I was checking out some articles online today and came across some interesting ones dealing with IT and how corporations tend to deal with them. If you have time, you should check them out. The one that best describes most IT departments I’ve worked in is the “Dead Sea” effect… here’s a quote from the post:
There is an anti-pattern that I’ve seen in large organizations which I have come to call “the Dead Sea effect”. The Dead Sea, of course, is a large body of water between Israel and Jordan, located well below sea level. The Jordan River empties into it; water leaves only by evaporation, which means that over the eons, the Dead Sea has become very salty (e.g., 8x saltier than the ocean). As such, it is generally unable to support life, except when spring floods temporarily lower the salinity.
Many large corporate/government IT shops — and not a few small ones — work like the Dead Sea. New hires are brought in as management deems it necessary. Their qualifications (talent, education, professionalism, experience, skills — TEPES) will tend to vary quite a bit, depending upon current needs, employee departure, the personnel budget, and the general hiring ability of those doing the hiring. All things being equal, the general competency of the IT department should have roughly the same distribution as the incoming hires.
But in my experience, that’s not what happens. Instead, what happens is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave — to evaporate, if you will. They are the ones least likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems that plague large organizations; they are also the ones most likely to have other opportunities that they can readily move to.
What tends to remain behind is the ‘residue’ — the least talented and effective IT engineers. They tend to be grateful they have a job and make fewer demands on management; even if they find the workplace unpleasant, they are the least likely to be able to find a job elsewhere. They tend to entrench themselves, becoming maintenance experts on critical systems, assuming responsibilities that no one else wants so that the organization can’t afford to let them go.
For those in IT, that may sound very familiar. For the longest time I thought it was just my luck, but it seems that’s almost the “usual” when it comes to IT. If you’re interested, here are a few more good articles from the author (Bruce F. Webster):
The Wetware Crisis: the Expert Pool
The Wetware Crisis: the Thermocline of Truth
Anatomy of a runaway IT project
Some are a bit long, but they’re all good reads.
