The Tech Industry's Legacy: Creating Disposable Employees 271
An anonymous reader writes: VentureBeat is running an indictment of the tech industry's penchant for laying off huge numbers of people, which they say is responsible for creating a culture of "disposable employees." According to recent reports, layoffs in the tech sector reached over 100,000 last year, the highest total since 2009. Of course, there are always reasons for layoffs: "Companies buy other companies and need to rationalize headcount. And there's all that disruption. Big companies, in particular, are seeing their business models challenged by startups, so they need to shed employees with skills they no longer need, and hire people with the right skills."
But the article argues that this is often just a smokescreen. "The notion here is that somehow these companies are backed into a corner, with no other option than to fire people. And that's just not true. These companies are making a choice. They're deciding that it's faster and cheaper to chuck people overboard and find new ones than it is to retrain them. The economics of cutting rather than training may seem simple, but it's a more complex calculation than most people believe. ... Many of these companies are churning through employees, laying off hundreds on one hand, while trying to hire hundreds more."
But the article argues that this is often just a smokescreen. "The notion here is that somehow these companies are backed into a corner, with no other option than to fire people. And that's just not true. These companies are making a choice. They're deciding that it's faster and cheaper to chuck people overboard and find new ones than it is to retrain them. The economics of cutting rather than training may seem simple, but it's a more complex calculation than most people believe. ... Many of these companies are churning through employees, laying off hundreds on one hand, while trying to hire hundreds more."
It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Insightful)
Hire another local programmer at 110% of the fired employee's salary to fix the cheap H1B programmer's code = 60% loss.
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Funny)
Hire another local programmer at 110% of the fired employee's salary to fix the cheap H1B programmer's code = 60% loss.
Hire 2 new FTE programmer/H1B programmers for 50% of the 2nd local programmer's salary = another 50% savings = 100% savings!
Where is my honorary MBA?!
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You obviously don't work on Wall Street.
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a minute... MBAs don't do math! They just shout slogans and business speak at each other... or they hire a consultant to do it.
MBAs leverage the synergies created by the exciting opportunities created in the emerging digital economy. They take a holistic, ubiquitous view of an organizations ability to.......BINGO!!!
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Insightful)
That 60% loss is not in this quarter. So the hiring manager has already received his bonus based on the 50% savings.
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If performance is a factor in his bonus, his next bonus will suffer resulting in him not benefiting in addition to possibly being on the hook for the screwup. He could later be considered for termination if the pattern continues.
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Informative)
nope he has already been promoted/layoff and no longer is required to justify his mistakes. we live quarterly reports by quarterly reports.
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No, he'll get promoted before that happens due to the savings. Then it's the fault of the next guy who had nothing to do with it, but fuck him, right?
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless his next quarter is a negative bonus where he has to pay his ill-gotten gains back, he gets $10000 for hitting this quarter's target and gets only $1000 next quarter. As opposed to only getting $1000 both quarters. The behavior is a no-brainer.
Unless he's high enough up AND his behavior drives the company into bankruptcy, then the gets a $50000 retention bonus to help ensure his leadership through these tough times.
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Funny)
This. I've actually seen this practice in action. My division is always in the red because we do not directly make money, we build the products, services and tech that another division then sells. So we end up looked down upon as a money sink while they are heralded as the saviors.
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Insightful)
This. I've actually seen this practice in action. My division is always in the red because we do not directly make money, we build the products, services and tech that another division then sells. So we end up looked down upon as a money sink while they are heralded as the saviours.
That's a severe management problem, which is solved by internal billing. Everyone using your services should get an internal bill, which gets internally counted as your income. If your department thinks something should cost $100,000 and they only want to pay $50,000, then they should hire an outside company to do the job for $50,000 (either you are inefficient, or they are living in a dreamworld). Obviously with heads rolling if you offered to do the work for $100,000, and they found someone who offered it for $50,000 and ended up costing $200,000.
Oh I live in this world as well (Score:4)
Product have made something that's not quite right. We ask them to fix it. They don't want to, as they're adding the latest shiny new feature instead.
This makes sense to them, shiney got given budget, fixing something would mean them admitting they screwed up before and there'll be a teensy bit less shiny/budget. They don't like doing that.
So, I have to fix it. I can't charge the customer more, I can't internally pay product less, so I just got myself some additional work.
I can then repeat this process for each customer - or hope that product pick up the fix/feature and integrate it.
This second favoured option whilst easiest for me, sticks in the craw a bit as it's not really motivating product to actually make what we need - throw something out the door, and it'll get fixed if we missed anything important.
Now, obviously you get to point when you lose your rag a bit - and tell the customer it's all borked, tell them to escalate it, and sit back as product fixes product. This can only be used rarely, too often and the customer twigs it's all messed up internally.
A better alternative, and something we seem to be moving towards, is to slice the company the other way - Take chunks of sales, site, delivery, support, product to create a 'functional slice' through all of them. Common purpose, common(ish) pot of money - "We" have a problem, "We" need to fix, or our whole slice is screwed (and the multi-VP shit will rain down equally on all of us).
Above still isn't perfect (more services, than product) but even as a small step, if you get product closer to the customer it improves. Not just people feel more involved in actually providing a solution, but helps shape the product roadmap - These aren't just new "Shiny Features" - They're "A Shiny feature we know if we add to the product, has landed us all another million dollars in the next release".
I guess if I had to sum it up, it's just being more open and then trying to align all the interests. People want to do a good job, but asking them to sacrifice themselves to do something they'll never be rewarded for just demeans and pisses them off, which leads to resentment, which leads to the internal barriers, fiefdoms and all the rest.
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Support ALWAYS gets the shit end of the stick.
I'm currently in testing (formerly of development AND support) and I always try my best to beat the snot outta new/updated code so that it doesn't take a dump that support has to clean up (despite every effort of development to put out crap).
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Don't forget to rotate the hiring manager to another department so when the problems to the program finally hit it won't impact his yearly assessment.
That's a myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Hire another local programmer at 110% of the fired employee's salary to fix the cheap H1B programmer's code = 60% loss.
No. If they DO have to hire a local person ( non-H1-b), they are able to get them at 90% of what they originally paid him.
See, the offshoring and H1-B has been putting DOWNWARD pressure on salaries.
Salaries here where I live haven't moved in 15 years - and that's not including inflation.
Sorry, but there is no real downside for a company to hire offshore or H1-B labor - only an upside.
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The first rule of business economics club is never talking about business economics club.
The second rule of business economics club is that you never take all costs into consideration. As much as possible, make those someone else's problem: your minions', your successor's, another division's, the great big greater economy, the ecology, whatever. But keep all the success/credit/profit for yourself.
Then cash out and find another place to pillage.
Yes, business economics club is kind of like piracy, but more bo
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:5, Informative)
As a former H1-B visa holder, current lawful permanent resident, and eligible for U.S. citizenship, you should know that the LAW requirs H1-Bs to be paid at least 90% of the prevailing wage, the employer to handle their INS legal expenses, AND bear the cost of sending them and their family home when they are layed off or their visa expires. H1-Bs generally cost MORE than locals, with all the extra hassles.
Now, where I would likely agree with you is that many companies BREAK those laws to bring in cheap labor, something which I would opose as well.
Re:It all comes down to payroll (Score:4, Insightful)
They can't leave unless it's to go back home. In the case of some countries it's just a few years, but if you're from someplace like India you'll probably be there a decade or more before you ever get a green card.
I've worked at a number of smaller companies, and (at least in that environment) this whole yearly wage increase thing simply doesn't happen. If you want a substantial raise, it means accepting an opportunity somewhere else. Something an H1-B holder cannot do, so it's no wonder that they're preferred. I wouldn't exactly call you slaves, you're really more like indentured servants.
Re: It all comes down to payroll (Score:3)
Payroll? that's last century. Uber sets the mark toward which corporations aim at ' robotics'.
Hardware, software and artificial wetware replace employees entirely with driverless transport, space exploration, customer service, drones, electronic trading, etcâ¦
You have been replaced.
Turn about's fair play (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who is "surplussed" and "losing" my job in March, it's the norm (3rd time in less than a decade.. Buyouts, contract losses, etc). Just don't complain when your newly hired $150k/year wunderkind jumps ship 3 months later for someone offering more. You've created a "fuck you, I've got mine" bed, and we're all laying around in it.
Re:Turn about's fair play (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly there is a double standard. If you have only been at your last couple jobs a couple years you get a lot of inquiry and scrutiny to justify yourself. Companies seem oblivious to the fact that they get rid of folks like tissue paper, while demanding the new employee act like they want to join for life.
The truly awful part of the shift mentality to "we are all temporary employees" is that it has infected companies well outside tech hubs. In Silicon Valley it is pretty easy to leave one collapsed startup and find something else to pay the bills, or for companies to scoop up extra people as you expand. Cost of living, as well as cost of hiring are a bit insane, but it allows workers lots of backup options, and companies a near sure fire way to expand simply by throwing money at the problem.
Tech companies elsewhere have joined the crowd in using layoffs as a way to cut the training budget and goose the stock price at will, but the laid off workers often find they are in a desert of opportunity leading to very long stretches of unemployment. Likewise, those left inside the company cannot often get enough decent local talent on the next up swing, making rehiring and rebuilding a group a long and painful process, only to have it all undone the next time there is a bad quarter.
Re:Turn about's fair play (Score:5, Insightful)
new employee act like they want to join for life.
The key word here is act, because as far as I know, nobody joins a company for life anymore, unless he's in civil service. Not the lowliest contracted janitor, right up to the (contracted) CEO.
Re:Turn about's fair play (Score:4, Interesting)
nobody joins a company for life anymore
They never did. Average job tenure today is actually higher than in the past. "Lifetime employment" is mostly a myth that never happened for most people.
Re:Turn about's fair play (Score:4, Informative)
I saw the BLS stats, but i don't think you're right. The median tenure of the workforce is increasing. The length of tenure is highly related to age, and the workforce is aging.
What you really need to see is if the tenure time is actually increasing across age bands and not just for the overall workforce. Here's a somewhat dated analysis (compare figure 1 and figure 2): http://www.frbsf.org/economic-... [frbsf.org]
You can see the overall tenure is increasing, but the tenure of each age subgroups are actually declining. It's just the change of the population in the subgroups has dominated the results. This is called Simpson's Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
So the truth is that for any given age, job tenure was higher in the past. As they say, "lies, damned lies, and statistics."
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Absolutely true. And it started in the nineties when companies were doing massive layoff and when companies like IBM who had never done such a thing before (six Thomas Watson's principles) started to revisit the principles which were the base of the contract between the company and its employees.
Loyality is a two-way thing. Why should an employee be loyal to his employer if the employer isn't loyal to his employee?
Given that, wouldn't there an employees skills recycling fund created and maintained by specif
Re:Turn about's fair play (Score:4, Informative)
To some degree, this is handled by unemployment insurance premiums.
Most unemployment offices, in addition to the direct unemployment benefits, have retraining programs that often last well beyond when the direct benefits expire.
For example, I started my masters' degree part-time when I was still working at my first job. 4 weeks later i got laid off.
I got the standard unemployment benefits (26 weeks I think???) but when those ran out, I was still eligible for New Jersey's tuition waiver program (free tuition at a state school with some limitations - you're last in priority when classes fill up pretty much but that wasn't a problem in an EE graduate program) for the entire remaining duration of my M.S. program.
Two year turnover (Score:2, Funny)
Most tech companies are not operated as going concerns and thus have no HR policies beyond hiring and firing.
Real reasons for the layoffs (Score:5, Informative)
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Indeed. I recall reading a story about IBMers being told that the internal posting for a job was not intended for U.S.-based employees. Recent news tells us that IBM is laying off N people but hiring the same number. So it's all good, of course. Wanna bet on how many of those new hires are going to be based in the U.S.?
It's about raising the mean... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you hire tons of people especially quickly, you're going to have a lower mean of high quality people. Churn can be as stated, but also a common part of the industry, is to find a way of increasing the quality of your employees. Fire the worst, replace them with better. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes its about a body, any body, to move the ball forward. Then it's about getting better and better people. It's not just about training, it is still largely a talent based industry, where the majority of the progress is made by a minority of the people.
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it is still largely a talent based industry, where the majority of the progress is made by a minority of the people.
No, it's a suck-up based industry, where the majority of the progress is made by those who know the right people, speak the right buzzwords, or went to the school that prepares you for the silliest interviews. I've got way further than I deserve on technical merit because - as Cartman would put it - I respect authority.
The same can be said of pretty much any industry which isn't well regulated or well unionised (there are bad regulations, e.g. the regulatory capture of accounting exams, and bad unions, whic
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The same can be said of pretty much any industry which isn't well regulated or well unionised
The same can be said of well regulated or well unionized industries.
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... it is still largely a talent based industry...
Of course, you are aware that the concept of "talent" is utter bullshit, right?
Yes, people have differences in "natural ability" but that accounts for less than 1% of the variability in performance. The vast majority of differences in performance are accounted for by practice, training and experience.
Re:It's about raising the mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not always... really depends on the quality of management. Expensive people aren't always the best people to lay off anyway since they tend to have significantly higher layoff costs. (severance, etc).
The last company I worked for had some real financial issues (highly profitable company in-general but suffering from a crushing debt load killing all of those profits) we ended up going through 2 rounds of layoffs. The first, dictated by the board but implemented locally, was stellar. It's amazing how much better a company can perform when you can shed a bunch of people who were holding you back. You feel the bite a little bit because a person who was only operating at 20% was still doing 20% work that has to be made up somewhere but you also get rid of some costly bottlenecks leaving you with clearer holes to fill for partial re-hire.
Round 2 was terrible: This one was mandated by a gov't takeover so not only were the numbers MUCH higher but they were based on nationality / new background checks instead of manager input / performance. Honestly the capability of the company was severely neutered.
Honestly a layoff of the first variety every 5-10 years is good for culling the chaff. Unfortunately most larger companies seem to operate more like the second variety when they shed numbers to make the shareholders happy.
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Except layoffs are determined by job title & tenure, not quality of work.
Absolutely untrue. I have seen situations where a dollar reduction was mandated, and the decision was to drop 2 high priced people instead of 3 low priced people, but outside of the case of an entire department being swept out the door, the managers/executives always seek to maximize the work they can get done after the layoff, meaning that they will do their best to keep the best performers. That doesn't require any altruism, just a desire to keep the company functional after the layoff.
Hmm, Adobe changed course in 2005, so the tech ind (Score:2)
Let me see if I understand this author's thesis. back in 2005, Adobe changed direction and needed different people, with a different type of education and experience. From this, they draw the conclusion that ten years the entire tech industry is made up of "disposable employees". I didn't work at Adobe in 2005, so I don't know the details of that reorganization. I do know that in all of the companies I've worked at, most people leave when they choose to pursue an opportunity elsewhere - the employee lea
Not just Adobe (Score:2)
He mentioned seeing it in many companies, Adobe was only one example. Churn all over the place.
Then they have to enter into collusion deals with other companies to keep the employees that they do want, since such a culture breeds NO company loyalty, encouraging an employee to jump ship the moment they see a better prospect.
it's called Texas. advantages and disadvantages (Score:2)
>. I want to live in your world.
It's called Texas. There are advantages and disadvantages.
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Agreed. I have been laid just once, but have left two companies who had done a couple rounds of layoffs. I've rather spend a couple months interviewing while I still have a salary than risk having to burn through my savings if it takes a while to find something after I get laid off. In the case of my one layoff, I volunteered because the place had become so toxic inside, so I don't know which category to put that one in really.
The last place I left seemed honestly hurt that I would leave. However they h
Typical for Slash (Score:5, Funny)
> Agreed. I have been laid just once
That's about par for the course for Slashdot nerds. :)
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I have been laid just once.
My condolences. Did you try paying for it?
Welcome (Score:4, Insightful)
to greedy, laissez-faire, unregulated, globalized, secret-trade-agreement-favoring, trickle-down, uncaring, 1% favoring capitalism.
Republicans out there -- you voted for it, you got it. As they like to say, "To hell with you, Jack, I'm all right."
Except for not being true (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, there are large layoffs in the tech industry, but big layoffs are not a new thing.
Two of the largest layoffs in US history occurred in 1993. 60K employees at IBM and 50K employees at Sears/KMart.
Big layoffs are a result of other business conditions, including.
An actual need to cut expenses -- bloated, slow-moving companies find themselves in the condition of declining sales, and big losses.
A desire to increase profit margins, often linked to increased stock prices -- CEO's can get lots of bonus compen
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Free Market (Score:2, Informative)
This is just the free market in action, treating employees as any other resource: fungible, consumable, disposable, replaceable.
I've spent my career in high tech and enjoy it, but I don't recommend it as a career path to anybody I know.
Tech Startups don't have business cultures (Score:3)
How much of this is due to mergers? (Score:3)
One thing I've really noticed in the last decade or so is the massive amount of consolidation, mergers, acquisitions, etc.
Every time I turn around, it seems like some company is being bought out by another one. And with so many opting to recycle old company brand names, it's difficult to tell sometimes just who really makes a product or provides a service.
(We've all heard of Polaroid, RCA and Westinghouse -- but they're not the companies they used to be.)
Quite often when these mergers or acquisitions happen, the company originating the process really only wants to add the other business's patent portfolio, or its proprietary product -- not its labor pool. The employees typically come along for the ride, initially though -- with some kind of (often underhanded) plan to eliminate them over time. Perhaps it would be better for everyone involved if they were up front and honest about such plans, except the truth is? If they were, people would start throwing fits and revolting against these buyouts and mergers instead of viewing them as "just part of doing business".
(EG. If you want to own a technology that a competitor created, it's easy to pay off the head of the company who owns the rights to it and let them "resign". Everyone assumes it's because that individual is simply angry that he/she lost so much control over the original business plan and is going to walk away on principle. In reality? He/she just sold out and threw their staff under the bus.)
In the end though -- hey, it's the modern way business is done. They're worried about maximum efficiency, which means having a labor pool that costs the company the minimum in training costs, salaries, etc. while doing as much useful work as possible. Loyalty is pretty much out the window because keeping people around, just because they've "been with us a long time" turns out to be less efficient than hiring fresh people who are motivated to "prove themselves".
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LOL, the last company I worked for Laid off the IT staff in a "Re-org" They had just announced how they had made 3 Billion euros in the last year and the President of the company took a multimillion Dollar bonus! However, no raises as there was "no budget" for it, then they laid off all the IT staff, to cut costs. Turns out they out sourced it to a firm in India that thoroughly failed at managing the systems.
9 months later, they run ad's looking for IT people. They were having trouble finding people because
Disposable Employees also in turn create.... (Score:5, Insightful)
....disposable employers.
When the market is doing well, which is almost all the time since I been in IT in my area, it's not hard to find jobs. So if somebody comes along and offers me more money, equal hours (or better) and equal or better working conditions, well let's just say I have a macro'ed resignation word doc that fills in date and employer name. Why? Because I know if the tables where turned, they would not hesitate to put my head on the chopping block.
Loyalty is for suckers.....
Do I like it this way? No, but this is the world we live in.
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You are 100% correct.
There are some former bosses I am friends with, hell we sometimes take trips to Vegas together, but I quit working for him not because of him. The Company.
A corporation, as much as lawmakers and conservatives want you to believe, is not a human being. It is a machine. A money making machine. It does not value things like loyalty, mostly because it is not easy to quantify and put on a balance sheet.
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"Unfortunately, a lack of stable income will impact your credit score."
Is that really unfortunate? Should companies loan you money if you have a "lack of stable income"?
You know what else impacts your credit score? Lack of debt.
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We had one once. I haven't been to it in years, so I dropped by fuckedcompany.com and got this...
Fuckedcompany is... fucked.
R.I.P. 2000-2007. If you're just now seeing this website for the first time,
ask someone who was in the internet business during "round 1" to tell you all about it.
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http://www.glassdoor.com/ [glassdoor.com]
Use it to screen companies before an interview. It is always fun when they ask "Do you have any questions for us?" and you pull comments from glassdoor and ask if they have corrected the issue. ;)
It's the metrics (Score:4, Interesting)
Big business is in thrall to the MBA's and their "scientific" management. If something can be measured, it's legit; if something can't be, it isn't. The thing is though is that, at any point in time and given any development in statistical research methods, some things are going to be more easily measured than others. If you have a business culture that believes you're clear-eyed and sensible when looking at numbers, but wishy-washy and "unscientific" when going by experience and gut feelings -- and, even worse, if you have a similar investor culture financing the whole thing -- you will run into trouble.
It's the numbers guys firing people with experience (and the judgment that comes with it), and replacing them with spanking brand new rock stars, or foreigners with well-crafted resumes. Add up the columns, contact human resources, collect your bonus check. If it all goes wrong several years down the road, you'll be working somewhere else anyway. That's the business model we're all suffering under.
Tough problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very current problem. The tech press is talking about IBM's announcements/rumors about yet another huge restructuring. Not so long ago, IBM was one of the most stable places in the world to be employed at outside of government and academia. There was an implicit contract that employees who contributed and worked within the framework of the company would be taken care of for an entire career. I think that needs to come back for those who desire it, not necessarily for socioeconomic reasons, but for workforce improvement reasons. This move to contractors and outsourcing for everything is just idiotic MBA management consultants looking at a spreadsheet and seeing a way to shift costs. The long term problem is that loyalty works both ways, and employees who are treated as disposable will treat their employers the same way.
I know that large organizations generate forests of dead wood as well, and that there comes a time when some of it needs to be cleaned. However, an enlightened company in my mind would be better served retraining that dead wood worker for something else. You get someone who knows the organization's culture and politics, and the institutional knowledge of how their previous job was done doesn't walk out the door.
I know I'm not in the majority on /., but I would love the ability to stay with the same employer for an extended time, without the worry of suddenly losing my job and immediately being branded with The Scarlet Letter U (unemployed) that prevents me from being hired ever again. I actively seek out employers who treat their employees well in exchange for long service -- and they're harder and harder to find. The reality is that the industry is rough - the 25 year old single coder/systems guy is preferred over the experienced person who's done the latest rehashed tech fad over and over again. Anyone with a family would be pretty foolish to go the contractor route - it's hard to explain to the family that you can't pay the bills this month because a customer didn't pay you or there's no work to be had. There's a difference between someone like me, who would put in extra effort in exchange for more security, and someone who just wants job security because they're lazy. I've worked with plenty of those types over my career as well -- they set themselves up as the single point of failure in a system or hold all the knowledge on a particular process just because they're scared someone will come and lay them off. You would get less of this if large companies didn't routinely say "we're cutting 30,000 workers" the way HP just did.
The problem for me with contracting isn't the constant learning - I like that. It's the bouncing around, never knowing where you'll be in 6 months, and never getting to finish anything you start.
In a perfect world, my solution would be twofold:
- Admit that there is going to be huge structural unemployment in the future, and enact European style unemployment insurance and worker protections.
- Take the design/engineering aspects of IT or SW development, draw a clear line between the engineering and the tech tasks, and merge it into the licensed professional engineer track. A professional organization would get a lot more support than the unions that techies irrationally fear. In addition, having a clear career ladder starting out as an entry level tech, spending the time necessary to make mistakes, then graduating to a status that requires you to be responsible for what you build/design is a good thing.
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Security, has always been and will always will be, an illusion in the work force.
It's a scam they sell you to get you to stay in underpaying, overworked jobs.
Like in every other aspect of life, the more risk you take, the higher the potential rewards. No risk = no rewards.
Do you think a company who is in the red this quarter will be like "Hmmmm we did bad this quarter, we lost money but so did everybody else. Let me just pay my employees and reassure them, so what the execs won't get a massive bonus this ye
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" Admit that there is going to be huge structural unemployment in the future, and enact European style unemployment insurance and worker protections"
Or, you could pretend that the $100k you're earning this year is actually $50k, because you are unemployed half the time and plan to live off of $50/year instead of the feast/famine model.
So...don't be disposable. (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds a little insensitive, but, don't be disposable. You're a Windows admin. Great. So are a million other people. If you're a Windows admin who also knows some programming, there are maybe 250,000 people with your skill set. If you add in that you know some Linux, maybe 100,000 people.
What I'm saying is, if you want to be safer than the average employee, don't be average. Enhance your skill set.
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What you are suggesting is that a generalist will be kept while a specialist is disposable.
Simple question, when the MBA/management person is looking at the spread sheet with all the numbers on it trying to decide which people should be laid off, which filed is the one that indicates your skill set?
Re:So...don't be disposable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Dimit:
Thank you for taking the time to apply to our job. Unfortunately we are not able to extend an offer of employment to you as we feel you are overqualified for this position. Thank you for your interest.
Sincerely,
HR
Re:So...don't be disposable. (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds a little insensitive, but, don't be disposable. You're a Windows admin. Great. So are a million other people. If you're a Windows admin who also knows some programming, there are maybe 250,000 people with your skill set. If you add in that you know some Linux, maybe 100,000 people.
What I'm saying is, if you want to be safer than the average employee, don't be average. Enhance your skill set.
Everyone is disposable. All companies care about is $$$.
Here's my experience, working for a *large* corporation... I have 25+ years (14 at my current company) as a Unix system programmer and system administrator with commensurate Linux and Windows experience - I've worked on just about every type of system from PCs to Cray super-computers. I am currently the lead developer of a three-person team on a cross-platform utility (Solaris,RedHat,Ubuntu,Windows) of about 300k lines of code in about 10 programming languages - 75% of which is my code - that is heavily used by our customers.
I was almost laid off last summer, simply because I was one of the most expensive people in my category of people on the contract. Even pleadings from my two managers to the higher ups that laying me off was inappropriate had no effect. The *only* thing that changed their minds was the realization that I also worked on *another* contract onto which some of my work could be (properly) charged.
Don't be naive (Score:2)
The solution is to refuse to play their way (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Have/Learn marketable skills.
2. Have plenty of money in the bank and as little debt as possible.
3. Have a source of passive income to help with cashflow during times of unemployment (Rents, royalties, etc.).
4. Have as few kids as possible.
5. Be picky on what jobs you accept. Use 1-3 to exit the labor force for as long as necessary to retrain and regroup.
6. Be active politically: e.g. Lobby congress for tighter H-1B restrictions, better labor laws, inclusive capitalism.
7. Live below your means. Try to do as much as possible yourself without hiring contractors, mechanics, gardeners, etc.
Re:The solution is to refuse to play their way (Score:4, Insightful)
Your list could be collapsed to:
1. Be wealthy enough to not need a stable job.
Dilbert's Entirely Perceptive Take On This Issue (Score:5, Funny)
Only 22 years ago
Link [dilbert.com]
It's not so bad (Score:3)
Result of the Glengary Speech . (Score:2)
In that scene, he effectively preaches what I call "douchebag capitalism". The heart of his speech is that people should only be rewarded for success, not for trying. It is based on the false belief that success is entirely base
Re:Result of the Glengary Speech . (Score:4, Informative)
No, it's based on the true belief that only success produces the rewards to pay you with. If you want to paid for trying but not succeeding, you have to take the pay out of the rewards gained by the people who actually succeeded.
The world doesn't pay off on a "good try." That's not to say that a helping hand is wrong, but you should be aware that ultimately it all comes from somebody who tried and succeeded.
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Your basic problem is you don't understand how the world works. You live in a black and white world where there is either success or failure, nothing in between. The real world has grays and colors.
The real word DOES pay off on a good try. It does so all the time. People go to college and fail out. Yet they still do FAR better with the partial education they got then people that graduated:
In the real word, people get married have children, and then divorced. Their marriage failed. bu
Nothing New (Score:2)
I think it was in the 1980s that the business world stopped being a place where you could join a company and expect it to look after you in return for your loyalty. I don't know why the author thinks the tech industry is so special that it would be immune from this.
One thing driving this, or at least in the past that I have seen, is that people are brought onto projects when there is the ability to do so, not when there is the need to. So when the times are good you expand your workforce even if you don't
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I think it was in the 1980s that the business world stopped being a place where you could join a company and expect it to look after you in return for your loyalty. I don't know why the author thinks the tech industry is so special that it would be immune from this.
Sometimes it's good to get a specific picture of a subsection, even if it's just to confirm that the specific subsection is following the greater pattern as well.
HR underestimates domain knowledge training (Score:3)
My blog post [datascienceassn.org] today argues that it takes as much or less time to train an existing employee on new skills than it does to train a new employee on the company's domain knowledge.
I.e., yes, companies should be training instead of churning. And training doesn't even cost anything any more except for the paid time to do it -- everything is online now.
Women (Score:2)
This increasing churn may be one of the key reasons women tend to avoid IT careers. When you feel compelled to do what's best for a family, job and location instability is undesirable.
The California dot-com burst certainly hit me, a father, in the wallet (and family time), as I was job-seeking in a glut market for a few years, taking crappy fly-by-night gigs that remind me of Bob Seger tunes. If I had been a single parent, I'd be screwed.
Whether it's genetics or social norms, women often end up with the pr
Remember the guy who hired a Chinese programmer? (Score:3)
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I know of at least one company that views bodies as disposable and interchangeable. They may fire a bunch of people during a lull only to try and hire back some more in the future. It's still a layoff even if it seems abusive and short sighted.
I even know the guy responsible for making those decisions in that particular company. I tend to refer to him as 2-Bobs to others as he's essentially the 2 Bobs.
Seems like it would be simpler to avoid the whole layoff+rehire scenario but clearly Company X thinks other
Re:Insert Subject Here (Score:4, Informative)
Same here - Fiserv for starters. They have a layoff every two years at some random month early in the year (it's been derisively termed the "layoff lottery").
The only clue we got was the Friday before, they told all the remote/home workers that from now on, all work will be done in-office, starting Monday (this ensures that you bring all your stuff in so they don't have to worry about recovering it.) Come Monday morning, they began discreetly walking up to desks, quietly asking the victim to come have a chat with them in the office. If you're low-man on the seniority totem pole (as I was at the time, since the department was small and had low turnover), you were guaranteed to be unemployed before lunch that day.
Funny thing is, not six months later they were hiring for the same damned positions that they laid a number of us off from. Word quickly got out in our local tech community though, so recruiters were met with a wall of silence when that company's name was mentioned.
Fortunately for Fiserv, the company is able to get around that by instead bolstering their offices in Norcross (near ATL) and Dallas (larger cities with larger tech communities).
Unfortunately for them, websites like glassdoor.com exist, and anyone with half a brain stops there first before interviewing (unless desperation or similar circumstances dictate otherwise).
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:5, Insightful)
Although this problem needs a solution, a union is not that solution. Unions are a relic of a bygone era. The core premise of a union is that employes are all the same and can be swapped in and out of work like parts in a machine (once they are trained). This leads to collective bargaining which takes back some of the power that big employers have. However it also removes individuality from the worker. If I am smarter, stronger, or more skilled than my coworkers, I want to be able to elevate myself based on my merits. A union interferes with that. You pay a union, and the union acts only in its own best interest, not in your individual best interest.
Modern skilled workers, especially in the IT and Engineering fields, are usually very specialized. This is not a good fit for a union. It would be ill advised to take a good thing and remove all motivation for creativity and the free flow of invigorating talent.
A better solution is to simply prevent large corporations from getting away with their bullshit. No "gentleman's agreements" to prevent poaching. Stop accepting lies regarding layoffs and market performance. Reward employers for using home-grown talent rather than rewarding them with tax loopholes for moving overseas.
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:5, Interesting)
In other developed countries (France, Germany, Japan, etc) there are a lot more hoops to jump through to lay someone off, and the layoff packages are legally set to be much greater. After that the safety net is much stronger while you look for more work. On the upswings companies hire less than a company in the US might, but layoffs are pretty small for even pretty big downturns. It ends up much better for the workers, though it can tie the hands of the companies when they are competing against the rapacious capitalists in the US or China.
I see such protections as an alternative to a union for workers who are very specialized.
Instead most workers are "At Will" employees. You can quit anytime, and can be cut loose at any time. Most full-time employees don't realize that they have less actual job security than the contractors they might be working with.
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about Japan, but these workers rights in France and Germany were largely the work of unions.
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It's better this way. The free market determines who stays and who goes, who gets hired and who gets fired. When I've worked in union environments the relationship between workers and management has been bad. When employers are obligated to do things they wouldn't choose to do or keep people they wouldn't choose to keep it makes for a very screwed up adversarial relationship. Someday tech workers may not be in demand and there may be a reason to unionize, but for now I'd much rather work and know the compan
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, as this story suggests, the company already views you as interchangeable cogs, so you might as well go with the flow.
You can still collectively bargain for minimum standards. The engineers should go on strike when they take away the secretaries' health insurance. The secretaries should go on strike when they try to replace the engineers with H1Bs.
The "ruthless meritocracy" bullshit is exactly what your corporate masters want you to believe. That it's all dog-eat-dog, but you could be the top dog! And your coworkers? Psssh those losers are just dragging you down! Best not cooperate with them, or they might get some of the scraps we might toss your way instead!
And really it's the prisoner's dilemma. If the workers work together, everybody can be better off! But if everybody's just thinking of themselves as rugged individualists, well...divide and conquer.
I'm glad I work for a non-profit. It's like being an employee-owner. Everybody works well together, everybody gets taken care of, the janitors have health insurance and retirement plans and we've got a lot of people who've been working here 15, 20, and 30 years.
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I'm glad I work for a non-profit.
You work for the NFL? [wikipedia.org]
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LMAO, out they come at the whistle of the word. Unions are alive and well today. There is no premise that people can be swapped out, but that collective bargaining means that we all stand together and no-one can get trodden on. A union is the only way that workers can "simply prevent large corporations from getting away with their bullshit". They got working hours and conditions under control in the 19th century, wages and equality under control in the 20th, and may finally get randomly firing people/hiring
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe a solution is to move away from the job culture and into service/contract culture. Employment meant something when it was meant to be long term, when companies were stable. Tech world especially moves too quickly. Unless someone really likes the company, wants to be a part of it anyway and accepts that he or she may need to leave when the company's needs change, why be an employee at all? Why go through the pretense of loyalty and security when it doesn't exist? Simply work per project or as a contractor as long as the services are needed, then be quick and nimble and find other clients when the situation changes. Not much different than a taxi driver perhaps. All the while be your own boss and keep your dignity, even if you make a little less (or more, if you are lucky and willing) and accept the short term uncertainty. (Something we evolved to deal with anyway.) Arguably long term uncertainty is worse when you are employed.
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an incredibly selfish attitude that puts the individual interest above the interest of the collective. The irony is that collective bargaining is much more effective and is much stronger in the long run. Your self interest is great until such time that you reach a point when other, more skilled people take your place (which is inevitable, because our cognitive capabilities decline with age, not to mention that older people have more responsibilities and find it hard to work 80 hour weeks).
Even the most meritocratic of individuals can run into unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances (e.g., an accident that has you laid up, or family issues). I worked in a strictly up or out management consulting firm, and about a year ago, my pregnant wife had some issues. My son was born, prematurely, and I was in a rough place with my personal needs and professional responsibilities. My wife was hospitalized and my son was in the NICU, unable to breathe, and I was the only one who could take care of things. My employer was understanding -- for about 6 weeks -- after which things got rather unpleasant. So, I quit and joined another firm that is not only more prestigious but was also more understanding and accommodating of my needs. But I was fortunate -- I could very well have been unable to find a job, and been unemployed for a year because I wanted to take care of my family.
Union agreements ensure that in such cases, collective bargaining agreements protect everyone.
Not really. Most of what goes on in IT today is quite commoditized, and there are very few areas that are truly specialized. And it is only going to get worse as IT matures. You may think your task is highly specialized, but the truth is, there's probably someone in another part of the world willing to do it for a tenth of what you get paid. That is not specialization.
If you want real specialization, you perhaps see it in chip design, algorithmic optimization, biotech etc. You know, all those guys with PhDs who specialize in a subject?
And how do you propose we do that? The share market is the ultimate arbiter, and the people who are rewarding the companies and the executives are the shareholders who are in for short term profit (it's the extension of the same short term myopic outlook of looking out for oneself rather than the collective).
I find that most Americans have a poor understanding of unions almost entirely rooted in propaganda, and it gets repeated again and again as gospel. The truth is, unions are immensely helpful to the labor force, especially in a service economy such as ours. Everyone thinks their skill is specialized, until it gets outsourced and commoditized.
You are not special. And despite what you may think, unions can help you negotiate agreements that would be impossible for you to go at alone.
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
Re:Time for a UNION! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an INDUSTRY problem, not particularly an employer problem, though they certainly do a lot to fan the flame. A union won't solve all the problems and will make some of them much worse.
Employers:
- Do not hire a person until existing employees are nearly 100% overbooked. No training or ramp-up time in the schedule.
- Want to hire the cheapest person who can barely get the job done
- Do not want to spend money on training or other activities that might increase employee value on the market (even though, in my opinion, that shoudln't be true)
- Do not significantly value sub E-level employees as investments, but rather fungible commodities to broker
- Vastly prefer to lay off people in position who have become expensive and hire H1Bs to replace them to cut payroll costs, essentially creating a glut of people with the same skillset.
Employees, particularly in Tech:
- Want to hire a drop in replacement. Look for someone with many years of experience doing exactly the job being hired for (i.e. create a niche/no-train, no hope environemtn)
- Tend to focus on job skills over job experience. Skills can be taught to any college hire, and ARE taught in low-cost regions, but tend not to be taught in western schools. Think languages (C), tools, mechanics. Things if you have the proper background and education you can pick up in a month or two. For any non-trivial job however, this is nearly worthless.
- Misapprehend "experience". Experience is not, or should not entirely be how long you've done a particular task. Most tasks can be mastered in well under 5 years. Experience is how many problems you've worked on and solved in your life. It's one thing to learn a solution (i.e. school), it's another thing to learn a problem. The more you've seen and internalized, the better you will be. Instead we interview for how well so-and-so knows how to write python, or how long as he been a python-engineer. Useless. I want to hear what projects he worked on, what solutions he considered and rejected, etc. I don't care what language he did them in, or if he was a cardboard-box folder for 5 years and has the audacity to apply to a plastic tub sealer position without any industry experience!
- In some fields, mine in particular, I have noticed people intentionally block candidates because they are not "in", simply because they are not already "in".
So in essence we are all responsible for creating this market we're in.
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changes in tech make their skills useless
You forgot quotes around "skills" to indicate the sarcasm of what many people call "skills". Skills don't get outdated, knowledge does. Problem solving is a skill, programming in C is knowledge. A skillful person can easily apply their skills to new problems.
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In my line of work, interviews are a panel of 6-8 people (the higher "experience" you are, the more people) on a grueling 8 hour interview process, followed by an obnoxious round table where we "collectively" decide who to hire. But we're not doing so based on our own motivation, we're doing so on behalf of our corporation and executives who lay out criteria and want us to put our badges on the line for those criteria.
None of us, individually, is the employer except perhaps the hiring manager. He sets the g
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There Fixed that for you:
More illegals and H1B's! That's the answer! Maybe we can get down to Bangledeshi income levels by the time the rethugicans successfully overthrow the US government with a second business plot.
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"when you look at how much money is made because of the IT departments "
That's the same argument every department makes. "If it wasn't for us, this place would fall apart." It seems, sales depts. are the only ones who can pull that off.