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Job Market Crisis: Laughably Low Pay and Salaries

It’s simple: pay people what they are worth, and stop this stupid "I can’t find skilled people" or "can’t match salaries." All this outsourcing has lead to totally unrealistic expectations. And when they do outsource, it is hit or miss. Many companies have to re-outsource a project multiple times just to "get it right" or […]

Written By: Channel Insider Staff

Sep 14, 2008

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It’s simple: pay people what they are worth, and stop this stupid "I can’t find skilled people" or "can’t match salaries." All this outsourcing has lead to totally unrealistic expectations. And when they do outsource, it is hit or miss. Many companies have to re-outsource a project multiple times just to "get it right" or to "fix it" or to "make it work." Smart companies will hire local people and keep them in house and keep them happy to work for you and will be productive. The worse thing that ever happened to U.S. businesses is the advent of the H1B visas and international outsourcing.
The problem these days is most employers want someone who knows all the latest buzzword technologies, but they want to pay them 30 percent to 40 percent less than market—often less than what people made back in the 1990s.
There is no shortage of talented people. I do understand the dilemma you are in, but we all have a job to do. Yours is to find the right people for your business. You get what you pay for. If you are only willing to pay $60,000, you will only get talent for $60,000 because the really senior people will not even bother to send you a resume.
Your problem is you are both too cheap to pay for training and too cheap to pay for someone who is already a 110 percent fit. Expecting workers who are often already being asked to work 50 to 60 hours a week with no additional pay to work on their own time to learn new technology that may or may not ever be useful for their careers is ridiculous. How many techies spend time "chasing the dragon" trying to learn every up-and-coming buzzword only to find out that the technologies they picked didn’t pan out? Anyone with a well-rounded background including a solid grasp of the fundamentals can learn a new language or package in a fairly short period of time. There is no shortage of people if employers weren’t so picky, lazy and cheap, and expecting someone else to train their employees for them.
When I review listings at Monster and CareerBuilder for the Chicago area, the jobs that do list a salary range are completely laughable. I am a webmaster/Web developer. The jobs I see require specific experience with high-end CMS products, UNIX admin, database admin, web server admin, and a really long list of duties/responsibilities for anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. Are you kidding me?
It isn’t a matter of "satisfying" applicants’ demands. It’s a matter of insulting low pay rate offers. Typically (as I’ve seen myself on all of these job boards) an employer will ask for MSCE, CCNA, intermediate to advanced level experience with Cisco, SQL, clustering, telecom, etc., but only be offering $12 to $17 per hour. "You want to pay me how much??"

Read More Feedback on the IT Talent Crisis
•    Frustrated Hiring Managers
•    Disappointed Job Seekers
•    Undervalued Salespeople
•    Ignorant Human Resources
•    Trouble with Training

Job Market Crisis: Laughably Low Pay and Salaries

Channel Insider Staff

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