November 11, 2014 at 2:21 am
Mile Higher Than Sea Level (11/10/2014)
...Too-Big-To-Fail...
That sums up the issue. The governments (I am particularly looking at the UK & US ones) should have let the banks fail then purchased them at minimum value agreeing to save the depositors. The shareholders have allowed this to happen so why were they protected? The board allowed this to happen so why were they protected? The regulators allowed this to happen so why were they protected?
Nothing should be too big to fail. The governments were too generous with public funds.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
November 11, 2014 at 4:48 am
Totally agree with the premise of your article.
I have contracted several places and every time I get asked how I have got the skills and experience I have and I repeat the same answer that I invest in myself. The dozens of books, SQL seminars, time checking blogs and my own home virtual playground means I am forever evolving. This is contrast to employees in static environments where they are not encouraged or supported in their own self development.
November 11, 2014 at 5:34 am
parv 3831 (11/11/2014)
Totally agree with the premise of your article.I have contracted several places and every time I get asked how I have got the skills and experience I have and I repeat the same answer that I invest in myself. The dozens of books, SQL seminars, time checking blogs and my own home virtual playground means I am forever evolving. This is contrast to employees in static environments where they are not encouraged or supported in their own self development.
This is one of the reasons that justifies differences in some freelancers' pay. You get in an expert with the skillset needed who has the experience of how to apply it. If you want a "bum on seat" option then sure companies should be paying the equivalent of a full time employee (plus some premium for the flexibility of non-employment). If you want an expert for a project then that is a different case entirely. The latter will be continually investing in themselves, the former are likely to do so occassionally (just like an employee's minimum development needs).
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
November 11, 2014 at 7:25 am
Gary Varga (11/11/2014)
Mile Higher Than Sea Level (11/10/2014)
...Too-Big-To-Fail...That sums up the issue. The governments (I am particularly looking at the UK & US ones) should have let the banks fail then purchased them at minimum value agreeing to save the depositors. The shareholders have allowed this to happen so why were they protected? The board allowed this to happen so why were they protected? The regulators allowed this to happen so why were they protected?
Nothing should be too big to fail. The governments were too generous with public funds.
Personally, I'm a believer in economic and political Darwinism. For an institution to call itself "To Big To Fail" is obscene hubris, and at the end of day it's not even true regardless how hard government tries to make it so.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
November 11, 2014 at 7:33 am
But like I said earlier, it's not enough to provide employees with training. The training has to be relevent and within the context of a comprehensive plan to keep the organization's IT department up to date. It's the application of new technology, not just the accumulation of knowledge, that keeps employees enaged in what they're doing.
Like, if your organization is currently sitting on SQL Server 2005, and you send your database developers off for a week long series of training sessions on SQL Server 2014, then you had better have a plan in the works to upgrade your servers to 2014 within the next year. Otherwise you will certainly lose the better half of your development team.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
November 11, 2014 at 12:36 pm
I'd like to make two additional comments. First, something I've said before, and that is that I'm surprised at how little companies are willing to devote to training their employees. Since I'm currently in transition whenever I have an interview (which I try to make as often as possible) one topic I bring up is what training opportunities there are for employees. My own experience shows me that about 5% of companies will spend anything on training their employees. (I'm referring to training for IT and developers.) That is shocking to me, but it definitely is consistent.
Second, I wonder if training for employees might be more specific to what the company does. For example in my last job our "product" was performing assessments of clients with substance abuse issues. We (IT/developers) did get training, but it was always after the counselors got their training. A lot of that might be simply because counselors are required to attend so much training per year, in order to maintain their certification. It's not an option. And it certainly wouldn't look good for the organization as a whole to maintain their status if counselors weren't certified. Such certification isn't necessary for IT and developers, at many companies and organizations that I'm familiar with. I wonder if working for a Microsoft, Google, Amazon or other large tech company would result in better training opportunities. After all, their products are their technologies. If an IT or dev. guy/gal works in behavioral health, or medicine, or the fashion industry, etc., might their opportunities be less, just because they don't produce "the product"?
Rod
November 24, 2014 at 8:59 am
I agree 100% with this article. If we start viewing people just as resources it will cause undesired results for everyone by dehumanizing the workplace.
December 1, 2014 at 6:53 am
Organizations actually don't need to spend thousands of dollars to train their IT staff. Those of us in IT, by virtue of our nature, are perfectly capable of going out to pasture and training ourselves, whether it be during slow intervals on the job or off-hours at home. The problem is that in many cases we simply don't have a clue what the organization's IT strategy is going forward, so we don't know where to focus our study. Will the next version of the data warehouse be implemented on SQL Server 2014, Oracle, Neteeza, or Hadoop? Those are totally different paths of study.
When executive management isn't forthcoming with their future plans (assuming they have a plan); it leads to uncertainty and doubt down in the trenches. That's perhaps the primary reason why we quit our current positions for another employer; it's not about the pay, the perks, or the people we work with; we're simply attempting to align our personal career goals with the goals of the organization we work for, which is perfectly natural.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 1, 2014 at 11:16 am
As both a data professional and an MBA, I will park my other comments about broad inflammatory comments.
What I will add to the conversation is it: it is no longer enough in today's organization to state "we are valuable" and hope that resources will be thrown your way. It's reasonably important to show WHY inveasting in your people is valuable. Have any of you put together a CBA of why it would *make sense* to put more money into training some folks, the *risks* of losing key individuals in your IT organization, etc... Or on a more basic level - what time/money might be lost if you put crappy code into production and the jobs start to run 4 hours longer than they did before. I don't know about your organizations, but the print manager here had to go through that same level of analysis to upgrade our print room, so - why would we as IT not be subject to the same scrutiny?
In this particular case - what value would the company derive from the specific training you're asking for?
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
December 1, 2014 at 11:53 am
I can only share what I personally experienced. I worked for a premier financial services company for 17 years. The latest CEO was a hack that insulated himself from the "rabble". When he started, the IT organization had four levels of management between he and the lowest worker. When I left about 11 years later, we had either seven or eight layers of management between the lowest IT worker and the CEO (it varied based on the latest org chart change). His focus was only on the Wall Street metrics and his RSOs. He did not entertain thoughts from below. If training for IT was not in vogue, it didn't matter how many CBAs you floated. Usually we didn't have the time to do this unless you wanted to take an off-weekend to do it. I even ended up paying a large chunk of money for my own training (it didn't change anything the next year).
Even prior to his tenure it was really tough to get ideas to flow upwards. It was simply part of that culture. I once made a suggestion for a new type of coordination meeting and it took over two years of mid-level management saying it was a good idea before it came to fruition.
Honestly, I got a really sour attitude from my last ten years in Big Business execs. As I said in a previous post, they couldn't care less whether they manufacture widgets, provide credit card services, or sell luxury goods. These execs would sell horse turds if it got them their compensation levels. They have no loyalty to anything else. It is best to consider your stay there only until it stops working for you -- but keep your skills marketable meanwhile.
I would rather be in an organization in which the c-levels have a passion for the goods or services they sell. Then the CBA will appeal to the upline.
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