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