SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Have you ever wondered how much it costs to recruit a new programmer? The numbers may surprise you.
The most common cost of recruiting a developer which comes to mind is a recruitment agency fee, but it’s just a starter. In the IT world, where there is a talent shortage, hiring a new programmer (or any tech talent) increases in cost and effort as time goes on. The better a programmer is, the more expensive it gets. The best ones are like superstars with their own agents. Employee turnover is a huge problem for most companies and long-time employment is almost unreal. According to the 2015 Recruiter Survey, the average employee tenure is below 6 years; 30% of people change their job in 1-3 years and 29% in 4-6 years. Quarsh’s research gives even more dreadful numbers – 20% of new hires leave in 12 months!
Even with low turn-over you need to be prepared for recruitment costs. These studies show that 79% of the workforce keep their resumes up-to-date and 63% have updated their LinkedIn profile just in case. Are you sure your employees won’t quit on you?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sulla on Saturday December 31 2016, @08:18PM
And how did you get to where you are today? Find a place and work your way up as the previous generation retired?
Most places I have been do everything they can to only hire externally and not promote from within. CFO at a state I worked for (as relayed to me by my at the time boss who was one position under her and near retirement) would not promote hard workers because they are already providing more value than they are worth. Another place I worked jumped from accountant 1 to 3 with there being a bottleneck with the 2s, the only way for a 1 to become a 3 was to go work for another place for a year then apply for a three because internals were required to be a 2.
The way to advance is no longer from within for the vast majority of work, it is to go back and forth climbing the ladder between companies. I was fortunate in that I got a job with a local government that has found my abilities so desirable that they are able to keep up with and match and other employer in order to keep me, and is putting me through training so that I can replace the two people above me as they retire. I doubt I will ever bother looking for another employer until I retire.
The reason your opinion is shitty is because you punish people for not being a martyr for a company that sees them as a product to be worked until a better one can be found. Nobody in this market is doing anyone else any favors, and its a joke to act pretend they are. Please read as a royal you, I have no idea about you in particular.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @11:46PM
I had a perfect candidate apply for a position from inside the company. When I told HR that I picked him for the job, they sent me back a memo denying the hire for insufficient justification. So I went down in person and was told, off the record, that they never approve internal moves without a really good reason because if they approve that move, then they have to fill another position. What I surmised from the explanation is that they are too damned lazy to do their jobs and goodness help anyone who made them do it more than once.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @07:14PM
What I surmised from the explanation is that they are too damned lazy to do their jobs and goodness help anyone who made them do it more than once.
That sounds about right for every single HR department I've ever had the misfortune of interacting with (as a candidate or as a hiring manager).
I'm still trying to find out what HR actually is for (except for protecting the company *from* its employees^Wheadcount^Wexpendibles)
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Sunday January 01 2017, @12:11AM
The reason your opinion is shitty is because you punish people for not being a martyr
Didn't say a word about being a martyr, or about loyalty. All I tried to say is that if I need to hire someone, I prefer someone with a history of stability rather than someone who appears will be jumping ship just about the time they've become productive. The second kind of person slows my team down, costs me money, and gets me no usable work.
I fully agree that they only way to advance professionally is to hop companies - it's the best way to have a broad background of different types of projects, of different languages and environments, as well as being the best way to move from junior to senior to lead to manager to director to VP. Your need to manage your career can be in tension with the hiring manager's needs to build a team, to develop the ability to take on jobs and complete them. Understand both sides before you decide to jump at every opportunity; you'll do better long term. If you don't like what I'm saying, that's fine - but understand why I'm saying it, and that I represent more hiring managers than just myself.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Sunday January 01 2017, @01:47AM
Probably an issue of timeframes too. If someone's resume has them changing position every 1-2 years vs 3 years, or for young people are you seeing the 6 month changes as indicitive of a problem?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:54PM
He jumped 3-4 companies over the span of 3-4 years. The first three were a ~75 percent raise over the previous job (20 35 50 60)
The last job however was a net loss because that increase of pay was in a higher expense area and the raise barely covered the difference in cost of living the first year, and the second year raise was so small it didn't cover the rental increases over the same period. The original reason he chose the last job was to get into job market in that area which turned out to plateau around his current pay unless you could get on the job experience in adjacent career paths, which his current job wouldn't offer without someone retiring.
Long story short he's now moving back to his old area to increase his purchasing power (and move back to a social network he fits in better with) while retaining that job (which can't/won't pay him more, but considers him necessary enough to telecommute full time rather than try and hire a replacement locally..)
The sort of nonsense going on with the current job market in many fields is crazy, and the burden of experience for many of the IT related ones are difficult to achieve when nobody is hiring entry level positions, but everyone expects mid-level experienced candidates available with years of experience in a 'niche' subset of a generalized field. Unless of course they are all just hoping to fill the positions with H1Bs...
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:30AM
I'm very curious. How do you resolve these two statements? They look contradictory to me.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:25PM
It's not my job to resolve those two statements for you. One is made from the perspective of a worker, the other is made from the perspective of an employer. Their interests aren't the same here.
For me personally, the answer is growing as much as possible in one company before moving on. I've been at companies for various periods, ranging from 6 months up to 8 years. The 8 year stint was too long, as I ended up doing the same thing for the last 4 years of it without growing.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday January 01 2017, @08:44PM
Then this is why businesses can't find people to hire. Perhaps the interests of employer and employee may be different, but the goals should be the same.
I will agree that in some situations, moving on to other companies can sometimes be healthy for both a company and the employee, but I'm not seeing healthy movement in modern businesses.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Monday January 02 2017, @12:33AM
>> but the goals should be the same
Why should they?
Business has a goal - make money. Unless your growth makes them money in the reasonably near future, they don't care about it any further than necessary to keep you employed.
You have many goals - make yourself happy, provide for your family, keep up with changes in your field to make sure that you'll be employable next year, grow your responsibilities and move up the ladder if you're so inclined.
There's no necessity that the two sets of goals should be the same, perhaps it's nice if they do but that's about it. Do you believe that Microsoft can have 115,000 employees, all of whose goals are aligned with the company?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday January 02 2017, @08:33PM
You and I have very different notions of how businesses should run.
This is the best I can do to explain my position in a simple way without writing a book: Businesses serve people and business are made of people. Money is an advanced bartering system to negotiate between two or more people. Businesses first and foremost revolve around the needs and wants of people -- not money. Money is simply the tool they use to accomplish the exchange of goods of services. A byproduct of money is that it also represents the amount of power a person or entity has.
If you remove the human element from this basic equation, then what businesses actually focus on is the power that money provides. Businesses that focus on money actually focus on consolidating power in the hands of a few. When just a few businesses or people have money and no one else does, it destroys the lives of people and eventually that society.
An unhealthy society is not good business.
That's the best I can do. After that, I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:02AM
You, my friend, are a revolutionary at heart. You want' to change things to your definition of "should"; I'm simply trying to describe my view of what "is".
I think we'll have to disagree respectfully here.