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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."
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.
"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.
Even the slowest orgs have been doing this on a 12-18 month cycle. Plugs are lost to attrition, and those willing to retrain/refocus keep their jobs. Those who stop training become plugs.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
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
Let me translate that to English:
Everyone else, you're redundant. If you don't have pointless buzzwords on your resume you won't get one of the 3 do-nothing, fluff positions we're keeping open.
Depending on which bit of it you're in depends on how in demand you currently are. All the Kool Kids doing the latest new shiny will probably have job offers being thrown at them. But in 5-10 years time their skills will be borderline irrelevant (Ruby On Rails anyone?) so its retrain time again. And again. And again.
Meanwhile those of us plodding along doing old style boring backend coding in (supposedly according to the Kool Kids) grandpa languages like C/C++/Java or even COBOL might not have recruiters kicking down the door to get us to an interview but we're unlikely to be out of work for the forseable future or need retraining other than to learn some new library now and then so long as our skills are good to start with.
How often have we heard about the mass layoff and now the industry is surprised that people jump ship? The industry has shown a lack of loyalty to the employees the treated like replaceable widgets, it's no surprise that these employees are looking out for themselves. Add to that the various companies that replace their loyal employees with contractors (hmmm Disney etc) it shouldn't have surprised anyone that this would happen.
Or maybe if companies showed the same loyalty to their employees that they demand from them, this wouldn't be a problem.
This, on the surface, sounds great.
What doesn't sound so great is it will probably end up being a gig-economy style hustle, always trying to get that edge to keep your job. "Oh, Bob, you got 3 certs last month, that's great!, but Susan got 4 and she paid for them on her own dime, sorry, bud, there's the door, get the fuck out."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
What is this "training" of which you speak? I have never seen any.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The article is looking from an internal perspective instead of the entire business perspective. Cutting ten jobs at $100,000 each by outsourcing to another company for $800,000 helps the entire business. Cutting the same amount of jobs and hiring a worker at $200,000 to manage the outsourcing to a cloud provider does not create new efficiencies in the organization. It is tough to really draw relevant data from the article without having a complete picture of the benefits to the organization, which is the context most of these articles need to be written. How many companies really judge the capability of their employees based on the salaries they could demand on the open market?
Or maybe if companies showed the same loyalty to their employees that they demand from them, this wouldn't be a problem.
That's very idealistic and I respect the intent but it's just not reality and probably not sensible for either party.
First off, it's a business transaction. The company needs work done and the worker needs money to do it. If the company no longer needs that work done or if the worker isn't doing it competently or efficiently it make no sense for the company to continue to employ that person. Paying someone to do no work or for bad quality work is idiotic. Conversely if the worker can do work elsewhere and get a better compensation package or a better situation then why on earth should he/she be expected to be "loyal" to company? Neither situation is a win/win. Loyalty between employees and companies only makes sense when both side benefit. That does happen sometimes but it shouldn't be a default expectation, especially in a competitive global economy.
Second, even if both sides want to be loyal to each other economic reality sometimes makes it impossible. I have about 20 people who work for me. I would LOVE to pay them more than I do. But the industry I am in (contract assembly) is very competitive on labor costs so if I raise salaries for everyone we would be out of work faster than I can say "Chapter 11 bankruptcy". I do what I can for them but if one of them finds a better job somewhere else I just have to wish them the best and hope I can replace them with someone else who is competent. Demanding loyalty to the company from employees in that situation would be ridiculous of me.
>> my job isnt going to evaporate overnight
It might if your startup gets purchased. Centralized IT (e.g., no dedicated IT dude in the office of the acquired company) is one of the first "cost synergies" that goes into effect in my experience.
A company can fire you an a moment's notice but when you leave they want 2 weeks from you.
You can leave any time you want. The company is REQUIRED BY LAW to pay you for any time you have worked. The 2 week notice thing is nothing more than a courtesy. They cannot withhold pay (legally) nor can they require anything further of you unless you agreed to it in an explicit contract. The company can ask for two weeks notice but you are under no obligation to give it to them.
My take on two weeks notice is that in two weeks they will notice I haven't been there in two weeks.
The most insightful thing Curt Carver says is at the very beginning of his article:
Candidly, the people that have been loyal to the organization, that are active employees, that are eager and hungry to learn – those are the ones that I’m willing to invest in to keep.
What he doesn't get is that Silicon Valley is the antithesis of that. There was a time where Silicon Valley didn't exist, and IBM and Bell Labs were king. According to this PBS Documentary, the culture at that time was that talent was nurtured, not bought. You got your desk, you were a pencil pusher, and if you had ambition, you climbed the ladder, but you remained loyal to the company that provided for you. Then William Shockley broke away from Bell Labs, ventured out to California to make them a reality, and formed Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories. In a twist of irony, the very people he recruited to break ranks from Bell Labs (The "Traitorous Eight" as they came to be called, quit to form their own company, Fairchild Semiconductor. (And exactly 18 months later, interestingly.)
Silicon Valley has always been about venturists who seek opportunity wherever they can find it. If that's Silicon Valley's own undoing, so be it. Let the snake consume its own tail.
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.
Well, as a 40-year worker in technology, I can definitely say that HR, managers, and CXX have all contributed to any problems they have. .NET programmer with 5 years experience. HR.
In 2001 I saw an ad for a
In 2005 I saw an ad for a linux programmer with VBA experience. HR
Golden Parachutes. Managers and CXX...
Outsourcing: Managers and CXX and MBAs . ( also, any in-house workers from some-unnamed-country ).
17 to 119 page employment contracts - HR extravagance and ego.
Sorry. I will not feed your machine any more. Or enable your delusions. Or your manipulations/threats.
You could have had a good worker, who would have gotten better.
Instead, you have someone 10 timezones away. Good luck with them.
No more of the $35,000 / year graduate.
No more of the $55,000 / year worker with 10 years experience.
Get off the dime and pay what it's really worth.
You pay for what you get. Good. Or Cheap. Pick one.
The relationship isn't equal financially in that they make financially a substantially larger amount of money than what they pay you - which isn't disclosed to you.
That is not necessarily true. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it very much is not. Believe it or not a lot of companies don't actually make much profit. Many actually lose money. People tend to have this peculiar notion that all companies are just raking in megabucks but for many of them that is very far from the truth. Furthermore in many cases the profit of the company is published. If I worked for Apple or Google I can look up exactly how much money they made during my tenure with the company. The financial relationship is fair in the sense that the company and the employee agreed on a value for the services provided to the company by the employee.
If you make $100k but they're making $700k off of you (even after expenses), who is getting the bad deal?
False dilemma. That situation could easily be a very good situation for both parties. If either side thinks it is unfair somehow both are free to seek a better situation any time they want. But there is a market rate for salaries and both sides can get a good or bad deal if they deviate far from it. If you are making $100K and the market rate for your work is really $50K then you are getting a spectacular deal even if the company makes a handsome multiple of profit on top of that.
If someone mentions the "gig economy" to you, that's when you should pull out a 12" frying pan and hit them in the face as hard as you can. It won't make your life better, but it's extremely satisfying.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If I'm understanding TFA correctly, we've come full cycle. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In the nineties, the thing was to hire bright individuals and grow them. Later, the paradigm changed to "IT is plug and play" so hire the talent you need at the time and lay off the people with training you didn't need anymore. Now we're back to the more healthy paradigm of growing your current employees to meet new challenges. This is a good thing. I wonder how long it'll last.
I also wonder what this will do of the paradigm of laying off locals and substituting green cards.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Believe it or not, at one time, companies didn't lay people off at the drop of a hat.
And now we don't because in many (not all) cases that is economically irrational.
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.
Hiring new people is expensive but keeping people employed when you don't have work for them can easily be more expensive.
There was a certain noblesse oblige there. The company took care of you and you took care of the company.
I think you have rose colored glasses there. The labor movement happened because there WASN'T any noblesse-oblige. Working conditions 100 years ago were atrocious, safety terrible, pay was low and heaven forbid you actually spoke out about any of it. Things moved slower and labor was less mobile so it was easier to keep talent for longer because it was harder for labor to move. Increased labor mobility benefits both workers and companies but there is a cost to it.
Then by the laws of capitalism they should not exist!
If they lose money long enough to deplete their assets then they won't. But many companies lose money on a routine basis and have to adjust manpower levels to compensate. Sometimes it's because their industry is cyclical. Sometimes it's due to unexpected business problems. Sometimes it's just bad management. But companies can survive periods of losing money. They cannot do so indefinitely and continuing to employ surplus labor in the face of economic losses is a great way to ensure the company doesn't survive.
Furthermore many business are roughly break even propositions. It's not hard to find companies that make enough to stay in business but profits are very thin indeed. This is especially common in small businesses.
But here we have companies complaining that it is too expensive to retain employees.. What I was trying to suggest is, if a company cannot have enough left over to make the employees happy and therefore stay, then obviously there is something fundamentally flawed with their business plan.
You are making the mistake of assuming that low employee turnover and successful business plans are highly correlated. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that this is not necessarily true. Sometimes it is too expensive to retain employees and the economically sane thing to do is to let them go and hire new as business conditions dictate. For an extreme example McDonalds has an annual turnover rate in excess of 100%. That means they will turn over more employees in the next 12 months than they currently employ. And they do this every year. This is not a sign of a bad business model, it's simply the reality of their industry. Nobody would argue that McDonalds is not a wildly successful business. And all their fast food competitors are in roughly the same position. There is no realistic way they could make the work rewarding enough to retain all those employees. The work is often unpleasant, the pay is low and there is little McDonalds can do about much of that. Sure it's cheaper if they don't have to hire new employees but that doesn't mean they will be able to keep most of them. If they doubled pay they wouldn't get double the economic output so pay is effectively capped. High turnover is not an automatic indicator of a bad business model. In fact in some cases it can be vital to the viability of the business.
Here's the basic problem:
For most corporate management, IT -- particularly infrastructure -- is simply a black hole of cash. They don't understand what we do, they don't understand the value we bring to the company, and they don't know why they're paying us. It's just money going somewhere, and they don't understand where.
There's no way to make them understand. They lack even the basic computer skills necessary to do anything beyond everyday work on a PC. They have not spent years or decades in the field, and you can't expect them to understand anything without that experience.
We're a black hole. We can be jettisoned any time a corporate bean-counter wants to save some money. I've been in the industry for over 30 years, man and boy, and it's always the same story: we're a black hole.
So we're expendable when crunch time comes. After all, what the hell are we being paid for, anyway?
I haven't worked for a company -- ever -- that displayed the same loyalty to me as I did to them. I no longer have the energy to be loyal when I know for a certain fact that I'll be canned the moment someone wants to cut expenses.
Want me to learn new skills? Fine, I'm happy to. Been doing it for over 30 years.
No company I've worked for paid for learning new skills. It was just do the work -- and then shoved out the door when crunch time came.
I don't know where this article originates, but it's nonsense. Employers don't train IT people. They don't even know why it's necessary.
We're an expendable black hole. Period.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
pull out a 12" frying pan and hit them in the face as hard as you can.
And not one of those nancy-boy aluminum and Teflon ones, either. Get yourself a cast-iron frying pan. It's much more satisfying.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
The thing you need to realize is aritcles like this are talking about SPECIFIC ENCLAVES in the world - namely the Seattle area, the Bay area, the Austin area, and a few others... areas with huge concentrations of high tech companies. This huge concentration of companies combined with a huge concentration of very intelligent labour, results in a very competitive labour market. People in these markets routinely will work for 3 different companies in a 5 year timespan... they have no loyalty, they go where the money and/or opportunities are. As a result salaries are high and benefits are good. When you are competing against Google, Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, and Uber for employees, you have to pay well.
The thing that people who live in these areas DO NOT realize is that this is a UNIQUE situation to these enclaves, and does not translate to other places in the United States, let alone the world. People who work on the east coast or midwest do not have anywhere near the hypermobility of those on the west coast because the labour pool competition is not there.
The base message - if all you care about is a job and IT and money, move to the bay area. I can basically guarentee you you will find tons of well-paid work. Will you be able to afford to live there though? That is a different problem.