
Why Bad Jobs-or No Jobs-Happen to Good Workers - noonespecial
http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-bad-jobsor-no-jobshappen-to-good-workers
======
jasonkester
Have you ever noticed that some developers see the job market as a bleak and
desperate place where jobs are scarce and exploitive, while others see this
market and can't believe their amazing luck to have stumbled into such a
fantastic career?

We all know guys from both those camps, so something must be up.

I think a lot of guys get trapped in this cycle between their own lack of
confidence and predatory companies that look for that sort of employee to
exploit. I mean, what better employee to have than one who's constantly in
fear of losing his job in the next round of layoffs and will happily work long
hours for "market average" wages in the quest for job security.

That developer, when he hits the market, will hit it via a layoff. And he'll
have four years of his last employee reinforcing his lack of value, so he
won't expect much beyond a desperate search for somebody, _anybody_ who will
hire him. That's not the sort of dude who will network his way into coffee
with your CTO. He'll pray and spray resumes at HR and endure half a year of
being rejected by keyword filters. By the time the next exploitive company
finds him and offers him another death march at a "market average" salary,
he'll be so grateful that he'll never want to leave.

You see that guy here from time to time (though more often at Slashdot and
Reddit). I wish there were a way to get through to him to let him know that
it's really not like that.

Programming computers for money is the single greatest profession in the 21st
century. If you're doing it and you're not happy, know that you can fix it.

~~~
patio11
Everything Jason says and then some. (Well, OK, I'd quibble about luck having
anything to do with it. Nobody lucks their way into being a doctor - they
correctly identify it is a good idea based on the scads of available evidence
and then work hard on the obvious pathway to becoming one - and we should
similarly avoid trivializing ourselves.)

I have a folder in Gmail of comments thanking me for my negotiating advice
articles. My running tally is folks are $214k a year wealthier _literally just
by asking for it_.

~~~
winter_blue
> folks are $214k a year wealthier literally just by asking for it.

How do you ask for it? (or how do you get there?)

~~~
artmageddon
Personal anecdote: I literally just asked while on the phone with the
recruiter for negotiating for a six-month contract last year in NYC. At the
time, I was getting about $67K.

Recruiter: "Our client is offering $45/hr for the position, what do you think
of the offer?"

Myself: "How close to $50/hr can we get?"

Recruiter: "He can do $50/hr."

That was all it took, and that was the discussion about it verbatim. It's hard
when you're already in the position and you have to negotiate a higher raise
with your boss because you need to prove you're worth it by performance(and
whether or not you meet their metrics, etc etc), but in the interview process,
that's how it went for me.

~~~
vidarh
Can't stress enough that you should ask.

As someone who's been on the hiring side most of my career: I've _never_ given
my "best and final offer" to a potential hire right away. Doing so is leaving
money on the table, as most hires accept the first offer made to them unless
it's totally out of the ballpark.

But that also conversely means that not asking for more than you get offered
is leaving money on the table.

If they clamor to accept right way, I'm left wondering if I offered too much.

I've also _never_ terminated discussions with someone, or known about
situations where that happened, without providing at least one counter offer.
I'm sure it could happen, but as long as you're not being an ass about the way
you're doing it, few people will turn around and decide not to hire you just
because you try to get more money. If anything I _want_ the people who have
the confidence to ask, rather than the one that just quietly accept what's
offered.

~~~
artmageddon
> If they clamor to accept right way, I'm left wondering if I offered too
> much.

I doubt that it's ever "too much", but sometimes it can just be a matter of
appeasement or desperation. I told the same story above to a friend of mine
who had been out of work for at least one or perhaps two years after finishing
a degree from a video-game school as he was being offered a position as a web
developer. I encouraged him to ask for just a little more than what he had
offered, but he sent back an acceptance of the original offer from the
employer as he was afraid of rocking the boat, and simply just wanted to get
paid as bills began to mount up.

The original offer was for a $50K salary, which isn't terrible for starting
out of school. In my eyes, I was slightly disappointed that he didn't even
really try to get another $2000 or $3000, but in his position, he didn't want
to risk losing the original $50K just for a little more.

~~~
vidarh
I can understand that people are worried. But for anyone who reads this who
fall in the worried category, I usually ask for at least 20%-30% more. Asking
for just a tiny increase has never been something I'd even consider. There are
situations I might _settle_ for an increase in that range if the original
offer was high enough, but I'd certainly ask for more than that. If asking for
an increase that low is rocking the boat, there will be other problems with
that employer...

A counter-intuitive trick for those who have trouble getting offers and/or
worry about talking up their offers: Look for jobs below your desired salary
range.

Most people look for jobs where any stated salary range match what they expect
based on past experience - I see that in candidates for jobs I hire for all
the times. Most candidates fit squarely within the range.

If you look for jobs slightly lower, it will often mean you interview against
less skilled candidates than yourself. As long as you can convince the hiring
manager you're not overqualified and looking to leave as soon as possible, it
significantly increases your chances of an offer.

Once you have an offer, if you stand out skills wise, you'll be in a far
stronger position to ask for more, even if you're asking for more than their
salary range - everyone will have "invested" in you as their preferred choice,
and standing out in terms of skills makes it easier to justify to HR to offer
even beyond the top end of the range, sometimes beyond what they'd planned on
stretching to.

I've seen this work from both sides of the table - psychologically it's hard
to give up what is seen as a great deal, even when the other side makes the
deal less and less attractive (by bumping up the salary requirements), and in
the end people (on both ends) tend to be happier with deals where they've had
to negotiate.

------
blu3jack
I think the interviewee made a very solid case that there is a hiring gap in
the area of experienced specialists. He seemed to think that was the major
chunk of the "skill gap" employers complain of.

I have seen that.

On the other hand, he described an army of job-hungry young people striving to
get the right education for entry level work... but missing the boat on just
the right tech -- again for overly-constrained hiring processes. _That_ does
not match my experience: I see students coming out of the educational system
-- reputable universities -- with a huge gap in fundamental knowledge.

I fear that universities, colleges, and vocational schools, in their effort to
deliver workers with fashionable resumes, are failing to deliver the
fundamentals.

Yes, you can teach yourself the fundamentals if you know you need them. But if
you've gone through 4-6 years of university under the theory that they are
teaching you what you need to know, it may be harder to realize that, in fact,
you have learned how to look good, but not how to _be_ good.

~~~
rmason
The problem he described with colleges has been going on for a very long time.
I was interested in both engineering and Journalism when I started college.

I vividly remember attending a lecture by a noted career counselor my first
week in school. They had just laid off tens of thousands of engineers
nationally when the space program wound down. He told us if we got the
engineering degree and weren't in the top twenty percent of our class we
wouldn't find work.

But if we went the journalism route there would be four jobs for every
graduate. I was more passionate about Journalism so that's what I majored in.

So what happened? Four years later I literally couldn't find work in my chosen
field. But my buddy with his engineering degree and 2.1 gpa had employers
fighting over him. All of this happened in four years time.

------
netcan
It's interesting that he mentions the software and doesn't really mention
recruitment companies.

To the extent that this guy is right, recruiters are getting paid a lot of
money and doing a pretty crap job. They are supposed to be the ones saying to
employers "The requirements are too specific, The salary is too low." They are
supposed to be the ones qualifying borderline applicants with a low percentage
out of a deep pile. It's a hard job, but its not like they're charging $100
for it. They charge a lot. enough to justify full days talking to lots of
applicants, hundreds if necessary.

It feels like HR "consultants" spend 60% of their budget chasing clients 30%
advertising & 10% actually doing the job you want them to do.

Anyway, this guy, or one of the good HR consultants should blow the whistle
(I'm exaggerating) on what they actually do. Then, show us how to do it right.
Make a video going over job descriptions and point out when/if they're absurd.
Show us the CVs that come in. Let us see the pain from the employer side. Why
is Joel Spolsky the best resource for this? Where is the industry?

------
countessa
Getting hired is as much a skill as programming is. What many people never
grasp is that learning to present yourself in your CV and your interviews in
such a way that people _want_ to employ you is a skill in and of
itself.....which means that the ability to code well does not equal the
ability to get a job that requires you to code well.

~~~
rprospero
It's absolutely true that getting through the hiring process is a skill. So is
miniature golf. The question is why companies are spending weeks on interviews
and logic puzzles when they could just send all their candidates down to the
mini-golf course and hire candidate with the lowest score. Unless there's
evidence that the skill of resume writing is related to the skill of
programming, your candidates will be just as qualified and you'll have saved
everyone time and stress.

~~~
countessa
Not really. When we interview, we look at more than just technical prowess. We
want to find people who fit well with the organisation. In fact, being the
best possible coder in the world is just unnecessary in what we do. Our
interviews reflect that, and I think it would be naive to assume that other
organisations don't also tailor their interview process to find the candidates
with the best skill set - that means, four our software dev team, coding well
but also communicating and presenting well (we have close relationship with
our users, seeing them practically daily), writing documentation, training
users, writing code that the rest of the team can understand and debug when
they are on vacation or sick, without having to disturb them etc. At the end
of the day, it isn't just about who can write the most brilliant piece of
code....I'll take an average coder with additional skill set over a brilliant
coder who grunts in the corner any day.

------
tomjen3
Interesting, but I don't really by his it arguments. All that is required to
learn in our industry is a sub $1000 pc (and on a budget, sub 500) or a $1500
mac.

Yet somehow we end up with people who cannot solve fizzbuzz.

That seems like a talent shortage to me.

~~~
phaus
I'm a CIS student and a telecommunications professional, with aspirations of
eventually being a professional programmer, so if this is a dumb question,
please forgive me.

If there are people who can't solve fizzbuzz that are getting programming
jobs, what do they do at work?

I can solve fizzbuzz easily, but I haven't ever built an application that I
would consider useful. I've solved puzzles like fizzbuzz and completed lots of
programming assignments (mostly involving stuff at the command line) and I
feel like I know nothing when it comes to actually building something
significant. I feel like it would be impossible for me to get an entry-level
programming job right now, but from the sound of it, maybe not.

~~~
vorg
> If there are people who can't solve fizzbuzz that are getting programming
> jobs, what do they do at work?

The good news: They cause the programming messes which you'll eventually get
hired to clean up, while they're off somewhere else making another mess for
you.

> I can solve fizzbuzz easily, but I haven't ever built an application that I
> would consider useful.

The bad news: All you're ever do is clean up those frauds' messes. Anyone can
build a system with 100k lines of Java code (incl comments). But only people
like you can come along after it's up and running and make it work, so that's
all you're ever be doing. Unfortunately, the employers will expect you to
carry a cellphone around and solve those problems at 3:00am. It's cheaper to
pay you 10% extra for wake-up calls than take your time away from other
maintenance clean-ups in the daytime.

~~~
EvilTerran
_"(incl comments)"_

Optimist.

------
ceras
He touched on the "Silicon Valley model" of poaching employees from companies
that handled the costly training. In a culture where loyalty to your employer
is largely anachronistic, why should most companies -- and not just the top
employers -- bear the costs? The risk of attrition to free riders seems high.

I'm not disagreeing with his assessment so much as questioning the value to
the typical employer. In aggregate it sounds like the right solution, but
individually I'm not so sure.

~~~
mcguire
Because you wind up in a position with a large number of underemployed people
missing just the right skill and a large number of employers who can't seem to
find anyone to hire.

------
tomjen3
We have an issue here with basically two sides that keep blaming each other.

What would it look like if we had a talent shortage instead of a skills gab?
How would that effect our expectations?

~~~
tomjen3
Actually they wouldn't change much, the best solution is still for each
individual to see where he is most likely to find employment, with less
priority given to areas where breaking in is more difficult and more to do
what he is good at.

So why have this debate?

