Tech News - Salary watch - IBM Sucks
Ξ January 24th, 2008 | → | ∇ Blog |
The Full Article: IBM responds to overtime lawsuits with 15% salary cuts
Anywho, if you don’t feel like reading the article it basically says that IBM settled a lawsuit with thousands of employees who wanted to be paid for the over time they did. IBM said, “OK”, but then cut everyones salaries %15 to make up the difference.
OK, we make some fairly good money in the technology business. There’s a reason for that though. We have to know a lot. You need to know the in’s and out’s of multiple operating systems, network protocals, several programming languages, computer hardware, storage area netowrks (SAN), wide area networks (WAN), local area networks (LAN), and then there is the list of development IDE’s, software packages (apache, sendmail, bind, etc), and then theres databases. You need to know how to administer multiple kinds of databases, and of course you need to know the SQL Language for working with databases. Naturally when you write code (say a web page), you’ll be writing it in something like PHP. which is wrapped in your HTML, that will have Javascript code snippets in it, and will use SQL to connect to a database. So here you are in a seemingly simple project (writing a web page), and you already have four programming languages interacting with one another.
The point I’m getting at is if you want to succeed in the technology industry, you need to know a lot of very detailed technical information and how it all works together. It doesn’t just happen over night and you can’t get that kind of knowlege from taking a six week course. It takes many years to develope the skills necessary to be good in the Information Technology industry. Most really good IT workers have technical degrees in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Math, Information Technology or Mechinical Engineering. Sure, there are some English Lit majors who found their way into the field, but most of them only know aspects of things .. perhaps a programming language .. perhaps two of them, but usually not how everything listed above works together. (I preface this by saying that there are some fairly bright cats in with English Lit degrees, and some of them know a ton of IT stuff, but it’s the exception not the rule .. and it also goes to say that while I’ve taken my share of English Lit classes, I couldn’t possibly know the technicalities of literature either unless I had that kind of education. The truth is, formal training goes a long way. It’s not the only way to learn things, but you miss a lot along the way if you don’t have it) You seriously need years of training. I’ve been at this for almost 18 years and I’m still learning tons of stuff.
So, we get fairly good salaries, but we get paid to know and understand lots of things. It’s our knowledge that keeps most companies afloat. We often have a better understanding of a business then most executives, simply because every time we write a program we have to drill down into the mechanics of how something works. Take a stock trade. We understand that market data comes into a company via some data feed (go ahead ask me about the granular protocals .. I’ll bore you to tears). We understand the programs that read the data feed and how they decide when to trade stocks based on the information in that data feed, we understand how to look for restrictions on stock trades because we wrote that too. We finally know how to make the stock trade because we did that part of the technology as well. So .. not only do we understand the underlying technologies in the mechanics of how a stock trade works, but we also understand all the logic that goes into making the business decision to actually trade that stock (since we automated the system to do it). We essentially know about everything a stock trader knows, but also the technology incorporated in building an automated system to make the trades and record the transactions for the SEC or other regulartory requirements and bodies; which the trader may NOT be familliar with.
When we choose IT as a career, we understand that there will be late nights and weekends. We know that this is because we can’t just toss in a new piece of code in the middle of a trading day, or upgrade hardware in the midsts of regular business. The number of late nights and weekends that an IT worker works is a direct reflection on how well he is managed. Managers can schedule a few different changes to occure at once making it one Saturday, or they can schedule it over the course of several Saturdays. Some managers are good…some are not.
So, I get a yearly salary with the understanding that there will be the occasional weekend or evening. Fine. If I begin being taken advantage of because my manager isn’t good at scheduling changes, why shouldn’t I be able to collect overtime. Without any skin in the game, what is the benefit to my manager of not scheduling me to work around the clock? It’s not like theres any shortage of things that need to be done in an IT group. When I talk about “skin in the game”, I’m talking about insentive. If there is no additional pay, or a reason to keep the departmental budget down (because you’re not paying the IT guys to work extra hours anyway) why in the world wouldn’t he schedule me to work longer hours if he doesn’t have to pay for it.
I truly wish the workers at IBM stand up for what is rightfully theirs. I’ve never worked at IBM, but I know a load of people who have. Every single one of them complained about the long hours without getting paid for them. And when the IBM workers finally get what is rightfully theirs, IBM Screws them and knocks back their salaries. One has to ask themselves, if it weren’t for the tech workers at IBM, where do you think the company would be? If you think outsourcing is a solution, then go ahead and outsource. I’ve worked with PLENTY of outsourcing firms. The technical skill does not nearly match the skill found here in the United States. I always encourage companies to outsource. They always come back because while it looks great on paper, the code is bad and it never really works out. What you save in the development of software or technology, you’ll end us spending on supporting poorly constructed code.
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