doing so.
Why waste hours of my day every day (or whatever cycle) doing something I can write a script for and when needed press a button and more less do the same thing.
Wanting to do less work, is not Lazy, it is about being efficient. I tell this to friends and they seriously think I am joking.
Your attitude is part of the problem. There are lots of people who think "that's easy...I can pick up a manual and write code". And this is true to a certain point...but experience is required to know how to write GOOD code. If the only requirement is X lines of code, we can easily hire that out to some sweat shop in India. The shop I work in caters to customers who expect quality, not quantity. It takes a minimum of 6 months of close mentoring to get an entry level programmer trained up enough to write any decent code on their own, and a couple years of supervision and mentoring under senior programmers before they are "journeyman" level typically. When you only have a 6 month or less project/contract, you usually can't even consider entry level people because they would be more of a drain on the project then a help. The problem is still a lack of SKILLED people. You may have learned some programming concepts, but that is a far cry from having skills. Just like you wouldn't read some books on karate/kung fu/whatever and expect to win a fight with Chuck Norris.
The best advice I could give to anyone wanting to get into this business is to get experience any way you can. Pick a problem, even if it's been done before, and create your own program/database/ect to solve it. Volunteer on a project for a not-for-profit. Ask a programmer you know if you can look over their shoulder on some code and then try the concepts you see by yourself. You gain skills by doing/practicing.
You're looking for someone who can beat Chuck Norris?? There's your problem right there.
So that we can continue our policy of race to the bottom payroll strategy
So you might want to start a union.
And for the inevitable rants to follow: If unions are getting such a better deal than you, rather than complain about it, why not start or join one?
It's and illustration. Duh, everyone knows it's un-possible to beat Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris fact of the day: Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table of elements because he only recognizes the element of surprise.
Chuck Norris was the first man to set foot on Neil Armstrong!
I get your point, but it also illustrates how employers unrealistically expect top-notch talent for pretty much every job, when in reality most experienced people are competent if not good. Only a small percentage of people in any field are really good at what they do, and they are in a position to demand high salaries that employers don't want to pay.
Worse, people have grown up with the expectation that becoming a top performer is easy if you just focus and "work smarter." It's the "Karate Kid" effect that David Wong wrote about:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html
So who they are really going to hire are liars.
I've been laid off since January in the Boston area, and can't find IT work that wouldn't involve a $25,000 pay cut. No IT person with any level of experience wants to take a $75,000-a-year job in an urban market, knowing that they're 24x7x365 on call.
I agree with what many others have said here, including the larger picture that this country has worked for 10 years to discourage careers in IT, and that those efforts are now coming to fruition. In a corporate setting, if you're not seen as driving revenue, the view is that you're costing the company money. IT budgets get slashed first, fewer staff are hired (and incented to stay), and people who only interact with IT staff when they have a problem are all too willing to shunt that work to a random call center.
For five years, I advocated to replace my company's aging network. No one ever wanted to find the $50k for a new network, but two months after getting laid off, when the core switches died, I got the panicked phone call. I stayed out of it, but that $50k ended up being a drop in the bucket compared to the 72 hours of a full corporate blackout. To the companies that I work for: I'm very good at what I do, and I only ring your bell when it's important.
If I'm doing my job correctly, then I'm not running around like crazy, your systems are available when you need them, and your employees are all working at full strength. My role is to advocate for the technical needs of the office, to make sure employees aren't bottlenecked by processes I can solve, and that I have time to be the calming support presence for someone in crisis. I like the career in, and I know I'm worth what I'm asking for.
I think it is more the case that they are not willing to hire the qualified applicants. They seem to take Woody Allen's position--they would "never join a club that would allow a person like [them] to become a member". One reason China is beating the pants off the U.S. is that it just puts, nearly enough, all the people to work, one way or another... It's not like the U.S. does not have the resources and more than enough things to do. The problem really is the lack of will to be constructive. Of course, finishing this line of thought is too much work. I think I'll rest up and just watch some TV, now...
Joel Spolsky is the one who pointed out that the very best workers are seldom on the market and when they are on the market, they aren't there for long.
;-)
Joel did not point out that even tho most everybody thinks of himself as a topnotch worker, less than 5% are correct
Companies looking for good workers need to hire them when they are available. If you only wait to hire when you -need- to hire, all you get to choose from is what is currently available on the market.
Because how come I can't find a job then?
Nothing to see here -- move along now...
When you're looking for creative and intelligent people to solve problems, it would help if you have creative and intelligent people interviewing them and filtering them.
That's why the most successful US companies have good to excellent IT departments.
If you're applying for work at a company that sucks, it's your job to know everything about the company, and make your case to the right people why YOU need to be hired.
IT isn't a "job", it's a way of life, we are the solution creators, so much so that often times we have solutions to problems that don't even yet exist, but that we can see clearly on the horizon.
Stop whining about shitty American companies, and start your own fucking companies. Stop wasting your time.
http://desiopt.com/
Casteism
I have been in the industry since 1981. For many years, if you could spell "UNIX" you could get a job. If you could program in one or two languages, you were considered a programmer and were hired. Now, the job reqs we see are loaded with requirements that I cannot believe any one individual would possess. And, since big corporations use auto-filtering devices on their HR systems, if a resume is posted that does not meet EVERY ONE of the requirements, the manager never sees that resume. So, they wonder why they post requirements and don't get any resumes... duh...
A few years ago I saw a job posting on a local IT jobs board. They literally wanted one person who had (get this) sysadmin and Oracle DBA and trainer experience. They were offering $50K a year. I couldn't stand it. I emailed the contact person and told them 1) they wanted 3 people, and 2) the sysadmin they wanted would cost them $70K, the Oracle DBA would cost at least $80K and the trainer would be at least $60 K if they were any good.
They didn't write me back...
You're revenue to the consulting company, but to the client you're still a cost.
The client (and it's them you spend sixty hours a week with) has no reason to treat you any better; indeed, they might well treat you worse. One, many think they have the right - after all, they're the customer and they're paying a lot of money. Two, if they mistreat too many internals they can get a bad reputation, whereas if some consultant walks out, nobody will miss the overpaid prima donna. We'll just call up and get another - and bitch about you to the account manager or whatever they're called this week. To them you're just like a rental car.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."