What's driving people out of tech biz? Unfair treatment, harassment, funnily enough – study Among the reasons people leave jobs in the technology industry, the most common, according to a study released last week, is unfair treatment. Unfairness in this context represents a variety of ills: unfair management practices – like passing people over for promotion or misattributing credit for work done – stereotyping, and …
It didn't say they left the technology industry for a job in the happy land of eg. investment banking.
It just says that they got fed up of coding language X at company Y and walked across the road to sit in front of exactly the same app coding language X at company Z
This suggests that the tech industry is ok, it's just that worker mobility in very high, staff are in demand and techie skills are transferable.
In other news, grass green, water wet and mondays suck
Would you mind terribly much posting the link to the article that you are commenting on, because it's not the one linked to this comment section, bro? If you'll bother to read the article, you'll note it states this is a survey done only on people leaving the tech industry, or a data set that is only of those people. It's very clear what it's about, and who they were talking to. What's not clear is where did they end up going, but they certainly left, and of course the aforementioned article that you read. :P
I agree with you on this. I've left a few companies for a job in the same industry because I didn't like the way company A treated me or others. Went to company B and all was good.
I'll note that worked for established companies and not startups. There do seem to be more than a few bad apples to work for in the startup sector.
I'd like to see a comparison between these stats from the IT sector and those from other economic sectors. Are the IT numbers anomalous or are they typical? If IT stats diverge from those typically found elsewhere, that would be highly relevant. If not, that might explain why there is no comparison provided.
The linked white paper, which I read, did not state that the survey respondents had left the tech industry. From the paper's description of the sample:
"The Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll conducted an online
survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,006 adults who have left
a job in a technology-related industry or function within the last 3 years."
It isn't always race and sex that cause the ill treatment, but to the extent that author Thomas Claburn is correct that it is, the reason for the high numbers leaving is that it is majority groups and near-majority groups facing the unfair treatment.
That is certainly how it is in Canada. Once they're up to quota in your sex or race your treatment declines ways made obvious every time a manager opens its (his/her) mouth. And in IT in Canada that means male, but it doesn't only mean white males. At large companies here, Chinese and Asian males often complain privately that they're are treated so much more poorly than other members of their ethnic group.
(Basic arithmetic: Small minority groups leaving for any reason would only only cause statistically small movement. Big movement statistics require large groups leaving.)
This isn't 1980, but you still have to be quite intelligent, and you'll be treated like a labourer. IT contains perhaps half of a typical financial company's top 10% in brain power is in IT, and they're almost entirely excluded from strategic decisions and management development.
I will repeat what I said in response to past articles, I don't regard it as ethical to recommend directly entering an IT career to anyone, male or female.
Much better to do engineering or business administration or fine arts and get into IT via being an expert user.
"unfair management practices – like passing people over for promotion"
'Twas ever thus. I quit on this basis over 30 years ago. Odd that as soon as I handed in my notice I was offered a promotion without any of the formalities that normally ruled in that organisation, right out of the normal annual cycle and without the normal promotion board. Things don't change. If employers think they can get away with being cheapskates they will. They're helped if their employees have a very niche skill set with not much competition from other employers.
For employees the answer is to develop a second, less niche skill set if you can. That and an FU fund.
Yup ... Back when I were a strapping young PFY; Had a similar experience with my second real job (tm). Was a hell hole pressure cooker gig with demanding clients and worse management. Was told repeatedly that I just needed to harden the fuck up and that if I couldn't take the heat to get the hell out of the deep fryer.
The war drums of diversity make me deeply uneasy however; Good tech people are hard to find and a small percentage of the population to begin with, to try and mandate requisite genitalia and skin colour seems stupid to me. If someone has the drive & skills to make it in tech then that's all that should be required. Don't care if my team mates are blue with three heads, If they do good work and turn up to help when the shit inevitably hits the whirly thing; then they are good in my book.
Most upper manglemnet are blithering idiots who have the opinion that Techies are just another replaceable cog in the machine and any cookie cutter replacement will do just fine in the assembly line that is corporate IT; By the time they realise their mistake the company they are ruining in falling into the mountainside under full power.
@LGB "Good tech people are hard to find and a small percentage of the population to begin with, to try and mandate requisite genitalia and skin colour seems stupid to me."
The bosses say they hope to get more people into the industry by recruiting women. (Either that or they hope to pay $0.72 (or $0.92) instead of $1.00.)
For every woman they attract they probably push away a man.
Much better to let women who want to enter the industry. And let them take the positions they want.
Yes, but is that *always* unfair? I've seen people expecting to be promoted just because they've been there for n years more than others, or were the among the older one. The fact that their skills, experience, and productivity was far below those of other younger and/or hired later didn't bother them. And get upset if someone younger gets promoted.
I'm sure they see the treatment "unfair", and from their side it probably looks so. But IT is one of the places were skills and experience have a paramount importance and hierarchies often form around them. In other jobs, often promotions follow a fixed scheme exactly to avoid competition and related issues (and that may lead as well to some bright people leaving).
That's not to negate many companies are dysfunctional and people get promoted for the wrong reason (and you really have to leave them as soon as yo can), but "unfair" often may depend from what side you look at it. Difficult to measure it properly, in researches as such, though.
Settling: "I'm really not happy here, but maybe this is the best I can expect and I'll regret giving it up."
If in doubt, go. If you really are miserable where you are, then go.
I recently left my job because the company owner decided that the team product owner should be a goofball from the sales team. Much misery ensued.
" team product owner should be a goofball from the sales team. Much misery ensued."
If "team product owner" is anything like a product manager you'll find that is pretty much universal.
Same thing with CIO, usually some person with a strong sales background from somewhere, and just a little technical knowledge.
In Canada, in the finance and services industries, IT people, especially male IT people, are seen as so universally and completely lacking in people skills they're only ever allowed to run small teams of fellow socially handicapped colleagues.
Managing larger groups more requires either a woman or a former salesperson.
Actually, the salesperson if often the wrong choice as a product manager because he or she can't usually see beyond short term gains. And the interpersonal skills to manage a production group are very different from those needed to deceive a customer <G>. Often, salespeople "sell" promises to their people (which often aren't kept), and that's truly dangerous for morale.
Good product managers need a clear view of their products, and be able to find the right compromises among costs, features, development effort, etc. They need to collaborate with their teams, and be open and sincere.
Salespeople instead often look for shortcuts and then put the burden on tech ones. The issues is many IT companies have only tech people and sales people....
When I was growing up Mum and Dad always said I was wonderful and talented and great and bought me anything I wanted and allowed me to do whatever I wanted. When I went out and got a job, the people who hired me don't treat me like that at all. I am being treated unfairly.
Most likely means "Didn't get a pay rise of even inflation, despite getting a good or better performance review".
As that has basically been my experience at every tech place I have worked (apart from my current one funnily enough).
Sometimes it works out due to other stuff like stock options ofc, but generally people move jobs to actually get the pay rises they didn't get for the last x years.
Amazing how all employers use some "formula" that is supposedly based on "industry averages" that magically reveals that no pay rises are needed.
Yet your new job pays lots more.
This is a bit of a strawman argument isn't it? I mean people are saying why they think they've been treated unfairly and you've ignored that and fabricated an easy to attack image.
"When I was growing up Mum and Dad always said I was wonderful and talented and great and bought me anything I wanted and allowed me to do whatever I wanted. When I went out and got a job, the people who hired me don't treat me like that at all. I am being treated unfairly"
* To anyone male or female. Look at how employers from IBM to Yahoo treat their staff. Look at the plumber like wages, the horrendous hours, the negative job security.
* Tech, where if you Slurp + Ad-Sling you get to be more valuable than any other corporation that's ever existed. This applies even if you make nothing and even admit it on your IPO like Snap etc!
* Tech, where governments claim they can't get the staff, yet chase contractors out of the business with extreme prejudice for petty taxes that amount to nothing.
* Tech, where corporations claim they can't find qualified staff in order to perpetuate the lie that lets them bring in cheap labor from India etc, all to artificially depress wages at home.
* Tech, where wealth concentration is in the 1% of the 1%, but founders still get to keep 99% of the power by hijacking voting rights.
* Tech, where the connected few dictate laws they want or don't want to politicians / legislators, with more favouritism than Big-Oil and Big-Banking combined.
Well, not if the likes of MS, Google, Amazon and this guy
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/04/30/2230229/vc-founder-predicts-ai-will-take-50-of-all-human-jobs-within-10-years
have anything to do with it. A.I. will dictate our entire lives which will (if the American Ad slingers have their way) be spent consming srap, sorry media.
Then this
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/01/203221/taser-will-use-police-body-camera-videos-to-anticipate-criminal-activity
will make going out into the streets even harder as you won't know if the apparently friendly cop's A.I. will decide that you need a quick zap to stop your subversive thoughts.
with Amazon etc delivering everything we need by drone and all our entertainment needs sourced from social media why actually meet with other people?
The world that Asimov painted where people just didn't meet others is about to come true but quite what we will do for income is another thing.
I feel a new revolution might ne about due, one to stop the rise of the machines but where is the new Ned Ludd when you need them eh?
THAT is the reason people are pissed off and are leaving IT.
Funny how they never outsource the Exec jobs, or HR or Finance.
We are seen as just a commodity, despite superior skills and adding value to the organisation.
When it all fucks up, ends up taking longer and costing more, and you fire the person who actually knew anything then you will realise this. Except of course as an ever moving Exec you will be long gone by then, with your massive bank balance and big fat bonus.
Management is a separate skill from Engineering. Just because you are good at one doesn't mean you are good at the other. In this case I suggest quite the opposite. An Engineer who starts and leads a tech business is unlikely to be a sympathetic people person, rather someone who has clear technical ideas and the drive to realise them. Others follow in his (predominantly male) wake, or leave.
In larger companies, management posts tend to be filled through promotion. Take an good engineer and make him/her a manager. Like will select like and in the end you have the technical division of your company run by promoted engineers who couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. An excellent example of this was, through personal experience in the 70s to 90s, BT.
Laurence J Peter knew something about this.
These are the companies that don't have separate tracks for promoting tech people and non-tech ones. It is true many talented engineer aren't good "managers" - when they have to manage non tech stuff (which often just annoy them), just as well as many people without a tech background can't really understand and manage tech stuff. You have to separate the roles, and ensure people do what they know how to do well.
I remember my first boss telling me "you can't be a techie all your career" - and I asked him "why? This company doesn't have higher roles for tech people, only sales/marketing ones?" That company went bankrupt a few years after I left, when they got rid of the most paid techs, because execs started to think tech people were just "blue collar" you could easily replace with cheaper ones. No tech people were in a position to counter that argument...
Management is a separate skill from accounting, sales, marketing, banking, news reading, you name it.
That doesn't stop those people getting into management.
Actually engineering is pretty close to management. Project planning. Maintaining professional standards in your design so people aren't killed by your bridge.
Most successful large manufacturing companies have former engineers filling most of their executive positions.
But in IT it is mostly salespeople filling the executive positions.
Is BT a former crown company. In my experience managers with bad people skills seem common in current and privatized crown companies. I think it goes with having to deal with employees you cannot fire, the thick skin needed, calloused thick numb skin needed.
One of my brothers is an accountant, and he says accountants are notorious in management. They have no sympathy and they're looking at the bottom line.
What number of men and what number of women leave due to unfair treatment and harassment?
I can't believe the only male to have left the industry (retired early) due to that reason.
And I didn't quit one job either. One bad company does not make a poisoned industry. I'd encountered a bad company/bad department really, early in my career. They happen. (Any professional reporter should know that, after all there are bad news media organizations for reporters to work in too. Doesn't mean the entirety of the news media industry is bad.)
I tried a few companies for a couple of years each -- fair trial -- leaving each, before I tossed in the towel.
In my career I knew 4 women who left IT in Canada for reasons other than being promoted out of IT and into general management.
Two left to go into nursing.
- One of those two left because a couple of employers in a row forced her into supervisory roles, when all she wanted was to program.
- The other left because programming was too socially isolating and she didn't get many thanks (and none of us got much thanks, that is how it is in programming).
The third had been a nurse (graduated and worked in nursing) before coming to Canada and starting work in programming. She went back to Australia to work in one of their health ministries as a user analyst.
A fourth left for a position in the USA where she was promised she could just do programming. Her company here in Canada was asking her to go into management so frequently it constituted harassment.
Other than that four, I've know a half dozen other women to leave IT, but they left to go into management.
That is the thing, if you are a woman and you want to work in IT you will not have that opportunity in Canada, because you'll be promoted out of IT. Your only choice if you want to do tech work is to leave IT and do some other kind of tech work.
I hope things are better in other countries.
Odd. My experience is that most women are keen to get into supervisory and manglement roles and leave the heavy lifting to others. There have only been a few dedicated to getting on with the job at hand, although often it was detail-mongering or "design".
...the person (or multiples of people) get pushed out due to "restructuring" and decide, fuck it, I'm going to do something I enjoy.
It's that final kick you needed to leave this miserable career path.
It's easier to move on when you have nothing, instead of everything, to lose.
The only person who decides what the workplace environment is, is the supervisor. A worker does not have the power to control the workplace unless a supervisor or manager has allowed it.
Hiring based on gender and race is going to create unfairness. Yet more racism and sexism is never the answer to racism and sexism. The answer is a respectful workplace and while that must come from upper management it is the immediate supervisor who will have the greatest impact on producing a respectful workplace for the individual worker.
A boss cannot make people respect each other but they sure as hell can make workers act like they respect each other, particularity in a Union environment where respect is clearly part of the contract all are working under. But even if each worker has their own contract a company, the boss, can demand workers to act and be respectful at all times, and take action if that does not happen.
Managing is a skill, it is far harder to do right than troubleshooting, coding or any technical task that has direct cause and effect but at the same time those skills can be learned.
IME fairness is tricky in large part because the exact same treatment for one worker is not always fair or considered fair treatment to or by another worker. Equal is not always fair, it often is a lazy bosses excuse for failing to provide a respectful workplace.
For an actual example, consider a worker who claims they need to leave work early to pick up children from school. Normally that isn't accommodated on a regular basis but the worker claims special status due to gender and upper management agrees for political reasons. The other workers are quick to notice that the worker is working fewer hours but getting the same pay. That's not respectful and appears unfair.
Upper Management "solves" the problem by saying anyone who has kids can leave early if management agrees. Of course all other workers are too valuable to let go early. Eventually a grievance results in the worker leaving early losing pay for the hours missed, now they too think the situation is unfair. BTW the same workplace also had different expectations based on race, creating yet more unfairness.
In the above case there was a respectful solution and that was to allow flexible work hours and not put workers into the position of having to "sell" or rationalize their reasons. Supervisors should avoid making certain judgement calls. Those can result in one worker having their vacation cancelled so another can take their kids to Disneyland. Not wanting to make public that the first worker was going to visit a dying relative made that feel very unfair to them, even more so when the relative did die. (an actual case, that very productive worker ended up leaving for another company)
The problem isn't just an IT problem, many many industries and workplaces have similar problems but all of them can be addressed by better management. The problems of disrespectful or unfair workplaces can be solved, work can be a very pleasant place to be, and more productive.
Part of the trouble is most of those people who want to be in management, want to be bosses, to be seen as better, over others. It is a job where most of those wanting the position should not have it and all those who do get it should spend years in training for it. That also helps with the unfairness that is felt when promotions are available.
The requirements for promotion should be made clear and promotion should come from within first. Who the next boss is going to be should be obvious and the reasons why and how they got into that position should be obvious. The many courses should be available to those who want them, and anyone showing conflict resolution and respect to all should be encouraged.
It isn't rocket science, in many ways it's harder.
'Hiring based on gender and race is going to create unfairness' - It does but life isn't fair, it would be nice if it was but it ain't.
Some recent comments outline what an IT shop realistically recommends:
'The pace of change in technology is increasing and we need to get better at changing. That ability to change HAS to include each and every employee at [redacted]. Stasis is followed by irrelevance and that is followed by an excruciating and painful decline - I am not going there and will do everything to ensure [redacted] doesn’t either. Job stability comes with great skill, in today’s climate you’d better be able to change.'
'Don’t set yourself up to fail. I am certainly not trying to.'
Personally I would not recommend IT to my kids, but then they have no interest in it either.
Life isn't fair is exactly what management at workplaces that only hire one gender or race claim, lazy management that cares little for workers or a respectful workplace. It is also the claim of those that do not want to change, to do better.
And since that describes most IT workplaces, I rarely recommend them either, even less so now that some local IT business have been bought by a company from India actively working to export the work and bring in new workers. They too point out that life isn't fair.
I left a position with a Tech company because I saw that my skills and work performance were undervalued. Sure enough, when I popped into the office months later, three (3) people were fulfilling my job(s). "Doubtless" they were doing those jobs better or more fully, but still. "Does the work of three" would be a funny line on the CV.
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