July 17, 2011 at 12:12 pm
TravisDBA (7/17/2011)
Maybe you are not suited, or skilled enough, for the position you are looking for. Not saying you are, but consider it.
.
😀
With all due respect, unless I know someone's personal situation when it comes to finding work in this miserable economy right now, I rend to refrain from saying things like this. But, maybe it's just me. There are people with 20 years of experience and graduate degrees currently out of work right now. Skills is not the main issue in finding work right now. The work just isn't there like it used to be. Companies are being forced to cut their staff back for other reasons than not being able to find skilled people.. 😀
Having just banged my head on the wall, repeatedly, trying to find a skilled SSIS person... no, it's skill, not just work. I understand the arrogance of ignorance and all that, but just wow. We've finally decided to just train our own from the ground up, and try to unlearn any bad habits he's gotten along the way.
This field isn't for everyone. Some folks got tossed in over their heads as being the 'best on staff for the job'. That doesn't mean they've got the ability, or knowledge, to take it somewhere else and be considered effective.
That said, I have no idea about the poster in particular that Steve's mentioning, but it's a worthy thought for everyone to have. "Can I really DO the job?"
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
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July 17, 2011 at 12:19 pm
TravisDBA (7/17/2011)
What you fail to grasp is that companies are competing in a world economy now.
If rhat means keeping the same broken status quo we have right now amidst record enemployment and record foreclosures, then I will ask a question I asked before: " How's that working for everybody?":-D
Sir, I respectfully ask you these questions:
1) Define "broken"
2) How did 'it' get broken?
3) How would you "fix" 'it' ?
If you can answer these questions in an intelligent and coherent manner then I really hope you actually contact your representatives ... and vote in every elections, etc. If not, please quit opining.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
July 17, 2011 at 1:21 pm
sturner (7/17/2011)
TravisDBA (7/17/2011)
What you fail to grasp is that companies are competing in a world economy now.
If rhat means keeping the same broken status quo we have right now amidst record enemployment and record foreclosures, then I will ask a question I asked before: " How's that working for everybody?":-D
Sir, I respectfully ask you these questions:
1) Define "broken"
2) How did 'it' get broken?
3) How would you "fix" 'it' ?
If you can answer these questions in an intelligent and coherent manner then I really hope you actually contact your representatives ... and vote in every elections, etc. If not, please quit opining.
I do contact my reps, and excuse me, it is my right to opine as much as I want. Remember the first amendment bud. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 17, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Having just banged my head on the wall, repeatedly, trying to find a skilled SSIS person... no, it's skill, not just work.
Maybe for YOUR situation it is. All I'm saying is no one can just say that for someone else unless you know he his/her situarion first. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 17, 2011 at 3:23 pm
TravisDBA (7/17/2011)
I do contact my reps, and excuse me, it is my right to opine as much as I want. Remember the first amendment bud. 😀
Excellent. I find it difficult to obide people that do a lot of complaining yet never take the time to call or email their elected officials (much less even know who they are).
Having said that... if you voted for Obama you are getting exactly what you voted for.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
July 17, 2011 at 3:44 pm
sturner (7/17/2011)
TravisDBA (7/17/2011)
I do contact my reps, and excuse me, it is my right to opine as much as I want. Remember the first amendment bud. 😀If you voted for Obama you are getting exactly what you voted for.
I didn't. Also, if you have ever read my previous posts in other threads I do talk about writing your congressman/congresswoman. in particular on offshoring of American jobs. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 17, 2011 at 3:59 pm
There is a fundamentally short-sighted foolishness in treating IT specialists the same way as offshored manual laborers in a factory.
Worker involvement with a factory product ends when the widget leaves the dock.
It is utterly wrong to think the same way about an IT worker's relationship with software, design, and other intellectually high level involvement with technology.
Software developers, IT specialists, etc... are intellectual assets, and are not merely interchangeable laborers.
Such people (such as myself), increase in skill and knowledge, and retain memory of previous work done in terms of institutional memory.
Institutional memory is itself is a hard to replace asset. A good American college education that has taught critical thinking and good communication skills should combine with IT skill to provide a better fit for American companies. And exposure to cutting edge technology products in the most competitive consumer economy in the world (the US), provide intangible qualitative advantages as well, since a high quality technology outcome shouldn't be an abstract & foreign standard in the mind of the IT specialist.
Memory of application code, functionality requirements, application history, business logic, hardware implementation, company policy, rapport with personnel within a company that prompts better communication, etc... this is not outsource-able. American IT workers are a long term asset that helps reduce error rates in development and maintenance, as well as produce better quality software applications and infrastructure. A minor quantitative difference in development and maintenance costs may often not be worth the long term risk in quality when it comes to business critical technology.
In addition, being able to easily meet and/or correspond with a US educated software developer/IT consultant with fluent communication skills is an advantage towards reducing long term risk over the lifecycle of a business critical application, because a major source of project dissatisfaction and error is about whether the requirements are truly well thought out and satisfactorily implemented. Business requirements are often not written in detailed technical implementation terms. It is often not practical to do so. And yet, when requirements are written down or verbally described there are a great many (unexamined) assumptions that pass between parties.
Therefore good communication is critical; linguistic impedance combined with a mismatch in terms of communicating with someone without some exposure to an American liberal arts education can be a detriment when one assumes that everyone is on the same page in regards to correspondence. If the business decision maker does not have native technologists on her/his side to thoroughly translate often vague business requirements into technology, why risk implementation of all of these needs to someone thousands of miles away?
And if American IT workers are treated as disposable widget workers en masse, rather than as an investment in core technological capacity, it will result in a decline in the ability of American companies to control & manage their own technology infrastructure.
-- JS Park
July 17, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Therefore good communication is critical; linguistic impedance combined with a mismatch in terms of communicating with someone without some exposure to an American liberal arts education can be a detriment when one assumes that everyone is on the same page in regards to correspondence. If the business decision maker does not have native technologists on her/his side to thoroughly translate often vague business requirements into technology, why risk implementation of all of these needs to someone thousands of miles away?
And if American IT workers are treated as disposable widget workers en masse, rather than as an investment in core technological capacity, it will result in a decline in the ability of American companies to control & manage their own technology infrastructure.
-- JS Park
Exactly what I have been saying for years...Anyone that has tried to understand a development team of Indians speaking over a long distance conference call at night (their daytime) can definitely understand what you are talking about, I know I can. Its no small wonder the quality is inferior coming from over there. Go figure? 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 18, 2011 at 7:29 am
djackson 22568 (7/15/2011)
J Thaddeus Klopcic (7/15/2011)
What I can't understand is: If there are so many of these talented American programmers who have been replaced by offshore contractors, why are 95% of the programmers we interview complete dweebs? Where are all these unemployed experienced IT professionals hiding?Why? The same reason 99% of offshore contractors aren't even good enough to be called dweebs.
Come on, your racial prejudice against whatever country you are in is unwarranted. Every country has good and bad. I have worked with programmers, project managers and all kinds of IT workers from over 50 countries! I have seen that quality is better the more time someone has spent in America. Born and raised here with a decent college, you are among the best. Those who were born elsewhere but came over prior to college are among the best. Those who were raised and educated elsewhere haven't genereally fit that category, although many have. Overall, I have seen more qualified Americans. Amazing that the country where I would see the highest number of people happen to have the most qualified, I know.
The main issue I see is that companies want to higher wage slaves and can't figure out why nobody wants to apply except idiots. Gee, maybe the smarter people know they can find a real job and aren't willing to accept something less. I know of a company that was trying to hire an engineer, and out of more than 500 applicants, everyone turned down the offer until they got to someone who was willing to work for about 60% of what the position should pay. A year later, with experience, they left.
If you aren't seeing qualified applicants, maybe you need to evaluate your company and not the people who apply.
July 18, 2011 at 7:38 am
I'm sure I'm not the only non-American to be sitting here agape at some of the posts in this thread.
July 18, 2011 at 7:54 am
Richard Warr (7/18/2011)
I'm sure I'm not the only non-American to be sitting here agape at some of the posts in this thread.
Care to elaborate?
July 18, 2011 at 8:09 am
Richard Warr (7/18/2011)
I'm sure I'm not the only non-American to be sitting here agape at some of the posts in this thread.
I'm an American and we do off-shore some of our work. As for me, I appreciate the work that is done by our team in India. They are smart and hard working people. I occasionally review their code and I've seen them use methods to solve problems that I never thought about myself.
There was a learning curve for them to learn our data but that would happen to someone on shore as well. I have just a very small problem understanding them but if I ask them to repeat their statement, I can usually understand them the second time.
The time zone for their work city is a little odd being 9.5 hours ahead of us. That .5 hours makes it weird. When it's 10:00 am our time, it's 7:30 pm their time. So this team adjusts their time to work more of their hours at the same time as us. That's being flexible because they are working mostly at night. How many Americans would be willing to work that shift?
Our contract with them was to write simple SQL queries for reports but nearly every person in India has asked to have additional responsibilities like using Cognos and Oracle OBI which is done exclusively on shore. They are willing to do this on their own time just for the learning experience (of course we don't let people work without getting paid though).
July 18, 2011 at 8:23 am
Richard Warr (7/18/2011)
I'm sure I'm not the only non-American to be sitting here agape at some of the posts in this thread.
I'm American and I'm sitting here with the same reaction.
-Ki
July 18, 2011 at 10:26 am
J Thaddeus Klopcic (7/18/2011)
Richard Warr (7/18/2011)
I'm sure I'm not the only non-American to be sitting here agape at some of the posts in this thread.Care to elaborate?
I suppose I was a bit shocked at the perceived overlap between politics and economics as well as talk of the First Amendment (I take it that's the "Freedom of speech" one).
My job was "offshored" to India in 2002 so I got another job. I don;t really see any difference between America buying cars from Germany or software from India if it's up to spec. It's a World economy these days. I have also outsourced work to both India and Poland with mixed results.
However, many of the jobs that were offshored in the last decade have now come back onshore as companies realised that the promised savings were not always realised.
On a lighter note one bank decided to relocate its Indian call centres back to the UK as people were complaining (normally without justification) that they could not understand Indian accents. So the call centres went to Glasgow where the accents are even stronger 🙂
July 18, 2011 at 10:36 am
J Thaddeus Klopcic (7/15/2011)
What I can't understand is: If there are so many of these talented American programmers who have been replaced by offshore contractors, why are 95% of the programmers we interview complete dweebs? Where are all these unemployed experienced IT professionals hiding?
They're not unemployed, for the most part.
Skilled people tend to keep jobs. Unskilled tend to lose them, and thus not get the experience needed to become skilled.
It's a Catch-22. Always has been since we dumped apprenticing in favor of public "schools". Will be until business leaders realize that building in-house talent actually pays off in the long run better than advertising and hoping for the best.
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