IT Pros Make Job-Hopping A Way Of Life

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Technocrati,
User Rank: Ninja
3/25/2015 | 10:53:42 PM

The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

Really interesting questions as usual Dave. Working as an engineer for the past decade plus, I can totally relate to this need to move on. When I was green, I wanted to stay with my company for as long as I could but business has changed that view entirely.

There are a number of factors but for me - I can't really only stomach about 4 yrs of beating my head against the powers that be. They have no intention of doing anything that might cost them an extra dollar while piling on more work and less compensation and thinking you should be "happy" about it.

It does not matter what you do or have done - if you are not a part to the clique then you are going nowhere. It takes time to figure this out - because execs will smile in face and then replace you with the next "wide-eyed fool".

So now that 4 year window has been reduced to 2yrs, and it is funny - I am currently looking for another gig - and as I do - I am already looking for the next gig.

There is no loyalty in business today - so I am being proactive in the best sense.

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TerryB,
User Rank: Ninja
3/26/2015 | 1:28:14 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@technocrati, I think it depends on the size of the company more than anything else. Although I've spent my career at manufacturers, except for a 3 year stint working for consulting company, with 40-100 not shop floor people, I could see it would be hard to feel loyality to a large company. The customers we deal with at large orgs (like P&G) are so ate up with bureaucracy it is crazy. And I have a relative who works at Microsoft, I can't even imagine doing that. But at small company with flat mgmt structure, where you talk sports with top guy everyday, it's pretty easy to feel ownership in the business. And a large part of that satisfaction is the wide range of duties you do in IT, it's never boring. And no politics.

I've been working since 1986. First company got bought by a Texas company (a really stupid political one) in 1997, I moved on to consulting company even though they wanted me to stay with them. Consulting company went belly up after Y2K ERP work was done, I did my own consulting thing for a year with some of clients I had from them. I then took permanent IT job where I'm at now and pretty sure I'll finish my career here, about 10 years left. I've seen a few job hoppers in my time, I think U2 wrote the song "Still haven't found what I'm looking for" about them. :-)

Anyway, try a small company next time, I think you will find it a lot more satisfying.

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jagibbons,
User Rank: Ninja
3/26/2015 | 1:55:05 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

Thanks for that balanced perspective TerryB. I've been with a small company for the past 16 years. It's a non-profit on top of that. We have a great culture. We have excellent leadership and a lot of folks with a long tenure. Salary isn't everything. The right people doing great word is huge.

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Technocrati,
User Rank: Ninja
3/26/2015 | 3:39:04 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@TerryB Thanks for your advice and insight. One of the things I enjoy most about IW is our community of peers. I am happy things are working out for you and I am sure they will eventually work out for me as well.

I am acting on your advice, it is time to go smaller and/or do my own consulting. I would really rather be my own boss at this point, but as you know, one usually gets an offer before that client base can be built, so we'll see what happens.

On a positive note, my experience and background appears to be very popular so I am collecting options as we speak.

It will be interesting to see where I go next, the unknown is certainly scary but also exciting and invigorating.

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Stratustician,
User Rank: Ninja
3/26/2015 | 4:00:07 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

I think satisfaction overall has the biggest part when it comes to deciding whether to jump ship for some greener pastures somewhere else. I think any time that you work for a department that is viewed as a cost centre (not just IT, talk to marketing folks, we are huge advocates for changing companies due to a lot of the same reasons), it's easy to get stuck in a role where you feel the value you provide to the organization is constantly under scrutiny, shrinking budgets and honestly, as mentioned, because they are tired of beating their heads against the wall to drive change. No one wants to work for an organization where they don't feel they have any value, it's much easier to get up in the morning when you feel like a valuable part of the organization.

Culture is a huge factor, as is knowing that you have room to grow with the company. In many cases, it's not so much the size of the company, but how flat it is overall. Lots of room to move around, try out new roles, and especially if you have the right support in place to help employees plan for their next stage of career evolution or increase in responsibilities are great things to have at an organization, but sadly not a lot of organizations really take the time to support their employees, and as a result, turnover is going to be high.

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David Wagner,
User Rank: Strategist
3/26/2015 | 6:46:52 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@TerryB- I tis nice to see someone happy. thanks for the advice to folks. One counter question, though. Some IT folks think that they only way to work ont he really cutting edge stuff is to be at the biggest companies. Do you feel that way?

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TerryB,
User Rank: Ninja
3/27/2015 | 10:23:55 AM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

That's a loaded question, Dave. Depends on definition of "cutting edge". Am I going to be working on Hadoop and Big Data? Not likely. But this morning I'm working on developing a Sencha Touch app which will run on iPad Mini with a bar code scanner from Infinity Peripherals which plugs into the iPad connector. My app will talk to our IBM i5 business server to allow scanning of tool parts to put them away in location in our Tool Room and to take them out when we pull them to put in our new Forming machines on the floor.

This is a brand new line of business for us. Being the only developer here, I make all the calls how to integrate the support into our current system and then execute it. Above is a small side project of the overall effort.

In 2007, I was the pioneer to implement Sharepoint in our global company in our local business unit. Now, Sharepoint was certainly not cutting edge in 2007 but was to this company. I had the freedom to design our intranet site, integrate application with our i5 server, and implement it all. It was so successful Corp enlisted my help implementing and supporting one for everyone.

With i5 being a character based (green screen) user interface, I've been experimenting with technologies since web/GUI was invented in the 90's to serve i5 data to browser apps. I hated almost every solution until a few years ago when I fell in love with Sencha Ext JS. I've now written many dashboards and several full blown CRUD apps. My plan over my last 10 years of my career is to convert the "ERP" system I wrote here, which is green screen, to Ext JS.

Some explanation here, I'm not recommending writing your own ERP is a good idea. We were running Infor's BPCS ERP with my custom programs filling gaps and enhancing functionality, particularly on shop floor and lab testing. When our current global company was split off from our previous company, our genius Corp IT leader signed a new contract with Infor which cut off all rights to source code. And did this knowing he had paid $100K for a contractor to add a Metals Management modification used by all biz units using BPCS. His logic was there was some master plan in place to move every business unit to MS AX Dynamics ERP. Like many ERP plans, that failed miserably after first couple of business units tried it and plan is gone.

So unable to ever upgrade and move our customizations locally, I took 6 months in 2010 (while still supporting operations) and worked 60-70 hour weeks writing all the functionalilty we used in BPCS beside the General Ledger function. That BPCS module had no source code modifications and had a clean interface from other systems, you could drop transactions you wanted posted in a file and BPCS would post. So I wrote things that no one has probably written in 20-30 years: Inventory Control, Purchasing, Sales Order Processing, A/R, A/P, Shop Floor Control, MPS/MRP, etc. I went ahead and integrated all my custom programs to enhance BPCS and created my own ERP system. About 900-1100 RPGLE programs form the system, plus I have a green screen "portal" system I had written years ago to control the use and security of the system.

So my final goal before I retire in 10 years is to port the entire thing to Ext JS, using CNX Corporation's Valence system on the i5 side. CNX developed a fantastic portal which handles integrated security with i5 and all the session control from browser. It is not hackable, uses the i5 native HTTP Apache server making AJAX CGI calls from Sencha's Ext JS on client browsers, assuming you don't make stupid mistake configuring Apache. Valence includes the support for iText, an open source tool, to directly create PDF documents from RPG on i5 and deliver to clients. I took time to learn and use that.

If I accomplish this, I plan on working with CNX to put the code out there as free open source for any other i5 shop to use for a template for their custome system. I'm so sick of the way ERP companies operate now, withholding source code so their people can bill for customization work that people like myself have historically done. And that on top of endless maintenance fees for nothing, they rarely ever add anything actual useful to your company but want to keep collecting. And they time bomb their software so you can't even move the system you already paid for to new hardware, which you have to do from time to time. It's a disgusting business model now, didn't always used to be that way.

Anyway, I'll leave it to you to decide how much of this qualifies as "cutting edge". But like I said before, never boring around here. :-)

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David Wagner,
User Rank: Strategist
3/30/2015 | 1:25:04 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@TerryB- Well, i don't know if I'm qualified to say what cutting edge is, but I can see that you have a full and busy (and sounds like fun) career. And one thing that seems great about your job is the amount of freedom you have. I think a lot of us yearn for a little more freedom in our jobs, at least at various points in our careers.

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yalanand,
User Rank: Ninja
3/28/2015 | 2:32:10 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@David: Yup most of us feel that way. Most of us are like "hey didn't that company develop that technology? Why not go work under them? They know better!" which is not usually the case every now and then, and if it were, Cyanogen wouldn't be competing with Google Android to buy it out.

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David Wagner,
User Rank: Strategist
3/26/2015 | 6:34:24 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@Technocrati- Everything you say makes sense, but one question for you-- does changing the "powers that be" change the problems? Or do you see the same problems no matter where you work?

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Technocrati,
User Rank: Ninja
3/27/2015 | 8:21:30 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

That is an interesting question Dave, something I had not really thought much about because I try so much to live in the moment. But thinking back, I think it depends on the type of business.

If they are technically avant garde, then ideas are accepted and moved on. While if the business sees tech ( and my role consequently ) as purely an "aid" then I have had less success in influencing new ideas. No matter how brilliant.

This is where it gets tricky. If the company does not understand tech, it has been my experience that they don't even appreciate it (tech) even though they love their iPhone.

I don't understand this - Do these types of CEO's think tech is magic ? It's funny it goes something like this, CEO: Who is that new guy ? Trusted Overpaid Advisor better know as VP of Whatever responds , "He is in the engineering department. Brilliant CEO responds, "Oh. When is lunch ? "

And I love this one, when you cross paths later and you get the look of Who is he again ?

I am thinking of my most recent CEO, who was exactly like this. They have some perception of what tech and tech professionals are, which are usually erroneous on both counts. But strangly they can seem to understand the revenue the use of it brings.

This particular CEO was more fortunate than able and sadly I think that is more the norm rather than the exception.

CEO's and the companies they run are influenced by many things that one would think they would be immune to - Economy of Scale ( and Daddy's money ) is the only thing that keeps them (CEO's) from being exposed as the inept "leaders" they think they are.

I digress somewhat, but the relationship of the CEO's views regarding tech permeates the entire company. Of course this is a multi-faceted question which I have only taken the liberty to skim yet in my case the negative has not always the case in the adoption of recommendations to improve systems, which is probably why I get so incensed when it happens now.

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yalanand,
User Rank: Ninja
3/28/2015 | 2:30:02 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@Technocrati: Basically tech people suffer from having really bad managers who carry up the working of the tech department like a wildfire but in the process the information gets slightly changed, and this creates misdirections in decision making, particularly from the house of the CEO.

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Technocrati,
User Rank: Ninja
3/29/2015 | 2:06:07 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@yalanand You are right. Often any information a CEO gets regarding this area (IT) is mostly clouded by the mis-management along the way. Nice insight.

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Angelfuego,
User Rank: Ninja
3/29/2015 | 3:13:34 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

I guess the IT pros are looking for the next best thing, whether that may be a salary upgrade, more appreciative employment, etc. Since they have option due to job availabilities, I can see taking the leap of faith by seeking a new company to work for. I am actually pretty content with my current job, so I am not looking to hop anywhere. I did hear of an opening at a site much closer to my home, but resisted to apply for it due to the fear of the grass not being greener. I have a long commute, but the trade off is that I really like my site.

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Ashu001,
User Rank: Ninja
3/29/2015 | 1:12:48 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

Technocrati,

Most companies fall in the second bracket you mentioned here.

Sad but true-Most companies just give lip service to Innovation.

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David Wagner,
User Rank: Strategist
3/30/2015 | 1:28:18 PM

Re: The Tech Perspective: I am ( and You Should Be ) Going, Going ....Gone.

@Technocrati- Sounds like the key to your happiness might be in finding the most tech-inclined CEOs. Maybe we should do a ranking of the top tech-inclined CEOs that aren't at obvious tech companies. Do you think something like that would help IT pros?

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Ashu001,
User Rank: Ninja
3/29/2015 | 12:03:30 PM

IT Pros jobhop to avoid Burnout

David,

This is something I have noticed amongst more and more IT Folks today(especially those who work in Basic IT Administration/Maintainence);they get pushed to accomplish more and more in Less and Less time(with No resources to Boot too!).

And when they ask for a raise(for the extra hours they work as well as for all those weekends they are on the job because you can't afford to inconvenice Users during the regular work-week);most of them are left Burnt out at the end of 3-4 year period and just want a break from their existing job so they switch thinking The Grass is Greener on the other side(so to speak).

Is this always true?

Not really;but atleast they get the breaks they need which are otherwise just not forthcoming especially in America where no company offers more than 10 days paid Vacation anymore;Job Switching is one of the Best ways to take a longer break (especially in a Field as in-demand and as fluid as IT today).

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Technocrati,
User Rank: Ninja
3/29/2015 | 2:02:44 PM

Re: IT Pros jobhop to avoid Burnout

@Ash001 Great point ! That is the reality of it ! You will never get the time to recover unless you move on. Theses businesses will literally run you into the ground. Send flowers and have the next one in place before the dust settles.

It is shameful, while everyone hides behind their definition of Capitalism. American business does not want Americans to go visit other lands, because they would see how the rest of the world lives and makes it work !

Six weeks paid vacation ? Unheard of in America. On second thought, America does have it's version - It is called "Unpaid layoff".

So given all of this, it is best for admins and engineers to "Get going, going Gone."

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