It's politics day on CodeBetter.com, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to weigh in on a few concepts about wages, unions, personal finances, and the IT business in general.
The American Dream
Sahil makes an interesting point in his post about the "American Dream" and people living beyond their means today. The American Dream originally started with the concept of people that worked hard and sacrificed to obtain freedom in the form of land ownership, no fear of religious persecution, and a decent life for their loved ones. Immigrants to this country often came with nothing and did some tough jobs at wages so crappy that most pampered Americans today would be appalled at the thought of taking such a job.
Somewhere along the way, the Dream got lost. The message got changed from hard work and sacrifice to entitlement. Many people I interact with on a political level seem to feel that just being an American entitles you to two cars in your garage, cable, a big screen tv, a big house, etc etc etc. Because of this perception people feel this driven need to keep up with the Jones' down the street and max out their lifestyle to match or exceed their wages. Savings rates are at incredible lows, bankruptcies have reached the point where the government has changed the laws to make it harder to file, and when people lose their jobs they're screwed if they don't start working in 30 days instead of having that 6 month cushion that any financial analyst with half a brain recommends to consumers.
In essence, the average American is a slave to their own lifestyle. Let's take a look at my friend, we'll call him Joe for these purposes. Joe graduated with an IT degree, and started out with a load of college tuition debt and an average credit card debt of $8,000. He landed a job for a software firm making $30,000/yr which is pretty decent money for a new grad. Did Joe buckle down and pay his debts off? No, Joe celebrated his freedom from college and his first real job. He leaped into an independent lifestyle by moving out from his roommates into his own apartment, he traded in his clunker car and bought a new one for $250/month, he updated his furniture, his wardrobe, and started having fun going out on the weekends. Why not after all? He's earned the right to pamper himself after being broke for so long in college. The hard fact is, however, that after all his spending, he didn't have enough money to pay off his tuition and credit cards, his lifestyle had expanded to meet his new wages. When Joe was laid off after 8 months in a corporate buy out, he was in worse shape than ever! Joe has since recovered and found a new job etc. My only sad feeling for Joe is that he lives in a constant state of fear about losing his job. He refuses to decrease his standard of living and save some money, so anytime hardship hits he's back at square one, it's a very sad way to live. His current employer walks all over him demanding unpaid overtime and not growing his career the way they should be because they know he's afraid and take advantage of it. Shame on them for doing that, but more shame on Joe for allowing himself to be in that situation in the first place!
How many of you are guilty of this? How many of you upon getting a new raise or a new job quickly increase your lifestyle, filling in all the gaps in what you feel you deserve? I'm not saying you shouldn't buy nice things or have fun, but always remember to pay yourself first. Did you know that with average rate of return if you saved merely $10/day when you graduated college you'd have over a million dollars when you retired? Just think, a pack of a cigarettes and a latte from starbucks sacrificed and you're a millionaire.
Wages
Ultimately, wages are negotiable. Your entire compensation package is negotiable. It all breaks down to a few things:
How valuable have you made yourself- Always seek improvement in your career. Read everything you can, go to conferences, get involved in communities. Broaden your experience and market yourself to people you know, create a reputation. These types of things build the experience (and confidence) necessary to leverage yourself positively in negotiations.
How good a negotiator you are- You would be shocked at how much pay rates can vary within a company for similar positions. The difference comes down how good of a negoiator a candidate is. People in general seem to shortchange themselves. Here's a good rule of thumb: Think about what salary you'd be decently happy with, now add 20% and ask for that. If you've got an employer to the point where they're talking salary with you then you know they want you. If the 20% is out of their budget they'll come back with a lower number, but it will NOT be 20% below what you asked for. Well, maybe, but it's never happened to me or anyone I know. You might be unlucky =). Think of it this way though, if you think 50k would be nice, and you ask for 60k, how shocking is that to an employer with 10 million in revenues? 10k is a lot to you, but the reality of the situation is that it is peanuts to your employer.
Changing Jobs
Changing jobs is the best way to push your salary up in the early stages of your career. I personally never held a job for more than 2 years. Old school hiring consultants will say that this looks bad to employers, but frankly I've never had my job history judged all that harshly. Employers understand a few things about the market:
With the elimination of pension plans and retirement packages, there's little incentive to stay long term with an employer financially.
Downsizing and layoffs are common, getting axed isn't the badge of shame it used to be.
They desire to have employees that are driven for improvement. Take that negative connotation about your job hopping and turn it into a positive one that shows you as a person who wants to grow and be challenged. I always left jobs the moment I capped out my growth and ran out of challenges. Leave the boring maintenance mode to boring people, I wanted to be on the front line.
Later in your career it may make sense to stay long term with a company, just make sure that they treat you well. Good IT workers are a precious commodity. Even after the dot com purging there are still a lot of poor professionals out there.
Unionizing IT
If IT goes union, I'm leaving the industry, simple as that. Now unions aren't all bad, they have several good points:
Worker protection- tenure, etc protect your job.
Open knowledge- payment scales, benefits, etc are all open knowledge, where your salary in a company is a secret.
Bargaining power- if you want something, you can get others to help you demand it.
However, unions absolutely SUCK for several reasons, these are the reasons why I refuse to be involved with them.
They tend to reward tenure, not excellence- Tenure and seniority are rewarded, at the expense of young, motivated, and more skillful workers.
You get forced into issues you don't want- You're a collective, if you feel against an issue but the majority votes the other way, you're stuck, unless you quit.
Corruption- Union officials managing dues, giving your money to politicians that you may not support, all this stuff is on your dime and you don't have any control over it.
In addition, look at how agreements with the unions is helping (only helping, there are other problems too of course) to put the airlines out of business? Manufacturing is a dying industry because our labor is too expensive. Why? Because union contracts mandate that someone with tenure gets $17/hr to perform an unskilled task. Sure the individuals are reaping the benefits, but they're cannibalizing their future for the sake of the present.
Previous Topic
