Are we selling ourselves short? 1

[Zen37]

Hi all

I've been realizing these past few weeks that the technical (I don't know about the programming side of things, but I’ll bet it's pretty much the same) side of IT is looking more and more like a fancy form of the oldest profession.

More and more companies take the IT personnel for granted if not down right expendable. They take what they want and throw us out once we're done or we can't sustain the stress or the long hours. More and more of us are in need to "get a life" but lack the time to do it.

Are we slaves of our own culture? Is the pressure that is put on us to work long hours, be on the constant edge or knowledge and know how, requiring us to work beyond the normal work hours caused by our own misguided love for what we do?

I for one am in a situation where I’ve decided to put my life first and because of that, I had difficulty finding work. I recently found work at a great place where I am very well treated, but the challenges are not very ....well....challenging. I seem to be trading one aspect of the job for another.

Do you think there is a way to find middle ground? I have been thinking about how the industry would be if we were more structured like the engineering fields. Could we get ourselves to be like engineers? We would need to be accredited by peers in our professions, strict standards and rules of conduct would be required, and we could be held accountable for our installations and our actions. This would require the companies to listen to some of the basic needs in IT that are being overlooked right now because of the "good enough" factor.

The "good enough" factor is the idea that we don't need to make thing right, where you carefully plan everything, make sure the impacts are known and well managed, where you think ahead of things, be proactive. No, we basically make thing fast, not planned, just make sure things work. That's what I call the good enough factor and I attribute 90% of downtime to it.

Would you guys agree to regulate the industry in such a way where we would be obligated to truly make sure everything is well planned for, tested and implemented correctly, just like a structural engineer must do before approving work on a building, or is this too much to ask?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

 

[Dollie]

Personally I'm completely against regulating the IT industry. Many larger companies are attempting to do that by putting rate caps on various positions and attempting to put IT services in the same class as your local discount store.

Regulation would mean that I cannot go out and sell my services (by way of employment) to a company and be able to negotiate a good pay rate for myself. I would be required to accept whatever the regulatory committee deems is appropriate.

Inventiveness, progress, forward-motion with technology would become a thing of the past. Integrity wouldn't be of much value.

This sounds too much like a union, and unions stopped protecting their members long ago. Now they are just cash cows for those in charge of the unions themselves.

 

[Zen37]

Dollie, what you are describing really does sound like a union, but it's not what i meant.

The corps of engineers, to my knowledge, does not regulate the salary of engineers, they regulate their actions, responsibility, their methods.

I'm definatly NOT suggesting a "Union" like regulatory committee here, more like a corps of IT.

 

[Dollie]

I guess I just don't like the idea of a committee making my decisions for me. If I don't like my place of work, it should be up to me to make the changes necessary for me to be happy.

It's not necessary to be in a job you hate anymore, too many employers know the value of a good IT staff. If employer's do not realize that value, it is that employer's loss, they will get what they pay for and pay dearly for what they get.

 

[Glenn9999]

Really the only solution for the original post is unionization. And I agree with your assessment. Really any kind of hire-for-money is a variation on that theme, but some work is much more like that than others. If you refuse to sell yourself like that, then they can always find someone else who will.

RE: "the good enough factor". I see that all the time when I work. People get either too much workload or it's just the culture. It's good enough - it works. Nevermind no one can understand the code or knows whether the output is correct. As long as the users THINK the output is fine, then all is well. For example, I've seen rather obvious coding errors in financial reports making the numbers off, but any thought of fixing them was shot down immediately.

As long as the users are fine with it, then all is well.
Basically, the rule everywhere. Although I predict when the full impact of SOX is brought to bear that a lot of companies are going to get the shock of their lives.

 

[Zen37]

I think i did not express my self correctly in my original post, and for that i apologize.

I was under the impression that the fact that we are willing to "prostitute" our work to anyone for anything makes us look and feel less than we are worth (not financial wise but more quality of life and work environment wise).

I think that having an IT corps like the engineers or architechs do would prevent us from being able to "prostitute" our work, making it as cheap and freakishly inadiquate (sometimes) as possible, which in turn takes away a lot of respect of our field. How many times have we cut corners to please management knowing full well that it was doomed from the start. The Dilbert principal is almost totally based on that. If we had the corps to answer to, we would be legally bound to the work we do therefore we would not be able to perform shotty work just so management can look good in front of investors for 5 minutes.

Would it slow down progress? Yes, of course it would. But i wouldn't be one to complain. Heck, it's getting tougher and tougher to keep up with everything out there. Most of it is junk or too immature to be reliable anyways.

I find it difficult to express my view on this and if you find this confusing, i do not mean to.

 

[lgarner]

I think I understand you clearly, and there's some merit. Though the only "Corps of Engineers" that I'm award of is part of the U.S. Army, I think you're referring to the PE license required of structural, civil, and other actual "engineers". This is far different from anything which would regulate employment, salaries, or tasks.

This would require adherence to standards of practice. The problem that I see is that the computer and software industries are too young and move too fast for such standards to be implemented. It takes years for new drugs to become approved, probably quite a while for new alloys or construction methods as well. If we had to wait that long before we could use something like XML, the industry would practically grind to a halt. This might be practical in some niche areas, such as flight-control systems or hospital patient monitoring.

As for the prostitute comparison, welcome to the world of employment. We get paid for services rendered. We'll always think that we're getting less than we think we should, all things considered. Companies will think we're getting more than we should. What we actually get is the compromise.