Posted on 04/16/2013 7:05:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Say someone who ran a successful contracting company in the SE US for about 22 years. Had as many as 150 employees at max, maybe just a little under that - as well as sub contractors and vendors?
Someone like that? Someone who would LOVE an opportunity to do something more meaningful than sit behind a keyboard ant tell everyone how wise they are? Someone who could make a real difference in a fellow FReeper's life?
I can't speak for SoCal Pubbie, but were I him I'd ask you to put up...
I don’t like travel either, but there’s almost no way I will escape it with the newer irons I have in the fire.
Good for him. Any openings naps? I’m not fussy and I’m willing to relocate.
I agree...25 years in one spot....then a few years of retirement....now itching to get back in....some will not be interested - but many will.
Venom? Project much?
Well I have no idea if I’m “bondable” or not in whatever field he is in (lot of different kinds of bonds - and Obama ain’t helped my personal balance sheet a bit) - but I’m always open to a biz opportunity. Like Isaid, I am in process of reinvention now myself....selling some assets to buy time, enjoying some sales success with the book....doing some consulting....but always open to possibilities...
not much...but probably sometimes....
On the bright side, we could have another Bush...
Too bad HR managers don't see it that way.
That is too bad - and there are always tragic exceptions to any rule. There is always the prospect of incompetence and corruption and inside the box thinking. As for me, I don’t look at your experience as having anything in common with what this article was speaking of.
Hmmmm. I’ll keep that in mind.
The landscape was dotted as far as the eye could see with mid-rise office parks filled with cubicles. In each cubicle, we could find a little rabbit, coffee-cup at his elbow, taking a break from his morning routine to discuss last night's game with his cubicle mates.
One of the rabbits - let's call him Jim - is in a good mood. It's 1995 and he has just been promoted to Senior Business Analyst at Giant InsureCo. His father owns a small shoe store in Illinois - his grandfather served in WWII and worked with his hands in a machine shop. Jim was the first in his family to graduate from college, and he followed all the rules - the right school, the right major, the right extracurriculars, hired by the right company, got into the right training program - everything according to what the guidance counselors told him.
Jim feels lucky. He's making $50K/year and in line to keep getting promotions and one day become a manager. He feels like his education and experience guarantee his place in the food chain, and he has nothing more to worry about until he is ready to retire from Giant in around 2030.
What Jim doesn't realize is that he has stepped into a long-term trap.
Jim is 30 years old. His company loves him at that age and at his current salary. There is a labor arbitrage they can take advantage of - they get more than $50K/year of value out of his work, which involves creating computer-based reports and serving as a liaison between two different and incompatible departments at Giant. His 1995 value to Giant is very high, based on the economy and the circumstances of his employment.
Jim makes the very natural mistake of thinking that his intrinsic value to Giant is very high.
Fast forward to 2008. Jim is now a 43-year-old Department Manager at Giant. He has done well over the years and is now paid $85K/year, but he is worried that he will never be able to crack the executive ranks. John, his 35-year-old co-manager, just got promoted to Assistant Vice President, but Jim got overlooked - again. His job is tougher now - he has been working with Giant's financial services group and over the years many of the software developers have been replaced by contractors from India. In fact, the new Global Finance application is going to be developed in India, and Giant wants some of the younger analysts to take lead roles on that project.
They never asked Jim.
In the fall, Jim reads a headline about the spectacular collapse of Lehman Brothers. It's an interesting story, but he chalks it up to the greed of Wall Street bankers and doesn't think it really has much to do with him out in the Midwest.
In December, Jim gets called into a group meeting with his Vice President. His department is being eliminated in March, and he will get a year's severance pay if he stays on to help the younger analysts learn what they need to know to help the Indian development teams migrate the US applications into Global Finance. It turns out the Lehman collapse has affected many of the investors in Giant's financial products, and the attrition rate means the company can no longer afford to offer certain investment management services...those that are supported by US employees.
Jim is angry, then depressed, but he still believes in his intrinsic value. There are other insurance companies out there, and with his vast experience in statistical coding he is sure to find a similar role at another firm. His family might have to move, and with his daughters in eighth and sixth grade his wife is going to be very unhappy about that. But Jim is not a quitter.
He starts the search process as his job winds down. The plethora of open positions on Dice.com and other sites gives him comfort. He sends out resumes - carefully, at first. It wouldn't do to apply to the wrong kind of company. Jim is willing to wait a little bit, to find just the right place to continue his career.
Fast forward to 2013. Jim has been out of work for nine months after his last contract job ended. Contract work has been dwinding, and he never was able to find permanent employment after his time with Giant ended. Companies showed some interest early in 2009 and he nearly got the job with BigInsCo in Wisconsin, but his wife was so unhappy about the move he actually felt glad when they turned him down in favor of the younger guy from Kentucky.
Jim is almost ready to apply for a job at Home Depot, but he feels like a complete failure. It's so damn hard to apply for that kind of work after having a private office and fifteen people working for him. Jim knows he deserves that kind of job - he knows he can excel at it - but no one will give him a chance. He is 48 years old, still in good health and still smarter than most of these young kids who can barely write a coherent English sentence. Why won't those greedy corporate bastards give him a chance? All they want are cheap Indians and cheap young kids!
Jim has failed to recognize to realize a simple truth:
When there is a paradigm shift, everybody goes to zero.
The Age of Overemployment ended in 2008. Millions of Jims all over the country are still sitting around in dumbfounded amazement, wondering how the economy that treated them so well for nearly three decades suddenly has no more use for them. But they were being paid not for a general skill like an electrician or an auto mechanic or even a contract computer programmer, they were being paid for their situational utility. They became hyperspecialists to make more money, but they made themselves unemployable outside of their current corporate environment.
In the age of transition from paper to computerized offices, many people with moderate brainpower became necessary to automate processes - and they paid for themselves by eliminating the large clerical staffs common in big companies until the early 80's.
Those processes are now fully automated, and future work to enhance or improve upon them has been commoditized to the point that it is no longer necessary to retain a large staff of expensive Americans to do it.
We have a growing Nation of Jims - smart, capable, somewhat spoiled by years of relatively easy success, who are never going to make the transition back to being shopkeepers, tradesmen, or laborers. Rather than using their Big Company employment as an apprenticeship to learn how to run their own businesses, they became subject matter experts in very narrow fields. This got them promoted, but also left them incredibly vulnerable to paradigm shifts like the 2008 crash, the full effects of which have not yet even begun to be felt.
Worse, the Nation of Jims are so desperate now to get back what they had that they will vote for any Pied Piper who promises to ease their financial burdens with free money.
Enter Saint Barack.
There is no straightforward answer. It is difficult to imagine a modern economy needing millions of specialist office workers again. Office parks sit vacant all over the country. The work didn't really move offshore and China didn't steal it - it simply doesn't exist any more. Jim has nothing to do. Nobody needs him, and they feel - justly or not - he would need five years of retraining in both processes and culture to be useful. Companies prefer to spend those five years growing younger employees - their labor arbitrage value is much higher, and even if they turn out to be a bad fit at least you can get a few years of excess value out of them. Many companies would probably consider hiring him as a 1099 independent contractor, but unions and placement firms have run to the government to get specialized laws passed that make hiring independents very difficult. We can call this age discrimination, but it's actually a direct side-effect of politicians pandering to unions. Good luck getting that law changed...
And smaller businesses don't dare hire someone like Jim right now. They simply don't dare. We know that is by design, as the 60's radicals who have taken over our government are systematically implementing their bottom-up plan to destroy the bourgeoisie with no significant political opposition, as the so-called opposition's primary financial contributors are also benefitted by such moves. Small business are under direct assault. The strong will sell themselves to larger competitors - the weak will perish. Either way, they will hire only the exact employees they need, and that is highly unlikely to include Jim.
The bottom line is - the Nation of Jims have to start over. Not quite from scratch, perhaps, but almost. It doesn't matter what Jim was - the paradigm has shifted, and the value Jim once represented is gone. And the longer they wait, the harder it is going to get for them.
As a final note, ponder this quote about the 1982-2008 era - it contains more truth that you will find on this topic in the whole of the Internet:
"When the whole world brought its savings to the United States, people of mediocre skills and slack work habits could afford big houses, expensive vacations, and (at taxpayer expense) generous pensions. Why Americans expected to live well indefinitely on the largesse of foreign investors is a question for the psychiatrists, not the economists." --Spengler, Asia Times
Except for that can’t buy an interview thing of course.
Frankly I’m grasping at straws to make sense of it.
That would make a good thread in its own right.
You might consider checking out http://www.military.com/
Lots of ideas, support, and common ground for you to plow...
An absolute, spot-on look at the current situation in America! America saw a smaller version of what is currently occurring, in 2001.
I USED to be a computer programmer. I was self-taught, proved myself as a contractor and was then hired on (seven years total - including contractor time). With the dot-com bust, the Clinton recession and 9/11, there was a paradigm shift in the IT world. When the above occurred, I along with many non-diplomaed programmers were dropped like a bad-habit! We could not even get an interview at all those job-fairs; as soon as they saw you lacked a degree, they gave you the old, “We will call you.”! Basically at that time, many companies streamlined and went H1 Visa happy and automated and really cut back. My former company had 48 people in my old department. Since I was cut, they have ran that department with about 12 people. Companies learned to do more (or at least the same) with less people - PERIOD!
I along with many of my fellow non-college programmers moved on to other fields - we realized that our time had came and went in the IT field and unless we wanted to spend 3-4 years getting a degree, then it was OVER. I went back to construction and safety. I have a friend of mine who went back to construction, but ultimately created and currently manages the IT department of the cabinet manufacturing company for which he went to work.
As you stated, until the “Jim’s” face facts and move onto to where-ever/what-ever, work is available, there will be this perceived notion that companies are just being evil.
I think you are right.
Yes, it may be blowing my own horn, but I was almost able to throw out my resume on the floor and there would be multiple jobs offer the same day until the central planners gained control.
Hm, do you have any advice for us "young `uns" who're basically being shit on, entry-level jobs requiring "X years of experience"?
> By law H-1Bs are to be paid the same as Americans.
> The last paying position I held was lost to THREE H-1Bs. as a money saving move.
> Do the math.
Well, if they keep Americans out of jobs for long enough then the rate they have to pay, as required by law, goes down. — So, if three H-1Bs are put into every American position (let’s assume there’s still some, so a 3:1 ratio) the reduction in wages for that job is 2/3rds.
BTTT
I would cheerfully work for half my last actual paycheck. (Which coincidentally is about 1/3 of the last start-up’s fictitious and never actually paid salary!)
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