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Why Bad Jobs (or No Jobs) Happen To Good Workers
sean_nestor writes "Back in October, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal with the headline 'Why Companies Aren't Getting the Employees They Need.' It noted that even with millions of highly educated and highly trained workers sidelined by the worst economic downturn in three generations, companies were reporting shortages of skilled workers. Companies typically blame schools, for not providing the right training; the government, for not letting in enough skilled immigrants; and workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages. The author of the article, an expert on employment and management issues, concluded that although employers are in almost complete agreement about the skills gap, there was no actual evidence of it. Instead, he said, 'The real culprits are the employers themselves.'" The linked article is an interview with Peter Cappelli, author of the WSJ piece, who has recently published a book on the alleged skills gap.
What happened to companies hiring a competent worker and training them for the specifics of the job?
Consdiering some of the people hired recently where I work, I would have to agree with this article. Things like personality, which is necessary to some degree depending on the job, are always considered highly above the genuine ability to do a job. People want those who they like around them, more than those that do their jobs.
... and you turn down *ANY* legitimate job offer that offers at least 80% of your previous job wages, then your benefits can be terminated, immediately. There's currently a bill in the pipe in Canada to reduce that percentage to, I think, 60%. Somebody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about the exact percentage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There was once a comic of two people walking down the street in opposite directions, one person thinking to himself, "why can't I find anyone to hire?" and the other one thinking to himself, "why can't I find a job?"
A lot of it is companies not knowing how to find good workers, and workers not knowing how to draw attention of companies. If either one of these situations were fixed, then the problem would be solved.
Incidentally, one of the most crucial skills for programming managers in Silicon Valley right now is knowing how to find good workers for your team.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After 15 years of software development, i have yet to see a job that i could not do..
There is basically zero unemployment for good software developers right now. Things are so bad I can't even find qualified people to take interviews, which is sort of a prerequisite to make them that upwardly spiraling offer.
Except that these offers aren't "upwardly spiraling" at all, that's complete bullshit. Salaries have been frozen for years.
As another point of evidence, new grad offers are now roughly 2.5X the national average for other BS degrees
And what does that have to do with people with 10+ years experience? Absolutely nothing. As usual, employers want cheap workers, and want to fire everyone that's been around too long because they're "too expensive".
There is no shortage, period. There's only unwillingness to pay more.
There is basically zero unemployment for good software developers right now
wow, we are on different planets. I live in the valley (been working here about 20 yrs) and yet find the employment situation very dark, indeed. I'm not currently working fulltime, I'm a software guy with decades of programming and even some hardware design/implementation (along with firmware to drive it) lately. do I find even interviews? no!
I should add that I'm over 50 and that is a huge setback in the valley. if you are not young, you are not considered for software development. at least that's my experience. after 40, things were noticeably different in the job market and now at 50ish, its a cliff that I seem to have fallen off of. maybe having a resume that has software jobs continuously from the 80's thru the present is considered a give-away of your age and its immediately circular-binned by HR and most hiring mgrs?
at any rate, the valley does not seem to be very hiring-friendly to all of us. if you're in the right class, hey, enjoy it while it lasts.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
An interesting comment from the linked article:
Yeah, you know, the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people.
The implication is that the Silicon Valley approach to personnel management helped destroy the traditional system, and it makes a lot of sense when you talk with people who work in the industry. Traditionally, companies would train and develop college hires and employees because they could reasonably expect their employees to stay with them for a set period of time, guaranteeing an ROI on their investment. However, many of these new start ups basically came in throwing around money and stock options, stealing people groomed by these companies. Even employees who would be required to pay back tuition and training costs would still make the jump because the poaching firm would pay for it. The companies that developed these employees then have incentive to give up on the practice and resort to the same sort of poaching.
When I talk with college hires before the floor fell beneath the economy, I saw that mentality: I'll go work for X firm long enough to get training from them and then jump ship to go make big money in start ups or consultancies. If you're a large firm, why would you invest in grooming employees if this is the mentality that the best and brightest are embracing? If the pool is ready to jump ship for the next big salary bump, why should you pay for expensive training and development? Only problem is that we've now begun to exhaust the pool of experienced employees and the "shortage" emerges.
Move to Pittsburgh! Lots of tech companies here are starving for high-experience engineers!
Interesting story that illustrates your point: my girlfriend works in HR, and gets to define job positions and offers after getting the wishlist from the executives. She came back one day and wanted some feedback on what a job description should like for a developer for their internal software. Then she showed me what her executives had given her: a laundry list of languages (PHP, C++, Java, SQL) with multiple years of experience, proven ability to design system software and good presence in front of customers interested in buying said software. And they were planning to pay about 80k.
In short, they were looking for a system architect with several years of experience and the ability to sell said software to potential clients. I told her that those people do exist, but they are employed and make whatever they think they should be making. After that, I'm a lot less surprised by these stories. In essence, a lot of companies think that there's still an employer's market when it comes to jobs, and most HR people have absolutely no clue that the requirements that they're getting are either not related to the job, are utterly unrealistic or have no relationship to the offered pay.
Your last quote also neatly explains the recent strategy of HR to only look for employed people. It is born of the similarly unrealistic expectation that having a job now is somehow an indication that that person is worth more than someone without a job. And it dies in the same place: the complete lack of understanding that in order to lure someone away from an existing job, they need to make it worth that person's time and effort.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
They do this in the U.K. What it ACTUALLY does is take away jobs from actual computer science teachers, park maintenance workers, programmers (and whatever). All the while creating a free labor force that's used by corporate interests. A labor force that's VERY compliant, because if they don't do exactly as they are told, their benefits are cut off, and they will become homeless/starve/etc.
I GUARANTEE that you haven't researched any of this, and that you haven't thought through any of what you said.
Because I can hire an Eastern European, Indian, Oriental or Asian worker with a better work ethic with a living cost less than a quarter the fee I'd pay to an American and I don't even need to worry about employment contracts or benefits or anything. Right now more than half the programmers I use are foreign and I get better code from them for $500 a month than I did American and Canadian workers at 3k+ a month. Sorry, that's just reality.
And before anyone starts posting "outsourced programmers are awful" or whatever I will tell you from extended personal experience you are wrong. Some of them suck, sure, but it's about the same ratio that suck in America. Do your homework, get sample code, have a trial period, and manage them properly with good tools (Trello and GitHub are amazing!). End of story.
That said, when put in context your point is excellent - but it is pointing out a very big problem: if I'm going to pay an American $2,000 for a weeks worth of code I want something 10X better than the code I would pay to a Russian for a weeks worth of code. That's a big order to fill.
What's interesting is in the interview the story links to the guy actually blames the loss of HR people on this. According to him in the old days an HR manager would go to the manager looking to fill the vacancy and say "do you really need someone with ALL these qualifications?"
I ran into a job posting wanting 10 years of Server 2008 experience. Obviously I don't have the experience of a time traveler. And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't be working for that company. In fact, I wouldn't be working at all but rather gaming the entire planet Earth for profit.
Seriously, to hell with that HR. I hope the company she/her represents fail!
Life is not for the lazy.
Well, there's your problem right there.
In todays job market (and it has been this way for awhile now), you don't go into a job, planning to stay there and get raises and rise through the ranks.
That is a VERY rare thing to happen.
The only way to increase your pay..is change JOBS.
You get a job..stay there 2 maybe 3 years tops. At that point, you need to be sending out resumes...interviewing (always good to keep in practice), and being ready to move to the new job.
That is practically the only way you're going to significantly increase your salary over your career....that is, if you're planning to do nothing but be a W-2 employee all your life.
I'd advise....get a few years experience under your belt, grind out the W2 lifestyle, and when you have generated experience, you are good AND, you've attained some contacts.....incorporate yourself, and become a hired gun contractor.
That's where the big bucks can start coming in, and you can save a ton of your own money in tax write offs.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I've been on EI several times.
I lost my job as an Optician in 1999 after selling too many glasses. (The AM felt I was cutting into her commissions.) I was on EI for a few months and decided to get off my butt and finish my degree.
I was let go from a post-degree job in 2006 after I optimized the code to the point they just ordered it pre-programmed from Microchip for $0.37. (That's the code that run the Project Lifesaver transmitters.) I was on EI for about a month.
My contract was not renewed in 2007 after I built a prototype to showed an existing radio set could be upgraded to work with P25 using only a software patch. That was a rough place to work. I was on EI for 5 months after that, looking for work and working on my own to keep ends meeting. Since I didn't have my P.Eng. at that time, I couldn't do actual Engineering work.
The shop I worked at after that closed during the recession in 2009. My boss (and still friend) took me out to coffee, said, "there's... no easy way to say this." "Let me guess, we're out of money and we have to close." "Uh, yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't even have money for severance." I was on EI for a few months, got three job offers, and I've been at my current place for about three years.
(Given my track record, I appear to be an insufferable ass, so next time I'm out the door I'll start my own business. )
If I hadn't had EI, I'd likely have lost my house and wife.
If you're not in town, you can't collect the benefits. If you want to head to Mexico, then you don't get the bennys for that time. There was a case where a guy had a friend call in and answer his cell for several months. He was an "involuntary guest of the Crown" for six months for breaking and entering. I guess that's one (non-recommended) way to supplement EI.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Yup, that is one problem. The second, more important one was implied in the text but carefully not made explicit. We changed the implied work contract to something that doesn't work. So things simply can't remain the same, the question is how to fix it?
The old work contract implied loyalty in both directions. Up to a point the company would be loyal to their more valuable workers, pensions, bennies and trying really hard to hold onto them in hard economic times. In the other direction employees were expected to have a certain loyalty to the company. In that environment it made sense to think longer term, seeking promising talent and developing it. Now companies aren't loyal to employees and employees aren't loyal to their company. If you assume the employee you hire today and spend a year training up will be gone in three years it doesn't make sense. So if employees are interchangable free agents they are expected to come 'complete' with all required skills. But there isn't a way to get those skills and the system thus fails.
Go reread the part of the article again where it discusses how the IT startups devoured the carefully cultivated talent the old school companies had developed. If you didn't expect them to take the lesson from that beating as "stop paying to train your competitor's workers" then you aren't paying attention. And the startups are running in such a breakneck race to IPO they can't think of training anyone. That problem is worse in IT but applies in pretty much every field. Why spend a lot of time and money training somebody who will get headhunted away as soon as they can check the experience box? But once everyone is expecting someone else to hire the fresh grads and finish training them up the game is over.
We probably can't return to the old 'company man' ways and it isn't even clear we want to. So we can't go back and we can't stay where we are either; so what next?
Democrat delenda est
Speaking of this, heard an interesting discussion recently on the subject of the recession hanging on so long.
Basically, it concluded that the reason people haven't gotten back to pre-recession levels of spending is more a matter of people are paying down debt rather than spending money on (relative) luxuries.
Rather than buying a new car/computer/house/vacation, they're getting their personal debt down to managable levels. But by doing so, they're keeping the economy from picking up steam.
If these people are to be believed, in a couple more years, when personal debt levels have been worked down a ways, the economy will pick back up again.
And nothing that governnment (or anyone else) does in the meantime will move things along faster...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
My employer uses a computer to screen all incoming resumes. Unless your resume hits every single keyword in the job description, you're kicked out and never get seen by a human being.
And the company as a whole wonders why it's so hard to fill most positions...
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.