So what's the (job) catch?
March 16th, 2003 by HenSo apparantly whatever that .com boom thing was is gone now. All the share stuff is not doing as well and there aren’t many jobs out there. We see lots of things that say this, and lots of articles that explain how IT people are not ’special’ anymore and will have to become ‘normal’ employees, because employers no longer _need_ IT staff and can replace them.
Now, this is partly bullshit. When programmer P or admin A leave the average company, there’s still likely to be a big iceberg of their previous work, and just like an iceberg, only a small part is visible to the other people. Some places however will have things organised and documented well enough [and slowed down enough] that the employee can leave and be replaced, so there is some truth.
Basically the powers that be have decided that the ‘alternative’ IT character is now ‘un-fashionable’. I’m happy with that, I needed a shave anyway.
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But [you knew there was a but didn’t you], what gives? I’m a believer in equality [my generation had it built into us] and if the new era means that computer people at work [much nicer than ‘IT’] have to start being less geeky and salaries are dropping [the best link google found for me], what is the balance?
I’d like to see articles about how our jobs are changing to affect the fact that we’re now more expendable. Do our employers want us to document more so they can bring in the replacements when needed. Do they hire more employees so there is less of a load on the department as a whole? Or is everyone accepting that the work people were doing previously was not balanced by the renumeration they were getting and in fact a % of their renumeration was merely a retainer to stop them vanishing?
If so, what is the % retainer? Is the amount of work an employee puts into their job related to their renumeration? It ought to be a function of it anyway. Although desperation for a job/need for type of renumeration and enjoyment gained are also linked in.