Consulting Opportunities

The Mythical IT Shortage

Despite all media hype, repeated studies find no shortage of skilled IT workers[NM], although there is a huge shortage of Dilbert candidates. What the unfilled IT jobs stats betray is nothing more than a cultural shift in expectations[CTM]. Even our young are less than willing to relocate to a strange new city on only a 3 or even a 5 month guarantee. With downsizing, ¾ of all IT projects being canceled before completion and a growing interest in a quality of life over the size of a paycheck, the paychecks can grow as high as they like and the jobs will remain vacant.

The experiment to support my theory is easy: Put a job listing on any site you wish and promise full-time telecommuting with proper infrastructure and remote worker support. Watch the lineup form. I have repeated this experiment many times over the past 15 years and have watched others repeat it; the results are remarkably consistent.

IMHO companies who require geographic proximity betray themselves as ignorant (or afraid) of the very technology they seek to master, and as such, qualified people stay away. When we investigate the supposed 300,000 seat shortage of skilled programmers, which we do as a matter of my own professional and academic interest, we find interesting patterns.

• Virtual corporations and offering full-time telecommuting distributed workgroups find all sorts of top-notch people within a few hours of a mere Usenet posting

• Many open positions are suicide missions. *.jobs newsgroups seethe with these; sometimes I get angry and rant at them. Due to bad council, these companies had a Project Manager who locked them into huge-ticket but highly inappropriate technology, and then bailed for a better offer (or before it hit the fan. Now the company needs a saviour, or a scapegoat.

• This is very well documented: Many ads seek to hire new immigrants and new graduates because these people will work for less and under worse conditions, and are more desperate for something to show on their resume. This is also true in other staff-shortage industries such as collection agents and hairdressers.

  Let an old-timer pass some advice to the youth reading this: Don't sell yourself short. You have knowledge even if all you know is how to use the technology to find your answers. In an information economy, networking knowledge is more power than you imagine. Yes, you need a job, we all do, but if you work yourself to death in an underpaid and exploitive job, don't think for a moment they will even thank you --- they are more likely to dump you in a wink the day they have a bad quarter.

• Some just betray themselves as thinking too highly of themselves. To be fair to them, we should remember that Narcissus did not know he was looking at his own reflection when he fell in love with it. Still, in a network world, it is the honest pitch that finds the mark (if you will pardon the mixed-message metaphor borrowed from scam artists): A company who portrays itself as just people, presented honestly, with all their foibles, is more likely to attract quality talent than a slick marketing affront painting themselves as the coolest place thing since Andy Warhol.

Employers are being naive: We need to step out of our cubi-cell and proclaim "Everyone! A meeting!" for no real reason except to shoot the breeze and talk straight for the first time in our lives. What's more, we need to let everyone within our charge also speak just as freely and without fear. Instead, we see too many management styles who call that meeting only to see their minions drop their tasks and file in under their command. The good ones feel like kindergarden teachers, and the bad ones ...

Face it. It's time we started treating our employees like graduate students.