Okay, okay ... I no longer apologize for being "an old phart" by now, but I also don't apologize for being (for more than 20 years now ...) a consultant who "sings for his supper" based just on his professional opinions. I've watched the entire process of IT employment, as they say, "from both sides now," and I frankly think that we have some very serious problems that we ought to deal with.

In no particular order, here they are:

• "The language / database" (whatever it is ...) isn't "what you should be hiring for." Let alone paying princely(!) sums for, as though you were hiring a one-of-a-kind Rock Star. Programming languages, databases, frameworks, and so-on are merely tools. You really don't need to be spending a quarter of a million dollars(!!) on any individual, just because (s)he can list "<<python / ruby / hadoop / fill_in_the_blank >>" among their personal list of recently-done projects. In fact, the entire point of a truly-experienced practitioner is that by now (s)he has worked in so many different environments that picking-up "yet another one" is simply no mean feat.

• "3 years of experience?" Pshaw ... how about 30?" Okay, I'll settle for fifteen. Ten. Who cares. Someone who over the course of ten or fifteen years can list a diversity of technical assignments, all of them successfully completed, is "experienced and adaptable." A person who doesn't have "X years of experience" in any particular tool, approach, or technology, but who managed to get the job done anyway, is precisely what the current job really needs. And this sort of experience is irreplaceable.

• "Subcontracting agencies" are useless. They pay more than $10,000 per person per year to Monster Networks, Inc. ... a publicly-traded company ... to scoop-up resumes from people that they've neve met, in order to fling those resumes to you en masse in the vain hope that (any) one of them will manage to stick to your windshield. Knowing that, if it does, they can charge you "more than twice what 'the poor schleb, whoever (s)he is,' will receive for doing the work," and simply pocket the difference. When you pay that $120.00/hour invoice, remember that the person who's actually doing the work is getting $45.00 if (s)he's an American Citizen, and (probably, "much") less than a third of that if not. The difference is just going down your drain ... and, into theirs.

• You can't find people using "a keyword search." Need solid proof of that? Okay, how many hundred "qualified (sic ...) resumes" arrived in your inbasket, just today? Of these, how many did you actually open? How many (mercifully ...) vanished as "junk mail?" How many of these actually interested you ... anytime this week? I rest my case.

• "Cheaper" is not always "better." "Foreign" is almost never(!) better. People are not mechanical. They're not really "resources." Their business-value is not summed up in a litany of the tools that they know how to use. Don't stare at the other side of the fence and think that the grass is really greener there.

Perhaps we ought to be taking a different approach. Maybe the "talented people that we are looking for" are ... the people who are already in our employ. Maybe they've been working for us for several years. And maybe, just maybe, it really is in our best interest to try to keep them happy. Maybe, just maybe, even though they've not yet encountered "this-or-that technology," they would jump at the chance ... and, if given that chance, would succeed. (Perhaps, "admirably.") In other words, "being human beings, maybe they can learn and grow."

Maybe what we should be doing, when we strive to staff our IT projects, is to seriously take a long-term view. Maybe, instead of trying to "pick" our talent on the open-market project by project, we should instead be trying to "grow" a resource that we can tap into again and again and again ... a group of people who work for us, who have done so for many years, and who have every reason to want to stay.

i totally agree.
and not only in the IT department - general experience is better than a particular qualification.

but people (companies, bosses) want categories, drawers, LEGO basically: "ah, this worker fits nicely into that free space!" - so qualifications become the "nail to hang your coat on".
especially so when the decision-makers don't have a freaking clue of IT.

As someone who has had a very hard time getting into any IT positions I actually have to offer a rebuttal on this:

1. Offer training - Be willing to invest time into a recruit. Most people know some aspects of IT, so at least aim for the basics of what you think a person will need for a position minimally. Don't just assume a candidate will come everything plus the kitchen sink in skill sets. If you need a person with SQL experience, and you have a candidate that doesn't know it, but is willing to learn, consider the options and offer to train the person to use SQL not just well, but effectively.

2. Bachelor Degrees don't mean anything - 10 years ago, we offered good jobs to High School graduates, then suddenly we wanted Associate Degrees because everyone started going back to school thanks to the Obama Economy. Now we want Bachelor Degrees. Seriously, does education even mean much to people in Entry level positions just trying to get a job? I mean do you need a Bachelor Degree to work a Help Desk? I doubt it. If you know the position doesn't need it, don't ask for it.

3. Years of experience in Entry level is a waste - I honestly can't see how an Entry Level position can actually require years of experience. Entry Level is the baseline, it means no experience, and getting into the industry at the lowest level. Here's a good analogy: Do you honestly think a guy who's worked 20 years as a Network Administrator is going to take a Help Desk job that requires an honest level of No experience? People after 10+ years don't change jobs, they're in it to retire, or they just look for another company to bounce to, or at least can get them a higher position. They're bored, tired, and honestly some don't care.

4. Please stop posting jobs in directories for Job Hunting if you aren't hiring - I honestly have seen a company put the same job in the online database where I live for three years now, and I've applied at least ten times, as I meet all the requirements, but they keep rejecting me saying I don't qualify. If the above arguments are valid, then why bother posting the job other than to waste money and time of people. Do not waste the time of applicants.

5. Stop creating applicant pools a thousand miles deep - If you're going to hire someone, as I stated above be willing to create a small list, then work from it. You honestly don't need 10,000 applications to keep and reject. The jobless rates are going up, and people need work. Yes, the US economy is still NOT recovering. It's stable, but it's still at an all time high for jobless rates. Be willing to hire someone who need a job, and can do the work, even with some training. You don't need Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, or Michio Kaku level intelligence and experience to do a job some college graduate with no experience can do with minimal training. If the guy doesn't work out, at least he/she can walk away with a positive experience, move on, and hire the next person. Is a pool of maybe 10 applicants going to hurt you that much? No. Is investing time going to hurt you? No. Stop contributing to the unemployment problem, and help reduce it.

This is certainly not a "rebuttal." I'm in full agreement, and I think that most of us are.

What I like to explain to clients (and to anyone else who'll listen) is that computer software is an implementation of a business process ... a process that literally is "your business." The programming-language, database, what-have-you are merely the tools of the trade, like wrenches and hammers and power-saws.

All of the "engineering" trades ... building of things ... except computer-programming (at this moment in time) ... has a legally-defined process, a legally-defined system of licensure, a legally-mandated system of inspections and so on. Today, the computer-programming profession has none of these things. If you are even vaguely aware of which end of the hammer is supposed to be used to strike the nail, you get a job as a master-carpenter. Does this contribute to the IT project-failure rate that is more than 70% and climbing? You bet it does.

Could it have something to do with the mass-disclosure of secret information such as Target, Home Depot, and many other enterprises have experienced? You can be sure of it. You don't have to be "a far-away Chinese hacker." You probably are an insider. You feel that the company offers nothing to you and that you have no allegiance to the company. (You're going to be sent back to India in five months, anyway, say ... Or maybe you're a "snot-nosed white guy" who styles himself a Ruby God.)

I think that it isn't okay ... that it is unconscionable ... to "simply let this sort of thing go on" and not speak up about it.

May I ask from where this statistic came?

Do you, too, feel that it's higher? ;-)

But... But.... But......

If sanity starts prevailing in IT hiring, how are the MBA-toting pointy-headed bosses going to get their bonuses? Mindless and meaningless statistics are the only way these clowns can prove their "worth"!


My experience is that the rot in IT starts at the top. IT is almost always viewed as an expense to be reduced or eliminated, not as a service that is vital to the success of an organization. Until that changes we're stuck with a system that values cheapness over all other factors. Someone cranking out total crap for a quarter the price of someone doing it right will always win because it is too easy for the pointy heads to sweep failure under the rug long enough to make that quarter's numbers. By next quarter, the failure is forgotten.

Now if you'll excuse me, it is happy hour down at Olphart's Pub and I need to go cry in a beer.

I just need to add that I agree with every word of the top post.

"That statistic" came from a variety of sources, all of which say the same. The now-famous and therefore much-derided "Chaos Report" is still the best example.

"We have a problem, Houston," and it's not only "not getting better," but it's taking on an element of crime.

We cannot, for example, reasonably suggest that Home Depot's recent data-breach could be anything other than: an inside job. You simply can't get all the way through, and very selectively, to the self-service checkout stands of "every Home Depot store" if you are "A Chinese Hacker Someplace (Else)." But you can effortlessly do it if you are on the inside, and most especially if you have a strong financial incentive ... you're living 17 to an apartment, on a six-month or one-year visa ... or the company has outsourced its data-center and its programming to your country because it has nothing close to the (supposed) standard-of-living of the United States ... and you realize that you nevertheless have access to The Keys To The Kingdom.

You could be a nice American, too ... and now you're afraid of losing your job, afraid of reaching age 60 in just a few years with no hope of surviving once you get there. The company doesn't give a damn about you, and you know that you have the means to pull off such a caper, undetected.

Fifteen years ago, twenty, you were fiercely loyal to your company, because you felt you had a good job with a good future, that you were trusted, that one day you'd retire with your head held high. Now, you look at cell-phone commercials with "smart engineers" saying this-or-that, and every damn one of them is Indian. No one is so not-human that, when faced with a direct assault upon their livelihood, these resentments do not rise and grow. And our "über-connected world" society is more vulnerable to this than our world ever has been.

No matter how many billions or trillions of dollars any government wastes spends "vacuuming up the Internet," both governments and militaries have little impact upon the individual decisions that are made ... especially when those decisions are now electronically wired point-to-point with everyone else's.

We treat "the Internet" as though it were a happy sea of IP-addresses. We treat the people that do IT work as though they were interchangeable parts, buying and selling them literally at-auction and offering nothing more than "a six-month gig," and we refuse to connect this with the incredible vulnerability that these two things, taken together, present to our ... to the very heart and soul of our ... "new world 2.0" societies.

"What fools these mortals be." There's a gaping hole in the hull, and they're standing there measuring gallons-per-second and making charts.

Chinese hackers and disgruntled employees can be a problem in the situations described but, the more likely culprit is corporate greed and lack of concern for their customers. This is much more likely to be the reason than hackers and employees.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles...cked-wide-open

http://www.dailytech.com/Appalling+N...ticle36517.htm

That's a big bag of fail

Sure you can. You just hack the server that pushes "updates" to the self service checkout stand of every Home Depot store.

I'm not saying that you can't do that sort of thing "from five thousand miles away," Dugan, but I am saying that it is most certainly not "the most probable attack scenario." The odds are much, much higher that someone who was thought to be loyal to the organization ... but who felt that he or she owed nothing to the organization and who stood to surreptitiously profit thereby, opened the Gates of Troy from the inside.

I just stumbed-upon a very interesting quote in one of the Facebook forums that I (anonymously) read. It said: Well, call me old-fashioned if you want to, but I happen to think that this has profound implications relevant to what we are talking about here.

We have, in about ten short years, utterly demolished the perceived stability and job-security inherent in what is probably the single most-important business unit that any modern corporation has: its IT unit. Simultaneously, we exposed data of all kinds (not by any means "just credit-card numbers ...") to avenues for exploitation that have never existed before. (Indeed, we are building business models around exploiting these pools of information, and for no more good reason than, "because we (now) can."

We are careful to impose strictures of professional licensure around the professions that build "ordinary things" for public use ... roads, buildings, bridges and so-forth; even the electrical wiring and plumbing systems and the framing in a home. We do this even though a single failure of any of these systems will impact (kill?) only a few hundred or a few thousand people at any one time. But we do nothing of this with regards to our most vital resource of all: Information Systems in particular, and Information in general.

We only looked at: "money." And we very naïvely supposed that, no matter how little we managed to pay and no matter how few social-promises we made to those we paid, that we'd always get what we used to be getting before. But real human beings are just not like that.

We know this about ourselves.

And why do you consider the second scenario to be more likely?

Before answering, think about how popular spear phishing attacks are.

it's just like in superman 3.