Young IT Workers Disillusioned, Hard to Retain 853
bednarz writes to mention that NetworkWorld has an interesting examination of young IT professionals and why many make unreasonable demands for their services. "'The issue managers are facing is with retention, not hiring. That means the work environment is not living up to the employee's expectation,' he says. For instance, many younger workers expect to get an office immediately or be paid at a rate higher than entry level."
Many managers are saddened they actually have to (Score:5, Insightful)
Economists around the world are stunned. Was Adam Smith right? Were there truly rational actors within an economy?
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell should I work 70 hour weeks, kill myself outside of a job to learn the latest tech, deal with idiot management and unreasonable schedules when the company would gladly lay me off to save $5?
Treat people like cattle, and you get a bunch of people just biding time until the grass is greener elsewhere.
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Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
I have news for you. 70 hour work weeks should not be a part of anyone's "real working world" unless they are the owner or higher level exec in charge of the business (and then that is done by their choice).
What you're advocating is throwing away almost all of your waking hours for a job - something that doesn't love you, doesn't even care about you, can be done by someone else if you leave, and on the whole, you don't get any more out of at 70 hours than you do at 40.
There is a lesson you need to learn, and that lesson is drawing reasonable boundaries. Trading your whole, active life for a paycheck is a bad deal no matter how you look at it unless you are only doing it for a couple of years so that you never have to do it again.
You work in order to obtain the money needed to live your life. You don't live in order to work.
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Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of my peers expect to graduate college and start off on the same level their parents are (who have worked for 30 years). I see this both in all my peers, from the construction workers to the computer scientists. I don't believe it is unique in I.T.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
No only isn't it "necessarily bad", I think it is a positivly Good Thing (TM). Moving around gives a graduate a range of experiences on both the technical level (develop skills etc) but also a range of experiences with various people and ways of working & doing business. All of this helps create a well rounded and skilled professional when then start to grow up and remain longer in jobs.
However, if you're an employer who wants to spend peanuts then you should expect to get either
- Someone with little experience (who will leave when they see they've developed skills someone will actually pay for)
- someone who can't get a better gig right now and promises to remain for ages (but won't)
- someone who can't get a job with better conditions because they are actually worth the little you pay, or maybe worth a little less
- A mixture of the above
Bottom line is - if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Some monkeys will develop well and you should treat their tenure as a bonus. The monkeys you wish would leave, won't; and then you've got to consult your local labour lawsRe:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Interesting)
It's simple economics. If a key employee thinks that he is worth $X salary, you evaluate whether or not he's worth it. If he is, you pay it. If not worth it, you don't. That's it. These people are not quitting to go work at McDonalds, they are finding other work that pays them what they want.
The 'retention' problem is not because this generation wants the kitchen sink; it's because these companies don't have any money to buy kitchens.
- DaftShadow
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Interesting)
See, when I tried to get my first job it was the year 2002. IT staff was fired left and right and I decided I was lucky to get a job at all just after one month.
The job was crap. They hired me because I would work for the least money (being so young) but expected me to run their complete IT including fixing a newly introduced business software that had been more like forced into the environment rather than introduced into it.
When they started expecting that not only should I be on call 24/7, do the consulting, learn to handle the whole business software, do user support and actually code some equivalents to things the software should have done in the frickin' first place in Access but also, on top of all that, I was to fix hardware problems without any money I knew it was time to go.
My next job was to be just user support and 'low level' IT work such as deploying workstations and fixing them and such. Then, during the interview, I got offered to work together with the consultant and be the one to actually build the support foundation for the new business software they were introducing. I had never worked in such an environment before, I didn't know the old software and I certainly diddn't know the new one but I thought to give it a go. After all I was offered the fall-back to the original offer of supporter.
A few weeks later they had hired another supporter and I was called into the boss' office and told that some people didn't like some stuff about how I was doing my work. I was neither told what exactly was the problem nor was I told who had complained so I could have discussed the problem with them. I was just told to do stuff differently.
Then I got the job I'm working at now. It is a good job because I like my coworkers and the stuff I do. But until this year, I was 20% underpayed (meaning you had to add another 20% to my actual salary to get to toe average salary). I was told that getting the 10% I asked for would be hard. Usually people in that company had to be happy with raises around one or two percent if they got anything at all. I was lucky since two IT people had left shortly before so they were in something of a tight spot.
But my experience thus far has been as follows: It doesn't matter whether you have managers as your boss or the owner of the company, they're all trying to screw you over and unless you are willing to risk being laughed at because you have such high demands you will NEVER get fair conditions on your job.
If companies started to actually treat us workers like we were trying to help get our company along instead of just an expense on the budget then perhaps we might start to have realistic demands in the first place. I am just unwilling to be treated as slave that has the bonus of being paid. If you think I'm unreasonable to ask that then, frankly, screw you.
And it's even good for everyone, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
See, the whole idea behind capitalism, going all the way to Adam Smith, is that it essentially optimizes using the resources we have, to create the things we actually need. You have X million people, Y million acres of land, etc. You also have these needs that the population has. The "wealthier" nation will be the one which uses them to produce more of what its people need, and less of what they don't.
If it's more profitable to raise sheep than make wine in England, there's probably a good reason why, and you're doing all of us a service if you raise sheep. And if you raised sheep anyway, and France pays more for wool than you'd get in England, then by all means, go sell that wool in France. Then buy the wine where it's cheap and good quality with that money and sell it back in England.
Or if you want to sell your land, and there's this peasant who can only pay you 1000 pounds for it, while another one would pay 2000, then by all means sell it to the latter. Probably he has a better business plan, knows what and how to raise there that's more profitable, and in the end it's better utilization of that resource and makes us all better off. Right?
So then the same applies to the workforce. If another company can pay you more for the same work, they've probably got a better business plan and can make better use of that work. It's making us all better off if you quit your work at the one who pays less, and take the job that pays more. The same resources produces more for society, right?
That's been the theory of capitalism all along. Self-interest is what makes Adam Smith's "invisible hand" work. I mean, right?
At any rate, that's the kind of a theory that apologists of all-out cut-throat capitalism love to wave around. And it's surely used, in one way or another, when they have to justify doing something for _their_ self-interest. So then it's _weird_ to see them turn around 180 degrees and moan about these ungrateful, disloyal graduates who'll leave at the first opportunity to get a bigger wage.
You'd think they'd be _thrilled_ to see the younger generation apply the same kind of capitalism all the way. I mean, surely, if cut-throat capitalism is good for us all, then people using the same principles in their job hunt are, well, nothing short of _patriotic_, right? And if the role of the corporation is solely to produce money for the shareholders, then it's _good_ to move to a corporation which has a better plan for your work and can afford to produce more with it. It's probably producing even more value for its shareholders, then.
Well, ok, that was partially tongue-in-cheek and partially taking the piss, but still... it never ceases to amuse me when people go "capitalism is good! we only have a duty to maximize our profits!" when it excuses their own actions, but demand the exact opposite (e.g., unconditional selfless loyalty) from their employees. I wish they'd make up their mind whether they want one _or_ the other.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
So we do just that, and the six and seven-figure salaries in management still feel violated.
I say f- them. Either pay more, or quit complaining about our right to leave.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
We've done our young people a disservice the past few decades....in schools and society, we've taken away anything that might hurt little Timmy's self esteem.....everyone gets an award for 'trying', and everyone is taught they are all equal and will be treated that way.
Parents who work too much....have tried making up for it...by giving their kids what they want. It leads to people coming out of this sheltered environment, and being shocked that they don't walk right into a job making the $$ their parents did....not instantly being a manager...and [shudder] having to work their way up from the bottom.
I'll admit...my generation (early X) had a great deal of this too...but, not quite as bad as it seems the youth coming into the workforce now have.
I'm not saying it is all of them...but, this attitude does seem to be rising. Unless you can start your own business....you're gonna have to learn that there is the golden rule...whoever has the gold, makes the rules. If you wanna work and make it...well, you're gonna have to sacrifice and work hard for awhile, pay your dues as they used to say.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with you - every new generation has it easier, apparently for all the wrong reasons. However, there is a huge amount of bright young people who have every right to ask more of their employers. More money, better conditions, not to be treated as children just because they only started working in last year or so. It takes forever for a young person to advance, even if he/she is more productive and better educated.
I've seen my share of this over the 25 years of my salaried working life.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:4, Insightful)
You say they have a "right" as if that were true. Please give a cogent reason.
The employer has a "right" that more productive, better educated Johnny prove they are more productive and can friggin' work, too.
In my 35 year salaried life, I've seen a large share of worthless new folks claiming they're better.
What planet are you on? (Score:5, Interesting)
After 12 months the department I was in charge had gone from one of the worst performing to one of the best; from wastage measured in the double digits to below 1%. From having loss leaders during specials to everything making a profit due to better procurement of stock.
Who made these changes? Me. Did I get any pay rise or kudos? fuck no! I was working quietly and dillgiently hoping that one day the manager of the organisation would say, "hey son, you've done a great job with this department, we need a real can do person like yourself - how about a promotion" - nope, not even that. Not even a damn bonus after all the money I worked to save the company.
Sorry, I don't expect million dollar salaries, I don't expect huge amounts of cash, but I do expect at the very least an attempt by management to acknowledge those who go far beyond what management expects through some form of recognition. I've since left that organisation, and funny enough, under 3 months everything has not only gone backwards but worse than before I started.
Was I offered a job? yes, I told them that they never took the time to give me due respect when I was there, buggered if I was going to bend over backwards for them now!
I think there's also an experience bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we have a LOT more people in middle-class office jobs. They don't have to pull double-shifts to get their kids into college. And their kids don't have to work their asses off for it - they can just get financial aid and student loans, WITHOUT having to join the army for 6 years. Yeah, there are still kids out there who work their asses off to get into and through school, but they're in the minority.
30 years ago most kids who graduated college were thankful they didn't have grease under their fingernails when they came home from work like their parents did. Nowadays, more of the kids who graduate college are from families who never had to worry about anything. If your parents always had enough money, why wouldn't you?
Re:I think there's also an experience bias. (Score:5, Interesting)
So when it comes around for performance reviews a year later, everyone looks back at what they've gone through, and realized that their time is being wasted. Too many meetings, too much cost micromanagement, over goals that they simply don't care about. And so new hires are now looking elsewhere, for some place where their work might matter to people they meet around town. Employers might talk about managing unreasonable expectations, but I've seen many dog and pony shows telling potential software engineers that they have great retention rates, they have great benefits, but when you talk to friends who took the job there, it's radically different than the people they trotted out to tell you about the Corporate Experience.
Basically, stop telling me you have a great workplace while I overhear two people who interned there talking about working 45 hour weeks on a project that wound up getting canned.
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There's more to it than that. Someone just out of college may say, regarding his first 2-3 jobs, "This sucks! I'm not getting the {respect | money | office | projects} I deserve! F*** this. Bye." But that person mistakenly thinks that he's getting a worse-than-standard deal. So out of ignorance, he leaves a perfectly good job, chasing the mythical perfect job.
It's that pointless churn that I think employers might reasonab
They've been promised the world (Score:5, Insightful)
College is your ticket out of the ghetto, means a higher income, better work conditions, more freedom, more control over your career, more respect, blah, blah, blah. It's true in a way, but the way a university education is described is often as the opposite of blue-collar work. That is to say that many kids are told (I know I was, all the way up through the end of undergrad) that I was going to college to avoid certain things:
- Being poor
- Having to get paid for what I "do" rather than what I "think"
- Being stuck in a "dead-end job"
- Having to "flip burgers," "answer phones," "make copies," or other "menial labor" work
- Low pay (this is a biggy, and you hear it over and over and over)
Well... all of these things are exactly what you confront when you finish your bachelor's degree. I know it was a tremendous shock to me after having been goaded on for years to get good grades in high school, then to go to college, then to hang in there—goaded using all of these reasons for sticking with it—only to find out that college doesn't provide you with wealth, the ability to get paid for what you think, a way to avoid dead-end jobs, having to start at the absolute entry level, or getting paid nothing for all of the above... The only way up the career ladder is to climb it, from the bottom.
It's the "all kids must go to college" culture that we have—we even direct kids away from the things they're interested in in many cases using these kinds of arguments (which are really veiled threats in a way of what consequences await them if they don't go to college) and then they graduate expecting exactly the benefits that have been used as selling points for all these years.
I can completely empathize. It took me a good five years to come to terms with the fact that I'd essentially been had and would now need to choose between going out and starting up the career ladder as if I'd just graduated high school with essentially no advantage, or going to grad school on the other hand (i.e. school for many more years and at great expense) to gain at least some measurable advantage for myself with all the hard work I'd done.
I chose the latter, but I often reflect on the fact that I could easily have chosen the former as well... there was certainly a point in my life where it could have gone either way.
Re:They've been promised the world (Score:5, Funny)
- Having to get paid for what I "do" rather than what I "think"
- Being stuck in a "dead-end job"
- Having to "flip burgers," "answer phones," "make copies," or other "menial labor" work
- Low pay (this is a biggy, and you hear it over and over and over)
Sounds exactly like grad school.
Re:They've been promised the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I don't think this contradicts your point, but it may explain it. I think people may have mistaken the self selection in the last generation for some magical property endowed by the act of going to college. But I will contradict you enough to say that SOME new college graduates do find that those expectations are met. If you're at the top of your class, intelligent, and actually good at what you do, you're never not wanted. It may take a bit of legwork to find someone who's willing to pay for that, but they're always out there, because a lot of people are really really bad at what they do.
Re:They've been promised the world (Score:5, Interesting)
I think for undergrads at the top of their class in NYC or DC there is always something to do. For undergrads at the top of their class in New Mexico or Montana or Wyoming or Utah this may not be the case, especially for undergrads in very clearly "academic" fields like the humanities or the social sciences.
It's yet another thing we should probably be warning kids about: "You realize that if you get a college degree and want it to help your career, it basically means moving to one coast or the other for at least a decade or so, right?"
why do you want that degree? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I asked him for his opinion, he said "Why do you want it?". Money wise I'm making what college grads with Masters or PhD's made and he made the point that at my age, 35 that it was probably more headache than worth it..UNLESS my goal was to learn something rather than just to have the title "PhD" after my name. You don't have to have a PhD to do research, but having one will open some doors that otherwise would be harder to open (but not impossible).
The problem is that many college students see college as a way to make more MONEY first and the love of learning about something SECOND (if at all). From their perspective college is something to be endured like a bad trip to the dentist and if they can make it through it the pot of gold waits at the other end. This is wrong! College is not supposed to be a stamp on a form you get so you qualify for an expensive car, house and trophy wife.
If that is what your expectations are, then you should drop out of college NOW. You can make GOOD money, MORE money than many white collar college requirement jobs. Jobs like electrician, plumber, AC repair and believe me NOBODY looks down on the good plumber who has a BIG freaking house and expensive sports car.
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Any job that requires anything more than proof that you went to school after you've been out of it for more than 2 years is a job not worth interviewing for. The only thing that matters is practical experience. If candidate A has a 4.0 GPA in computer science and no experience and candidate B has a 2.8 in computer science and 2 years of practical experience in the workplace, candidate B wins every f'n time in any environment where common sense counts.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of my peers expect to graduate college and start off on the same level their parents are (who have worked for 30 years). I see this both in all my peers, from the construction workers to the computer scientists. I don't believe it is unique in I.T.
Now I've been downmodded by the rah-rah business crowd for expressing these views before so fuck you in advance -- the man who said "the business of America is business" should be smacked. I'm traditional when it comes to these things: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. There you go. Nobody says you're going to get what you want wrapped up with a red bow and sitting on a silver platter, but if you want it you can get in on the chase.
What's more, no organization exists in a vacuum. Business exists in an ecosystem, the same as farmers and fishermen. You abuse the ecosystem that supports you, you suffer the consequences. A prudent farmer knows when to sow his fields and when to leave them fallow. Fishermen know if they take too much, the fisheries will collapse. The same holds true for the artificial ecosystems of American industry. The leaders these days are not satisfied with sustainable profits, they want to clearcut the forest and to hell with leaving anything for the next guy.
You want to know why people feel discouraged? It's because employers demand as much labor as possible and tell their employees that they're lucky to even have jobs. Hard work is seldom rewarded. And in today's economy it's a cycle of shifting jobs and unsteady employment. There used to be a time when workers could count on a lifetime of working for a single company and a pension upon retirement. We're paying into social security now with no hope of ever seeing any of it. I'm 30 and I know I won't get any. Employers are getting out of the benefits business, cutting down on health care with pensions becoming a thing of the past. Because turnover is so rapid, it's hard to accrue any seniority in a company and the ageism curse is looking to bite us in the ass as we approach middle-age.
Real wages are dropping, the government is lying about inflation, and parents today will be the first in the history of this country who cannot collectively count on their children being better off than they. With all these problems facing us, the presidential horse race is still about foo-foo bullshit issues. The media concentrates on superficial banalities and we continue on course straight into the shoals.
So, what's there to be positive about?
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
I would clear out a large (or medium sized, the LCD monitor won't take up much space) broom closet for an IT worker that is expected to produce working code, even if it is just maintenance scripts.)
If interruptions do not cause you to be an order of magnitude less efficient than you can happily do with out an office, many top producing sales people prefer not to have an office, or if they do have one they want a fishbowl (glass walls to the hallway).
I don't get this idea of hiring people and then not giving the an environment that the can do the job you are paying good money for.
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Part of it is because a lot of managers, HR people, and furniture police don't understand what people writing code actually need. All they see are a bunch of people typing all day, and typists don't need offices, privacy, quiet, etc. They just need a desk and a computer, so that must be all that anyone who just types all day needs.
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I was on Helldesk for the last 8 months, and I've observed that one of the guy that I work closely with would routinely put on his headphones if he need to work on something with some concentration
Of course, even that doesn't work well - see the book Peopleware, for example. Listening to music tends to harm your ability to concentrate. I like to listen to music while working, but I have also found that if I really need to concentrate, I turn it off.
This is assuming your co-worker actually listened to music, and didn't just use headphones as a social mechanism (i.e. wasn't actually listening to anything).
Anyway, all the people saying nobody needs an office should read Peopleware. They did the
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the reason is plain management stupidity, that wants to be cheap and has to have something over the peons they manage just to show they are above them.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
wow, really nice to hear that we are all the same and there is absolutely no individual variation for, say, folks like some I know who thrive in an open space environments, and folks like me who are 1000% more productive in an office with a window and a closed door.
Also according to the same yardstick we could also all live chained to our desks 24/7, we'd soon learn to tune out everything else and attend to what's relevant, like somebody handing out some bread & water, or somebody else whipping us if we don't produce enough LoC during the 16 hour workday.
Just because humans can adapt to abysmal environments it doesn't mean that we should be made to.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that if, say, one has a job where you have to be on the phone an hour a day, the best way to operate is to always have the receiver at your ear and ignore it till it mentions your name.
No sir, the "communication" point is just nonsense. If you want to make a point, talk about "socializing", or, since there is no money in that, use the magic "team work". This will work much better for you, as at the same time, without name calling, you portrait your introvert counterpart as unsocial or not a team worker, which only makes you look better!
Logic dictates that "concentration" workers should have offices. Communication jobs, like many of the management or HR, could use the open floor plan. The only reasons it's the opposite are status and finance. In my experience the second reason is most often a case of "penny wise, pound stupid", although one can argue that if the work is not rocket science and if you get a team of junior extrovert monkeys and it works for them on an open plan, it works for the company and it's cheaper.
Re:Many managers are saddened they actually have t (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, people who have a business need to shut out the world every now and then and concentrate, or people who have a business need to work with expensive or confidential stuff which they don't want to trust to a filing cabinet lock, etc.
Collaboration is a really nice sounding word, but ultimately collaboration, distraction, and gossip are just different products of the exact same thing.
Re:Unionize! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe because unions only protect the weak and those who can't negotiate good employment on their own right? Yep, that's it. Some of us, on the other hand, are actually skilled enough to get a job at a firm that cares about their employees, treats them well, pays them well, and recognizes their value, oh and doesn't make them work 60 hour weeks, let alone 70 hour weeks. And go figure, I work on Wall Street.
Re:Unionize! (Score:4, Informative)
Unions are a pyramid scheme. It might work out great for the first few people on board, but it puts the company at a competitive disadvantage which in the long run will result in fewer jobs.
You can't get something for nothing.
No age discrimination! (Score:5, Funny)
Ouch, I think I hurt my back laughing...
Re:No age discrimination! (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is to use their intelligence; not ignore it. They appreciate it and the job gets done. Most managers I've dealt with can't get around the not telling subordinates what to do. Sad.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:No age discrimination! (Score:5, Insightful)
More *educated* to be sure, but not necessarily more intelligent. The two are not always related.
I have fixed and re-written many a PhD's overly-complex and/or poorly-written code using only my little BSCS (and 20+ years experience). In fact, I would hazard a guess that experience almost always trumps education - something many of the fresh-from-school don't grasp.
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As an academic I hope, for my own sake, that the quality of a code doesn't represent the intelligence of the one who wrote it, but more the lack of proper training in writing proper code. A lot of academic software is meant to solve one specific problem and then forget about it. At some point someone discovers that with a bit of rewriting an existing code can be re-used for another project, and over a few years you have yourself a 'software
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But also, a lot of PhD work does count as experience. Quite often, it is everyday work, not study.
Sometimes it is not being spoiled.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, maybe that is just working for the State is not very well paying, but it is a problem affecting thousands of employees not just the younger ones. I guess when it comes down to it though, people need to get off their tails and apply for other jobs that pay more if we want to leave. The problem is often that you like the area you are living in, just not the pay rate you are making working there...
Re:Sometimes it is not being spoiled.. (Score:5, Informative)
This is just my two cents working at IT companies who do work for government agencies and in my experience interfacing with their staff.
Re:Sometimes it is not being spoiled.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The review stuff you're right, you basically have to be grossly incompetent to get fired, but at the same time even if you are the best IT worker ever you will NEVER get a pay raise from a performance review which sucks. There is zero incentive to do more work than the guy next to you because the slacker gets the same raise as you at performance review time - NOTHING. And, when you do get a raise it is state-wide and everyone gets it equally so how hard you worked doesn't matter. That is a bit depressing..
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Raises through obtaining skillset / marketabilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Should they counter (it should be for more, not just matching), you could go to the company wanting to hire you and ask for a matching rate for what your existing employer is willing to go up to (don't ask for more than your current employer offered, that sounds greedy and doesn't leave much room for growth if you do jump ship).
Don't forget to be sure of perks, number of paid holidays/vacation days, bonuses, like healthcare, cell phone, paid home internet, company laptop, company car, etc. You might have those now, but not if you leave.
I've traded employers twice like this. As I didn't burn any bridges, I actually work for my first real major employer again, and each time I've traded up in position, title, and of course compensation.
Well yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, I expect to be put in charge! I'm just out of college! I know EVERYTHING!!!
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Office? You _must_ be new here. (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe the only time I've actually seen non-management tech workers get a private office was the result of a fluke. Large company (several thousand employees) buys remains of relatively small company (few hundred) with a long lease on half of a very roomy building with lots of small individual offices, and underutilizes the space. As a result, the only people in the largely-desolate cube farms were temporary workers. Everyone making more than, say, $35k, got an office.
Non-news (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? If supply for something is less than the demand, of course prices will go up.
If a younger person wants, say, $60K for an entry level job and has negotiation power (i.e. another company that pays it), then that is the entry-level payment and it means that you're paying less than what they deserve to your existing employees.
This is one of the content-free articles.
I don't think an office is unreasonable for anyone. The industry took away employee's rights one by one when there was ample supply. Now it's drying up and the workforce is asking for what belonged to them.
If managers stopped "managing" people like they are a herd and became a part of their team, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to hold on to employees as long as the pay is competitive.
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Re:Non-news (Score:4, Insightful)
If an employee's salary demands exceed the profit my company can generate from the goods, then regardless of what other companies are paying, I cannot sustain that salary level. That either means my company is inefficient, or selling the goods at below market value, or that other factors (such as a surplus of VC money for startups) is allowing the other company to pay more to produce the same goods.
There is also the chance that the employee wasn't actually very good, or was difficult to manage. Either of those cases have caused me to pass on a demand, despite putting me in a situation where I had to replace the employee because they walked.
Those factors (and more) can take the negotiation out of the realm of straight supply and demand.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If an employee's salary demands exceed the profit my company can generate from the goods, then regardless of what other companies are paying, I cannot sustain that salary level.
Sure. But this is all very tangential to the article's talk of "unrealistic salary demands from young employees"; If a young employee wants 60k to stay with you because competitor XYZ is offering that, then his demands are not unrealistic. Rather, your belief that you can employee people of his calibre for whatever sub-60K amount you want to pay is unreasonable.
It ain't all about money (Score:3, Insightful)
The real key though is to migrate the desire of the younger guys from tearing apart every new technology to the skillset of an established professional. It might be somewhat less exciting but in the end it is what customers want and what pays the bills. As your guys/gals get older and move along in life a polished skillset pays the best.
Oh, and if you're really smart, you'll achieve those long view items w/o crushing that natural curiosity out of your folks. That is, after all, what makes all of this exciting.
Could be it more than just pay (Score:5, Interesting)
* Could be that 5-10 years later the market has changed so dramatically that it's unusual to even find a company with an "IT department" anymore. It's all been outsourced.
* Could be that most IT workers are tired of seeing executives get 20% raises and stock options year after year while we get flat 3% annual - or no raises at all.
* Could be that with all this automation we're still checking our Blackberries at 3 AM and rebooting servers. We're always on call (like doctors) but we don't paid like them.
* Could be that the "fun" of this industry left long ago. It's no longer hacking away at circuit boards. It's watching server farms blink.
* You want to know why employers are having a touch time retaining us? Could be that we're smart enough to realize the "traditional" career of an IT professional is all but gone and the only real career paths left are through management (hence folks skipping the certifications and going for the MBAs). Alternatively, consulting still proves lucrative. But to chide us because we know that the "IT professional" career is dying is silly.
Ask for too much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seen it first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the younger programmers really don't want to work in an inflexible office environment. Absenteeism is pretty high where I am now, and that's a contract that pays pretty well. And they want their web mail, IM's and iPhones. Cut off internet services they want and you'll lose them.
They don't do office hours, don't like cubicles and want their toys. But if you can work with them on those issues, they are capable of producing some amazing work. The best project I ever worked we set up an office in the corner of a warehouse, walled it off with fence panels and white boards, collected old furniture and used shelf grates for desks. We had a basketball hoop, frig, microwave, satellite TV and our own DSL. Plus we'd stay late and play games after hours. No one quit on that project and we worked some long hours toward the end.
You don't really have a lot of options. You can deal with them or outsource to someplace that doesn't speak English as a native language and works in an office that's open in what's the middle of the night for you. They're not going to work in a cubicle so just deal with it and adapt. You're better off giving them an empty, unfinished room and give them money to punk it out to their own taste.
Lack of knowledge (Score:5, Insightful)
Same as it ever was (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously...the media trots out this "Younger generation wants more" story every 5-10 years. They certainly did twenty years ago, when I was one of those hard-to-please kids.
Nothing's changed. Employers pay crap wages at the entry level, and treat young kids like crap. Said young kids then hop jobs until they find something better. Same as it ever was. When I was that age, I quickly found that without experience, jobs I could get were pretty sucky. I also soon found that it was much easier to get a raise by job-hoping. So I spent the first ten years of my career moving around until I got the experience to get a good job.
The younger generation isn't any different. It's always like this, because entry level jobs tend to be the suckiest and companies that employ lots of entry level coders also tend to be the suckiest. If a company doesn't like their people switching jobs, they should pay more, and stop treating them like crap. Of course, so companies *do* do that. They're the ones people job hop to and then stop.
Yes! Yes! To Obi-Wan you listen! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the mid-1960s my father worked for a contractor on the Apollo space program. Realizing that once the moon rocket design was substantially complete, engineers would be superfluous (a Briton would say redundant), in 1968 he transfered, within his company, out of the space program to a group in another state designing time-shared mainframes for business applications. It was the best decision of his career, but one that was very controversial at the time ("you're leaving the space program?!?").
I will carry the memory of the period that followed to my grave. Some time after the transfer, the NASA cuts began, and we started getting phone calls (at home!) from my father's former coworkers, looking for work -- any work, any where, in any field. More than 20,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians in the state of Florida alone -- and probably 100,000 or more around the country -- were laid of as fast as the mimeograph machines could reproduce the pink slips. Engineers were driving taxis and bagging groceries in the towns around the Kennedy Space Center.
The ultimate was when my father returned to the dinner table from another call to announce that the caller had been his former boss's boss's boss, looking for any work -- even a drafting position (six levels down the corporate ladder, and one that did not require a college degree). Like all the other callers, he had a wife, x young children, and a mortgage to support. (Homes were essentially unsellable in the areas around the major contractors' plants; the mortgages were greater than their market value, so foreclosures were the norm.) I hope I have sufficiently expressed the desperate nature of the situation.
And yet...
No university dropped its engineering program; freshout engineering graduates appeared, just as they always had, at the end of every semester. And all of them needed jobs. Entry-level jobs. All of these people entered school at the height of the space program, only to find when they graduated that the job market was considerably more difficult than they had expected. Having a difficult entry-level job market is not a new thing.
One of the pleasures of age is that one sees the world as dynamic, rather than static. A young person sees a constant world, for it's the only one he's ever known. With age, however, one sees things change, and can evaluate, say, the first derivative of the world function. With greater age, one can see the rate of change change, and appreciate the second derivative; at that point, one can begin modeling the dynamics of social structures.
The shortage of engineers in the 1960s led to the glut of engineers in the 1970s. However, because of the 4- to 6-year delay between entering and completing engineering school, the system is not necessarily stable; the glut of the 1970s led to such an engineering shortage by the early 1980s that separate, higher, salary ladders were established at major corporations for entry-level engineers (creating salary compression that demotivated experienced engineers, but that's a different thread). The system continues to oscillate today; the point is, it's oscillating through values we've seen before.
Retaining Employees (Score:3, Interesting)
I was hired in December of 2006 to follow a software development plan to implement a visualization suite which allowed building developers to visualize housing before construction to show potential buyers, city planners, etc..
The software development was in Microsoft Visual C++ 2003 using OpenSceneGraph, XML based configuration and skinning, used OpenThreads and had TCP based network sessions for live or pre-recorded guided tours.
When I was hired, I replaced an intermediate software developer that could no longer get along with the director (immediate supervisor). There was a senior programmer above me but he left by mid-January of 2007, but before he did I was told the development team was going to be expanded to 3 full time developers. We had a graphics artist who used tools like 3D Studio Max to visualize the buildings from architectural blue-prints (or floor plans if you prefer).
Just after the senior programmer left, I started going through all of the modules to get an idea of what would need to be done to prepare the rendering engine for the development plan which had been presented to me. I found that whenever a HUD button was being pressed a new thread was being launched. In fact if you pressed the 'move forward' button twice quickly, the camera would jump back and forth between two positions because two threads were being launched without mutexes or any other safe-guard. I also noticed that nearly all class data members were public and being affected from other classes. And finally that the event processor had code that depended on the event be associated to a HUD button.
So I made recommendations to decouple the modules, fix the event model & processor as well as eliminate the excessive threading which was not making things faster as the unexperienced multi-threading programmer who implemented them had obviously assumed.
When I presented these recommendations to the director he laughed in my face and began yelling at me when I tried to explain why these changes would be necessary. So I backed off after the president of the company heard us out and decided to back the director who had been there longer than I.
At the beginning of April I was falling behind the schedule because of problems directly associated to the event model where the software development plan called for events to be generated by the camera walking through tagged plains. As mentioned, the event processor contained code which read fields from a HUD button which had to be present, so I was trying to emulate a button's state but the events would run in a continuous loop. While struggling with emulating the button states properly there was construction crew in our new office building during the day and my director was having (business?) friends in the office in the evening to drink wine and chat within earshot of my cubicle.
In my last few days of my employment, in early April of 2007 I started going into the office in the late afternoon to ensure at least 4 hours of my 8 hour shift had no distractions since my employers who told me when I was hired that my hours of work were flexible as long as they amounted to 8 hours a day. They decided to fire me without telling me why, though I expect it had to do with my decision to go in during the evening to avoid the distractions during the day. Up until that point I had never handed in any work late. Get this, they still had not hired any other developer, so I was the only programmer left when they terminated my employment.
I have been unemployed since April 2007 (we're now in January of 2008) despite looking for work at junior and intermediate levels, software development, testing, maintenance, help desk support, etc, etc..
In my years of IT work I've found management to be incompetant, not at technical skills but soft skills. It sounds as though the new generation of IT workers have been informed of what kind of crap happens in thes
Supply And Demand 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
If there's more demand for workers than there is supply, those who're around can make more and more demands while companies wishing to hire them can either pay that or go out of business for lack of product. Again, over time, salaries and conditions will change, in this case improving, until equilibrium is reached due to increased supply (high salaries attract more people to the field) and reduced demand (companies can no longer make a profit at those costs and stop trying).
Either way, though not a static equilibrium, basic supply and demand implies that salaries will generally regulate relative to the value society places on them.
What doesn't make sense, is the argument, "Both sides need to meet in the middle!" If the young coders are asking too much, ignore them, they'll get hungry and come begging. If the young coders are actually asking a totally reasonable price, given how in demand their jobs are, what's the problem?
And that, to me, is really the crux of this: It sounds more like bitching that, "It wasn't like that in my day! We were lucky to get paid six pence a week to write COBOL!" So what if it was? So what if you don't like how in favor of the young coders the market is these days? If it's such an issue, don't hire them. If you want them badly enough that you are willing to pay what they demand, don't have your actions show that willingness then bitch about that reality.
The reverse is also true: If you're a coder and you think you're entitled to more than you're getting, you need to ask yourself why you're not getting it. Think you deserve an office, a car, expense accounts, 401ks and stock but you're not getting it? Well, if you merit it, why are you sitting here bitching about it rather than in the next job that'll apparently willingly reward you for it?
It's a free country. Employers can [pretty much] employ at will. Employees can [pretty much] be employed at will. That's a pretty good sign supply and demand is allowed to work and everyone's getting roughly what they should get. Look at how fast the dotcom boom came (maybe two years) and how fast it went (six months) - that's another great sign the market regulates pretty quickly. Don't like it? Wait six months. The whining about how things should be is just that - whining.
Disillusionment (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't till later on in my career I learned some humility and became easier to work with, and that's when the bucks started to roll in. When my can-do attitude started to shed the rampant contrarian in me. I see a lot of kids younger than me that go through this - I recently tried to give some budding superstars inside and outside my company some coaching in this regard; however, they didn't become open till they lost their jobs. It seems that this is a lesson the young continue to need to learn, and my dad had hinted to me that this would be my struggle with others as he saw me grow up to be a smart alecky know it all.
So if there's one thing I can recommend to the under 25 crowd, it's this: a little humility and willingness to learn from others goes a long way. You'll find that people that don't always have all the top technical answers at their disposal are useful in other ways: managing chemistry with team members, negotiating with clients, directing personnel in certain directions and managing crisis before they get out of control.
Don't worry we'll crush your souls (Score:4, Insightful)
So get out, Make the Suits happy. There is no such thing as retention. Retention is bullshit. You leave and they'll replace you, or not, with a robot or a monkey and a robot.
NO Pension, Rising Healthcare, Falling Dollar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Widely needed rare skills are worth paying for (Score:4, Insightful)
IT workers are needed everywhere. IT workers know this.
Managers have managed to keep IT salaries low due to downward pressure on wages from immigrants and offshoring, but these pressures are temporary. As developing countries develop their own IT infrastructures, the worldwide demand will continue to outgrow the worldwide supply, and this will eventually be felt at the local level.
When a worker manages a system which costs an employer oodles of dollars per day of downtime, but is paid peanuts, the worker knows that the worker is giving more value to the employer than the worker is being paid for.
It is time for an upward market adjustment. The IT workers know this. The employers are trying to avoid it, but in time the difficulty hiring and retaining good IT workers will force management to acknowledge it.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe someone will come up with a great technology that allows managers to get the benefits of technology without the headaches of IT workers. However, if history is any indicator, most inventions that hold that sort of promise at the beginning (SQL, the GUI, the personal computer, automatic program generators (remember The Last One?), the web, and so on) usually end up creating a requirement for more IT workers than before.
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Perhaps the "entry level" rate for whatever position they're talking about is not in sync with the "market rate". Supply and demand affects the job market too.
Re:Spoiled (Score:5, Insightful)
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But don't let me ruin your feeling of smug superiority
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Re:Spoiled (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement captures the problem beautifully. The world will be yours one day, want it or not. And if you're a bunch of checked-out WOW playing crybabies it isn't going to be much of a world. Nobody gives anybody anything worth having in this life. You get it by earning it. And if you don't give a shit now, you certainly aren't going to give a shit when the next generation is crying that you don't do enough for them.
I advise you to get your ass off your shoulders and act responsible first. You'll become elite within your generation.
-Peter
Re:Spoiled (Score:5, Insightful)
No one was enthusiastic in the slightest, and it wasn't because we were in a new company. No, we weren't pepped by his speech because it was clear to us that there was no advantage to us other than perhaps some prestige to being number one. All we would be doing is earning him and the stockholders more money.
We're told that we have to earn our place in society, but from many of our perspectives, there really isn't anything *worth* earning. What is the very best that most of us can hope for? A middle class position in an ever poverty-increasing society due to the tremendous shift of wealth towards a small number of businessmen? A marriage where we both work long hours in order to fatten a tiny number of people's pockets, coming home so exhausted that we're barely able to tend to the children's needs and much less to each other's, so we compensate ourselves by the accumulation of possessions? Some world we've been offered. I'm not sure that it will be worse off if we're a bunch of WOW playing crybaby slackers.
I'm frustrated that despite all of human innovation and technological advancements, I have to kowtow to an alarm clock that rings at 6:30 AM. Where are the promises that technology was supposed to reduce working hours and make our lives more pleasant? No, we're forced to work harder to compete with other organizations who also suffer the same fate as our own. I think many of us have realized just how much society *has* lied to us, about college, technology, etc. and we've grown apathetic and tired of the empty promises. I'd rather be a relatively poor slacker with time to myself to do what I want and to enjoy my family than a successful developer whose time is consumed with largely meaningless pursuits and whose life is filled with possessions.
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MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is you.
If you work for the #2 company, that wants to be the #1 company, and they're going to compensate you the same whether the company is #1 or #2, QUIT!
Nobody has to slave for a company to make the stockholders more money. Get off your ass and get a job at the #1 company, that's probably #1 because it rewards their employees. Or start your own company.
Where are the promises that technology was supposed to reduce working hours and make our lives more pleasant?
They're here! Move to BFE Nebraska, get yourself a high speed internet connection, and work from home 20 hours a week. You'll make more than enough to cover your needs, and probably have a nifty TV and computer to boot. Glamorous? No, but not possible in 1950 either.
But even working full time, nobody is making you get up to your alarm clock at 6:30 every morning except you - because you're lazy. You have to wake up at 6:30 every morning because you want a job where somebody else guarantees you money every other friday, assigns you what to do every day, and keeps paying you as long as you don't fuck up too bad. THAT's why you get up at 6:30 in the morning.
I'd rather be a relatively poor slacker with time to myself to do what I want and to enjoy my family than a successful developer whose time is consumed with largely meaningless pursuits and whose life is filled with possessions.
You ever watching TV and they have those commercials for tech schools that teach auto repair? Sign up. Seriously. Work 9-5, make enough money to support the family and BBQ every weekend if you want to. Oh, and as a mechanic, you get paid by the job, so the better you are, the more money you get.
Nobody promised you something for nothing. The problem is that if you behave like all the other people who just want to show up for a paycheck, you'll be treated like all the other people who want to show up for a paycheck. You just get more 0's on your check for going to college.
Re:Spoiled (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to buy the class warfare line, hook line and sinker, there. The prosperity pie isn't some fixed size, with the slices being re-arranged. Any increase in your standard of living is a result of your producing it. Do you REALLY think that you're not better off than someone 20 years ago, doing roughly the same amount of work with the same overall level of dedication and relative knowledge about a given area of work? What are you spending your money on? Video games, instant access to information from all over the world, three televisions, a new web-enabled cell phone every 18 months, fresh vegetables from all over the world at your finger tips year round...? The averge middle class person's standard of living HAS improved, dramatically. You're using the wrong measurements.
From the Washington Post the other day: Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 - because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."
Try actually living with the same creature comforts, vehicles, entertainment, and quality of food and medical care that our parents and grandparents did just a few decades ago. You live like a king.
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Once upon a time, being poor meant cabbage soup for dinner, outside toilets, washing clothes by hand, and smashing up the furniture to burn during winter just to keep yourself alive. But yeah, keep telling yourself the poor are getting poorer.
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I'm frustrated that despite all of human innovation and technological advancements, I have to kowtow to an alarm clock that rings at 6:30 AM. Where are the promises that technology was supposed to reduce working hours and make our lives more pleasant?
We have that technology. The amount of work required for survival is much less than it used to be. I live in Melbourne, Australia and I can't easily survive and live a good life on 2 days of work a week. That would have been much more difficult 50 years ago.
But most people don't want to just survive. Most people want a big screen TV, a car, a large house, an Ipod, a laptop, a mobile phone, eatting out every night, support five children and go to expensive concerts and sporting events.
The techolo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks to technology, you no longer have to get up at 4am and walk 10 miles to work 14 hours down a mine. I think your post just sums up how spoilt today's generation is:
"Woe is me, I have to drive to work in an air conditioned car, sit down for 8 hours doing horrible exhausting typing, then go home to my leather sofa and big-screen TV, never
Your innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
If young people do develop a sense of responsibility, they are still not going to take jobs. They are going to take over.
So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren't yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff. You will know when you are up to the task, because you will take over. Until then, you are just flapping your lips. And no, you aren't worth the same amount of money as someone that has been doing the job for 20 years. In all likelihood, if you disappeared, they would hardly notice - as a green kid, the company is investing in you - you likely add very little value, so you are being payed more than they are able to extract in value from your labor. You are likely being trained, groomed and given experience in the hopes that your value will eventually increase past the point where their investment is, making you a profitable employee to have on board. If the 20 year veteran disappeared, the lights wouldn't turn on, the database would stop working, nobody would be able to get a new release out, it would start raining blood, cats and dogs would be living together and the company would go into crisis mood. But you wouldn't know about that, because you haven't experienced it...
Re:Your innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
It must be nice to believe that such actions will be rewarded. From my experience the rewards will go to those who develop their skills in politicking rather than their technical skills. The only reward for developing one's technical skills is the self induced pleasure of mastering something difficult. If one has that, then it provides it's own motivation. If one doesn't
Well, I can afford to be sanguine about this. I got in at the early stage, parlayed technical skills into a durable job, and was able to take an early retirement when I got disgusted with the MS EULA. But seriously, my choices were irrational. I knew bloody well that technical skills might keep me in my job, but they wouldn't earn a promotion. And I got enough pleasure out of technical mastery that I was willing to accept the costs. But don't lie to people. Technical skills are only enough to keep your job, not enough to earn much in the way of promotions. (I would have been a lousy manager, though. Managing people isn't something that grabs my attention.)
Perhaps other places of employment are different. But I doubt it. (OTOH, I'll admit that I took the first job that I came to out of college and stuck to it like a burr. So all I know about other places is what I had learned in summer jobs. I think I lucked out...but if I'd been ambitious, or less technically introverted, I'd have left quickly.)
Re:Your innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
And as one of the older people, all I can say here is that it's our own damned fault. These kids are living in the world we built for them with the expectations we gave them. But the expectations and the world in question aren't those of what we told them. No, they've seen their parents (my generation) work their asses off, and as a result be forced to be parents in absentia, without anything more to show for it in the end than their grandparents (my generation's parents) had. They've heard their parents and their peers' parents talk about how upper management and the executives have been making millions while working a few hours a day, while the parents in question worked 16+ hours a day for months-long stretches, and after doing all that had to suffer through the indignity and financial burden of "downsizing", "rightsizing", and whatever else the management buzzword of the day was. All the while that same management got unprecedented bonuses for "cutting costs".
The people of my generation were constantly told by our parents that if we worked hard, we would be able to do better than they did. That turned out to be true for some of us (some of us got lucky in the dotbomb, for instance), but not nearly enough of us. The proof that we were lied to is that the middle class is, and has been, shrinking, while the distribution of wealth grows ever more topheavy. That has consequences. This is one of them.
The people coming into the workforce aren't stupid. They're being asked to do the same shit that their parents were asked to do. But unlike their parents, they know what will happen if they walk that same path, because they've seen it happen to their parents. And they're apparently not having any of it.
Good for them.
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I've got a permanent scar on my right major finger as a reminder of the grunt work I did as a rite of passage and here I present it to you.
I got it while working at gas stations cleaning the shit in toilets, facing product, cleaning pumps, shovelling snow and salting ice, mopping slush when I eventually became assitant manager, doing the paperwork, preparing bank deposits (you can imagine the cash totals I'm sure) and earning trust. In my spare time I learn
Re:Pay your dues (Score:4, Insightful)
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By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the init
Re:Not completely unbiased.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If one is entry level in a field where a degree is now required, (such as IT), one is entitled to entry level pay and benefits, regardless of what one's parents generation received when they entered the field with its requirements at that time. If one thinks one is underpaid, one has the option of obtaining employment elsewhere. If all employers are underpaying, then one has misjudged one's market value.
Re:Not completely unbiased.. (Score:5, Funny)
One might think one would choose one's words more considerately for other ones when reading one's posts posted from one's computer.
Re:Not completely unbiased.. (Score:5, Funny)
Did you read the article (Score:3, Informative)
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If one thinks one is underpaid, one has the option of obtaining employment elsewhere. If all employers are underpaying, then one has misjudged one's market value.
And if all employees think they are underpaid, then employers have misjudged their market value. That's what happens when you off-shore and H1B the shit out of previous generations working in the same market. The kids aren't stoopid, they see the risk they are taking by staying that profession and they expect to be compensated for it.
And if you're having trouble retaining staff... (Score:4, Insightful)
Conversely, employers having trouble retaining staff may well be underestimating their employees market value, and almost certainly made a utility misjudgment somewhere.
It's certainly possible to misjudge one's market value -- there's a good deal of misinformation out there, most accidental, some quite possibly purposeful, however, by those attempting to manipulate labor supply.
But consider this: entry level lawyers don't get paid what joe call center gets paid for his entry-level job. IT is, ostensibly anyway, a skilled and specialized field. There may not be arcane magic to every aspect of it, but experience and training count. Someone has to bear the cost for that training, and if employers want people who know their stuff and stick around, they'd best be prepared to pony up for it rather than trying to externalize that cost.
No, IT isn't as hard as a law degree, but it's not janitorial work either. And I have heard, with my own ears, management complaining about how hard it is to find workers who accept "entry level" -- sub $30k -- and wonder why there's such turnover among those employees they do manage to land. This while rewarding new management talent (with questionable record of delivering, other than being able to keep labor costs down) $20k raises.
The labor pool in IT, if it's actually shrinking at all, is shrinking for a reason and will continue to do so -- until it's opened to a pool of workers who consider prevailing compensation rewarding, or until the prevailing compensation rises.
Or, more cynically, until someone manages to convince enough people that IT is in fact such a rewarding occupation that they'll sink enough resources into training that they're in little position to do much else.
Re:Not completely unbiased.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're a "millenial" (what a stupid term) then, roughly speaking, it's me. Everyone I know in the technology arena has at least a bachelor's degree.
I just have a BS in Computer Science. My wife has an MBA, half of another Master's degree, and a BA with a double English/Math major. And don't tell me about student debt!
When I started working in technology 17 years ago, everyone at that company had at least a bachelor's, and most of them had an advanced degree, including some doctorates.
There's nothing special about this latest generation except being whiney spoiled brats. And get off my lawn, damnit.
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Re:Not completely unbiased.. (Score:5, Funny)
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My first few months out of college were rather somewhat unproductive since they felt it more important to take weeks of training on their various products and such. However, when I was able to be mentored with the usual work of the group it wasn't long before I noticed something...
"You mean whenever we start working on an issue we do these same series of steps on these same various servers in this particula
Re:Less benefits (Score:4, Funny)
I'll help you pack.