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Why It's So Easy to Fire Tech Employees These DaysWhen you discount what makes technology successful, you wind up with an expensive mess
Inc.com ^ | 25th July 2024 | Joe Procopio

Posted on 07/25/2024 8:37:43 PM PDT by Cronos

We need to stop treating technology and those who know how it works like a commodity. Because when you do that, you're quietly creating an elaborate and expensive mess down the road.

..asking tech to code itself seems like a great idea. On paper. But it's only when you ask AI to code something that's going to generate the revenue needed to pay for itself and the company's future growth that you'll realize that AI doesn't know how to shrug.

.. Techies, especially software developers, are terrible at marketing. Especially when marketing themselves.

So when the boom cycles in the tech industry reach a peak, like they did in 2021 and 2022, people who don't know better start asking questions like: 1. Is there any substantial difference between a programmer with 10+ years' experience and someone just out of an online code school? 2. Does off-shoring really come with all those management issues? 3. Can't we just use ChatGPT to code our entire next release with all this year's roadmap features packed into it?

In fact, I just said "people who don't know better" do this, but the shitty thing is that they do know better.

If you think the interest rates are scary on plain old regular money right now, wait until you see what the payback terms are for tech debt.

I'm all for low-costs and scrappy engineering solutions, but I'm also confident we haven't escaped the velocity in technology where elegance doesn't matter.

(Excerpt) Read more at inc.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: labor; technology; wboopi
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1 posted on 07/25/2024 8:37:44 PM PDT by Cronos
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To: Cronos

The business geniuses, who make up the executive suite, only care about off loading their shares at the high price. Leaving a legacy business has gone out of fashion.


2 posted on 07/25/2024 8:39:49 PM PDT by Jonty30 (Trump beat Hilary in 2016. He ended her kill streak in 2024.)
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To: Cronos
We need a union. I know that is a flammable statement on FR, but if there is a group of American workers that need a union, it is American tech workers abused over the last 25 years by corporations and their cheap H1B workers.

And regarding H1B, I'm curious to see how it plays out since both Trump and Harris are on record supporting and eyeing an increase in H1B. Will Vance help turn Trump back to opposing them and committing to end H1B despite the money from tech billionaires?

3 posted on 07/25/2024 8:42:32 PM PDT by Reno89519 (Biden's Given His Farewell Address, So When Is He Leaving?)
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To: Cronos

Bottom line is tech salaries got out of whack from during the early 2020’s.

FAANG was paying entry-level grads 200K to start.

I knew that was not going to be sustainable.


4 posted on 07/25/2024 8:42:36 PM PDT by DarrellZero
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To: Cronos

As a software dev, I can definitely say AI isn’t quite ready to replace individual people by a long shot. In the past year we have employed AI tools to help speed along the code development process. At times it works, but only for the most boilerplate stuff that I could just as easily copy from one place and paste into another.

For more bespoke problems, it makes a solid try, but more often than not there’s at least a small number of errors, and sometimes it misses the mark totally.

AI needs to cook for a little while yet before it’s ready to replace humans. Unless of course you want to build an upside-down pyramid and expect it to stand upright.


5 posted on 07/25/2024 8:43:46 PM PDT by cross_bearer_02
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To: DarrellZero

It depends on the value the person brings AND scarcity


6 posted on 07/25/2024 8:46:15 PM PDT by Cronos (I identify as an ambulance, my pronounces are wee/woo)
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To: Cronos
Bad Energy...

Jeff gets fired...
7 posted on 07/25/2024 8:46:35 PM PDT by know.your.why
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To: Cronos

Management at my company needs to read this.


8 posted on 07/25/2024 8:46:59 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
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To: Cronos

No scarcity when you flood the job market with H1B.


9 posted on 07/25/2024 8:49:04 PM PDT by Reno89519 (Biden's Given His Farewell Address, So When Is He Leaving?)
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To: Reno89519

I am all in for a union.


10 posted on 07/25/2024 8:54:18 PM PDT by wildcard_redneck (He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.)
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To: Cronos

salaries are a fixed cost which can be dwarfed by quality products in a successful company.

while reducing those costs may reduce the losses... it also increases the chance of failure.

we’ll need to out compete them with brazen pro-American tech ingenuity.

we need companies that hire ONLY Americans and aren’t afraid to say it.


11 posted on 07/25/2024 9:02:46 PM PDT by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
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To: Cronos

Long story below. Consider this your warning.

In the fall of 1992 I designed, from the ground up, an online transaction processing system to do medicaid medicare and private insurance eligibility verifications. All of these came into the datacenter through a dial-up system. (2 channel banks into 2 USRobotics boxes with 24 modems in each). I designed this system so that any component could be swapped out for something bigger, faster, and the system would just carry on. I had multiple paths of redundancy, backup battery power, everything. Planned down to the tiles on the floor in the datacenter. In exchange for this design work and sacrifice they promoted a different guy to VP who did basically NONE of the work. So, I left the company. About 4 years or so ago I met a guy who had just left the company as a developer. I asked him about how things were there, and he told me that in the last couple of years(!) they had FINALLY managed to replace the old system. He described the problems that they were suffering from. All because not only had *I* left, but everyone that I had worked with had left, and no one understood the design. So assumptions were made that were wrong, short-cuts were taken that caused single points of failure, and all sorts of other stupidity. “Where’s this going?” you ask. The company would become Change Healthcare. You know, that company that got hacked a few months ago and took down all the billing systems? Yeah, that was my company. I was employee #16. The system was never designed to be connected to the internet, and it sounds like the shortcuts that the former dev told me about in the main OLTP system were extended to the online servers as well. :-\

The moral of the story, don’t run off the people who not only understand the system, but can also DO the work and get results.


12 posted on 07/25/2024 9:52:15 PM PDT by FrankRizzo890
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To: cross_bearer_02

Well said


13 posted on 07/25/2024 9:52:53 PM PDT by Jaysin (Trump can't be beat, unless the democrats cheat)
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To: FrankRizzo890

Also, I wrote all the skeleton code. The “Data housed in a local database” server. The “Connect to datacenter over frame-relay” server. The “3270 terminal emulator” server. The “5250 terminal emulator” server. All worked out so that all the devs had to do was “string copies” as one of my then co-workers put it.


14 posted on 07/25/2024 9:56:24 PM PDT by FrankRizzo890
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To: Cronos

When Microsoft outages caused by a CrowdStrike software glitch that paralyzes airlines and other businesses, the importance of well-paid software techs becomes reality.


15 posted on 07/25/2024 10:34:09 PM PDT by jonrick46 (Leftniks chase illusions of motherships at the end of the pier.)
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To: ShadowAce; dayglored
This should be of interest to your posting communities.

I saw this snowball start rolling downhill 20 years ago seeing the most-experienced programmers aging out without the younger ones fully understand what they inherited. This was the main plot point in the movie "Space Cowboys" and has arisen in real life where minders of Cold War tech are often clueless as to what they're dealing with.

I got the hell out of I.T. when I realized we're not only thrown under the bus but expected to be happy living there.

16 posted on 07/25/2024 10:59:38 PM PDT by MikelTackNailer (Fortunately despite aging I've eluded the snares of aquired wisdom.)
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To: MikelTackNailer
Very important points.

I think that, overall, our society is not good at transferring knowledge from one generation to the next.

17 posted on 07/26/2024 1:59:26 AM PDT by BlackVeil ('The past is never dead. It's not even past.' William Faulkner)
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To: Reno89519
both Trump and Harris are on record supporting and eyeing an increase in H1B.

I think you have your facts mistaken. President Trump tried to reform the H-1B program to prioritize jobs for Americans by enforcing the rules for proving the business need and increasing the pay of H-1B workers to make them less attractive relative to American workers.

You might be thinking of Trump's position on H-2B workers, who are seasonal (non-agricultural) hospitality workers. Trump hires a lot of foreign workers for his hotels.

-PJ

18 posted on 07/26/2024 2:27:28 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too ( * LAAP = Left-wing Activist Agitprop Press (formerly known as the MSM))
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To: Reno89519

Was there ever a time when there was a union to represent the skilled draftsman’s trade in the automotive industry?


19 posted on 07/26/2024 2:59:39 AM PDT by equaviator (If 60 is the new 40 then 35 must be the new 15.)
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To: Reno89519

As much as I despise unions, I have to agree.

If not a union, some kind of guild.


20 posted on 07/26/2024 3:57:57 AM PDT by wally_bert (I cannot be sure for certain, but in my personal opinion I am certain that I am not sure..)
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