The Dead Sea Effect In the IT Workplace 396
Alien54 notes a blog posting by old hand Bruce F. Webster on the current state of affairs in hiring in IT, focusing on what he calls the Dead Sea Effect. "Many large IT shops... work like the Dead Sea. New hires are brought in as management deems it necessary. Their qualifications... will tend to vary quite a bit, depending upon current needs, employee departure, the personnel budget, and the general hiring ability of those doing the hiring. All things being equal, the general competency of the IT department should have roughly the same distribution as the incoming hires. Instead, what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave -- to evaporate, if you will. They are the ones least likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems that plague large organizations; they are also the ones most likely to have other opportunities that they can readily move to. What tends to remain behind is the 'residue' -- the least talented and effective IT engineers."
Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding all that in makes for a pretty restrictive job search, but even then it's not so hard.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Not every job has all or even most of those factors. But they can affect your willingness to put up with dross in the workplace.
Re:Travel (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I used to think. But in reality, when you travel for work, you get to see the inside of airplains, hotels, the client's office, and a taxi, and very little else. What you don't get to see a lot of is friends and family.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, when I used to do a lot of travel, it often went like this:
Wake up at 4:00 in the morning, leave at 4:30, spend an hour getting to the airport, (getting there the requisite hour before take-off), spend 2-1/2 to 3 hours on the plane, rent a car and drive an hour or so, spend 6 to 8 hours at the job site, usually on my feet, and often without a break (taking a break means a possibility of not finishing or missing my flight back), catching a flight back, arriving late evening, often getting home near midnight, then going in to work the next day at my regular time.
Even on longer trips where I actually got to see the place I went to, most of my "spare" time would be spent with clients, which was usually OK, often a chore, only occasionally fun.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the same reason why some people can't..or won't...relocate. Family can extend beyond the immediate family, and there are people who won't move to a strange city without family for support or while the kids are in
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
But, for the most part, yeah, you're right. The benefits of having programmers in the same time zone who speak the same language who you can go and talk to face to face outweighs the possible benefits.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then you just leave, and return from time to time to offer your services as an expert consultant. Because you know they'll need them.
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Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
We've seen a large chunk of our work go out, quality and timing suffer, and they're pushing to do it more because the costs are down, and of course there's going to be a blip during a change.
Our skill has nothing to do with it... it's the 6 levels of management between us and the "deciders"
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Catastrophic failures are up. Staff productivity is way down.
Combination of SOX, offshoring & out-hosting of our hardware.
When things do fail- there is an increasingly small staff (last time one guy worked 48 hours straight to save the company (multi-billion dollar co)). If he had told them to shine on each day after putting in a 10 hour day, the company would have lost millions. And yet... they are still probably considering continuing to outsource to the people who could do nothing
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
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We have the shell of a management group who's brilliant idea was to fire everyone and let them compete for their jobs. It's happened in the private sector, within our State Personnel rules, it's illegal.
End result: They lost, the figurehead was replaced,
Privatization (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the whole premise of privatization in government. The idea that an outside company can do the required job cheaper than in-house is a fallacy. And then they wonder where their budgets went at the end of the year. Mos
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Typically this is done to cut bodycount, but we're already down 10-15% due to retirement and staff leaving the state.
One of the new tenets is 'internal service providers.' A talented internal staff will _always be_ cheaper than outsourcing, as they know the envir
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting. Dell doesn't sound that bad then.
In fact Dell seems to be working fine if what you say is true.
If you're a manager, whether your staff like it or not, you get a lot more say. And your bosses aren't normally supposed to override your "say" until you screw up big enough, or are about to very badly hurt the company (otherwise what's the point of
Effective Management is Crucial (Score:3, Insightful)
But all consequences need to be managed properly. A demotion really needs to be well deserved. Incidents need to be documented, and people met with to discuss problems before issuing a demotion. But where it is warranted, do it. Where a firing is warranted, do
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
I work at a very large company, and have for a relatively long time by today's standards. I have seen it happen time and again. People who are very good at what they do are sometimes just working on the "wrong" project. Often it's projects, not people, who get offshored or outsourced.
Yes, I know I said I have been at my job for a while, but don't be so quick to judge. Some of us have a very cozy niche where we are given a lot of creative latitude, work with a great team, and get to do a lot of self-initiated stuff. As soon as that changes, I am SO done with this place. Or maybe I am being crazy, but the summary made me feel a little defensive.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
thats not a problem with outsourcing, that's a problem with your management. people keep confusing the 2. outsourcing is just another tool for a poor manager to make the wrong decision to use.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in the same boat as the grand parent. For the last 8 years I've been employed by one of the top 50 in the fortune 500. I'd say there is a lot of truth to the article.
So why have I stayed for 8 years? Because for the first 7 I had a very good manager. She shielded us from a lot of the corporate bullshit. Because of this she was able to hold together a group of fairly skilled people. I enjoyed working with them, and that's why I stayed so many years even with the ever increasing corporate stupidity. But, last year she pissed off someone higher on the corporate ladder (fighting for us). Our team was disbanded, and she was tricked into leading a group that had already been selected for outsourcing.
I should have quit then. But, one of my former teammates convinced me to join his team on another application (he's just a team lead, not true management). I've been regretting that decision ever since. The distribution of skills in the new application follows that described in the article, and there is little shielding from the corporate bullshit. I've spent a large part of the last 6 months trying to push through a small tool that took around a week to write. In my previous group, it would have been a small side project that would have been handled outside of the usual process (it's just a small tool to aid the test team). I've held on as long as I have because my old teammate is a good friend, and he was convinced he could change things.
But, there have been rumors flying around for a week that upper management is looking to replace our application (actually longer, but there's been more substance lately). And now I have a meeting request on my calendar from our manager with a subject so vague there can't be any doubt about it's purpose. That's it, I'm out. I have my resume open in another window, time to get back to work.
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But in general, I can't honestly say the summary is true. Because I've seen examples of talent moving on and dregs staying b
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To make it worse, while it can be argued that outsourcing IT abroad is not as cheap is it appears on paper, there is still downward pressure on wages/salaries because you have more local people pursuing a decreasing number of jobs.
In an analogy, it's like having a bunch of farmers, so some grea
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Webmasters don't make the money they used to. If you WERE a webmaster making 6 figures and now you're not, because it's become commodotized, then who do you have to blame?
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Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how good you are, you'll be outsourced. And you know why? Because this whole outsourcing is just a big scam. It's NOT about making things better; it's about managers PRETENDING they are doing something to justify their salaries, and an opportunity to get bonuses.
It's about avoidance of responsibility... (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's NOT about making things better..."
It's about non-technical managers outsourcing so that they can say that technical things are no longer part of their responsibility. It's about avoidance of responsibility, and has nothing to do with improving anything or cutting costs.
The manager who outsources can blame someone else when projects fail. If things get really bad, the manager just goes to another company.
Re:It's about avoidance of responsibility... (Score:4, Insightful)
Any arguments to the effect of "You have to stay relevant" or "The beset have nothing to worry about" mean nothing against the ability to say "Hey, let's just fire this crew and hire some cheaper guys tomorrow" with ZERO backlash.
The company I work for outsources some of its coding and I can assure you it is not about quality or speed.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
During that time period, I managed (and managed is just another word for led - we were all hands on) and trained 3 different teams in our IT group - server engineering, network engineering and one of our coding groups. I also worked two full time jobs for over a year in the company, starting a new division from scratch with only two other people to help. When the facilities department was gutted, I picked up the slack, spending nights going through facilities contracts with another IT director to save the company millions of dollars. All the while having the highest retention rate of any department in the company (we didn't have anybody leave the department for over 4 years).
But then management starting making even more brilliant decisions than usual. First they decided that with all the free time that IT had (first clue they were in fantasy land - they didn't even know were the IT offices were to have this discussion), we should be made into billable staff and start doing work for outside customers as well as our normal jobs. Then the company changed direction from commercial clients to government and started acquisitions. Which meant that we needed the person leading the IT department to come from a government contractor so the made the lead IT person from our first acquisitions (3 person IT department, 65 employees total) our CIO. That decision was rapidly followed by divesting the commercial entities. At this point I was among the longest serving employees in the company.
And then it happened. The last commercial division was sold, even though I was corporate I was included in the sale along with my senior server engineer and a senior support person. The new owners decided that outsourcing everything (and I mean everything - engineering, support, end user interaction, etc) to a datacenter was the way to go. For the 6 months that I worked for the new company I was basically tasked with how to migrate 400 people to a new network/domain/phone system. During that time I only dealt with consultants, never actually meeting my boss. Heck, I didn't even know who my boss was. As soon as I said something about what a mess the consultants were making to the head of IT of the acquiring company, I was terminated for failure to produce results (ie - I was termed because they didn't listen to me and continued to futz around with their $250/hr consultants who, for some reason, were unwilling to hurry up the transition). That was in November of last year.
Since then I've been unable to find equivalent work. I've now got my own startup going, but am still not making money. It's ugly out there for qualified people demanding a salary right now. Sure, I could pickup entry level positions somewhere, but those positions really don't pay the bills when you have a family with two very young children, housing prices that are so overinflated that people are burning them down so they don't have to pay their mortgages and gas prices that make it an extremely expensive proposition to commute any distance to work.
And I'm not looking for jobs in one of the "slow" markets, I'm in Seattle.
Don't be too cocky - I was and have now ended up at the bottom of the barrel believing that anything could happen to anyone.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Inexperience looks a lot like incompetence to employers - trust me, I am one, I talk to my peers all the time. I hire a considerable number of newbs and train them up, these other guys only want people with double digit years of experience to go along with the laundry list of skills (which my newb-hires also have).
The problem is, inexperienced people are the ones who become experienced people.
Offshoring is killing our ability to grow any highly competent workforce by eliminating all the entry level jobs - the jobs for newb hires that have all the appearance of incompetence due to their lack of experience.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
When you write to a design, and you have a contractual barrier insulating one from another, everything becomes about deliverables, whether or not the deliverable actually works. If it's a bug and there's a complicated three day workaround involving dead chickens and ritual sacrifices, then it's not a bug, it's an enhancement request. Performance so bad the product is unusable? not a bug, performance is an enhancement.
Management so inept at managing the outsourcing partner that they never get what they want, it's always overbudget, and a steaming pile of crap. And they don't have these massive contractual retaliatory ability, because the outsourcee has already contracted that away through creative use of feature requests and bug management.
Outsourcing works best when you find a nice Indian expatriot who wants to return home, and you train him up on your business, get him into management and charge him with opening up a remote field office to continue development at.
Cheap labor, under your control, with your business culture, your ingrained knowledge. You're not buying software from someone, you're building your brand in another country.
Re:Assuming there are other better jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
This is dead on.
I've worked a few places where they managed to make outsourcing work for them, and a damn lot that tried it and got catastrophic failure.
At a bare minimum, to outsource a project to someone on another continent, you absolutely must be able to write a design that is so exact and so good that the offshore team can realistically work 8 hours every day without having to ask you, or anyone in the home office, any questions. If you have a good offshore team, you can assume that they won't need to be asking questions about the base technology, but they will need to ask questions about the nature of the business, its rules, and what the project is trying to accomplish. (This is true of an on-site team as well, but getting these kinds of answers on-site is much, much faster and easier.)
Very, very few people are in a position to create a design like that for non-trivial projects. Typically you need a person who understands the business very well and who also is an excellent architect. Few businesses will have or be able to produce such a person; those that do generally need to give them a boatload of money. What's worse is that most businesses will either not realize this requirement or think they have someone who can do this, and will find out in a disasterous way that they don't.
Laminated talent (Score:2)
Re:Laminated talent (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted, I am not complaining, as sometimes there's really no other way to do this. However, my personal grumble is that the others don't truly seem like they have the time - or the initiative - to step up as I did......
But they still complain about not being promoted. I can lead a horse to water with the best of them, though...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Laminated talent (Score:5, Interesting)
To sum it up. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To sum it up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, I think we just made Slashdot redundant. There's nothing more to say.
Re:To sum it up. (Score:5, Funny)
I have not found them to be rare.
well (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, the companies with the best programmers will tend to do better in the marketplace, meaning they can afford to treat the good ones better and fire the bad ones. They can also be pickier about picking up new programmers and will have to hire people less often because they have a core of talent that they tend to expand instead of constantly replacing workers that get fed up. Talent tends to clump just like matter in space, leaving a vacuum where it's hard to find the talent that they need.
Perhaps they start their own companies? (Score:4, Interesting)
As a developer, if you can put away enough money to survive half a year, you can start your own company with minimum risk.
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thank you captain obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:thank you captain obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
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i know thats how i feel about my current job - and how everyone up the foodchain from me feels with the exception of my immediate superior, and have basically since the first month or two.
Re:thank you captain obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not even sure it's a problem, per se. I've made a long career out of working for startups and small to medium sized companies. Either they fold, as is the case with the majority of startups, or they prosper and end up growing and eventually being bought by larger companies. Either way, when the bureaucracy becomes stifling, I collect my letters of recommendation and move somewhere more lively. Unless you work in oil or heavy industry, there's always a wave to ride, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. The pay is generally lower than what you'd get being a placeholder at a large company, but on the other hand, I've never had trouble paying the bills, either. Money isn't everything.
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The principle is also known in more colorful terms as "shit floats". Gifted managers find ways to keep staff at their level of *competence*, but it can get very difficult when managers no longer actually know their staff or become involved in turf wars rather than trying to accomplish the work. And it applies to managers
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I have been doing the same for quite a few years, but while money isn't everything and an int
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Like Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Like Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Like Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as heck wasn't aware that being a 'nerd' precluded me from playing video games and discussing them. Nor was I aware that I had to be doing 'math and science' every waking moment of my life. Considering I willingly buy and enjoy reading graduate level math books as well as playing video games I take offense to your ridiculously broad generalization.
hurray for ACS! (Score:2)
it's really simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it's really simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hate it when companies put employees down for not making work their entire life. I love my job, but when I get home I want to relax, enjoy my hobbies, go out with friends and have fun doing things that aren't work. It's part of living a healthy lifestyle.
People who love their job so much they do it even at home and do nothing but their job usually end up burning out within a decade or so. I've seen it happen.
It's all about balance. You don't want to wake up one day and realize "I put the last 15 years of my life into this company, but hardly any time into *myself*... I have no life outside work!"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They are called average.
Programming is my life. I work as a programmer because that is an easy way to pay the bills. If I had enough money I would probably stop working, but I wouldn't stop programming.
9-to-5'ism and allegedly "loving your job" (Score:5, Funny)
That suggests to me that you've chosen a job that you don't *really* love, since you see a clean break between going to work as a necessary chore and returning home to enjoy life. That's not uncommon: it's called 9-to-5'ism, and it's the bane of company life because it creates shoddy, uncommitted workforces full of people whose main concern is leaving the office.
If you truly love something, then you *DO* want to make it your entire life --- it's part of the human makeup, to seek to maximize what you enjoy and to minimize what you don't enjoy. If you truly loved your job then you would give it unlimited attention, and multiplex it with other things that you love (eg. sleep, eating, family) as best you can, flexibly. That means sitting at the job's bedside for 48h non-stop when there is trouble, just as you would sit at a beloved's bedside non-stop when they are in trouble. No 9-to-5'ism, no treating the job as second best.
From your description, it seems that you don't place your job in the same category as your home life. This contradicts your statement that you really love your job, and it casts a doubt on your claim that you love to excel in it, since your level of committment to it is limited. You may "love to excel in it" as you say, but only on your own terms, as a secondary, less-loved interest. It's still 9-to-5'ism, and it really isn't in the same league as working in a job that you truly love.
Incidentally, the tell-tale sign of really "loving your job" is continuing to do it when you get back home after office hours are over, without getting paid, when there are no other issues of higher priority to attend to. It's part of our natural desire to maximize those things we love. If you don't do that, on principle, then you're actually deluding yourself about loving your job.
Re:9-to-5'ism and allegedly "loving your job" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:9-to-5'ism and allegedly "loving your job" (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you really love your craft instead of "the job" where you practice it, and seek out new technologies and live "the bleeding edge", growing your skills, do you not risk harming your employer in the end? For instance by introducing unproven tech in a project because "it's cool and new"? Or by effectively sabotaging teamwork because your dedication to the craft grows into an arrogance. What if they enjoy other things in addition to work? Exclusive focus ("commitment" in your terminology) on one thing to the exclusion of all others can be a sign of a mental disorder - perhaps a mild form of autism which some claim is prevalent in the IT industry...
It is possible to have more than one interest in life. So it seems the complement to your dismissal of "9-to-5'ism" is "socially-inept'ism"...
Re:9-to-5'ism and allegedly "loving your job" (Score:4, Insightful)
For many of us, a profession, no matter how interesting or worthwhile, simply can't demand the same amount of "love" as our families. Of course, you can devote yourself to your job and let "the little woman" (and it's almost always a woman in these situations) be in charge of the family. You and your children will both have reasons to regret that decision in a decade or two.
"9-to-5-ism" as you put it represents a healthy acknowledgement of the fact that humans have many different needs besides fulfilling employment. And, often, people who love their jobs as you describe end up being exploited by their employers.
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Even if you are obsessed about your profession, it doesn't necessarily mean
that you want to do it for your corporate overlords 24/7. You may also want
to persue your own chosen projects in your field in your downtime.
Eventhough my "day job" is in my chosen profession, it still remains quite
distinct and separate from my chosen profession.
Re:9-to-5'ism and allegedly "loving your job" (Score:4, Insightful)
Programming as a job? Is fun... part of the time. Oh, there are probably even rare jobs where it is fun most of the time. If you have such a job, cling to it like a life raft, because you will understand how lucky you are when you change to your next job. (The last time I had a job like that? Well, let's just say a sock puppet had a Superbowl commercial. [wikipedia.org] Those were great times to be in IT.)
At most IT jobs, the fun will be less than 40% of the job, sometimes considerably less. The parts that aren't fun? Those parts still need to get done, even though they aren't fun. This is the reason why programming and related IT work are compensated better than actual fun jobs. It's hard work to get the credentials you need to do IT work, and then the actual job is hard work. Oh, and if it isn't hard work, if it is really just fun and diversion as many of my colleagues have asserted on Slashdot over the years? Well, then the fact that you are putting in all those hours is no credit to you. Give up what I like to call "IT machismo." Since doing IT is like having an orgasm for you every minute of the day, why should we be impressed by the hours you are putting in? That's the paradox of these kinds of assertions.
Really, what we are supposed to gather from these kinds of assertions is this, "My faith in the IT gods is far greater than yours. I'm willing to take vows of silence, poverty, hardship and chastity (especially chastity!) because my love for the IT gods is so great. However, despite my love of my devotions, you should also understand that they are a hardship. My disgust with you is because of the fact that your faith is so small, that you are unwilling to take up the IT cross joyfully."
Believe it or not, other professional jobs are just as much fun as IT. For example, there's a reason why there are TV shows and video games about lawyers. It's because we all know that there are fun aspects of being a lawyer. Ever hired a lawyer? They expect to be compensated for the hours they work, and they don't work for the hours they aren't compensated for. Oh they may be dedicated, and they may live for the job, but for most of them that doesn't extend to uncompensated work.
Now, to be realistic, in the modern IT workplace, a certain amount of your time is expected to be uncompensated, mandatory unpaid overtime. This is simple reality. Also, if you grumble about this mandatory unpaid overtime, you are branded a "9 to 5er." (Which is some sort of evil beast to management and the parent, sort of like a basilisk.) The best way to look at it is that an unknown amount of mandatory unpaid overtime is part of what you are expected to do in order to get the compensation package when you get hired for an IT job. Hopefully, you have an idea of what that's going to be before you take the job. In other words, hopefully you don't sign on thinking the unpaid overtime is only going to be during crunch time, only to find out that crunch time is "every day, including weekends and holidays." [livejournal.com]
I know going into any IT job that if I don't put in some unpaid overtime, I'll probably be made to feel uncomfortable. So, I try to remember that when I have to, like this evening when I'm doing my mandatory unpaid overtime, and not grumble. I'll do the job, but what I'm doing isn't "fun." It's work... and that's why we call it work and not fun.
This is an economic problem that extends to large parts of the economy, not just IT. Ask a Wal-Mart worker. At least we are currently still making more than them, poor bastards.
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If you put everything into your job and you lose it, your sacrifice will be meaningless. You will have missed babies' first steps, kindergarten plays, and sunday afternoon strolls and you won't really have anything to show for it.
not just IT (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience working in a large petroleum company I have seen the exact same thing - high turnover of good engineers, with a few competent people who stay on dotted around the organisation, but also a lot of dead weight.
However this is not news. This is just what HR battles every day in large orgainisations - balancing pay, benefits, career advancement etc. against turnover rates, to try to make staying on more attractive. Which is hard because the grass is always greener...
Story is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is not what you think. Modern western businesses are generally run like the military, at least in form if not function. This puts too much control in the hands of those who are not proven fit to lead. The problem of good people moving on is prevalent in ALL industries, including the all volunteer military, forklift drivers, plumbers, restaurant managers... on and on and on. It has nothing to do with IT other than its affect on IT.
Bad leadership is the problem, and it spills out of corporate offices like stink from a blocked sewer pipe of grand proportions.
Hiring decisions are effected via budget restraints and leadership decisions between what amounts to two basic waring factions within the company: The IT shop and the HR group.
When you start to think of modern corporate businesses like armies you can see how things go wrong. It only takes one bad lieutenant to totally fuckup the battlefield. With field promotions, that Lt. gets to a spot that s/he doesn't belong and it becomes more short term pain to replace them than to let them carry on fucking things up.
Bad leadership chooses to avoid short term pain. If sports teams were run the same way they would never win anything (sorry NY).
The problem is bad leadership. end. of. story.
With good leadership, all the other problems can be mitigated or removed.
Re:Story is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
In combat, that tends not to be a problem for very long because the incompetent leaders die, either by doing stupid things that get themselves killed, or by doing stupid things that could potentially get their troops killed, resulting in a "friendly fire" incident.
Hmmm... how can we apply the notion of "beneficial friendly fire" to corporate America?
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Or better yet, avoided altogether.
Agreed, but also... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Dead Sea effect is not really wrong, but I believe it's swamped by larger effects:
Re:Story is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
This bad leadership has root causes. Incentives to sociopathic management behavior are intrinsic to the capitalist system. In the short term this psychopathic exploitation pays off. Anything with negative effects that manifest after the next quarter's numbers doesn't matter. By that time the perrpetrators have been rewarded and have moved on. Don't assume that better efficiency can fix an inherently corrupt, dysfunctional system. Making the trains run on time has been tried before. Good thing the Allies came along to blow up the tracks.
The other side of the coin... (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, it's quite frustrating to join a group with a collective level of technical knowledge below one's own. Groups such as this are often resistant to suggestions from the new guy, and it's been my experience that it's the new hires that end up leaving.
EDU also. (Score:2)
Copyright Reform! [copyrightreform.us]
Ouch (Score:2, Funny)
It's even worse than that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider the position of the talentless drone who's achieved a position of junior management by virtue of being the longest-serving talentless drone in the room when the previous manager left.
Is this PHB-in-training going to hire the best and brightest?
No way, s/he doesn't want underlings making him/her look bad, so s/he'll be careful to only hire other talentless drones.
There's an additional benefit (for the PHB) here, as it requires 2 or 3 talentless drones to do the work on one talented geek, and a managers prestige and remuneration are proportional to the number of people s/he manages.
So only "brackish water" ever flows into the lake, evaporation then acts to make it even worse.
Chemical Reaction in that Sea (Score:3, Interesting)
How large is large? (Score:3, Interesting)
CEO perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't care about individual talent, that's crazy. Programmers are like plumbers. I run a company with 1000 plumbers. There's a turnover and a general skill level, I won't bother beyond that. Of course every plumber thinks he's a star plumber, which is funny, considering how replaceable they are. Let them scream, let them whine, let them hate the management, let them move on. They are just another commodity. The numbers are fine. Now please excuse me while I collect a huge bonus."
I think it's a bit naive and too easy to think that companies fail to hang on to star programmers because of bad management. The management doesn't care by design, as a professional choice.
Re: it's really simple (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't take into account that people should have lives outside of work. Especially if they have families. It sounds like to me you don't have a life. If you think that the only dedicated employees are ones who eat/sleep/breath their job at the company then you must not have a life. People need to have a balance in life. I found that out way late in my career. I spent so much of my time early on in my career eating/sleeping/breathing "the job" I missed out on my sons first 6 - 7 years of his life. I'm sorry but if beign someone who comes in puts in 9 hours a day (extra at night and on weekends as necessary) does his job and does it well then goes home to spend time with his family is considered a "sub standard" employee then the whole industry needs to take a giant brain dump! I spent 80% of my time outside of work finishing up a college degree (at the expense of spending time with my family) for about three years. Now, I take time to volunteer as a boy scout leader in my sons scout troop, I volunteer in the community and spend time with my family outside of work. I'm donig more than just a job now, I'm being part of the COMMUNITY, not sone loner living in it. A job is just that a job. You go in do your -job-, the company pays you. Just like the barter system. Yes I do love my job, I've been a "geek" my whole life. Before I had a family I spent 24/7 in front of a computer. When I met my wife she called my computer "my mistress". I just had to find my balance. You just have to remember the majority of companies out there don't give a shit about you, your just a body, a number to them. They have NO loyalty to you these days so why should we show loyalty to them? I got sick of showing loyalty to a company only for them to shit all over me. Now I look out for myself, because no one else will.
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When I think of eating/sleeping/breathing "the job", I think of spending 70 hours a week doing stuff work related.
But I think where the author is coming from is spending some of your free time reading blogs, journals, experimenting with technology at home. I know guys at work who are programmers who don't even have a home computer, or internet connections.
Here's my collective response to comments. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a response to the main themes that I see coming up there.
The Dead Sea effect isn't unique to IT. True enough, though I could say the same thing about just about any project management issue regarding IT. What is unusual about IT (shared with other engineering disciplines) is the degree to which individual talent and other factors affect productivity and quality [brucefwebster.com]. And what is unique about IT (as opposed to, say, civil / mechanical / chemical engineers, architects, etc.) is that there is no standard (state-run) professional certification, so there is no assurance of minimum education and competency.
This is obvious/common sense/trivial. So are most of the problems in IT. Fred Brooks [amazon.com] and Jerry Weinberg [amazon.com] pretty much nailed down all the essential issues in IT project and personnel management more than 30 years ago; yet, amazingly, the problems haven't all gone away! There is a profound lack of professional and institutional memory in IT; almost everyone who writes about IT project/personnel management [bfwa.com] (myself included) is looking for new ways to cast or explain the core issues in a touching hope that maybe this time someone will actually listen and fix them.
The Dead Sea effect is just the Peter Principal (or a corollary thereof). No, it isn't. The Peter Principal [wikipedia.org] is that a given person rises to her/his level of incompetence (I'm actually old enough to remember when 'the Peter Principal' first came out). This has nothing to do with promotion within the IT organization; it has to do with self-selected removal from that IT organization, not due to a lack of promotion or opportunity, but just because there are greener pastures elsewhere.
Not all IT shops are like this . I would certainly hope so. In fact, there are IT organizations where just the opposite occurs; the quality of the IT engineers is quite high, and engineers who are mediocre or disruptive either don't get hired or don't last long if they are. I worked in one such IT group (Pages Software [brucefwebster.com]) for five years. During that time, we had only one voluntary departure (the network admin); we had two others who were dismissed due to problems, and a few others who were (painfully) cut in downsizing.
Not everyone 'left behind' is incompetent . Again, this syndrome doesn't apply to all IT groups, and it doesn't apply to the same extent to all IT groups. Turnover in IT personnel is common (though it can be reduced by intelligent management), and just because good engineers have left a given IT group doesn't mean that the rest are, in fact, residue. What I'm talking about here is a very real syndrome, typically found in large corporations and government organizations, but it's certainly not universal.
The IT hiring process is broken. Amen. Not only is the IT hiring process broken in many organizations, the entire approach to IT is often broken. It is rife with empire-building, 'heroic' project management, and an 'interchangeable code monkeys' mindset. As mentioned in the comments
The GE inspired ranking model (Score:3, Insightful)
I was the senior architect and manager at a major Fortune 30 company ($50b in size) that hired in a new CEO who had been one of the Jack Welch proteges. As with nearly everyone of his sycophants, this new CEO brought both the Six Sigma and HR ranking methods with him.
During review time our managers had to rank everyone from 1 to 5 and were suggested(not formally written as required, as HR liked to point out) to have 10%-1,5 20%-2,4 40%-3's within your group.
Now my team had been composed of the strongest developers and architects from the various other units, specifically to provide guidance to the entire organization and be available in a matrix model to assist any project team that needed it.
So review time comes around, all my team were high performers, all had through out the year been involved in fixing critical issues, helping projects get back on track, etc and I had given them all 4 & 5 (3 was shows up a does their job satisfactorily).
HR told me I had to change some ratings, though they always insisted there was no required distribution, I was pressured to change them. I refused, pointing out that when compared to the organization as a whole, these were the most senior, most productive people we had.
My VP over ruled me, changed the ratings herself so that I had 1-1 (performance plan required), 1-2, 1-4, 1-5 and 3-3's. They also re-organized and took the team away from me. The excuse was that our bar was higher than everyone else, so we had to be ranked against that.
Within 6 months, all but 2 of us were gone. We all took different jobs elsewhere that didn't have this garbage.
The HR ranking model had been pioneered at GE manufacturing plants which employed union workers. In order to be able to get rid of true dead weight in a way the union leaders would agree with, they came up with this ranking model. Classify a bad seed a 1 and you can get rid of them.
The big problem with this is after the first year or two, the dead weight is gone, and the process is now cutting out good people. The other problem was the good people would stick with a particular team where they knew they would come out on top instead of offering to move around so they came out at the top of the curve.
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There needs to be a better salary distribution. Good network administrators are like world class composers.
Amen to that, Roy. When I was at Pages (as CTO), I had constant fights with the CFO and the CEO over the pay for our network administrator (Sean Church) and told them it would take several people to replace him. I was right, too. Sean left Pages in early 1995, and it took three of us -- myself, the VP of Engineering, and the Director of Quality -- to pick up the slack. ..bruce..
Re:Money, money, money (Score:5, Funny)
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> Surely an unusual place to die?
Very efficient, and you gotta give him props for his "do it yourself" ethic.
Re:Money, money, money (Score:4, Funny)
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If you want to work in a quality shop, you have to be willing to move. If you are not willing to move, that's your choice. But you can't expect there to be opportunities galore in comfort
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"Permatemping" (great word) has made me a lot of money. Because most companies seem to think that a good IT guy costs 200 an hour and there is always some permatemp company who is willing to whore themselves for a dollar just to get the gig, it is easy to make a lot of cake doing that if one plays their cards right...
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The biggest reason to be an employee rather than a permatemp is usually medical insurance.
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The truly lucky ones get to design their own....
Re:Impressive Credentials! (Score:4, Insightful)
I someday hope that "software engineering" will be a real profession -- but on the other hand, that has legal and professional consequences (e.g., state boards, state licensing, risk of malpractice) that I suspect most people in IT wouldn't want to touch.
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Some of us really ARE Engineers. Raise your hand if you ever had a solo project where you had to design/implement the server code, the client code, the servers machines themselves, the client machines themselves, the database it all ran on, and the protocols in which they all interacted. After all, which, since it is your baby, you get all of the bug reports and feature requests, the work to go with it, and all of the testing your brain can handle. I can't actually see any of you, but I would be a rotten banana that I am not the only one with my hand up.
Doing all of that, and doing it well, still doesn't make you an engineer. A good craftsman, yes, an engineer, no. And, yes, I raised my hand, and I call myself a software engineer because it's the common term, but I don't think what we do is disciplined enough to really be called engineering, yet.
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Depending upon the business cycle and their own inclination, they either go to do startups (trading security for fun/intensity) or they become consultants (trading security for a multiplier on their salary). At least, that was my observation.