[Gllug] VACANCY: Site Reliability Engineering

[Jose Luis Martinez]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Balbir Thomas <balbir.thomas at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Stephen Nelson-Smith
> <sanelson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You jest, but a friend of mine is recruiting a junior PHP developer,
>> and is offering about 12K.  He's getting lots of applicants.
>> Obviously junior - just out of school etc, but all the same...
>
> Question is : Are the members of this list willing to let recruiters
> and companies
> use the resources of this list, to recruit people at wages that don't
> afford them
> a life of dignity, appropriate to their skill level ?

I think what a living wage should be can't be decided by wilful
general agreement, each person has different needs, and the agreement
of what is acceptable has already a name: job market.

Wages are neither determined by us, even if we will band together in
any form, neither by recruiters and companies, that is determined by
forces in the job market that are mostly outside of our control, I
have contributed my own anecdotal evidence about this, to the
surprising incredulity of some people.

With the gloomy news coming strong every day, I think it would be
pretty obvious that wages will be affected, but for some reason some
list's members don't believe this economic tsunami will affect IT
people, even many at their prime of their techie powers.

If nobody wants to pay you a certain wage for your skills, then there
is nothing you can do about it, no matter how much we organize
ourselves. Read below to see wage conditions in other places! That is
what we are faced against, not against a conspiracy of IT employers.

Very often when you push for artificially high wages you only postpone
the inevitable, so the answer is to band together to find the most
profitable fields where our common skills still have demand or where
they can be transferable.

> Though I am sure
> a lot worse goes on in
> this world, but does that mean we be silent spectators to it, or even
> neutral commentators
> (alas, so it is, Amen!) ?

Perhaps we shouldn't be, but first we have to learn from history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

I feel compelled to quote one important phrase from there:

"The principal objection of the Luddites was against the introduction
of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheap,
relatively unskilled labour, resulting in the loss of jobs for many
skilled textile workers."

Banding together for a lost cause is not a good idea.

> Or should we as Linux/Unix adminstrators and
> developers strive to
> setup basic humane standards of what is and is not acceptable in our
> profession ?

Yep, we can strive to that, then you will find out that people in
India, Singapore, Manila, and closer to home Romania are willing to do
the same job for up to one fifth of what you earn yearly, working
daily  shifts of 14 or more hours and be grateful about it.

By all means lets strive for ideal conditions, but if you don't keep
an eye to how competitive you are, then such strife may lead you into
unemployment anyway.

I will repeat this so it sinks: there are people out there, working
for a fifth of what you earn, happy to be "exploited" as we see it.

Frankly there is little you can do about it: companies are moving
whole departments or divisions to cheaper locations which is not
illegal, this naturally tends to depress salaries here. Lets say we go
and demonstrate outside of the companies doing this, or more
radically, strike about it. Well, I think they will move faster out of
the UK.

The way to fight back is to "uber-skill" or to lower you wage demands,
so the differential between local and overseas salaries is smaller.
People already in a ultra specialized niches that have not been
affected have just been lucky. I can name dozens of companies that
were doing something special but still were overtaken by developments
in the industry.

> I think
> the polite way to refer to such an approach is "exercising our
> collective bargaining power" .
>
> This is an open question to all members of this list and not directed
> to any one specific,
> even though I am replying to Stephen's post.

I think your idealism is commendable, but the realities of the job
markets, specially for IT people, are much harsher than idealism
allows. Our jobs are ideally suited for close to ideal market
conditions: they are transferable in a global free(ish) market,
banding together will not change that.

The best way to help each other is to share information about the
field out there, refer people to good job oportunities and to help
each other to sharpen skills, troubleshoot problems, band together for
bigger contracting projects, etc.

>
> regards
> bt
> --
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