Jack-and-Jill
We’ve been having a lot of conversations at the office about a trend we’re noticing a lot of in the IT field lately. We’re getting all kind of employers who essentially want an eight-armed, Jack-of-all-trades, interdisciplinary employee to solve all their problems for the low, low price of $15/hour.
First it was the company that wanted an experienced web designer who was also a competent Linux administrator.
Then there was the company who wanted the programmer, with client relations experience, who could also manage a network and VoIP system.
Today it was the company who wanted the administrative assistant who is also an expert in Quark and is willing to work for $30,000.
How does this happen? How do employers’ expectations get so wildly out of sync with reality?
We have a theory about this. It goes like this:
After the dotcom bubble burst and thousands of techies lost their jobs, the ones who were left suddenly found themselves having to wear a wide variety of hats- designer, developer, administrator, even receptionist. The ones who didn’t get to keep their jobs found themselves in a hostile marketplace, and had to take administrative jobs not related to their disciplines.
People grew into unique roles in organizations, roles that not only included the jobs they were hired for, but all the other skills they had, and they developed new skills while waiting for the economy to rebound. Suddenly you’ve got office manager/web developers, client service/programmers, sysadmin/designers, etc.
This isn’t entirely bad, of course. Well-rounded IT people are good for companies, and strong overall business process knowledge makes IT people more valuable. But there’s a downside too- all these companies who built complex roles around employees who took on lower-skill, uninteresting, or rare responsibilities or skills are seeing the economy rebound. Employees, tired of hunkering down and waiting for better times, realize their skills and hard-won business experience make them worth a crapload more money elsewhere, so they look out for their own career path and jump ship.
The company is left with this oddly-shaped hole where their employee was. Then they call us and want us to replace the employee they took 5 years to train tomorrow, and for cheap.
Riiiiight. Let me just get out my fairy dust and take care of that for you.