A New Reality For IT: the 18-Month Org Chart

StewBeans writes: Finding and keeping IT talent is getting increasingly competitive and expensive. A recruiter for Bay Area and Seattle tech companies said in a recent New York Times article about the cloud computing skill gap. "Someone working deep inside Amazon is getting five to 20 recruiting offers a day. Compensation has doubled in five years." Beyond steep salary and benefits packages, the resources to train new IT talent is wasted if they jump ship for the next best offer. That's why some IT executives are focusing talent management inward and investing in their current employees who are loyal and eager to learn, adapt, and grow with their company. Curt Carver, CIO for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that this approach led him to do away with the 10-year IT org chart and remain more agile as technology needs change. He argues that 18-month org charts and constant training are the new reality for IT, providing this example: "If you go back a couple of years ago, we were heavily involved in the storage business. Now I can buy unlimited storage from the cloud. I don't need a lot of people doing storage. In fact, I may only need one. Everybody else, I'm willing to retrain you, but you're going to be doing mobile, or you're going to be doing business intelligence, or you're going to be helping our organizations do gap analysis."

Comments

I've got a gap you can analyze

[Anonymous Coward]

The gap between the expectation that technology would lead to a leisure society, and the realization that it just leads to a feudal, totalitarian regime where the billionaire beggars just take, take, take.

Re:I've got a gap you can analyze

[jellomizer]

Technology doesn't make your job easier, it makes it harder. What it does is takes those mind-numbing jobs, away. And replace them with harder jobs, that requires creative thought, and out of the box problem solving.
Our education system fails to stress this new type of thinking. So many people are caught off guard as technology replaces their work.
Even if you are in technology, you need to keep an eye on what is happening for your job, if you find what you are doing is repetitive with a canned solution to a planned event, that means you are probably getting out of date, and will need to work on training for a change in your job.

In IT you can't expect to be doing the same job in your career.

Re:I've got a gap you can analyze

[PopeRatzo]

What it does is takes those mind-numbing jobs, away.

And replaces them with mind-numbing jobs that can be done by people in third-world countries for 15% of what you're making.

Well done, technology.

Re:I've got a gap you can analyze

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology doesn't make your job easier, it makes it harder. What it does is takes those mind-numbing jobs, away. And replace them with harder jobs, that requires creative thought, and out of the box problem solving.

So it makes life harder. Rather than a tedious but relatively secure 9-5 job with nights and weekends free to do whatever you want you have a tenuous, short-term contracted 9-5 job that leaves you feeling too drained to do anything at night or on weekends... if you're not doing (probably unpaid) overtime (and I include thinking about work problems in that) then because of fear you might lose your job or your skill-set might become outdated.

And this is a good thing... how, exactly? Because we have more machines that go bing? Because apps? Because people are now so damn addicted to "social media" that they waste every free moment looking at it rather than, I don't know, having an original thought? Because the rich are getting richer than ever before? How?

Don't get me wrong: I really do like tech. I find how it works fascinating. I actually enjoy programming. And the advances in medicine (aka not dying quite so soon) rock. But I absolutely, passionately hate what it is doing to society, and the missed opportunity it represents. It *should* be making our lives easier and our work hours shorter, but thanks to greed and the fucked-up priorities we make in politics and life it is actually making our lives suck more.

Let's just nip this in the bud right now

[Anonymous Coward]

"The cloud computing skill gap" "Finding and keeping IT talent is getting increasingly competitive and expensive"

Juxtaposed with "mass IT layoffs across the industry"

I think it's pretty clear what we're seeing here. People are leaving the industry or the West Coast, whichever you prefer.

Or maybe...

[ilsaloving]

Or maybe if companies showed the same loyalty to their employees that they demand from them, this wouldn't be a problem.

Re:Ehh... Cloud Computing?

[poetmatt]

This is the very definition of bad math/outsourcing mistakes.

Just because it costs less doesn't mean you're getting an equivalent service. If you save $200k but lose $500k in productivity then congrats you have outsourced to the detriment of the business. Likewise transition costs take out more productivity.

Re:The reality of loyalty

[RabidReindeer]

Believe it or not, at one time, companies didn't lay people off at the drop of a hat. Because hiring them back again is expensive and hiring new people means that you not only have to train them to do the job the way your company needs it done, but they also have to learn where to go in the company to get things done.

When 110% efficiency and rapidly gaining short-term share price was not the expectation, people would be reassigned, furloughed or sent off for training if their primary skills weren't required.

That doesn't mean that people didn't get laid off. Just that the norm was that layoffs were a measure of last resort, not the first thing you did to boost quarterly profits. There was a certain noblesse oblige there. The company took care of you and you took care of the company. You worked until you retired, they gave you a gold watch and a pension. You were invested emotionally in the company and in the happiness of its customers. Or, if not, you got canned, but not because you weren't the perfect fit for the moment.

Then they invented "perma-temping"...

Re:The reality of loyalty

[ilsaloving]

That's the thing. You're completely ignoring the emotional element, dismissing it as something valueless. But it's not just about a pay packet.

Perfect example... I could be making a shit ton more money elsewhere, with my skill set. But I'm not leaving, cause the company I currently work for is one of the best places I've ever worked. Management does everything it can to not only make employees succeed, but make them *want* to succeed. And not in a, "Some consultant advised us to do team building exercises" kind of way... In the, "the leadership actually *cares*" kind of way.

I've lost track of the number of employees that have left, only to humbly come back again after realizing that that greener pasture they found was a field full of cowshit. And we've welcomed them back, too.

Re:Training?

[fluffernutter]

Every time I read one of these articles I expect to look in my local paper and find all kinds of wonderful enticements to leave where I am and expand my career elsewhere. Or even better, new local companies or companies willing to hire remotely. Alas, they are never there. And I am a person that is historically very loyal to the company that I work for.