ExamForce

Youth in Asia – the Death of Loyalty in IT as we knew it

Ok so this has nothing to do with young people in China, or Korea or Japan for that matter…it was actually something I saw on Facebook…”Youth in Asia will kill your grandmother”

It just seemed funny at the time.

So my sense of humor is a tad off center. I’ve heard it before.

What got me on this kick was a recent article from Network World, “The CIO’s Lament.” The CIO, Louis Trebino from Harry Fox Agency, was complaining about the turnover in his Java development team.

Specifically that they are a younger crowd that, once they see how things work in his show, are jumping ship faster than rats left the Titanic.

“No sooner does he hire a Java programmer and train him in the company’s music industry niche, than the programmer is recruited away for a higher salary. Indeed, everyone on Trebino’s six-person Java development team has less than one year of experience with HFA, which is the nation’s leading provider of rights management, licensing and royalty services for the music industry.”

There was a lot of extraneous noise in the article but I thought that first paragraph pretty much summed up the entire treatise quite nicely. In fact, it made me wonder how the author stretched it into three (web) pages of text.

After reading the comments that followed it seemed I was right. Since that doesn’t happen often these days I thought it was worth mentioning…that I was right I mean.

Every comment lambasted Mr. Trebino for various assumed offenses. The work environment sucked. He wasn’t paying them enough. No one likes getting stuck with someone else’s crappy code. Even Trebino’s own comments later in the article upheld the sentiments. “…when I was first out of college, IT guys worked round-the-clock. My guys work basically 9 to 5, so I find it interesting that people are complaining. The other big reason that people have left is flexibility. We have moderate flexibility. We do not have work-from-home arrangements all the time, only occasionally. The younger people want full flexibility.”

He finds it interesting that people are complaining.  That’s funny.  IT has taken it on the chin quite frequently, especially from the bean-counters and stockholders who are, it seems, only interested in next quarter’s earnings and not in the long-term viability of the company nor *gasp* its customers.

It’s a lot like the government trying to write legislature about things they know almost nothing about. CANSPAM was one of my favorites…I mean, if you are going to write a bill that is against spamming, shouldn’t it at least have been CANTSPAM or NOSPAM or something similar?

Damn that soapbox. Just when I think it can’t hold me anymore it appears out of nowhere.

Here is the reality, at least as I see it.  Companies can’t ask for loyalty from employees, no matter what department they are in, when those same companies aren’t showing the people who work for them any loyalty.  In the case of IT workers with in-demand skills (Java is consistently ranked in the top ten most-wanted skill sets) taking care of your people rather than just lip-synching platitudes seems a smarter strategy.

I was browsing Spiceworks not long ago and someone posted a thread asking their fellow Spiceheads what kind of benefits they receive from their place of employment.  It was interesting to say the least. (Hey Spiceworks, can I charge you for this promo…maybe, like, by the word?)  The overwhelming response was essentially “I should be glad my paycheck doesn’t bounce.”  There were a few that could trumpet some decent bennies, and a couple that were downright absurd (methinks they were bragging, but hey…who am I to talk? I’ve got a pretty sweet deal here that includes air conditioning and all the coffee I can slurp down.)

And I never have to worry about my check cashing.

I’m just saying…

- Ben Ice