The other night I was having dinner with some friends I used to work with in IT at another company a while back. Among the talk of kids, mortgages, prostates, and retirement one of them confesses he had been recently laid off. The news threw most of us for a loop because he’s a good guy and was very competent at what he did. But apparently that wasn’t good enough for the new company he had recently started at because on his annual review basically the only feedback he received was, “be better.” Unfortunately, my friend wasn’t given much of a chance to “be better” at his new job because he had been so siloed at his old job.
In the corporate world that’s known as being “siloed”. It’s pretty much a career killer in any industry but especially IT where you can only hope that point to retire from that company or get laid off with a nice severance and a stipend for retraining. In IT the expiration date for staying at any one job is 3-5 years then you need to move on. Any longer than that you’re not learning anything new (unless your company is technologically progressive, most aren’t) or you become stuck in a rut knowing one thing for one company but they keep throwing money at you so you can’t leave. Usually if you’ve been at a company that long any move will seem like a step down financially. Unfortunately, this is a trap we all fall into at one point in our careers.
I’ve seen this happen to people in IT or any sort of tech job where they become so good at one thing as time goes on, that’s all they know how to do. A shining example of this was when I worked for a company (we’ll call it the “Big Yellow Box”) where generation after generation learned how to do one thing, do it well and for this one company. But as we know the world only spins forward, not backwards and the “Big Yellow Box” was not keeping up with the times. Soon those generations who became good at one thing for one company found themselves out of a job. Some of the laid off got lucky and continued doing the same thing they had done for years but for a different company. That generation shift their knowledge and skills from the “Big Yellow Box” to their overseas competitor the “Little Green Box”. Others were not so lucky. Many remained unemployed for quite a while until some bottom feeding corporation came along offering them new jobs, training for half their old salaries and vacations promising them they would not be laid off. These poor souls had no choice. Anything looks good when you’re desperate.
Recently I avoided being “siloed” by a company (not so much a bottom feeder but close) I was working for a contractor. This company not only seem to embrace the concept of siloing but also seemed stuck in 1989. They had surfed their name in the industry for years, so they never felt the need to change or were just afraid. They gave the illusion of “progression” with a ping pong table in the cafeteria and business casual. But they still weren’t on board working in Agile/SCRUM and as a contractor I wasn’t allowed to sit with the general populus. My “desk” was basically a card table stuck at the end of the row where the REAL employees got to sit. Despite my peasant-like surroundings, I still did my job. Eventually my boss took notice and encouraged me to apply for a full-time opening they had. After careful consideration, I quickly declined her offer. For the past year I had been working at an office throw away table in Siberia forced to use Waterfall and QA web pages which looked like they developed on a Mac SE in Koala. I recognized the signs of “siloing” and ejected before I fell in. Not everyone is as lucky and unfortunately, they fall deeper into the silo.
A friendly warning to those out there who are comfortable in their jobs right now. GET OUT! We are not living in 1956, loyalty has gone the way of the dinosaur and get use to the idea you are going to retire from the same company you started at. In the immortal words of Dory, “Just keep swimming.”
No comments:
Post a Comment