The "Dead Sea Effect" in IT employment
Apr. 13th, 2008 02:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kallistiiThe "Dead Sea Effect" describes what happens when you have have a highly mobile work force, and is going to be the model for the future, because right now, we are loosing "Baby Boomers", and the generation after them was much smaller, which means that a talented people, or even slightly talented people will have their choice of employment in the future. Here is a quote from the excellent article by Bruce F. Webster,
...what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave — to evaporate, if you will. They are the ones least likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems that plague large organizations; they are also the ones most likely to have other opportunities that they can readily move to.
What tends to remain behind is the ‘residue’ — the least talented and effective IT engineers. They tend to be grateful they have a job and make fewer demands on management; even if they find the workplace unpleasant, they are the least likely to be able to find a job elsewhere. They tend to entrench themselves, becoming maintenance experts on critical systems, assuming responsibilities that no one else wants so that the organization can’t afford to let them go.
URL to article: http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/
...what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave — to evaporate, if you will. They are the ones least likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems that plague large organizations; they are also the ones most likely to have other opportunities that they can readily move to.
What tends to remain behind is the ‘residue’ — the least talented and effective IT engineers. They tend to be grateful they have a job and make fewer demands on management; even if they find the workplace unpleasant, they are the least likely to be able to find a job elsewhere. They tend to entrench themselves, becoming maintenance experts on critical systems, assuming responsibilities that no one else wants so that the organization can’t afford to let them go.
URL to article: http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/
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Date: 2008-04-13 11:14 pm (UTC)It may make it hard for big, inflexible companies with stupid policies.
Awwwww. Poor big, inflexible, stupid companies :-).
This is related to something I've noticed every time a company gets itself in trouble -- it's the best people who are most easily able to go somewhere else. That does to some degree cut both ways -- they don't feel the desperate need to avoid the rush, because even if they do wait until the rush they'll still stand out; so if they want to hang tough and ride it out, they aren't taking a terrible risk.
I may have ridden out the high-risk part of my career; I've now been hired twice into good jobs when I was over 50. I was kinda worried for a while that it was going to get harder and harder to get my resume looked at, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
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Date: 2008-04-14 05:00 am (UTC)ttyl