While surfing for some clustering news I came across this post on scalability.org (it’s their take on this other article, go read ’em both, they’re interesting.)
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.
Well, what can I say? Sometimes I just think I really do need to jump ship, stop bothering with the technicalities and apply for work at HR somewhere.
Of course you end up with “dead wood”, and of course wetware is the trickier asset to manage. Educating users is often more difficult than educating clients [that is: people or companies to wich you serve, we’re talking just wetware here], it’s an ongoing battle, like against spammers.
However I do believe there’s much that can be done to avoid that, even in a cost-effective manner. What you provide to an employee isn’t just money, there’s a cartolad of fringes you can throw in, and if you do manage to know your people (which you should do if you’re hr) you can be more effective giving away perks than simply throwing money at the problem.
(This of course holds true for it as well) (not the perks, the analysis of the problem and the thowing money at things)
I see 0xDEAD disks 