Me-Commerce 105
Long ago and far away, the idea was that stable, long-term employment once meant a bond between employer and employee. You found a good company and worked there, possibly for decades, and the company paid your bills, took care of your health, and saw you into a secure retirement. That didn't always happen, but it was the ideal of the modern industrial age, also know as the pre-Internet era. The system was both secure and paternalistic.
It's also over.
Scholars, technologists and economists have been saying for years now that we're making a transition from an industrial to an information age. Information is becoming the most valuable single commodity in the world, and the Net and the Web are the vehicles bringing more of it to more people at less cost every day.
For tech workers, according to a new study by the CDI Corporation and MIT's Sloan School of Management, new kinds of companies and new technologies like the Net are sparking a reinvention of work, a flexible kind of workplace that the study's authors call "me-commerce."
Their report shows that the number of positions filled by temporary staffing companies expanded from 1.35 million to 3.23 million between l988 and l998 -- the fastest employment growth of any industry sector during that decade.
Today, more than 25% of American workers are part-timers, independent contractors or temps, the authors explain. When contract and on-call work is included, the share of the nation's workforce operating outside traditional, full-time jobs has mushroomed to nearly 30%. In high-tech employment sectors, those numbers run much higher. Only one in three Californians holds a permanent, full-time, day-shift job working on-site.
While this shift may benefit better-educated, high-end professionals in terms of earnings, job flexibility and creative work, skilled workers have a tougher time, the study warns. They face stagnant and declining wages, alienation from their employeers and a less-certain job market.
Over the past several decades, as large amounts of capital, increased competition, new information technologies and new management philosophies and techniques have downsized large companies and created a favorable environment for start-ups, Americans have come to feel less attachment to their employers. High-tech workers don't really seem to mind; they aren't interested in lifetime employment, but creative working environments and good pay.
That suggests the boundaries between the tech and non-tech work forces are becoming more distinct, even as the former grows increasingly influential. If you know computing and technology, work in IT industries, and use the Net and the Web, you're much more likely to enter this new, affluent, mobile workforce. If you don't, you're not -- and you probably won't be nearly as content with the "flexible" work environment you've been thrust into.
The study also reminds us again that parents, educators and politicans ought to be demanding that all their kids have access to the net, rather than obsessing about pornography and pummeling schools and libraries to install blocking software.
New kinds of organizations (the MIT study calls them "guilds") are emerging to look after the needs of increasingly-mobile workers: professional associations, labor unions and staffing companies, as well as new businesses like Web-based talent brokers and headhunters, along with local employers and some government agencies.
This matters particularly because the work practices of the IT sector are setting the patterns for many kinds of work in the future, one of the ways in which the Net is driving profound and largely unacknowledged social change. Silicon Valley and the tech industry are still seen as a culture apart. But the truth is, as high-tech districts sprout all over the country -- Boston, Austin, Minneapolis, Boise, Portland, Denver, San Diego, Silicon Alley in Manhattan -- their work practices are clearly becoming the mainstream.
We're entitled to mixed feelings about whether this is a healthy trend or not. Much-in-demand mobile tech workers think it's great. They have personal freedom, full employment and a kind of rolling job security. But what if the economy were to turn downward? What if companies sharply scale back on innovation and new directions?
And what about the growing social divisions between tech and non-tech workers? Won't the latter become increasingly disconnected and angry as they're pushed into a job market where they earn less, where their job security and opportunity and benefits may evaporate at any time?
The retreat of the traditional firm and the rise of the guilds definitely mark a new phase in the history of work. What nobody knows yet is whether this new flexibility is a great step forward for individualism or another heartless Darwinian profit-making tool of the new corporation. If history is any guide, it's probably a bit of both.
[Note: to read the study yourself, CDI requires registration.]
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:1)
Switching development tools and leaving... (Score:1)
Starving Netizens. (Score:5)
Eventually, though, the market will mature. The dot-coms that are unrealistic will fail, and companies will find themselves saddled with more IT people than they can use. The firings will begin, and a lot of ITs (and probably a lot of /. readers) will be out on the streets.
My advice: cultivate secondary skills. Being a top-notch Perl programmer is great when it's in demand, but it won't keep you fed if you get tossed out of a job and there's no market for your obsessively-honed skills.
Disagree (Score:2)
The business cycle is inevitable. The transition to employer's market is not. The [perceived] shortage of IT workers is going to continue. A recession will not necessarily cause temp/contractor/consultant work to dry up, forcing those types to seem permanant positions. In the past, recessions have increased employer's reliance on those types, as they don't want to take on permanent employees they might have to lay off.
The trend towards temp/contractor people is largely generated from employers like yourself, who look for people whose resumes fit ridiculous molds. Example: HR demands Java programmers with 3 years of Java experience. When they don't get anyone at their price, they fall back on contractors. Contractor whorehouses will outfit you with programmers who went to week-long Java seminars. Bad tech managers don't know the difference anyway; and if they do, there's nothing they can do about it because hiring practices are mandated from above.
As an employer, I look for quality people from diverse backgrounds, who don't necessarily want to do exactly what they've been doing for years, who appreciate an employer who overlooks their background or lack of it.
All the people I have hired have been consistent job-hoppers with resume gaps. Why were they job-hoppers? Because employers routinely suck. Because in most places politics is more important than excellence. Because most employers don't think loyalty is a two-way street.
You want loyal employees? Take any group of people and be loyal to them. And honestly loyal, not just lip service. Care about them and their concerns. Make things right. Be up front about everything.
As it is, you may be self-selecting a group of people whose major traits include conformity, an unwillingness to question authority, a lack of ability to assert themselves, an odd approach to keeping their job at all costs, and/or people who have been unable to get other work for some reason. Their "loyalty" may be simple inertia. Good luck!
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Hyperbole (Score:2)
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
Only from the "laughing to keep from crying" standpoint. Ain't it amazing that companies these days have to jump through hoops to keep the share price jacked up to please people who want the price high so that they can bail out of the company, because otherwise the company will have to pay a bunch of legal fees and still possibly wind up transferring money that belongs to all the shareholders to some of the shareholders, instead of being able to tend to their knitting and maximize the amount of profits that can be divided up betweeen all the people who buy and hold the stock?
Plan B (Score:2)
Re:It's not just the net... (Score:1)
Earn money making Buggy Whips! (Score:1)
Send me $10 and I'll tell you how.
Re:Plan B (Score:1)
The best method of growth is steady. You can plan on it then.
technical unions (Score:1)
What I really want is a geek Norma Rae.
you could have someone do a companywide system message saying "Strike" or some such. Volunteers?
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:1)
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:1)
e! e! e!
my last name is Day, so my so-called-friends now call me eDay. I think one of them even made a logo in the ebay style.
They will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Goddamn.. (Score:4)
me-commerce?
this industry has the most fucking ANNOYING acronyms.
e-this, e-that, i-this, i-that, me-commerce, information superhighway, dot in dot com, jesus christ, THEY ALL SUCK.
:\
Re:Once the smoke clears... (Score:2)
I got my BS in psychology, found I sucked as a grad student, became a temp/secretary, and worked my way into computing. I kept my eye out and surfed the changes. Now, ironically, my psych degree makes me valuable as a Senior Consultant as I understand people.
All we can do is adapt, I just wish there was more cultural/community/"guild" support for it. Then again, considering how humans develop . . .
Worth thinking about (Score:3)
The Industrial Age *IS* over, and that means a lot of concepts, some quite contrived, that went with it. Just as the Industrial Age gave us the idea of standards and mass production, now these tools give us the ability to communicate across large gaps, share information, and work faster and with less localization.
What we have now is the inevitable result - an environment allowing and even encouraging an age of change, communication, and altering arrangements. It's not something we can think of as good or bad - it is here, and it's time to live with it.
One concern Katz doesn't address in this article that should be is that some people on "this side" of the web need to adjust to changes just as those "outside" the web need access. Whole ways of thinking are outdated, and we need the mental tools to cope with the changes.
I'm a programmer and consultant, and most anything I was taught about the workplace turned irrelevant about eight years ago. It wasn't an easy adjustment, even if it was a profitable one.
Re:Starving Netizens. (Score:1)
Excuse me, but why is this necessarily bullshit? If somebody's working 80 hour weeks and making buckets of money, they might well want to take some well-deserved time off of the rat race.
Of course, if you know that they're lying, then I'd agree with you 100%
Katz does not "Features" post (Score:2)
Honestly, I have nothing personally against Katz, but it does bother me to see "Features" tagged for 90% of his stories.
Is this a gimmick?
NeoKatz... (Score:2)
Welcome, to the real world.
Not a prostitute.... (Score:1)
Temp work gets old (Score:4)
I'm not complaining here, just giving a different perspective. When I got out of school (doesn't everyone get their BS when they're 30 now 8*), I was offered a job 2000 miles away. The wife and kids cried for 2 weeks before I gave up and looked for a job 60 miles away. Even that was contentious. Changing jobs is just anything but easy once you build things up around you.
The
My unrequested advice to all here: Keep the future in mind. Try to build stability into your job whenever possible. Corporations have pushed the work ethic towards 'expendable employees', do whatever you can to push it back in the other direction.
Individuals increasing their personal value (Score:3)
This seems to be running hand-in-hand with open source software, with the software freely available what you really need is an admin to make effective use of it, and these admins, over time, create significant collections of configuration files, perl scripts, architectures and cooperative setups which solve regular problems effectively, patterns in the system/network space.
While these are commonly available if you request them from the right place, ie the mailing list for a given app, some of this knowledge, especially in the higher-orders of multiple application performance configs, are very hard to locate and invariably require some customisation to the problem at hand.
A goodly percentage of the value a company recieves from hiring a competent administrator is their collection, either mental or digital, of configurations and architectures to solve problems.
The question is whether it will turn into a situation where employees turn up at work with a cd of their own IP, heavily tested high performance plug-in configurations and a suite of scripts in order to make themselves more attractive to potential employers, or whether there is a constant flow back to the community, where only at the very bleeding edge are the configs and scripts hard to find, and as technology moves into mainstream so the relevant information to make it work well becomes publically available.
More advice (Score:2)
Now.. My esteemed advice: The IT sector is very hot right now, and may perhaps cool off. But while it's hot you've got a tremendous opprotunity to make youself fiscally independent. Do you really need that new BMW or super-widescreen HDTV? Save up a wad of cash and pay off all your debt while you are making all this moola, and when/if the IT sector dries up you'll have a nice cushion of cash and no payments to worry about while you figure out what to do next.
-- Greg
When they fire the perms, they hire temps (Score:2)
I've been a temp for the last 10 years. That includes right through the recession of 1993 (remember that?).
Frankly, economic down-turns can be great times for temps. Nobody wants to hire permanently, so temps get lots of work. Similarly at the peak of the wave (like now) there's lots of work. It was when things were ramping up (1998 sucked for work as a temp coder in Boston) that there was no work for temps, because if you weren't willing to go permanent, they didn't want to talk to you.- --
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Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
There are still COBOL programmers out there today. They are laughing all the way to the banks which employ them for obscene hourly rates.
Oh, I agree with your general premise, don't get me wrong. But there is always an element of crap shoot in pursuing any skill. There are less chancy heuristics, but it's still gambling. There are no guarantees.- ---------
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Unlikely (Score:2)
Of course you don't like temps. You're an employer. Temps you have to pay for every single hour they work -- and time-and-a-half over 40hrs, double-time at 60hrs. Salaried employees you can work like slaves, and never pay them an extra dime. Piss off a temp, and they walk. You can piss all over regular employees and they know they have to suck it up or get a black mark on their resume.
Maybe in your reality. Here in Boston, MA, USA, Earth, Sol System, contracting is considered valuable experience, and indicitive of initiative, self-discipline and willingness to take risks. "Stability and level-headedness" are, frankly, not much in demand. The idea of hiding contracting experience is as ludicrous as failing to mention your most important job responsibilities.
And, by the way, I have taken 3 month vacations. It's good to be a temp. :)-
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Not quite, bad math (Score:2)
Let's take a look at the real pay difference. One of the real issues here is that temps/contractors/freelancers are all paid by the hour, while direct employed techs are almost always salaried and overtime exempt.
Let's compare Curt the Contractor and Denis the Directly employed who work side by side on the same job, with the same responsibilities, for BigCo.
Curt is paid $40/hr. This means if BigCo. has Curt there for a year, 40hrs/week, Curt will be paid (40$/hr)x(40hrs/week)x(52weeks), or $83.2k per annum. Of course, this might not happen: Curt doesn't get paid for all company holidays (only the 6 federal ones), and he might want vacation time off. On the other hand, he might work for one of the many agencies which does have vacation pay, might work federal holidays, etc.
So let's say Denis is getting $83.2k per annum salary, the same as Curt would make for working "full time" for a year on the same job as a temp. But Denis is a salaried employee, even though he's not considered a manager, and he's over-time exempt. He regularly winds up having to work 45hrs/week. At first glance, that's (83.2k$/year)/(52w/yr)/(45hrs/wk) = $35.56/hr. But that's not right. If Denis were a wage employee (like Curt), he'd get time-and-a-half for those 5 extra hours -- money he's not getting because he's salaried. So, really, the equation is (83.2k$/year)/(52w/yr)/((40 + (5*1.5))hrs/wk). That comes to $33.68/hr.
Oops, did I say 45hrs? No, poor Denis is regularly working 10hr days, so it's really 50hr weeks. So he's really only making the same as a temp at $29.09/hr.
Let's take a look at one particularly bad week. Denis spent 60hrs on the job. He didn't get paid extra, and his actual wage for that week was $22.86.
And then there was that time Denis had to come in on the weekend, too, to deal with those pesky servers. He logged 65hrs that week. His wage was $20/hr.
If his coworker Curt had worked 65hrs, Curt would have been paid $1600 more than Denis. And remember, the premise of this exercise was that Curt's wage and Denis' salary were set to be equivalent.
Just something to chew on...
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You haven't temped, have you? (Score:3)
I've been a temp/contractor/freelancer for 10 years.
Temping/contracting is not the same thing as hopping between direct-employment jobs. Many of your concerns above just don't pertain; for instance the travel consideration. Not only do I not have move for jobs, I haven't even had to have a car. This trick, obviously, only works in dense urban areas, but then, that's where this kind of work is most pervalent.
In fact, I find it terribly ironic that you should hold up location and hours as reasons one would prefer permanent direct employment to temping. That's precisely backwards. As a temp, I can negotiate my hours -- I haven't had to show up anywhere before 10am in 4 years and ~15 clients, and I don't work more than 40 hrs in a week unless I want to -- and I'll never be relocated by my employer (you remember relocations, don't you? Back when jobs were scarce, if your boss told you "you're moving to Bismark, ND", you were moving to Bismark, ND?)
My agency offers 401(k), vacation pay and health insurance; they also offer a special program for temps who want to work as close to full-time as possible without going permanent in one job; there's some traing/education bene I've never looked into. It's just like a real job.
The only real concern is the irregularity of cash flow. That puts temps on exactly the same footing as anyone self-employed, from doctors in private practice to your neighborhood plumber.
You don't hear people lamenting that starting a business or striking up a private law practice is a terrible thing to do to your youth, now do you?
Like many career temps, I do so for life-style choices, not for big bux. It allows me much more time off (I only work half to 3/4th time over the course of the year) to pursue my art, travel and studies. I'm not getting rich doing this, but I am getting ahead. And I'm having a lot of fun.
As I am not supporting kids or spouse or (yet) mortgage or car payments, I can afford to do this. You may have or desire those such things -- but that is your life-style choice. And, indeed, those things are expensive enough to force various other life-style choices, such as how one shall work.
But see that for what it is: trade-offs. And the trade-offs each of us should make are dictated by our personal goals and values and circumstances.
Frankly, your advice is fine for the acquisitive soul who wants all the trappings of middle-class success, but for those of us "free spirits" who have other more esoteric goals, from a higher quality of life (I don't want to ever have to work full time) to more self-determination, temping can be an excellent avenue to what we want.- ---
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anti-Katz (Score:1)
Re:anti-Katz (Score:1)
So right (Score:1)
Once the smoke clears... (Score:2)
Change is good...so is knowing you can pay rent and have money left over for food. I guess all we can do is pay attention to the trends and try to adapt.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
/. readers on the streets (Score:1)
Gold Rush (Score:1)
Just my 2X10^-2 Dollars (US)
I'd rather be free (Score:1)
This system predates the modern industrial age. It was quite common in medivial europe. It was called serfdom.
Why can't people accept this novel concept "Personal Responsibility". I don't want my employer to "pay my bills". I want them to pay me for my work. I don't want secure, I want to be free. In the long run, free is more secure than paternalistic.
Re:Blame Employers (Score:3)
Hell, I've worked (as a contracter
When I first joined the workforce in 1990, I went through about 5 layoff situations in about 2 years, luckily surviving them all.
I wasn't always so lucky, and it just goes to show how worthless the "stability" of employement is. My average tenure as an employee at any one place is a little over a year. My average contract was about two years.
There are reasons to be an employee. "Stability" is not one of them, because employer loyalty is mostly a thing of the past.
It really angers me when I see companies complain about how employees today lack loyalty. I saw a company dump an entire department, six months after saying explicitly that they would not, and then watched as a few months later, saw memos expressing confusion as to why there was so much turnover and obvious lack of loyalty in other departments.
It is stupid of them, really, and your advise is spot on. In the eighties, companies decided that cutting short-term costs was a good reason to cut jobs. "Sorry, it is just a business decision, no hard feelings". In other words, they are in it just for the bottom-line. Remember that as an employee. It is in your best interest to do the same. Work with who suits you. What you owe is labor. What you do not owe is loyalty to people who aren't loyal to you.
(One caveat: one of the few places where you can find employers with some loyalty is in smaller startups. Not they are more stable, after all, they often dump everyone all at once, but hey, they are better than some corporate beancounter cutting your job because he's too ignorant to realize that you do something critical. (That's never happened to me, but it has happened numerous times to people I've worked with!))
Sorry for rambling. I'll shut up now.
Re:Starving Netizens. (Score:4)
My Advice: cultivate generic skills. Being a top-notch programmer will keep you fed long after being a top-notch Perl(C++/Java/Lisp/PLI/Cobol/Visual Basic/Whatever) programmer will leave you starving.
Want to always work? Never, ever tie yourself to one language, one OS or one set of hardware.
Not only are you less likely to end up on the death-train to doom (speaking as a former OS/2 programmer) but if you can point to times you've picked up language X in the past, employers are much more likely to take a chance that you can pick up language Y in the future.
This is one reason I feel sorry for some of the more obsessive Linux fanatics. (Don't get me wrong. This isn't meant as a troll. Linux is currently my OS of choice.) They may find themselves in trouble years down the road. Because while I don't know the future, I am fairly sure of one thing, based on experience: The hot OS of 2015 won't be Linux. (As it won't be Windows, OS/2 or anything else we've seen in the past.) For that reason, my advice to any young coder is to immediately run out and install the OS you know nothing about. If you're a Linux hacker, learn Windows. If you're a Windows dron^H^H^H^Hcoder, learn Linux. Not only will this make you a better coder on your OS of choice today, but it will prepare you for the OS you'll use in fifteen years. Unless, of course, you plan on using the same OS in 2015 that you are using today.
And if you want to be one of those, well, I've got a word of warning: There are still DOS programmers out there today. They don't earn much.
Re:Not to sound like "chicken little"... (Score:2)
I was courted by several firms to leave college early becuase I was pretty good with TCP/IP, LANs and WANs. However I'm glad that I didn't becuase in the course of my 4-year college career, I got two degrees in Computers and Business. So even if IT takes a downturn, I have my business background to fall back on. But I think that a lot of people my age (20-26) who left college to work at a high-paying
What about non-IT temps? (Score:1)
Tech vs. line, union vs. freelance. (Score:2)
This should not surprise anyone. Unions began in the era of large monopolies. There isn't any one company big enough to be called a monopoly employer in the tech business (with the possible exception of Microsoft, and they do not employ a very large fraction of the total tech heads). Today there is no company with the kind of power over employees to set their wages and working conditions with impunity (though I hear that the auto companies have managed to institute a contractor wage cap in Detroit). The conditions for a union are not met; there is no small number of entities to be bargained with.
This will prevent unions from forming. So long as someone can go submit resumes to two other companies down the road and bargain for pay and working conditions with them, there is no need to have pay scales and contract negotiations.
Most tech jobs are not in the processing and manufacturing of devices, which is where the hazardous chemicals are. The tech jobs are mostly design, programming and prototyping. Many suppliers of electronic gear have moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico. They don't do any engineering in Mexico, just the dirty stuff. A person in a tech job can go for years without looking at a wave-solder machine.This is one reason why unionization of tech workers is so unlikely. In the current business climate, long before a company could be unionized all their tech people would have jumped ship for better pay elsewhere; they'd be out of business. If the economy cooled to the point where reduced employee mobility no longer made this a foregone conclusion, the sheer overhead of union pay scales (just WRITING them!), grievance procedures and so forth would overwhelm the company which had a unionized workforce. How do you rate the pay scale of an embedded assembler/C programmer versus a Perl/CGI web-head? Trying to do this while things change so fast is a ticket on the slow train to bankruptcy, while the more flexible, nimble competitors eat the unionized company's dinner.
Things aren't going to change terribly much for a while. Might as well get used to it.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Foreign vs. domestic (Score:2)
The increasing number of technically-trained production workers and manufacturing engineers will be good for Mexico, if they can keep them from emigrating to the US. The economy of Mexico has been kept down by corruption and neglect for so long, it's going to take a long time to catch up. But catch up it will; it all starts with a bunch of people with know-how.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Techno-Whores (Score:1)
Now I still feel like a prostitute - just one on salery. They pay me this ..... I do this....
All in how you look at it I guess...
Re:Not a prostitute.... (Score:1)
Ouch... It always hurts...
Re:Tech vs. line, union vs. freelance. (Score:2)
The fact that they don't have that power is due to certain laws and the expectations of the citizens. For example, you can't shoot and kill your employees trying to form a union which happened more than a few times in the 20's and earlier.
However, the fact that certain employees are disposable (even more than in recent years) drops unskilled and semi-skilled laborers even farther down the economic ladder than before, even if no single corporation is driving this trend.
This will prevent unions from forming. So long as someone can go submit resumes to two other companies down the road and bargain for pay and working conditions with them, there is no need to have pay scales and contract negotiations.
This is part of my point: this will work great for people like us who are high demand, but this is not the case for most of the workforce, really. Even with the economy this good, the demand isn't sky high for regular office workers or manual laborers.
Many suppliers of electronic gear have moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico. They don't do any engineering in Mexico, just the dirty stuff.
Very true. This still bothers me, I mean, Mexicans are humans too.
In the current business climate, long before a company could be unionized all their tech people would have jumped ship for better pay elsewhere; they'd be out of business.
Also correct. Corporations found out they needed this flexibility when the information age started overtaking the industrial age. They realized rigid heirarchial employment structures no longer worked, therefore neither did traditional union representation. Now the temp workers absorb the hit when the economy bounces around.
Someone needs to come up with a new kind of union to represent these people that gives them some sort of saftey net in the wake of economic fluctuations. It will most likely require corporations to absorb more of the hit, but that's an issue having to do with how we allow capitalism to operate. That's another discussion.
the downside (Score:3)
There is a theory out there that the increasing polarization of wealth in the world is due in large part to this phenomena. In high demand fields like this, and other professional, highly skilled areas, people are raking in the cash. In manufacturing, or semi-skilled office work, and others, the outlook often isn't so great, where demand is average and workers are a dime a dozen.
I believe that labor unions are the main reason that the middle class is where it is today. Traditional unions are having a hard time, however, organizing temp workers in most fields. In many cases, they aren't allowed, which is technically illegal, but we know that doesn't stop corporations all the time. I've seen a few projects here in Minneapolis that were put on hold due to te corporation wanting guarantees that unions would not be formed.
Tech compaines are highly profitable, but this is part of the downside. They can get away with WAY too much. This is a significant part of their profitability. Tax breaks, land deals, and union busting/preventing. Since they bring in high paying jobs, they can get away with this (and don't forget the increasing corporate influence in Washington). Environmentally tech companies are bad as well among manufacturers of circuitboards and microelectronics. These industries use some of the worst chemicals you'll find. Take a look at the article earlier. Making companies responsible for what they make when its useful life is over? In the US, that would take an amazing effort to get such a law into place. With such a focus on profits at the expense of everything else, it isn't likely.
Re:Starving Netizens. (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Is it just me or does anyone else fail to see the correlation here? This is like saying ``rabbits eat carrots therefore nanotube technology is booming.''
It says "work practices." as in "the business model upon which IT companies have been based is spreading to the rest of the work force."
Of course, I don't agree that these changes began with IT. I think they began in the early 80's with corporate downsizing.
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:1)
Consider Source (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
I don't know about IBM, but I started working for HP in 1979, and in the Working at HP class they said that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had had experience with government contractors who laid off at the end of the project. They then vowed to avoid layoffs as much as possible. (AFAIK, with success for several decades.)
When HP held a round of VSI [Voluntary Severence Incentives], they used a lot of weaseling to say, "Well, we never guaranteed no layoffs". The first round of these hit about 10 years ago. This was also the time when temps really started getting used heavily.
Actually, the severence package was financially pretty good, as was the case a few years ago when they did it again. I was offered, but declined, and kept my job.
IBM may have had such a policy, but I know that HP had a tradition--not an official policy--when I hired in. Of course, with the new HP, tradition seems to be worth zip. This is in keeping with the trends started one CEO ago, Lew "Why manufacture anything?" Platt.
Re:Huh? (Score:3)
My division is/was semiconductors, one of the more notoriously cyclical industries around. Not that top management remembered this--we'd build up for the boom, business would crash, and we'd transfer people out. Come the next boom, we'd be unprepared. Again and again.
Eventually, middle management convined the Powers That Be to hire temp workers in the "less skilled" positions. Given a long enough boom, these temps would find permanent positions, either within the company, or would strike out for greener pa$tures.
At a rough guess, we were doing this bigtime starting in 1985. For the long term folks, it meant that come a crash, we didn't get the 4.5 day workweek, but it did mean that we had to spend a lot of time training the 'less skilled' people and providing continuity when someone got fed up and left. Didn't help that HP felt that contractors & temps didn't deserve to attend parties or picnics.
OTOH, Agilent seems a little more fair to temps, and we've had a bit of luck reattracting the alumni, usually to permanent jobs. I don't know the situation in HP anymore.
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
Is that an issue for contractors? I've been quite able to sell my skills as a contractor without providing any sort of month-by-month accounting. Code talks a lot louder than "What I Did For Summer Break."
And now that I have moved on to other things, I can't imagine asking it of a contractor. When I hire a contractor, I want to know what (s)he can do, not who and when they've done it for somebody else. It's up to them to them to choose how to demonstrate that. If they're any good, they'll make their skills obvious. And if I don't like that, it will probably be my problem in the end, not theirs.
Re:that may be true (Score:1)
Is what an excuse? Is the fact that a company will stab any employee in the back an excuse for the employee to be rude on the way out?... Yes!
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:1)
It basically means that you work at the will of your employer. Essentially what it boils down to, is they can fire you for anything that doesn't violate your civil rights. For example, they can fire you for have the wrong color car.
I'm not sure if it's exclusive to Michigan, but it is a reflection of corporate america's stranglehold on government policy.
Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:3)
...if for nothing more than a stock price increase.
I'm of the opinion that nobody is reponsible for your happiness then yourself. And if you don't like your job, find your ass another one.
Personally, I don't give 2 week notices, or any of that bullshit. If I got fired, do you really think they'd give me 2 weeks to find a new job? No. And who cares about references anymore? Most places will give you a BAD reference in order to keep you working there.
I've only quit a total of two jobs, the first I gave 2 weeks notice, and was told to leave 4 days later (after telling my new employer it would be 2 weeks before I could start). Once the company found someone new, there was no need for me.
So I pretty much promised myself it wouldn't happen again. And the second time, when I got the phone call that I was hired, the very next day I brought a cardboard box, packed my things, and said good-bye on the way out.
But maybe that's just because in Michigan everybody is an at-will employee (except if you're contracted). And you can quit/be fired any time and for just about any reason (exclusions would be Fair Employment Act, etc.).
If I were to give any advice to someone coming out of school looking for work, is that you need to take a mercenary approach to things. You are there to do a job, and you expect to get paid for the work you do. You're police to coworkers, not to companies.
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:1)
this industry has the most fucking ANNOYING acronyms.
e-this, e-that, i-this, i-that, me-commerce, information superhighway, dot in dot com, jesus christ, THEY ALL SUCK.
You sound iRate. Take it e-z dude.
Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:5)
I can hire a full-time employee at $60k/yr (I'm using Boston entry level salaries), or spend $60k on a contractor for 3 months. If it is a one-shot need, it is a wash. If I constantly need the contractor, I pay four times as much, right?
Well, not exactly. With the full-timer, I need to pay for them to keep their skills up to date, $15k/year (either classes or their learning time), soc. sec. tak, $5k/yr, benefits, say $25k/year, now I'm up to 105K/yr for the full-timer, 240K/yr for the contractor.
With the contractor, I record it as a one time expense. It affects my bottom line, but not my gross operating profit which is more interesting to investors. After all, from a business fundamental point, operating profits SHOULD matter more, unless games like this are payed.
If the business needs change, I have to lay-off full-timers, with severance, my unemployment insurance costs increase, etc. I also get my corporate name in the paper for lay-offs, etc. I record big restructuring costs while Wall Street plays wait and see.
With the contractors, I can increase labor in the short term (theoretically true in all labor, but the modern reality is that full-time help is a short-term fixed cost) and adjust to the market. With full-timers, I need to project out 2-3 years.
So, do I take a hit against "profits" to increase "net profits" or do I sacrifice net for gross?
I guess it depends what my cashflow expectancies and my ability to make aquisitions with a high stock price....
A dollar is not a dollar... what column does it go in?
Do I authorize the IT Staff to increase numbers, or do I allocate a one-time cost to get the short-term needs handled.
I know my company is using contractors and part-timers to avoid having to project our cash situation in 6-12 months which depends on financing which is variable... but YMMV.
Alex
Re:But What... (Score:1)
But in Gibson's world the corporations had government-like powers. At the moment, public servants don't really go job-hopping (well, maybe within the same department) unless they're political appointments. Plus, in the books corporations are like violent dictatorship-style governments, unlike what we have now.
When M$ (or Sun, or Cisco, or General Motors, or any of the other mega-corps out there) actually demonstrates via trials or whatever that they have more power than the government, then it's time to worry...
Dave
But What... (Score:1)
In the Neuromancer trilogy he saw the top scientists (easily expanded to engineers, programmers, etc.) of the not-so-distant future belonging to one company which would give them security in exchange for their life's work.
He updated his version of cyberspace to include "clicking" in 1999's _All Tommorrow's Parties_.
I wanna know if Gibson is ready to revise his vision of the employer/researcher relationship yet.
wunderhorn
Even more true at the bottom. (Score:2)
that may be true (Score:1)
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
turn the other cheek (Score:1)
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
Re:anti-Katz (Score:1)
Grab.
Old news... (Score:4)
Grab.
Yeah, and it's called contracting... and then? (Score:1)
John K., have you ever worked for a living? You remind me of a "journalist" called Tristan Louis who was in my class. You two share the same writting style. Look for him on the Net, see what people say about him
Blame Employers (Score:4)
When I first joined the workforce in 1990, I went through about 5 layoff situations in about 2 years, luckily surviving them all. That process didn't make me want to dedicate my life to this company. Once you realize that a company simply sees you as a commodity you begin to put your own situation first and if there are better offers somewhere else, take them. Loyalty is a thing of the past between employer and employee. It is a fickle relationship determined by one's salary. If you can get more elsewhere, you go there. If you can't, you stay. Same with the employer. If they can get someone just as good for less, say goodbye. Don't feel bad about it, just realize it and plan your career accordingly. Of course I am generalizing, but this has been consistent with my experiences.
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:1)
At will means that in the absence of a contract[1], either employee or employer may terminate a relationship 'at will,' meaning without notice and without having to give a reason.
I'm in Colorado, which is also very much 'at will.' I'm a cop, and about half of the jobs in my field here are 'at will,'including anything in the office of an elected official, such as deputy sheriff or deputy district attorney. People in such positions can be let go w/o notice if the new sheriff wins an election and decides he doesn't want any deputies with mustaches. (Very few sheriffs would be that stupid, but it is their legal right)
[1] 'At Will' doesn't extend to blessing a Civil Rights Act violation, FWIW.
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:1)
It also means that you can resign at any time for any reason. It works both ways.
How so?
What's with the quotes? (Score:1)
I really like your articles, but since when did you start using Word (or WordPerfect) to write? I ask because all of your single quotes are escaping into strange Kanji codes.
Please run the demoronizer [fourmilab.ch] (or in /usr/ports/www/demoroniser) on your text before submitting. I know, the LA Times and others have the same problems, but I didn't expect to see this kind of non-standard character usage here on /..
Off topic, but needs to be said.
Blame Wall Street and Lawyers (Score:1)
If a company does not "perform" in a way some "influential Wall Street analysts" expect, stock tumbles, shareholders' lawyers start preying on the company, and the upper management group is replaced with others (and the company announces layoffs to appease the Wall Street).
And here comes the cynical part: employees LOOK LIKE a HIGHEST COST. No one cares that the contractors-built system might fall apart or be a total mess that no one has knowledge of (even though it is not true most of the time). What is important, you can always tell a contractor that you don't need him as of Monday. And you don't owe him anything. He costs you not so much more while you need him, but IT COST YOU NOTHING TO GET RID OF HIM! This is why they are "allowed" to get more money at the expense of job security.
Re:Not only in the real world... (Score:1)
Fscking colleges save tons of money on that. My father works in the community college as a temp instructor. He has compared the temp and permanent conditions of work, and it is a real rip-off.
Permanent instructors cost a college about 4 times more than temps. This is because in academia teaching classes is the only minor part of the time; so, hourly paid instructors are paid for just 10 to 14 hours a week, even though they need to spend much more to prepare to the lessons and score the students' work.
Also, colleges "owe" sabbaticals to the permanent professors, and this is on top of all other benefits including long vacations and so on.
This makes the decision of screwing staff a no-brainer
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
companies need permanent employees too. They don't need to employ ALL people who build some system, but the main architect, project manager and a couple of techies who are going to maintain it. Another thing is that each company (but the most stupid) has some coding standards; it's the job of the employees to make sure that contractors follow them. Otherwise, the whole application will be an unsupportable mess.
I think the companies might compensate these people pretty well; they might not afford them leaving.
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
OTOH, you won't be able to squeeze more than 40 hrs/week from the contractor without paying overtime. Even though, the overtimes might not be necessary with a good specialist.
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
Don't you have problems explaining the hiring managers why you have these gaps ???
As for making permanent employment worthwhile, they've invented stock options.
Contracting IS a career choice; you make a decision to get more money, but not to become rich when the stock jumps over the roof. Another good thing for contractors is being paid for the overtime
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:1)
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:2)
this industry has the most fucking ANNOYING acronyms.
e-this, e-that, i-this, i-that, me-commerce, information superhighway, dot in dot com, jesus christ, THEY ALL SUCK.
Did you ever notice how actual coders and geeks never use those lame acronyms and terms? I'm talking about eThis, eThat, e-Whatever, etc. You wouldn't catch a "real coder" using those terms unless it was out of dire necessity!
Hearing somone use those terms is a pretty clear indicator that they're a "suit". Which is convenient, since "suits" don't actually wear suits anymore. So be thankful for those horrid terms; they're a convenient way to tell "us" from "them". :-)
Of course, Katz only used "me-commerce" since he was quoting the authors of the original article, so I'm not flaming him for using that term
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,... (Score:2)
So I pretty much promised myself it wouldn't happen again. And the second time, when I got the phone call that I was hired, the very next day I brought a cardboard box, packed my things, and said good-bye on the way out.
Not sure what you really gain by doing this. You probably cost yourself a good reference. Unless you're so incredibly pissed at your employer that screwing them over in a small way is more important than scoring yourself a good reference you might need later, why do it?
Managers I've worked for really value good references- they value character as much as skill. Then again, simply walking out on a job is kind of fun. I did it once...
Them: "John, we were wondering why you didn't come in today. Did you know you were on the schedule?"
Me: "Yep. Just didn't feel like it"
Them: "What?" Me: "You heard me, just didn't feel like it. And stop calling me. [click]"
Still, interviewers get a little suspicious when there are certain managers on your resume that you'd "rather not have them call". :-)
Re:Starving Netizens. (Score:1)
JonKatz-Commerce (Score:1)
Re:Starving Netizens. (Score:1)
Re:Goddamn.. (Score:2)
Hmmm . . . maybe we should start a new one . . .
f-
f-this, f-that, f-commerce . . . it has a nice ring to it.
Huh? (Score:3)
Is it just me or does anyone else fail to see the correlation here? This is like saying ``rabbits eat carrots therefore nanotube technology is booming.''
Personally I think it's kinda obvious that IT positions are spreading beyond the Silicon Valley. It's called the ``internet''. Perhaps more temporary staffing positions are being used because more and more postions are being opened up and there's not enough qualified people to fill them. Either that or the companies are to cheap to pay qualified people. In either case we're just watching our field evolve.
IMHO, it would be interesting to hop from job to job . . . it would keep things interesting. That is, as long as there are jobs to go to. Could be for the better, could be for the worse. Only time will tell.
Huh? (Score:2)
sulli
Damaged goods? (Score:2)
I guess it's a balancing act, like everything. But I learned much more per day as a contractor than I have as a full-time employee.
sulli
Lots of older companies (Score:2)
These days Microsoft is famous for no or few layoffs, but if Win2K and/or .NET severely tank, you may see a different scene. They have, however, been smart enough not to boast excessively about it.
sulli
Information != Economy (Score:2)
Still haven't figured Katz' point (Score:1)
No thanks. I get used enough already by my S.O. =)
On the cutting edge again (Score:1)
The sudden growth of Corporate use of temp services in the 90's, is simply the 90's version of the gutting of middle management in the 80's, and has very little to do with the influence of the IT community. There are a lot of economic advantages in using temp services. Temp agencies can provide large numbers of prescreened, skilled workers in a short period time, so it is very easy to scale up to a new project, or react to a sudden market demand. There are none of the usual problems associated with early termination, so it is very to scale back from a project. In the overall scheme of things, temps can be less expensive than perms, no benefits, no vacations, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no raises, no reviews, little or no training, less accounting head aches (the temp agency deals with taxes, SDI, unemployment insurance). I'm not saying it's right, but it's good business.
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
Oh so this is the reason companies are willing to pay so much more for contractors!! I was always mystified by that. I get paid something like 75% more as a contractor (and that is assuming 40 hour weeks!) than I did as a fulltime employee even when you add in the value of benefits.
What I don't understand is why everyone who can do it doesn't. I know so many people who are earning far far less than their potential for some illusion of the security of a "full-time job". To me the only real security is sitting on a large reserve of cash that is made so much easier by contracting.
Of course there are those who choose to be full time for a pile of silly valley lottery tickets which is understandable. It was when I realized that the options I got had to be worth about 150k for me to just break even vs. contracting that I decided it just wasn't worth it!
Michelle
Re:Not Economics, Accounting... (Score:1)
I know that they need permanent employees, but most software developers could make far more money contracting. I have been in that position in the past where I was one of the only full-time employees managing a whole slew of contractors. That was the job that made me leave full time employment, because most of my team was getting compensated far better than I was even though I had all of the responsibility.
Fulltime saleries for java programmers have been shooting up a lot recently, I wonder if companies are finally starting to realize that they need to make it worthwhile to be an employee so that they have some! I still prefer contracting though, mostly because I can take 3-4 months off a year if I want. :-)
Programmer Guilds (Score:2)
It's not just the net... (Score:1)
Prior to 1986 only half of long term capital gains were taxed. All of short term gains were taxed. In this climate people had a good reason to hang onto stock for 6-12 months or longer. With the change in the tax code people began to think only in the short term. There was zero incentive to consider the age of a stock. Hence the birth of the day trading mentality.
The other thing this did was force companies to think short term. Now they were forced by the stock holders to only worry about what the next quarter's numbers would be. With this mentality the concept of laying off people and hiring back at a rapid rate began to take hold. Now you could tweak the numbers just by getting rid of people and bringing them back later as consultants.
The problem with this was that "laying off" took away all the stigma of being "fired". When an employee could say that they had been "laid off" and no one took it as a bad thing, management lost huge leverage in the fight to get more from people. Now managers could dump people without worrying about ruining their lives and people didn't care. How many of use remember managers saying something like "You'd better get your butt in gear or your outta here." Now the answer would be, "So what."
The fear was gone.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Polarizations and Generalizations (Score:2)
High-tech workers don't really seem to mind; they aren't interested in lifetime employment, but creative working environments and good pay.
I've met very few people, tech or non-tech, who weren't interested in a creative working environment and high pay.
That suggests the boundaries between the tech and non-tech work forces are becoming more distinct, even as the former grows increasingly influential.
I'm very confused. If tech is influencing non-tech, then how can they be increasingly distinct?
Has concept of what employment means changed? Yes. Did the tech community influence this change? Yes. Does this mean that that society is polarized on technological lines? Not really. I see it as (in this case, anyway) techs are on the first wave of changes, which then filter through into a more mainstream approach.
I mean, even non-technical people are changing jobs frequently, working on a contract basis, etc. Like my father-in-law. He worked as a comptroller for the same company for years. The company went under, and now he's a contractor for payroll, taxes, etc.
We're in the middle of changes right now. I don't think it's fair to make sweeping statements about how things have polarized until things settle down.
Re:Starving Netizens. (Score:5)
>dot-coms that are unrealistic will fail, and
>companies will find themselves saddled with more
>IT people than they can use. The firings will
>begin, and a lot of ITs (and probably a lot
>of
Another thing you have to realize is that, while employers (like me) are SOL right now as far as finding people, when the economy turns down and it's an employer's market, people who have been "job-hopping" (i.e., spending only a few months at a .com-style job before leaving for another, higher-paying .com-style job) will be *damaged goods*.
Think about it: If you had to pick between someone who had three or four .com jobs in two years and someone who stuck solidly with their company through the past few greedy years, there is already an implied bonus: the latter seems to promote stability and level-headedness (even if it is not the case). It will also show that the person can make real contributions to the company (in terms of culture) and that training him or her will be worthwhile. These are just examples.
As I've learned when talking with other employers, some people (potential employees) have caught on to this and have started leaving "gaps" in their resumes to hide it. Either way, their resume immediately gets tossed. If they do make it into an interview, they are grilled about the "missing" time. Ususally, it is some bullsh*t like, "Oh, I took a vacation for three months."
Best thing: stick with it for at least a year. Remain level-headed and don't be greedy; as more and more people pour onto the scene doing what you do and the economy inevitably turns downward, employers are going to be selecting the best *people*, not just someone who can *code*.
--
Spindletop Blackbird, the GNU/Linux Cube.