You know there is a serious skills shortage going on when you see contractors on 150k asking “How do you tell how much memory my computer is using?” and you answer “Oh Mate, you just go into Task Manager and it tells you all that etc..”.

Yes I’m serious.

Actually, I’ve seen a fair bit of this kind of caper lately. There is this new wave of .Net “specialists” coming through the ranks. The problem is, their computer experience has been purely limited to Visual Studio and within - they have never *really* used a computer and have virtually no sys-admin/power-user type experience whatsoever. Seriously, so many of them have only ever loaded up Visual Studio and studied .Net books. They’ll say “Oh is that how you copy a file? I only know how to do it using the built-in Microsoft .Net copy file wizard. I didn’t realise there was a manual way - whoa that’s hardcore - but I still prefer the Microsoft way, .Net is the best at everything.”. Yes these idiots have a permanet set of blinkers on. You can’t underestimate the importance of getting people with broad computer experience in a whole range of different environments enough - these “It has to be .Net” fanatics can be next to useless in so many practical situations.

The upshot of the skills crisis is that those with actual real skills can demand a fortune and the companies are paying it. It would literally blow for businesses though. Japan’s IT market is totally the opposite - its so competitive over there, every Japanese kid is born with technology in their hands and so there is no shortage of tech-savvy kids. The wages are so much lower and in my opinion you would be crazy to go to Tokyo and bust your gut in the IT industry, unless you secured a top end position with an international company based in Tokyo that paid at international rates. Over there, you are far better off doing something you purely enjoy the most, because the money will probably be the same or better.

In a way, I really think that the Australian IT industry needed this injection though. If the wages were the same as they were 5 years ago when I was in Newcastle, there is no way whatsoever that many talented IT people would be dedicating their working days to large companies and Government departments. The top guys in IT have worked very hard and could have been doctors or done any degree at uni they’d liked. If the wages were like they were back then, those with an entrepreneurial streak would be far better off taking a risk and starting up their own businesses. But the way it is now, it kind of sucks them in to hanging around for a bit longer and a bit longer purely because of the money.

Drive an RX8 right now and go on multiple overseas holidays per year while still paying a house off no worries? Or go back to eating bread and water to start that idea off that you are so passionate about? It takes serious balls in a market like this to do the latter, but I can truly admire those who take that risk, as longer term, you can’t work in a job forever if you have that streak of passion inside you.

I know from experience that when I get the following symptoms, its time for a decent break:

• You start staring around at all the big buildings and infrastructure in the city absolutely bewildered at how it all got there and you just can’t understand why anyone would bother with all that hard work - it just blows your mind why people go to work at all.
• 40 hours of consulting in a given week seems like an eternity and you just can’t work out how you used to put “that many hours” in.
• You start taking regular 2 hour lunch breaks, even if its costing you money to do so.

If this is you, you are almost certainly well overdue for a really decent break. Take a month off and don’t think about work at all. You will come back only wanting half hour lunch breaks, totally understanding how all the big buildings and infrastructure got there and your 40 hour week will fly past and you’ll still be ready for more. This is when things happen!

As you delve into the world of very large organisations where the sheer size of the company can easily hide the fact that one or more individuals may not actually be contributing that much in terms of real measurable deliverables, an interesting creature starts to emerge. Its the “fascinated programmer”. This is a guy who is next to useless for the organisation’s bottom line. This is someone who is more concerned with using the ultra latest Microsoft Enterprise Library Patterns and Practices version XYZ21.789 to ensure the way that he generates his application log files is perfectly consistent with some new buzzword that someone made up.

They are just log files - things happen, you write the details into a text file and store the file. Even worst case if you write your own custom logging class, it still only takes you a good half hour to do a really polished job. But instead these fascinated idiots need to link in 5 external assemblies and add 50 DLLs to their projects to create their log files. They create the kind of projects in visual studio .Net that are a nightmare to rebuild and maintain a year or two after they originally wrote it, now that all the linked assemblies are terribly out of date.

“Oh there’s a new version of Enterprise buzzword version x, so our super log file generator needs to be upgraded to this new platform and we need to fix all these missing DLL references because the path to Enterprise Library on your PC is different to that of the original author.”. Again, all to simply create a log file. These chumps are the hand brakes of large organisations, creating the illusion that the IT department is a mystical pit that noone understands because it takes so long to release anything.

The poor managers just keep pouring more money into IT because they have no choice. In the midst of a skills crisis, IT departments hold organisations to ransom. Fascinated programmers focus so much on complicating simple tasks that they completely lose sight of the original goal - which is always to simply move data from A to B. Its always about data, any program just moves data from somewhere to somewhere else. There is no need to make this a complex, multi-layered process.

The positive out of all this is that these people create amazing opportunities for the “fascinating programmer”. This is a guy who comes in, puts in a strong effort to understand the organisation’s business processes and practises with the underlying attitude of simply moving data from A to B in a way that is the most useful for the organisation. They will have their application creating detailed log files in the shortest time possible, they will fully comment their code and they will avoid creating complexity at all costs. The fascinating programmer is always a business analyst and a tester as well - you don’t need separate people for these roles if the programmer is doing their job properly. The reward for them is seeing their clients happy and surprised at how quick they achieved the given task, rather than how many fancy add-on XML components they brought in to mess things up.

In an environment where fascinated programmers dominate, the fascinating programmer can really stand out and get ahead. The business end up loving these guys and try to get them to work on everything, they become like the personal favourite for the clients, run off their feet. But of course in a skills crisis this works to their advantage and they can demand a bucket load of cash - because essentially they are patching up the holes in the sinking boat while the fascinated programmers are pouring new buckets of water in.

It becomes difficult for the fascinating programmer to work along side the fascinated programmer, because the latter’s major goal is to be constantly amazed by dabbling with weirder, newer, more hyped ways of achieving the same goal. While the “fascinating programmer” simply wants to deliver results. Most fascinated programmers that I see, never seemed to originate from true IT/nerd backgrounds. They never had computers when they were really really young, a lot of the time they have come across into IT mid-career and are still kind of going through all that learning and hype that young kid nerds went through when they were 8 years old on their Amiga 500s.

There is almost always a tendency for the fascinated programmers to be permanent staff comforted by the long term safety of their role as opposed to being in less stable contract positions. Organisations often end up bringing in external consultants/contractors to make up for the deficits and inefficiencies that the fascinated programmers created but didn’t need to create.

Another reason to be very selective with who you employ and to find people with a very broad/open approach, rather than your typical monkeys who have memorised version XYZ of Microsoft .Net ABC platform 123 and will need to go on another training course when the next version comes out.

I’ve worked in a fair bucket of different organisations ranging from small, efficient IT shops and startups to Federal Government and large Multi-Nationals in a number of varying industries. And one thing that has always fascinated me has been the quality and productivity of the staff versus the salaries they were all being paid.

You have to keep in mind that salaries and hourly rates are all about demand as opposed to skill level or capability. E.g. Company X can pay Mr Smith $1,000 per hour if they decide they *really really* need him. And he might be a complete monkey. You can have a man in a fluorescent yellow shirt operating a shovel in Western Australia mining for gold earning $120,000/year while a rocket scientist in Newcastle is earning $40,000 because that’s what their respective geographical markets are paying.

One thing is for certain. The highest paid do not necessarily equate to the best performing or the most productive. Now from an employee/contractor perspective, if you have been around the traps and are good at what you do, there is nothing stopping you from going out there in today’s market and being up there with the highest paid - in Canberra that’s anywhere from $130,000 to $270,000 for a single individual contractor.

From an employer’s perspective, where is the value? They are paying this for general software development, DBA work and general consulting. Canberra is an IT gold mine and the skill levels still aren’t all that high. Gone are the old days where managers always earned more than their staff. Now its common in Canberra for the staff that they are managing to be earning more than double that of the manager. These standard IT skill sets are beginning to be classed as specialised and seen as rare experts. The companies and government departments are throwing money at them in the form of lucrative contracts while those managing them are often stuck in permanent positions attracting much lower paying salaries. Its like a whole hidden layer of the IT industry that doesn’t show up in the Hayes salary survey.

What they are paying for is experience and confidence - The people who walk into job interviews confidently saying “Yeah I can do that no problems, yeah I’ve done that before no problems, yeah I’ve seen it all before, yeah I’m a techo but I’m also a people person: take your pick”. But what does saying that in an interview really equate to? It equates to someone who knows how the whole system works, someone usually quite intelligent and confident, however not necessarily motivated any more. You see, when you need to throw a lot of money at someone to get them to come into work, its usually the money that’s the motivating factor - not a passion for the subject matter or type of work.

More and more lately I am always finding myself looking at everyone I come across within IT, thinking:

Would I employ them in my new startup company?

For most of the highest paid ones, I think “what an utter waste of money”. I frequently walk into big companies and think I could halve or third the salaries of all these contractors by replacing them with uni graduates who would be twice as keen.

There’s a definite sweet spot within the bell curve describing employee remuneration. Here are the various stages I am seeing repeatedly:

The base of the curve

As they say: “Pay peanuts and you get monkeys”. This always holds true. Paying the bottom salaries you will either get the extremely inexperienced such as kids fresh out of uni, or those who are so incapable that they aren’t confident in asking for any more money. But if you have a large stream of basic to moderate difficulty tasks, this can be ideal - everyone loves cheap uni graduates, until they get highly experienced and expensive. Uni kids can end up some of the smartest employees you will ever have. But they are not the only smart ones.

The curve comes on boost

In any bell-curve, not long after the base of the curve, the curve takes a sharp upturn and heads for the sky.

This is where my recruitment recommendations lay. These people still have that ultra keenness and excitement to learn. They have done their time as underpaid rookies, probably also with decent degrees. But worked their absolute ring off trying to get a pay rise. And if they worked for a small company, they would have the highest skills levels - small companies need to be smart to survive and usually don’t have a lot of money. So here is where the future employer can cash in. Offer them a bit more cash to continue their climb upwards while they still have the excitement and are still learning. They will come in, grinning about their new pay packet, ultra keen to show off their skills to their new colleagues and just as ultra keen to push on and keep learning. For those next 2 or so years the employer will get a tremendous amount of productivity out of this employee. And I stress it only lasts for 2-3 years in most cases.

The curve peaks

The former star employee now begins to know they are hot stuff. They have been demanding more money for the past couple of years and before long they are dissatisfied. They move between companies a couple of times trying to find either the perfect pay packet or something paying the same that is less stressful - by now someone has thrown a lot of money at them for their experience and confidence. The big danger is in them not learning any more - if you’re not learning, its hard to be completely interested.

This employee is already past their peak, losing interest, but still demanding the big money because of the confidence. This is where they start to run around demanding whatever companies are prepared to pay. They know what to say and how to pull off a successful interview every single time - interviews are all the same.

There is a particular risk if this employee is intelligent (no, not all highly paid people are intelligent) and has intentions of their own to get into something else or start their own business, that they will skate along saying the right things at the right time to hold the high paying position without doing much at all. And its ultra easy for intelligent people to fill the gaps and make themselves appear busy and important.

The curve drops off

Here, the employee is way past their prime and beginning to go downhill. They are visibly less motivated. They are probably aware of this and are usually prepared to accept a slightly lower paying salary just to keep some strong money coming in before they fizzle downwards and secure a more secure, can’t-be-sacked type position. By this stage, if they were ever going to, the employee should have gone off and done their own thing by now i.e. started their own business or become a landscape architect for the passion of it. If they wanted to, but just haven’t by this stage, it can mean a lower quality worker that the business is stuck with who never quite made it. If they were always happy working as an employee, then you might have found yourself the perfect company woman or man - someone dedicated to your company no matter what.

Usually, only big companies and government departments can afford to pay people like this. If they settle into their happy roles, they can be partially productive, but may be hesitant in learning new things.

Its an interesting topic area. And you can waffle on for hours about it. But I think the summary of this post for large employers would be to consider paying those approaching the steep uphill ascent of the salary bell curve instead of those already at the peak walking in like legends - you will save money and get keener performers. Its not simply a matter of holding up the most money and automatically expecting to get the best person for the job.

This is what non-technical recruitment idiots will do when they need a “Web Developer” to handle enhancements and maintenance to corporate ASP.Net based systems:

1. Place advertisements packed with buzzwords that they don’t even understand. If you are in the market for a technical role and you find these ads packed with fluff such as “we need to elevate our technical synergies in a corporate sense” etc - beware! Most likely a senior person that has bubbled their way up to that role after a very large number of years working in the same place, rather than because they actually know anything real.
2. Some existing technical employee told them that the systems they have are in ASP.Net, so that’s the only word the recruitment idiot needs to know. They run a selection process and the person who includes the term “ASP.Net” in their CV, selection criteria (If a government position) and in the interview will most certainly score the position. This is because the recruitment idiot doesn’t know what “ASP.Net” even is, so it comforts them if they get someone who can handle that territory for them.

Oh no - what a disaster.

I recently ran a couple of selection panels for web developers, who would primarily be developing in ASP.Net and this is what I did:

1. Took “ASP.Net” as simply one possible language that an all-rounder would be able to quickly understand and use to develop web applications, just like any other platform.
2. Was very pedantic probing applicants in areas of leadership and teamwork. These are critical. Existing staff are always going to leave, you want future leaders in absolutely any role. You need people who will get on with everyone in the team. You can teach an intelligent monkey how to cut out the same old code in ASP.Net.
3. Looked for a technical all-rounder. It was far more important to me to find someone who knew fluent XHTML, CSS, a bit of PHP, a bit of SQL, competent in Java, some Cold Fusion for instance, rather than someone who has memorised ASP.Net since the beta release date. Honestly, you just don’t want one of these narrow 1 language people. I’m sure they are gurus in their area, but in any role, people are going to come across integration challenges and need to have all kinds of open views to be able to be the most flexible developer they can be.
4. Took the written side of applications very seriously. If you can’t string a sentence together without proper grammar, how can you be expected to be organised in any role or especially push out structured, logical code as a developer? A lot of public servants have an attitude of “Oh well, I’m sure they were busy, its just a mistake - let’s still interview them”. Rubbish - Not if I’m part of the interview panel, and definately not when I’m chairing the panel. You just can’t throw money at people who don’t deserve it. Its survival of the fittest and Canberra suffers too much from providing extra handouts to the non-deserving. The sad reality is that a lot of internal handouts are dished out between those who have soft spots for the lazy. But again, not when I’m involved on the panel.

The result: Well I got a real open-minded, highly capable developer. A strong all rounder who would look people in the face, work reliably, politely, and had a very open approach to development and things in general. Someone who I knew was much better than existing staff who had memorised “ASP.Net” simply because they’d been doing it for a while.

This particular developer knew a handful of approx 5 different langauges, but needed to gain experience specifically with ASP.Net. But you have to look at that as no big deal at all. I mean that is nothing. The guy has obviously proven he can program in most other languages, so why couldn’t he spend a few weeks making links from the ones he knows over to yet another language named “ASP.Net”. Much more important than that is having a personality, being driven, reliable, a team worker and a potential future leader etc. Right - makes sense to me too.

Anyway, I apply for money to send this guy on an ASP.Net course, and actually 2 separate courses get approved - great. Not cheap by any means, but dangle the total cost along side the guy’s salary and you’re not increasing the whole picture by much at all. Its a deadset investment. You’re forking out some money from the government slush funds to actually put it to a really smart use. A future investment of getting someone already smart, to be specifically tweaked for the environment he will be working in. Kind of a kick start making the jump across languages quicker, and time allows for productivity.

In this particular example, I left the particular organisation, and in a way, this particular employee was under my wing - really fitting in with how I saw the area expanding and evolving. A short while later there was pressure from above about spending this couple of thousand dollars on the above mentioned course. That bottled up into an attitude of “Why do we have employees that don’t know exactly “languageX version 1.298457458459″ (i.e. ASP.Net). Which then bottled up into pressure towards the particular developer, specifically dragging him into a room and probing him about why he doesn’t know ASP.Net fluently backwards in the first month or two, which I would have normally absorbed and responded to as his manager, eliminating any unnecessary panic. Not long after, the developer feels like he doesn’t need to fight an uphill battle coming to work every single day and voluntarily resigns.

What an utter waste of Government money, but mostly, what a wasted opportunity of having a really decent all rounder generalist type technical person who would have been key in helping an area grow. Instead, the recruitment idiots want someone who can walk in today and has memorised “ASP.Net”. Oh well, there are plenty of one-language monkeys around - go get ‘em.

I end this post with a plea begging all you intelligent and common-sensed readers to come down and help Canberra out. There is no shortage of money down here, Canberra is the roots of where every federal budget is spent - to keep the Country’s administration ticking over. Come and do a good job in your chosen role and take pride in it. You will earn decent money and push the idiots out of these roles that they inhabit, usually because they have trickled up into those positions after 25 years of achieving nothing.