Management To Blame For IT Worker Shortage? 296
MrX writes: "In this story about a study on CNet news, it says the labor shortage in IT is more a management problem then anything else.
'The unhappy truth, the study points out, is not that there are few people available to do IT work, but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed. In addition, many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave.'"
Don't get what he means about culture (Score:2)
"IT has a culture of its own, and it's a culture that's usually detrimental to keeping workers happy," Cappelli says. "It's amazing that IT management practices simply run counter to how human resources people feel employees in all other kinds of jobs should be managed. Organizations should apply basic management principles to keep IT people satisfied and engaged in their jobs."
Now, I know we have our own culture. But beyond that first statement, it's all very vague.
He seems to be implying that the demands of our culture result in us disliking our jobs. How does THAT follow? I need some specific examples, but hee doesn't offer anything.
He seems to be saying that the best way to keep IT employees is to treat them like assembly line workers. I don't get it. I'd never accept a position at such a company, so they'd have a hard time retaining me.
Furthermore, companies with deeply entrenched corporate culture like IBM are having an awfully hard time retaining young IT workers. And they see the problem as being specifically because IBM culture isn't a good substitute for the usual IT culture.
So is this guy talking out of his backside or what? Like I said, I want examples and reasoning, not just an opinion.
Remember the source of this study (Score:3)
a professor at wharton was paid to come up with this, which (1) gets the professor's name in the paper for re-stating the totally obvious, perhaps with some half-assed stats to back it up and (2) helps drum up demand for mcKinsey, who will (for a huge fee, of course) restructure your job descriptions in marketing legalese, stir the pot a little, issue a nice shiny report with pretty graphs (perhaps [gasp] with a PowerPoint presentation too!) and leave everything underneath almost exactly the same.
these guys are just advertising how badly their services are needed by every company in existence.
it is very self-serving, and both cnet and now slashdot have fallen for it. or, more likely, they dont care that they are providing free publicity for a paid advertisement, because it caters to their audiences exactly what they want to hear.
you didnt fall for it, did you? are these observations really that illuminating to any of you at all?
unc_
Try finding Smalltalk programmers... (Score:3)
However, the moment you stop dipping the ladle into what M$ oriented education system pours out of the pipeline (or sewer,) you run into some real shortages.
Also the geographic distribution leaves a lot to be desired. While I might find some Smalltalkers on the West coast, since the company is in New Yorl City, I'm sucking wind...
I have lived in Kansas city (cheap,) in Atlanta (not so cheap,) and many places in between and I have lived in Canada (the dollars less, the taxes comparable but the cost of health insurance won't kill you,) and in the 'States, (but I had to almost double my salary to get a decent fraction of the life style I had out in the mid-west.)
The disparity in salaries betwen the coasts and the center of the continent and across borders, never mind oceans, is responsible for a lot of false appearances and income estimates.
Yes, MIS (mis-)management is partly to blame, but they're also subject to the vagueries of geography, salary and expectations.
I'm sure that lots of people would envy my salary and immediately reconsider when they hear that I can't really afford a car here. (Then again in New York City, you can pretty much get away without ownning a car. We pity the commuters.)
Re:Direct cause and effect relationship (Score:2)
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Re:Some problems in IT... (Score:2)
The part I hate most about large companies, aside from their objectification of their workers is the schizophrenic company mentality, where even though you're in HR and I'm in IT, we fight and throw red tape at each other because we both hate our jobs. What sense does it make for a company to fight amongst itself?
Granted, it's not possible to get away from all of this, but it is possible to lessen it some. And for you to say that all companies are driven only by profit, and that there isn't a situation where an employee could have a rewarding experience, is exactly the type of cynicism that i was talking about in my original post.
Re:There's no shortage... (Score:5)
Actually it's pretty obvious to me that the fact that we never bring these people into the profession is precisely why there is a shortage. If you search monster.com for intro level jobs doing anything IT, you won't find any. "Junior level DBA wanted" or "C++ programmer with 0-2 years experience wanted" just isn't out there. The problem is that experience and talent are only weakly correlated and the clueless fools (managers, HR dolts, and recruiters) would rather have an idiot with 5 years experience than a genius who programs for fun in his spare time.
I'm willing to bet that within 6 months at least half of the folks in your list could be earning money for you. Sure the training will cost a little, but it's ok to pay entry level people less to offset this.
Hire the one that seems "smartest" with a good work ethic; offer them half of what you would someone more experienced; pay for them to go to a training class in everything you think they should know; make them agree to reimburse training costs if they leave within 2 years; Give them a 20% raise every six months for the first two years.
My guess is that if you advertised these things you'd have some extremely gifted applicants who want to change fields and would probably be highly competent MUCH faster than you think.
Here's a crazy idea... (Score:2)
Re:Job Requirements? (Score:2)
They will be "forced" to play fair... (Score:2)
The work environment will force them to work with the workers, eventually. Guys like this can only cry for so long before they go out of business or their business flees to the effective employers that retain the skills developed within their own company.
BTW, I have changed my mind from my post above, in this thread, offering to send a resume. I would not work for this guy if I got to be corporate security VP AND chief pilot.
Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]
There is no shortage of workers... (Score:2)
When these high tech companies begin to finally realize that the high tech workers actually are smart enough to stay from these cities will they realize that there never was a shortage of workers to begin with.
In example, I was offered an opportunity to join HP's embedded appliance project. I turned the job down flat because it required a relocation to San Francisco - one of the highest costs cities in California. They didn't even want to consider tele-commuting (or even relocating their operation to a more reasonable cost location). Their loss as far as I am concerned.
Re:This ones a bit touchy... (Score:4)
A "Hardcore IT" person can learn to use any platform, anywhere, anytime to meet his/her goal(s). They know that the computer is just a tool, and that some things are easier to use than others, but all of IT was built by humans to be used by humans.
Tech Recruiters Share Some Blame (Score:2)
I've had to deal with enough "technical recruiting" companies that they're not getting off the hook. If businesses really cared about the kinds of workers they were getting, they'd do more than call up Rent-Warm-Bodies Technical Staffing and say "We'll pay you $500,000 to get us some people."
The recruiting companies don't care about good matches, additional skills, or paying decent wages with benefits. They want to place people fast and collect the difference in pay.
The companies that use the recruiters don't want to pay for benefits, hire people for the long term, invest in training, or spend the time it might take to find the right person for the right job. They want to pay someone else to do all of that for them.
What the unfortunate workers run into is that they have little training, less pay than a real employee, poor benefits, and an extra layer of management to deal with. Why should they work hard to keep the company strong when they see no benefits like stock options, employee recognition, or raises and bonuses?
Want a fun week? Put a resume with hot techie buzzwords up on some web site and see how many "placement services" jump at you. Then try to get some details about the job. Heh.
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That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
It's A Neverending Cycle (Score:5)
1) Mismanagement:
This is common, we're hired to come in and fix the problems that "management" can't. We're given deadlines of 3 days for a project that will take 6 months or a deadline of 3 months for a project that will take 6 hours. How can you respect this? These people are making more money than you? Time to leave.
2) Lack of Learning
You walk into an environment ready to help the company move to the next level, organize, commenting code, making it modular, smaller, efficient, structured. But it's the same code and there are new technologies out there. The technical "classes" are useless because what you really need is hands-on baptism by fire learning! But you never get that chance because another department who has done it before gets to do it again OR the company hires a consultant who "knows" the technology to come in and do it for you so you can support it. How do you get to learn it? Time to leave.
3) Poor Work Environment
You don't hold meetings so you don't really need an office, right? You don't move around much so you don't need that much space, so a 5x5ft cubicle is okay, right? It's better if you can communicate other programmers if they are sitting really close to you, right? That New Jersey office space is far cheaper, and you don't need the prestige of the Wall Street office like the salespeople, right? Wrong. Time to leave.
4) No Recognition
Because the people you work for need to go to even more simple business people who couldn't possibly comprehend why it took you so long to hand code everything from scratch because they wouldn't use open source for "security" reasons, they don't even bother mentioning your name. You could have written thousands of lines of code each day, no debugging necessary, other programmers in awe as you pound on the keyboard and it doesn't really matter. Why? Because upper management has no idea if you were good, stellar, poor, or committed fireable offenses in your code. They are more likely to reward the customer service rep on the phone who saved a $200 account...because they understand it.
5) Pigeonholing
You've developed a great specialty, you are the fastest and most knowledgeable in your area in the company. I hope you enjoy it! Because now you're going to do that same work for the rest of your time at the company. Time to leave.
6) Corporate Apartheid
Why? No, WHY do companies insist on putting IT on a completely different floor, building, city, state than the rest of the company or departments? I know it's annoying to have some gimp come over and ask you the Sun networking professional how to make an equation in Excel, but at least they can become more technical and improve the company. And information flows both ways, we like to learn what the hell the business is doing!!
7) Lack of Expert Recognition
Attention management: The grass is NOT greener on the outside. Sometimes it is, but that is a last resort. Many times the best place to look for a technical solution is to ask your technical staff. Yes, you can even pull them off that Priority #1 project to strategize about the technical future of the company as opposed to getting blindsided by new technology.
8) The good, the bad, the ugly
All it takes is hiring one shitty IT person. YES, they do exist, there are many. Hire one and the rest of them wonder why the hell they are around that place making the same salary as the idiot in the next cube. Time to leave.
I wish I could isolate all the factors and start creating a new model that companies could go from and improve all of our working conditions. But I think that we are in times that require an accelerated learning curve that nobody can keep up with except for those of us in the fray. The pace of change in our industry promises to keep management and non-tech people out of comprehension of our contributions for years to come.
All we can do is to try to lessen to gap and keep it from widening too much. Mix the tech and non-tech employees, treat them with the same amount of respect. Ask if you can improve their job. Do their reviews on time. Send them home if they work late all the time, kick their asses out the door so they don't get burned out. The usual management techniques will work.
Jayson Pifer
Re:General Strike (Score:2)
You know, I don't really know. The only thing I can think of is first that IT professionals tend to maybe be a bit more driven then your average worker, (maybe) so they tend to want to stay longer to do it right, and possibly also because if management treats you like dirt and acts as if they own your ass, maybe you feel that they do, and you're more likely to bend.
You know, over a hundred years ago people died for the 40-hour work week. It's a shame that so many contemporary tech workers have forgotten what it was like to have free time for their families, friends, lovers, hobbies, and LIFE.
Amen, brother.
(The managers in the back are screaming "But that would cut into corporate profits! That would cause the price of goods and services to rise! You don't really want that now do you?" but maybe we do)
It's not like this stuff needs to be coded right away. The silly CEOs can wait a few more months to squeeze millions out of people. As soon as the economy gets bad they'll start laying IT people off left and right. If you think that your company really cares about you, wait until they ask you to start packing because the company has to make a profit.
See the other response to my original post [slashdot.org] which I would give +40, Insightful if I had moderation access at the moment. You're right, it isn't like it has to be coded right now, but if your primary focus is on getting and keeping wealth, then it DOES have to be coded right now. So maybe it's not necessarily the rules and procedures that happen at work that need to change but the assumptions that go into the creation of those rules and procedures.
Poorly managed? (Score:4)
And read /. a lot. Like I'm doing right now. The thing I hated most about my previous job was that my immediate boss had way too many things to manage, and way too many meetings, and didn't have enough time to give me anything useful to do. In my current job, I'm waiting on stuff (mostly third party software) for some Sun boxen I've been putting together.
Not that it matters much to me yet, but all three of the managers responsible for each of the computers are hard to find, and seem to always be in meetings.
"We must be getting work done--we're certainly having enough meetings!"
There's no shortage... (Score:2)
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
First, there's the fact that you're only allowed to either recruit through an H.R. department, or from a small selection of 'corporate sanctioned' recruitment companies. I actually had the case (in a previous job, I might add) where we found someone to hire through a friend of a current employee. When we submitted his application for employment we found that we had to pay a 15% finders fee to the 'sanctioned' recruitment agency, even though they had never been involved in any part of the recruitment process. All part of the "back scratching" contract that some H.R. PHB had managed to work out, I suppose.
Next there's the fact that H.R. can quite often interview a candidate before the department that actually wants them gets a chance to interview. How many good people get rejected by H.R.'s "quality assurance / psychometric profiling / " before having the chance to prove themselves with the recruiting team? Sadly, I'd bet more candidates than I'd like to think about.
Finally, a group of completely non-technical H.R. people get to decide what technical projects a candidate is really suitable to interview with. Please!
Maybe it's the marketplace or maybe it's the daft recruitment procedure, but there certainly seems to be a lack of good quality I.T. personnel in our local market. We're not looking for anything too advanced - just some working exposure to Java development, maybe some basic understanding of Investment Banking. We're more than happy to train people up, but can't seem to find anyone worth training right now. The level of mis-representation that we're finding in submitted resume's is disturbing, to say the least (see my various rants in the HB-1 Visa discussion a couple of days ago for further details).
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Well ... (Score:2)
If I wanted real responsibility like this I would have gotten a degree in management or something. I do not mind working FOR someone. I merely don't want to be responsible for every little detail. I like what I do, which is support the end user and make things work. I don't want to be the entire IT/IS department (which, at the moment, I am) which is NOT what I was hired to do, nor am I making anything near what would make it worth it.
Anyhow, that would be my two zorkmids.
Re:Some problems in IT... (Score:2)
Yup. I work for a mediumish law firm and there are dozens of rich guys who can't let go. One is taking a week-long vacation to the Bahamas...and he's taking a laptop computer with him, so he can stay in touch with the office.
Attorneys at my firm START at $80K/yr, and it's in a mediumish Midwestern city where the cost of living isn't too high. Attorneys who are fiscally responsible can be millionaires within ten years (compound interest and all that). I don't see any quitting...
In defense of managers (Score:3)
I know it's not fashionable to look at things from the enemy's perspective, but has it ever occurred to you folks that the reason there are so few good managers is that managing people is hard? Let's try looking at this from a couple of different perspectives.
Where are you going to find good people to do all this? Where do you find someone who can keep both the technical details and the corporate goals in mind, who's reasonably intelligent and has a decent set of ethics and yet doesn't mind sitting in rooms full of Machiavelli wannabes and Just Plain Dumb people, and who's willing - all to often - to do all that for less money than some of the people "under" them get paid? There really is a shortage of quality people in the industry, but it's not a shortage of hands-on techies; it's a shortage of managers who aren't scum or morons or both.
I whine about my job as much as anyone, but I honestly don't think there's anything I could find myself doing in my prized role as an individual contributor that would be worse than being a manager. It is necessary to have someone else to do all that stuff, but I'm damn glad it's not me. Next time you feel like a few minutes of manager-bashing, spare yourself at least one second to give thanks that you have a better job than they do.
Re:Some problems in IT... (Score:2)
Huh? $200K, 8.5% tax sheltered, retire at 65. 6.6 Million.
Play here! [piperjaffray.com] for more info.
...Micromanagement being one of the culprits (Score:2)
What is wrong with these people? (Score:2)
I am leaving the company name out, if you know phiber optic carriers, you'll know who I'm talking about.
I am only including real first names of some of my (x)co-workers.
(if you guys are reading this, sorry if you didn't want me to use real names)
_BEGIN RANT_
I work for a large phiber optic carrier in Northern Virginia.
I was originally hired by the company as a Perl Programmer / Web Developer, under the title of Engineer II.
*Everything was going well, until*
A few weeks pass, my then, current, awesome manager, Nicole, quit, due to some management changes. A few weeks after that a DBA in my department quit. A few weeks after that, the SysAdmin, Nate, (who's claim to fame is not knowing Windows) quit.
At this point I was introduced to my new manager, a highlevel project manager, who worked in the Ohio and Texas offices. I had a short meeting with him, where he asked me if I'd move to Ohio or Texas. I bluntly said, "NO", then I said, "No, wait, I'll move to Ohio for $500/yr an Texas for $250/year. You see, I have no friends nor family there, so you'd be paying me to stare at the walls in my house for long periods of time." (no offence to anyone that lives in these states, they're just not right for me).
Anyway, he said that that probably could not be done. A week after that, my other SysAdmin went back to school. Well, that was my entire department.
I waited around a bit, then was notified that the project is turning into HTML/ASP. Well I'm not really into learning ASP, but I told the manager that, "I would be happy to take some ASP/SQL/IIS classes."
I didn't hear back from him for about a week, mind you that during this time, I didn't hear from anyone. At this point, I am wondering if I still had a job, or they were pulling an Office Space move. I continued receiving my paycheck, so I guess I was still employed.
When I did hear back, the message I received was:
So, do you want to move to Ohio or Texas?
I replied that I was still not interested, when can I get that training. A while passes, and I receive an e-mail, on a Tuesday, the message was dated Monday 12-noon. Unfortunatly, I was sick on Monday. The message announced a meeting at 5pm.
Who the hell schedules a meeting at 5pm, and sends out announcements at noon?
Well that's the last I heard of this manager for a few more weeks. Then he e-mails me again stating:
You can get training if you move to Ohio or Texas.
What the fuck is that?
I don't e-mail back, I post my resume on Monster and Dice, again.
Shortly there after, there was a promotion of one of the people in the building, to Director (Chris, you rock). He asked me if I'd be interested in working for him. I said that I don't know how I feel about the company at this point, so I'll consider his offer.
Recently, I start getting harassing e-mails stating that I am on the "Hot List" for people not doing ABT time sheets. I had actually asked for support doing the time sheets, to no avail.
The next e-mail I get is:
Where are your ABT time sheets?
I need to make arangements for you to move to Austin, please e-mail me.
At this point, I have come to the concusion that this guy is the biggest asshole I've ever met.
I e-mail back:
I am not interested in moving to Ohio or Texas, unless you have accepted the salary terms which we discussed. I feel quite abused by your constance insistance of me moving to Ohio or Texas, I have never been treated so unprofessionally, in my life.
That was today.
I'll go in late tomorrow, and see if I'm fired.
If I am, I'll go talk to my lawyer.
So I hung out there for 2 months, with nothing to do, I have been talking to several recruiters and doing some interviewing. I am very picky as to where I work, so I have not found something yet.
Maybe I'll work for the other manager, maybe not.
_END RANT_
If you, my manager are reading this...
I hope this isn't entirly too unprofessional, but "FUCK YOU!!"
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you are not what you own
Re:Poorly managed? (Score:2)
Soylent Green is people!
Re:it probably won't get too much better (Score:2)
Re:Competence Shortage (Score:2)
Why move people into job positions where they get to do less of what they do best?
Because sometimes it's necessary to have someone who knows and understands a product and a set of technologies running a project in order to avoid the wholesale destruction that a clueless PHB can wreak on it in what is often a remarkably short amount of time.
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Re:Do u discriminate against married or people w k (Score:4)
I'll turn 48 next saturday. I've been a programmer, since I was 19... Last time I looked for a job it took me 2 years to find a company that would hire me. The time before that it took me 2 weeks. The difference? My beard turned gray while I was at my last job. Funny how that happens.
I'm highly educated, and have up to date skills. I have a wide range of experience. I have shipped a LOT of real products to real customers. I'm willing to work for a reasonable salary.
The kid in the next cube with 2 years experience, NO formal training, who has never shipped a finished product, regularly gets offers for 20% to 40% more than I currently make. I apply for the same jobs and don't even get a rejection email.
Most of the programmers I've known over the last 29 years have given up trying to work as programmers. Not that they don't want to. It's just that it is very very hard to get a job as a programmer if you are over 40.
I can also tell you I have experienced what happens when you get "daddy" tracked in a job. All of the sudden you can't get a raise, can't get any more training, suddenly it isn't in the companies "best interests" to send you to conferences. "What, just because your kid is on the way to the emergency room you think you should be able to leave before 10 P.M. tonight? Remember, we hired YOUR, we didn't hire your family!"
I don't know why I so stupid as to stay in this business. I can tell you that there is NO shortage of IT talent in the US. There isn't really even a shortage of CHEAP It talent in the US. There is a shortage of IT talent that is stupid enough to work 80 hours/week for a fixed (small) salary, no benefits and NO RESPECT!
stonewolf I'm no ghost dog
Re:Poorly managed? (Score:2)
Soylent Green is people!
something (Score:2)
When I started I was told this was a management level position. What BS. I was a support tech for the LAN. If they told me this was what they had in mind for me, I wouldn't have accepted the position. All they wanted me to do was build a stable, secure, LAN, and get the most out of me as they possiable could for the least amount of money then replace me with a bunch of cheap clueless interms to support what I built.
When I ask for a pay raise, they told me I would have to move closer, basicly so I would be thier gimp boy. I wanted to move out of my parents house anyways, I took the paid raise. Instead of just calling me in for IT crap, they started to call me to build these desks. I guess it's becuase I could build them twice as fast as anyone else there. They tricked me by call me up on a 3 o'clock pm on saturday saying that the network was down. It was becuase they loosed (unpluged) the damn uplink to the router.
They called me in a few more time to do wierd stuff on my weekend. Hello! I worked sixty five frigging hours for you assholes this week, can I have a day off?!
I got pissed and an turned my cell phone off one weekend. I decided to come in anyways, Sunday after the X files for about an hour to setup some computers. I walked into the door as soon as I did the VP and CEO jumped on my case about how I should get voice mail. I siad the flat out, I hate phones, and I hate voice mail even more. No way in hell jack. I'm a geek, email me.
They wanted to do some stupid demo with MicroSoft NetMeeting and email that they couldn't do becuase of a firewall. I told them, just use two laptops to do your little demo. They wouldn't listen to me. They piss farted around with netmeeting for hours trying to get it work with the ipchains firewall until I failly said "no, I'm not messing with this crapp any more. Use the damn laptops for your demo. I'm going to finsh the work which I came here to do and go home and sleep." I told them how to get on the other side of the firewall, and warned them they won't be able to access anything the way it's currently setup." Did they listen to me? hell no.
That night I went to sleep at 2 am. At 8 o'clock my cell phone rang. I was pissed, I knew who it was and I knew what they were calling about. Five mintues later it rang again, this time I deciced to pick the phone up. Sure enough, the guy was still on the other side of the firewall complaining becuase he couldn't "see the network". After telling him just move the cable to the other socket and reboot a dozen times, I had to come in to do it for him.
At 9 o'clock I made it in. Other people were moving machines around and a NT machine decided to become the PDC, and my samba server didn't have enough to power kick it off. SMB was down for an hour waiting for all the NT crap to time out. The guy blamed me for it. He also blamed me for having to buy a hub. I waa thinking to myself "WTF, there's 1,2,3,4 FIVE! RJ-45 connectors in the room, and there's a hub sitting in my office in plain sight." I got yelled at, treated to be fired, and told [a new guy they just hired] could do my job, he knows Linux. The kid only delt with two network applices machines running linux (he told me "it was a mess") using nothing but web interfaces for three months. He didn't know jack about Linux or networking for that matters. When I was talking to him asking basic questions or explaining the network setup, he gave nothing but stuned blank stares. What really got me was a few people in the office wondered how I could do everything in the office by myself. I just told them, I just that damn good.
I was pissed. About everything. I can't belive I was having my job treated. I never worked so hard in my life for a company just to be pissed on like this. If they just listen to me, none of the BS would have happend. Once I fixed all of their fuck ups, I took the rest of the day off and read
Two days later, I left that hell hole. Two weeks after that, they hired two "Sr. Network Monkeys", a "Lead Network Monkey" (SysAdmin), and a "Techincal Support Monkey Team" for the 200 servers. God knows how many people just to do what I was doing!!! I think the total is like 10 or 12. Most of them are interms with no knowleadge getting crap pay, if they even get paid. Of course they double thier staff, but shit! The "Lead Network Monkey", my friend, and my self could rule over thier network like Nazi leaders using Debian and OpenBSD.
A month later I found my current positon. I'm making 60k a year, less work, less stress, able to hire people when I feel I need help (none of this, "I need help, please hire someone" oh no! All I have to do is say "I need help, hire this guy"), working with good people (no assholes here!), in a cool building (where I can smoke anywhere I damn well please outside), working my own hours, never called in to do wierd stuff, complete control of the network, able to choose what OS I want to use, order my own supplies, get true respect from my peers, and they pay for health ins! My boss isn't just a manager but a friend that understand the IT field and where's it headed. He understand the stress IT people go through. I love my job.
Re:Umm, Duh... (Score:2)
Soylent Green is people!
Re:Rare to find good managers (Score:3)
You are not the first person to point this out, but, to be honest, I've never understood this logic. Isn't everyone in the organization needed? If any one group suddenly quit, wouldn't the whole organization go down?
For instance, if the sales folks stopped selling, we go out of business. But by the same token, if the IT folks stop developing, the sales folks have nothing to sell, and we go out of business. Same result.
Since every worker is needed to do his or her part, what difference does it make if one group is playing the part of the revenue-makers, and another group is playing the part of the cost center? If either group quits, the results are the same.
It's that "cost center" mentality that drove me nuts, for it directly led to the odd concept that sales folks were more important than the IT staff. They weren't. We were all equally needed.
________________
Re:Working in Germany (Score:2)
I know this sounds funny, but how I got my offer was just by posting my resume on my page, and letting them come to me. If you have the qualifications that people are looking for, then they will come to you. You don't really need to do any job hunting yourself since there are so many managers out there dying for employees.
Make sure to mention you speak german on your resume. Make sure to mention that you've lived overseas and that you're not going to freak out with culture shock if a company pays to relocate you. (And you should expect to be paid a certain amount to offset or eliminate the cost of moving overseas) But you won't believe how much goodwill you can buy yourself by being culturally open and willing to learn foreign languages. Americans have a bad international reputation for being lazy snobs when it comes to language and culture. Break that stereotype with whoever interviews you, and you get a schload of brownie points.
How can this contribute to a worker shortage? (Score:2)
So what, they drop out of the IT field completely and go dig ditches or flip burgers at McDonalds?
Come on, even if there is lots of turnover (and there is lots of turnover), this doesn't affect the total labor pool for IT... other than a small amount of friction for people who are inbetween jobs.
Umm, Duh... (Score:2)
I mean, how hard iz it to git these new fangled computermibobs to werk? Any dern fool can do it. Jest giv 'em some mountain dew and lock em in a closet fer a munth er too. How herd is thet to manage?
Re:Direct cause and effect relationship (Score:2)
It's a little too much of a generalisation to state that "management is composed of people who were too dumb to be passed up for promotion." I've been working in the industry for well over a decade, and I've had some excellent technical managers (OK, OK, I've had the completely f*ckwitted PHB's too, I admit it!)
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Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:3)
Perhaps you aren't looking in the right places (monster.com is a favorite of IT recruiters).
Or maybe, your job just isn't interesting enough to attract the type of people you want or you are in a sub-basement at the town waste treatment center?
Unless you live in a biggish city, people are probably going to have to re-locate to work for you. Expand your search and be willing to pay for them to move. When they get there, be sure to send the guiness deliveryman by three times a week.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Rare to find good managers (Score:4)
That certainly has been true in my experience. It was rare to find a good manager, one who made going to work a pleasure. Usually I had to merely take pleasure in doing a good job despite management's efforts or the corporate politics.
When a developer finds a good fit with a clued-in manager, they tend to stay. For all the rest of us, the PHBs eventually get us disgusted enough to move on.
As for undervaluing the contribution of IT, that was always the case. Sales & Marketing were the stars, always, and IT was an afterthought. That was true both in corporte culture as well as management opportunities. The sales guys, no matter how idiotic they were, got to move up the ladder far faster than the best of the IT staff. I always attributed that to the VPs not knowing what we did but actually did understand what the sales guys did.
These idiots are beginning to get what they deserve if IT staff are leaving in droves.
________________
Re:Most Programmers are not happy with what they d (Score:2)
Talk about a biased sample. I would expect that most people who are reading job listings are at least somewhat unhappy with their current jobs. If they aren't, then why are they looking for another job?
Re:There most certainly *is* a shortage (Score:2)
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Very True (Score:3)
Oh Wait...
Re:Some problems in IT... (Score:2)
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
The big question is, how much does Madman allow his staff actually do in ways that use their skills.
Competence Shortage (Score:4)
It would be more productive to extensively train the managers to be competent in dealing specifically with bright and knowledgeable people, rather than ignoring a fundamental problem with IT work, which is that the more complex the work, the harder it is for managers to avoid being oafish fools about dealing with people who often are much smarter and more knowledgeable than they. This problem will only get worse as complex technologies continue to creep into every aspect of formerly simple products and services.
Hiring as a manager the venture capitalist's son-in-law or the college buddy is just not going to work anymore, not that it ever did ....
Re:Do u discriminate against married or people w k (Score:2)
CoManage [comanage.net], Pittsburgh, PA. Network management; in a young (less than 2 years old) company of over 100 people, I'm on the young side at 32. We have enough parents in the company that children's movie night is a company activity once a month, and working from home one or two days a week is a common occurance. The works challenging; the work's interesting; and the management has a clue.
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
And the employer you left is in the halls of Congress whining that there aren't enough good people around to keep the situation so that people like you would feel that you are priviledged to be mismanaged by them, and just stay on your slave job.
I believe that. (Score:5)
Read the paper and check out the ads sometime; they have totally unreasonable expectations of what skill-sets they expect people to have. Just going through college is not enough; you can graduate from mine with a degree in Computer Science, and never learn C if you're careful, just Java, assembler, and maybe a functional language and something else, like SQL.
But then you don't have seven years experience in web design, or five years experience in Java, or a working knowledge of RPG, or something else equally ludicrous.
Of course, these requirements are padded, as are most people's credentials; but I'd much rather people said what they meant and were honest about the job requirements and the work environment. Lying to prospective employees is not a good way to start anything.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Direct cause and effect relationship (Score:3)
but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed
No kidding. This is a flaw with current executive management thinking. It's the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" that causes us to work for piss poor managers. They see an IT worker doing a good job, and figure that he's fine where he's at, and that they shouldn't touch him.
Then you have Steph sitting around the corner, who simply doesn't have a clue. He keeps fouling things up, and costs the company way too much money.
So what happens? Steph gets promoted. Why is it, that in the IT field, the clueless are promoted faster then the insightfull? I can tell you why,... it's the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave
No shit! And it's not that they're simply ill-designed. They're designed EXACTLY how the designers want them. Do they want an experienced IT worker who's been around the block, and can provide solutions? No,... because it would be a direct threat on management's credibility. And as I've pointed out, management is composed of people who were too dumb to be passed up for promotion.
The IT field is in a flux. Nobody knows how to find competent workers (college degrees, nor certifications gurantee competency), let alone know how much to pay them.
Want a serious approach to labor shortages? Free the radical limitations that our corporate executives have placed upon us. Refuse to require college degrees and certifications. Hire people, not resumes. And for god sakes, if somebody doesn't know what the hell they are doing, don't promote them, can their ass!
Precisely why I left coding... (Score:3)
...and went into product management, so I could manage instead be managed.
When you get right down to it, the first 80% of coding (which takes 20% of the time) is fun, since that's where the design decisions and experimentation goes on. The last 20% (80% of the total time) sucks, because it's churning out the boring bits of the code, or driving yourself nuts debugging.
Unfortunately, 80% of your career goes into doing 20%-work. By the time you get to the fun stuff, you're cynical and sick of it.
Not to mention that many of the people who love coding so much that they stick with it that long have no management skills, but are expected to start managing because they're senior people. The last company I was at lost the best coder I've ever met for this reason -- they tried to get him to manage people, when all he wanted to do was code.
The hierarchies that work in other industries don't work as well for software. Every industry has a grunt labour component, but in IT, it seems that you're more likely to get out of grunt labour by switching companies or fields than by working your way up.
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
hmmmm..... It appears that you are in the right place. Maybe
Re:Try finding Smalltalk programmers... (Score:2)
I usda do some SmallTalk but these days I do mostly PHP as it is more appropiate for web dev which is part of what I'm currently doing. Don't see many places using SmallTalk. I think there are more programmers w/ experience out there than you may realize though. It just isn't a language people usually bother putting on their resume since so few employers know what it is.
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
Somebody give this guy some karma, because he's got a good point!
Seriously, I know of some big name corporations who are writing software, and because their turnover is 50% every 3-6 months, their code is 100% crap and unbelievably expensive to maintain and extend, and 25% of their people are always getting up to speed on the code base and architecture. (This turnover is in Silicon Valley mind you, and the most extreme case I've heard of).
More code re-use, better requirements and design, take fewer shortcuts, better end-user support and buy in. And of course better management.
A project I am working on right now is going swell simply because it's well engineered, and the main people working on it have been with us for years and know thier shit. If we had too bad a turnover rate, we wouldn't be able to do this anywhere near as efficiently.
Hmmm, I seem to have worked myself right back around to the position proposed elsewhere in this story!
Guess they must be on to something :)
Some problems in IT... (Score:5)
For example, when employers are constantly treating employees like dogshit, working them 65 hours a week, and trying to screw them out of the only 2 weeks worth of vacation a year that they're stingy enough to grant, employees lose respect for the organization that they're working for. If you love your job, and you like the people you work with, suddenly the pay isn't the only factor in whether you stay or whether you go. If on the other hand you hate your job and don't have any respect for where you work, then it's "Just about the bucks" and higher offers will cause you to leave with no regrets.
I've been working in American IT for a few years, and I'm totally sick of it. Recently, I got a job offer in Germany, making a lot less money, but offering a steady 40 hour work week, 4 weeks vacation a year, and the people I really liked. The corporation seemed to care whether I lived or died. So I turned down offers of $70,000+ to investigate that offer. Unfortunately, for personal reasons related to my family in the states, I wasn't able to take it, but had I been in a more flexible situation, I would have taken it in a heartbeat to have what I think every IT person wishes they had: quality of life
How many people do you know in IT who wake up at age 40 saying Oh my god, I've got a huge pile of money, but I hate my life because all I ever do is work? I know a lot of them. When employees cynical views of employers and the exploitative tactics that employers use against their employees rule the field, then yeah, you're going to have a lot of job hopping, and a lot of burned out pissed off disillusioned IT workers.
I'm in their ranks. Are you?
it probably won't get too much better (Score:5)
Re:Do u discriminate against married or people w k (Score:2)
I work with a senior guy, who is very valuable. We work at a "dot-com" with very little structure, everything is rush-rush-it's-due-for-the-demo-tomorrow. This guy is in his thirties, and he has, several times, LEFT THE PREMISES in the middle of a critical deployment to go coach a kid's hockey game. He doesn't even have a son on the team, I guess he just decided he wanted to be a coach. He says, "Oh, around 7pm I have to leave to coach, I'll be back at 10pm if you need me" and then JUST LEAVES. Guess who has to pick up the slack? Me. And I'm not nearly as good as him, and I end up calling him on his cell to ask him questions, and half the time he turns his cell phone off even though he knows we need him.
Now that's great and all, everybody knows you need to have a life, etc, etc. But what if I said that I need to have three hours off several evenings a week, just so that I could play Command & Conquer, because playing C&C is "important" to me. I'd get a lot of shit from my boss and wouldn't get looked on very well next time I was up for a raise, or asked for some paid training. I mean, do what's important to you, but don't expect it to reflect well on your career.
We have a senior DBA here from a South American country, he works constantly, and he just had a baby. He's always availible when we need him, and we need him a lot. In the country he's from, one of the head government people was photographed handing a bushel of cash money to an influential legislator. You think this guy wants to go back there? No, he's going to work long and hard because he wants to be here, not because he takes it for granted as a birthright that he only works a set amount and then can forget about work until a set time the next day.
I bet 50% is waste (Score:3)
Small companies have it slightly better, but only because cancelled projects usually lead to layoffs or bankrupcy, rather than redeployment into another doomed project.
Re:There's no shortage... (Score:2)
I used to think I wanted to code and only code. Then I got a job doing just that. Hell, I didn't even compile the code I wrote! I got bored pretty damn quick and i've just recently quit that job in favor of a 6 month trip to New Zealand for camping and fishing without any work).
I didn't make as much doing it, but it turns out that I much prefered working for a Mom -n- Pop joint where I was responsible for everything from ordering new equipment to coding that CGI with DB2 access for a new web customer. Much less opportunity to become bored with what I was doing.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Re:Competence Shortage (Score:2)
> knowledgeable people, rather than ignoring a fundamental problem with IT work, which is that the more complex the work, the
> harder it is for managers to avoid being oafish fools about dealing with people who often are much smarter and more
> knowledgeable than they.
Sheesh, this reminds me of one of the worst jobs I've had since I started making a living from computers. (Warning: the following is a rant. If you don't want to read this, I'm sure a troll will post some Emily Dickinson for you shortly.)
It was a contract job with a bank undergoing a merger with an out-of-state bank, where we had to repoint the LANs from the local server room in Gresham to one in Minneapolis. (And if you live in the Portland, OR area, it was *that* job.)
At first it promised to be kind of interesting, learning about SNA networking with TCPIP, working with several platforms. I even learned how to do some simple configuration of Bay routers.
Unfortunately, the high points were as few & far between as mountains in Indiana: the consulting firm was so eager to put billable warm bodies on the job that there wasn't enough work to go around. For a couple of weeks, several of us sat around most of the day doing NOTHING. Add to that the fact the agency felt it was unprofessional for any of us to be seen sitting around doing nothing, we ended up spending this time cooped up in a forgotten conference room staring at each other.
And the project manager was a treat also. Former SysAdmin & recovering alcoholic with all of the diplomatic skills of a BOFH. He constantly chewed us out for taking the initiative in solving problems we encountered, instead of bucking all of our questions up the line. (I heard that he was upset that I was doing the stuff with the routers -- nothing more than granting them new IP numbers -- because I was the only one who had taken the time to watch how it was done, & understand the steps.)
And I had complained about this to the consulting firm. And they promised to do somethng about it.
The breaking point for me was when I got called in on a day I was promised off. All the way in, I expected that I would be sitting around, doing nothing; sure enough, I found our team sitting around waiting for direction. The only thing that kept me from walking out at that moment was encountering a colleague who needed help inventoring some switch rooms. We finished that task 5 hours later, just in time to be dragged into another butt-chewing session because ``we" hadn't been doing enough.
I seethed about that all weekend, decided that no job was worth being that angry about, & called the agency & gave them a week's notice. This resulted with a PHB from the agency giving me the line ``I never knew you were unhappy. No one told me anything."
I was able to get a job that started the next day & happily left. I later heard that I was the first of several to leave at that point. Something changed at that point, since the project actually got finished, two or three months late.
Sometimes it is as bad as you hear it is.
Geoff
Re:it probably won't get too much better (Score:2)
Not really an article (Score:2)
It should be kept in mind that this is less of an article and more of a press release. It was written by "Knowledge@Wharton," the copyright is owned by the Wharton School, and the only source is the business professor who conducted the study. It is hardly an example of balanced journalism.
Is there a shortage of tech worker in the United States? Possibly. Are tech workers poorly managed? Possibly. Are there are significant number of open positions in the technology world? Certainly.
I would be more interested in reading the actual study rather than a predigested press release summary. The press release is designed to catch the reader's attention; the study may be a bit more interesting.
(Personally, I find it interesting that CNET runs press releases as "News," but that is a bit off-topic.)
Re:Working in Germany (Score:2)
The IT worker shortage is great... (Score:2)
Re:It's A Neverending Cycle (Score:2)
It amazes me that companies will pay out the gazoo for IT workers, and pile on perks in hopes of keeping them around, but then turn around and pinch pennies on office space, undercutting that highly-paid employee's productivity in the process.
Companies might actually be able to reduce headcount, if only they were willing to provide an environment where their IT workers could actually get something done.
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Re:Direct cause and effect relationship (Score:2)
What??? No way, man. If you do a good job, you get promoted! That's the cornerstone of the Peter Principle! (Also, the reigning philosophy in all of the joints I've worked in) If he's a good coder, he'll probably be a great manager! If he's a good manager, well then boot him upstairs into a director's chair!
You stop getting promoted when you start sucking at your job. Faked mediocrity is the only defense against being thrust into a position where it wouldn't be faked.
Re:There's no shortage... (Score:2)
But you also get people who are not exact fits. Such as someone who is a Unix hack, with network experience but no router management experience. Or someone who does not have Visual C++ 8.0 experience, but Visual Age C++ expereince. Or someone who does not have NLM programming experience but have Banyan Service programming experience. Or someone with CPM programming experience not MS DOS programming experience.p>
Re:it probably won't get too much better (Score:2)
The problem with that is people like me who panic in situations like that.
I had been told I would have to solve some problems like that so I looked over my algorithms book to refresh my memory, got really into B*trees because a project I was working on could have really used a better tree algorithm, and forgot to look over anything else.
So I got asked to write a bubble sort, I started getting really nervous but I thought, "Well it's really easy you just go through and swap the out of order ones." SO I wrote it and turned it in.
It wasn't till I was driving home that I realized I had forgotten the outer loop... DOH!
The problem is, I know that I am a better programmer than most of the people that worked there who had probably just memorized those basic algorithms the night before.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Re:How can this contribute to a worker shortage? (Score:3)
So, are you disputing the chief claim of the study, or did you just not bother to read it?
They may not be digging ditches or flipping burgers, but they're not toiling in the code mines, either.
In addition, Cappelli cites an unwillingness on the part of employers to hire older IT workers with more experience. I'm just now leaving the "youthful and hungry" stage of my professional career (translation - I'm 27), but conversations with my elders in the industry seem to bear out that claim.
I won't bother to reproduce the entire remainder of the article here, other than to say that it's pretty evenhanded in that it grants that a certain shortage of IT workers exists, while simultaneously taking employers to task for their hiring practices.
What does "poorly managed" mean (Score:5)
In my previous job (as a "team leader") I tried to take a more active role in managing the programmer's time. I always had a mental list of every project each person (3 of them) were working on and a rough idea as to status. Once in a while (every couple days) I pop in and make sure my head matched reality. It seemed to work pretty well--I didn't have any complaints and even got one compliment (from a programmer). Just think of the team as a furnace that needs a constant supply of coal--boredom is 90% of the problem. (the rest is variety--color some of your coal read 8^))
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Re:How can this contribute to a worker shortage? (Score:2)
I have at least 5 friends who were successful programmmers who "Burned out" and left the field. Remember the AVERAGE length of a programming career is 7 years - that's it! After that, your out of the field!
Shortage of intelligence? (Score:4)
There are plenty of these types out there. The qualified ones get hired extremely quickly. In the bay area hiring someone is like looking for housing.
Re:Poorly managed? (Score:4)
You're right. In my last job, I read
Every once in a blue moon on slashdot, some troll attack will occur whose basic thrust is that slashdot is a bunch of hypocritical morons running windows only paying lipservice to linux, because after all, it's been admitted that the majority of hits on slashdot come from windows machines.
I don't know if that's true about the hits or not, but even if it is, I'd expect that that is due exactly because of people working in IT jobs who check out slashdot 25 times a day because it's more interesting that staring at their desk. I used to check slashdot quite often, and it was always from a windows machine, since that's what management "suggested" we use. Ah but isn't the line between suggesting and issuing an edict thin?
Re:How can this contribute to a worker shortage? (Score:2)
Ordinarily, I'd say nothing. I read somewhere (can't remember where) that the average Joe can expect to have a major career change (as opposed to, used to be a DBA, but now I'm a Systems Integrator!) an average of three times in your life. That's healthy and natural, and truth be told, every once in a while I feel an itch get out of IT and into something else.
What we hope, though, is the people leaving the IT field are balanced by people entering. These guys are saying that people are leaving at a faster rate than new blood is entering. The conclusion they've drawn, using bigger words and better arguments, is that this is because a preponderance of IT jobs are No Fun. Make of this what you will.
Re:Competence Shortage (Score:2)
I think that sometimes the best IT managers are former IT stars - former expert programmers, etc. - who moved up into management positions; they understand the nature of IT and also can learn how to manage and coordinate teams. But I think it's generally hard for people to cross between the management and IT camps; the skills of management and the skills of IT seem to have little overlap.
And when a skilled programmer is promoted to a management position, it generally means that he/she is doing less programming... Why move people into job positions where they get to do less of what they do best?
What about the IT worker (Score:2)
When I was in the posistion to hire somone for an IT/IS posistion 1/3 of the applicants LIED on their resume. Of the 15 I hand picked from over 50 resumes, only 3 could accurately tell me the following (notice one is an opinion, some of the canidates didn't know what a scripting language was!!!)
Add to that some pretty nasty assumptions that we would be converting our network to an ALL NT network because that was the wave of the future and you have a dismal showing for people that called themselves IT proffesionals.
This "shortage" is also caused by workers that refuse to adapt to changing technologies, and Management that refuses to train old employees that are willing to adapt on new technologies.
Re:I believe that. (Score:2)
Whether the "inability to keep people" is due to the bidding wars for competent programmers in today's "we have money but no time" Internet economy or some other factor is irrelevant, but it is true that employees (in general) no longer stay for 20 years at any one employer.
By the same token, jobs no longer last 20 years. It seems that employers often expect loyalty that they have no intention of returning.
Any sufficiently large group of people (management) will always behave in economically rational ways. Period.
Actually, it has been shown that nearly any group of people will go for the short term cash grab at the expense of long term profit, even when it is pointed out to them.
Example experiment, $10 placed in a bowl. 5 people sitting around. Researcher tells them that they get 5 rounds. Each round, they take all they want/can get. The researcher will then double the amount left in the bowl for the next round. The game almost NEVER gets to round 5.
In case it's not clear, training is like refraining from grabbing cash NOW.
If you are hiring, why didn't you include email? (Score:2)
I checked your user information page and didn't find an e-mail address, nor do you provide an e-mail address with your message. If you are really looking, why not provide some contact info?
Then people like me who are fed up with the existing broker/headhunter system and HR departments would be able to network with you and who knows?
Feel free to mail me at my address...
They bring in the $$$ (Score:2)
Re:that's true (Score:2)
Ads are always exaggerated (Score:2)
One of the things we were taught by the people working there, is that job-hunting ads are always exagaggerated. They ask for the very best they could desire, as unrealistic as it might be. And then they throw in some buzzwords, and then some more. But in the end, usually they need far less, and most often desire far less, as it will be cheaper for the employer.
So don't be fooled. If you like a job prospect, don't be afraid to apply, even if you satisfy less then half the requirements. Worst scenario they'll tell you "we don't need you", but you have a better chance at landing the job than you believe.
Management vs. Leadership (Score:2)
I admit right up front I have a bias in this matter because of my military background. First in ROTC, then as a junior officer in the Army, I went through thousands of hours of training designed to make me an effective leader.
How an organization develops leaders is a question that is seldom asked. There are plenty of large organizations that drill their managers in how to be a good member of the corporate team, but how many of them teach effective leadership techniques?
Leadership is a mixture of native ability and teaching - lots of teaching. It's not a formula. No leadership book is going to teach you everything you need to know about leadership. Going to some retreat where everyone goes kayaking or whatever, is not going to make better leaders.
Sustained, in-depth training and feedback is the only way for an organization to make effective leaders. When you have effective leaders, more often than not, people want to stay in the organization, whether they're IT workers, sales people, or truck drivers.
There's no magic bullet, but promoting people into management positions because they can write good memos or sell more widgets, or even program well is foolish. Leadership has to be cultivated - it doesn't just come with the territory.
There most certainly *is* a shortage (Score:2)
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Re:realizatioin before age forty (Score:5)
American work values really lag behind many European job considerations. There are bad managers everywhere but they can certainly have a field day with tangled webs of woe such as the US "health care system"...
I've worked both places and it _still_ shocks me how completely and totally money-seeking essentially RUNS everything in America. the majority are out to get every buck they can and (I thought this was a joke until I lived in the US and experienced it non-stop) people often do define themselves in financial terms. It is tiring and leads, however subliminally, to all kinds of unhappiness.
Americans really DO tend to get their identities from what they buy, whereas in general Europeans get them more from what they do. A generalization of course but even the most resolutely opposed American has to deal with this, every day.
Thus the tone of weariness form the posts already up here on this topic is entirely typical of the whole US working world and not merely IT positions.
Re:Poorly managed? (Score:2)
I personally reload slashdot (and salon.com, which I enjoy) every single day at least 30 times. Email is nice too, but it doesn't seem to come in quick enough.
Maybe one of these days I'll find a real job again where I can feel like I've earned this cash... I miss start-up life. Right now my career just pays the bills and makes me more restless.
Recognition and better pay would help (Score:2)
The article mentions that IT workers are not recognized for their true value to the organization and I'll have to agree: too many upper level managers don't realize that their IT investment is a *stategic* investment as opposed to a cost center.
In an information-based economy your IT staff are crucial to the success (or failure) of your fundamental business. Treating IT as a cost-center classifies it as "something to reduce": hence the reluctance to train staff or increase base pay.
The real solution? Increase pay rates and put your brightest technical people at the same decision making level as their managers. When top performing IT architects/designers/coders (not managers!) receive pay rates on the same scale as their management counterparts (because they *produce* results), you'll see the best/brightest flock to the field.
I'm not expecting this to happen anytime soon due to the general cluelessness of old-line, non-technical, entrenched management PHB's but to hear them cry about their self-created IT shortage is just a bit too much when all they have to do is get out of our way.
Or it's an excuse for not hiring. (Score:2)
With the burn rate at a lot of companies these days, the key thing is to get by with as few people as possible. Many of us end up doing the jobs of 5 or 6 people, working far too many hours (or refusing to) and "there just isn't anyone out there who is qualified" is always a "valid" reason for getting by with as few people as possible.
I'm not saying this is always the case, but it is definitely a contributor to the whole gestalt.
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:4)
(I'm mostly talking to the companies/Madman/etc here)
What the hell ever happened to apprenticeship, and entry level positions? The company I work for (~100 people, growing with no problems finding people) trains our own. The key is to hire smart people, who show a little spark.
Nortel, IBM, and everyone else wouldn't touch me with a 10 foot pole when I finished my hard science grad degree, but my current employer did. Now they have an engineer with 3 years experience in a dozen of the most sought after skills. Now they don't have to go screaming all the way to the feds with a crybaby story about not being able to find anyone.
Quit crying and invest something in people. Quit asking for the feds to import your gold for you.
Re:There's no shortage... (Score:2)
I may not have the most glorious job, and it isn't always stimulating, but what job is? Still, 99% of the time, I'm happy here.
Hell, being a coal-fire power plant, I've even helped work on other machinery, from electronics to mechanical coal scales and the security gate system (chain keeps jumping sprocket...grrrrr).
All this variety easily keeps me from getting burned out. Sure, I make a little less here than I could working elsewhere, but I stay because I love the environment. I got my review today, and I'm doing quiet well (got a raise!!!), and content to keep showing up in jeans and punk rock t-shirts versus a job where I have to stay clean-cut and wear a tie!
I couldn't be a programmer full-time. I couldn't make my self sit in a chair all damned day mostly. Here, I bet I walk a few miles a day going all over the plant. That's more exercise than almost all the computer slaves I know.
Here, we're like a small community all working at the same place. No single office with a manager behind the door behind me.... Hell, I don't have a real boss here, they're all corp. On site, I've got a psuedo-boss that I talk to about once every few months....just to see how things are going, and I like it that way.
Long live diversity!!!!!
Job Requirements? (Score:3)
Heeellllooooo? Is anyone home?
Re:That's a load of crap! (Score:2)
Where is it and what is it paying? Now, put up or shut up.
BOREDOM is the real enemy (Score:2)
There was recently a case where a police department refused to hire a guy who took their test and was over the maximum intelligence level for the position. And a court upheld it!
So the proper way is to give said employee plenty if interesting, pointful things to do (pointless makework is usually about as boring as sitting around doing nothing). And if you don't have anything good for them to do, and don't make it your responsibility as a manager to keep them from being bored, don't bitch and write them up for reading /. a lot or for doing hobby stuff like disassembling ColecoVision game ROMs on company time.
If you want Mensa-level or higher IQ employees to stay around, don't use the Mushroom Theory of Management on them. Don't Dilbert them, or they'll just farm out their resume for $10K more. And only when they're gone will you realize just how much they did in the times you weren't peeking your head into their cubicle to find them not looking busy.
Where are you going to go? (Score:2)
And certainly it's a big mistake to churn people through college. We don't need less trained people entering the field, we need more trained people. This means focusing on real world solutions and not the toy problems that colleges seems to want to focus on. This is akin to adding more people to a late project, except on a different scale. If corporations have to spend more time training the newbies, then corporations will experience a negative effect due to their technical departments, not a positive one.
If corporations are going to pay me to learn, then why not go to college one or two years, get hired by a company and have them pay me to learn what I need to know? That sounds like a sweet deal to me.
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Re:Shortage of intelligence? (Score:2)
This is why I moved to Austin, because it's one of those places where the type that has a clue gets hired quickly. I've been hacking away at computers since I was a kid in 1978, back when you had to be a Real Programmer[tm] to do anything useful with a computer, micro or otherwise.
I came here because of a strong enough computer-related job market that there would be at least a few employers who would appreciate my background more than some four-letter alphabet soup.
Re:How can this contribute to a worker shortage? (Score:2)
eudas
Only 25 times/day (Score:2)
Even now (at a job I largely enjoy) I keep a Slashdot windows open at all times--to peruse while code compiles, etc.
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Re:Some problems in IT... (Score:2)
Look at Bill Gates and just about any other person whose got about 18 times more money than they could ever possibly spend on themselves or even on their next 3 generations. Still, they work all the time, (regardless of what you think of Gates, I'll bet he puts in insane hours at the office) accumulating more money.
The problem with working for companies and getting rich off of it is that it eventually becomes the end, not the means to the end. People start off working to get the means that they need to live the life that they want to live. When all you've done for the last 20 years is work like a dog for huge amounts of money, even though it isn't exactly the same, there seems to be at least a little bit of the same type of "institutionalization" that happens just like it does to prison inmates. Money wasn't the original end-all be-all, but it has become just that.
There is also another issue - there's a difference between having a pile of money, and being able to retire for the rest of your life. For example, I'm 22, and if I have $200,000 today, that's not going to be enough to retire on. I doubt that $400,000 would do it.
What I'm saying is that there's a choice to be made for a lot of IT folks: $100,000/year and no life, or $40-60,000/year and a productive, fulfilling life outside of work.
Re:What about the IT worker (Score:3)
Most Programmers are not happy with what they do! (Score:4)
If companies could hire managers who know the different between HTTP and FTP, between Kernel and Shell, could stand up for his team in Management meetings and take a beating for it, could explain in lucid detail to the management about schedule slippages and cover everyones ass and not just his then he would build a team which would stick through thick and thin for him. But from so far I have seen, this particular breed is dying fast. Everyone wants to cover their ass first.
Just providing Nerf gun battles and ping pong tables doesnt motivate people. People motivate people. Good diplomatic Managers tend to motivate people to excel in their work and make them stay. Making them stay back after six everyday and not reward them is begging them to leave. Most of the firms, even the big ones doesnt have a clue as to how to retain people. I would rather choose a firm which has Quake 3 deathmatches every alternate days or Fridays, where my Manager understands what I do and not judge me for my errors, where he first covers my ass and then his if i screw up,is the first one to comment or reward anyone who deserves it.
I havent found one, but being a sucker I am still looking.
That's not just the IT world (Score:3)
The same phenomenon happens to contractors in other fields. I was an administrative contractor (read: temp) for years. I used to get placed for jobs that asked for all sorts of computer skills and be set to making copies. The employers figure the more skills a person has, the better they must be overall.
I also used to be able to class jobs into three types...
From the sounds of the article, far too much of the industry is stuck in category three.
Do u discriminate against married or people w kids (Score:4)
The "IT shortage" is NOT for a lack of skills and it's not because younger people will work for less money.
The fact is, most tech jobs (sysadmin, programmer, web developper, etc.) are not 40hr/week jobs. They're demanding 60, 70, 80 hour per week jobs. And they're all "salaried" jobs, which means no extra pay for extra hours.
Now young people fresh out of college, and immigrant H1B visa workers have little else in their life to occupy them. They are single. They have no kids. Thus they are able to accept the abusive work hours employers expect them to put out.
But now something new has happened. The first BIG wave of IT industry workers are just now starting to reach their upper 30s and 40s. And that first wave of H1B workers are nearing the end of their 6 year temporary visas.
Tell me, what happens when a 70 hour/week employee gets married or has a kid?
Suddenly he or she has to cut back working hours to 50 or 40 hours per week as a responsibiliy to their family.
The employer sees this as MAJOR SLACKING OFF BY SOME OLD GRAYING BASTARD. So he's either FIRED. Or sees his salary cut 40% and is FORCED to quit because he can't support his family on a pay cut like that.
The employer then puts an ad out and discovers that lots more older IT workers are applying than years ago when he put that last ad out. These older workers suffer from the same problem... having a life.
So suddenly the employer screams that there is a "shortage of IT workers" and demands the government allow more H1B visa workers in so he can continue his abusive employment practises.
Well, IMO, it's time employers are FORCED to play fair and give up their extremely abusive practises. Naturally they won't want to as screwing people over is highly lucrative and profitable. Well, it is wrong to discriminate in your hiring practises againse people who are (1) married, or (2) have kids. So pardon me if I don't cry for your sorry assed IT shop and it's fuck-you hiring policies. I feel absolutely zero pity for you poor staff strapped IT shops who are only looking to screw people over.
Maybe your expectations are too high.... (Score:3)
Lots of times, they pass up excellent candidates because thay are afraid to consider if a person is trainable, and can be trained quickly. Flame me all you want, but no school teaches anything which can be applied evenly across any similar technology. The best candidates for the job are those who can adapt what they know to what's new and has been placed in front of them.
if (Book sense eq Common sense) {
print "Lousy hiring criteria!!!";
};
Here's a slightly off-topic, but comparable example:
All those schools pumping out 'certified' IT professionals by the droves on the "You paid - You made the grade" philosophy are also to blame.
Ask yourself, would you hire a newly certified person regardless of what they did before going to school, or would you hire someone who's been working with computers for a while and has provided good value as an employee of a previous company in that capacity without certification. Someone who has, through self teaching, dabbled in UNIX and is not intimidated by it, will be an ideal candidate for hire. They didn't go into school to earn a 'free ticket' into a job. They want to learn and expand their mind to be more useful. Those who are self taught are easily trainable.