It's time to take off that uncomfortable suit and put on those comfy jeans you left at home during the dot-com crash. And while you're at it, grow that tidy corporate haircut out, let your facial hair run wild, and visit your local tattoo parlor so you can show off some visible ink.

The word is out. IT rock geeks are back in demand and stereotypical "dot-com" culture (and smell) is back in vogue. Managers are again in a bidding war to compete with their rivals and new Web juggernauts like Google to retain their best employees by offering a laid-back environment to benefit staff moral, retention and productivity.

Enter Web 2.0 work culture, the future of yesterday.

According to this year's Deloitte study of 500 CEOs finding, hiring, and retaining top IT talent is on top of the high brass' agenda for future growth. According to the report what is making the situation worse is the impending retirement of baby boomers who are leaving the workforce in droves.

"Technology companies, which rely heavily on top talent to drive innovation, will suffer especially from this global problem" said Deloitte technology media and telecommunications industry group leader, Damian Tampling, who thinks that the shortage will become a crisis for the industry for decades to come, particularly in Australia.

It's fascinating to think that almost five years ago the total opposite was true. Dot-com was a dirty word, saying you worked in the industry was something one didn't readily admit unless you'd had a few beers. And that's if you had the cash to buy a few as many found themselves out of a job, their salary was on freeze, or had to take jobs at half the pay of what they were demanding during the boom.

Folks who had yuppified previous urban dank centres of San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, and London were having to sell their properties because they could no longer afford to live in said dank bohemia anymore.

Global recruitment companies were telling prospecting employees that they were no longer going to be employed just because they were a technical guru. They were going to have to learn to dress, communicate, and adapt all the traditional corporate ideals that IT has been exempt from during the dot-com boom.

Fast forward to Web 2.0 and while workplaces aren't as cheesy with their decor as they were were in the late '90s, and developers aren't getting paid $100K for being HTML and JavaScript jockeys, geeks just aren't chuffed with corporate culture.

I recently heard of a developer taking a pay cut of around $40K a year to leave his business intelligence programming and consultancy job to work as an engineer for Google Australia. It wasn't the money that necessarily was keeping him around but the lure of working on innovative projects in an environment where lunch is provided, developers get to work on their own projects, and most people have passed a stringent brainiac litmus test before being employed.

Not all people can take such a drastic pay cut and keep the mortgage but the reality is that people are looking past the dollar signs to a more flexible work environment.

It may not be a total bean bag environment yet, and here at CNET Australia we're still looking to re-instate our Street Fighter 2 machine, but it's creeping in more and more. Web consultants with big ideas are back in, reasonable pay salaries have made a comeback, and the ties and uncomfortable shoes are being left at home.

As Spinal Tap wisely once said "The less things change the more they stay the same".

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Comments

1

clanky - 04/07/07

"staff moral"? That's the opposite of what dot com culture tended to create. Probably you meant "morale." Oh, web editors, when wilst thou step up to he plate?

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2

L33TFooMaster - 04/07/07

"he plate"? Well that's rather sexist, isn't it? What about all of the she plates out there? Probably you meant "the plate." Oh, respondents, when wilst thou step up to she plate?

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3

j_king - 04/07/07

While this may be true in some parts of the industry, it's certainly not a universal. In fact, generalizations are becoming more useless as populations boom. It's hard to speak of "facts" with certainty unless one is willing and able to be specific -- not an easy thing to do!

To contrast this article, there's also the other end of the stream where "developers" are so plenty that the prospective employees are fighting for crappy salaries and even crappier work environments. This is usually in the start-up or small-business area -- a growing area for sure, but not known for retention or quality hires.

I'm sure there are still other segments to talk about... but AFAIK the companies that are investing in foosball tables, laundry services, and free meals are really just a handful of the big companies; hardly a cultural shift. Most of them have been doing it all along (ie: Google).

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4

Brad Eleven - 04/07/07

I do see the "employee retention" meme making a comeback; this is the harbinger of fair and dignified treatment of employees, and is a direct result of a rising cost-per-hire. Contractor emptor, though--this apparent revival of company culture is strictly an economic move, rather than the "do the right thing, every time" slogan which many of us parse as some version of the Golden Rule.

Foosball tables and nerf guns? I don't think so. Maybe iPhones and nicer laptops, or actual offices versus cubicles. I think that if we do see more bones being thrown in the name of retention, they'll be something that can be written off. Irrational exuberance be damned.

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5

Jeffery - 04/07/07

Well I don't really get this? who the hell in IT wears a suit to work?? I work for a huge oil company and we pretty much wear whatever we want. I mean we aren't shooting hoops and playing air hockey in the office or anything = ) but its pretty casual.

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6

deathbychichi - 04/07/07

We just did a few minutes on the Nintendo Wii in the conference room but, other than that, it's business casual attire here in Houston, Texas. The banker mentality, I guess. Hi Brad.

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7

Jacob - 04/07/07

I worked in Houston for over a decade and it was mostly biz casual. I moved to LA a year ago and I've tripled my salary while wearing shorts and sandals. Some times i even put my hair up in a Mohawk. lol...

Oh and L33TFooMaster; clanky meant "the" plate. not "he" plate. but it must be a Freudian slip as it's true that there are not many girls in IT. Thank god there are hot babes running round sunset blvd. I hang a net out the window and snatch em up! 

insert into Jacobs_Goobles_database

select 

  type 

from 

  hot_babes_tbl 

where 

  type in ('blonde','latino','asian') 

and 

  street like '%sunset%' 

and 

  state = 'CA' 

and 

  city= 'hollywood'

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8

MBCBUYB - 04/07/07

Hey Jacob, you should probably use a temp table to so you can just drop them when they become too needy ;)

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9

Gordon - 04/07/07

Ughh who uses temp tables anymore get real buddy use a table variable! ;)

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10

Laughing - 04/07/07

@ Clanky (#1)

You just got owned. Ha.

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11

Nathan - 04/07/07

Jacob

Do you have that printed on a t-shirt? Maybe it'll be a hit w/ the ladies

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12

Rian Y. - 04/07/07

@Brad Eleven:

Dude, you really meant "caveat contractor."

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13

ben - 04/07/07

i worked at ucla med center in la and we had to wear shirts and ties, 6 months of that and i was going insane. made no sense other then there being doctor around that dressed well so we had to.... because they cared what a developer wore???? no sense what so ever.

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14

Mark T - 04/07/07

Hahaha,

You can keep thinking that if you like but anyone who fails to do anything other than keep up and work their butts off may be not so gently reminded "all your base belong to us" from some firm in India or China since India and China both are producing more engineers each year that the US possesses.

Enjoy the foosball while it lasts, but that won't be terribly much longer from the sound of the posts here. Why would your executive staff choose to do so, when your company can find someone more competent than you at 1/2 your price who will work 2x as hard because they have a family to feed.

F*cking foosball, how many great inventors noted foosball as being the inspirational break they needed to solve some intractable problem, the probable answer is 0.

The problem is that we create the perception of being overindulged "creative" people, who are not demonstrably more "creative" than their non-foosball having workers. Worse, is that it's comically tragic to hear people wax on about how they are deserving of such nonsensical amenities.

It's irritating - to say the least - to see that nobody learned the powerful lessons and harsh realities of market economics, that during the dot com boom, alot of American executives realized that those engineers were in fact overpriced, over-indulged and that they needed to get them gone to someplace where foosball is unknown and slavery or a very close approximation is still considered a good thing.

Stop the foosball and get to work, or perhaps you should just leave all your comments in Hindi or Mandarin while you're coding that new application.

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15

a - 04/07/07

Meh, who really gives a rats ass what global recruitment companies were saying anyway? Most of them are completely clueless bottom-feeders who just try to match acronyms they don't understand and shove under-qualified candidates into corporate positions to squeeze a comission out of them.

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16

TalentForSale - 04/07/07

People aren't so stupid this time.

Less money for more work? I don't think so.

Free soda and foosball? How does that help my work-life balance if I am at WORK!

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17

John S - 04/07/07

MArk T, I think you are wrong, outsourcing is no risk to us. It was five years ago, but somehow people have realized that having a programmer aka Developer sitting next to you is ten times more valuable than somebody in India 10 hours away with a hard to understand accent over VOIP that sucks... imagine what it will be like explaining something to the Chinese. With all due respect, they are great people, but they do not have our experience, degrees mean nothing when compared to communication skills.

I can't believe they pay me to be a programmer!

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18

jj - 04/07/07

As a long-time geekgrrl who is more comfortable in body-hugging black than anything else, but who wears a suit because it's policy in some of the places where I work, I can say with some authority that the idea of dressing down at work may sound new but generally isn't. It all comes down to client relations. If you are likely to be meeting with clients, you dress more formally. If you are going to be spending our day in front of a screen (or with a screwdriver in your hand, fixing stuff, few people care what you wear).

But let me make this very, VERY clear. The geek *smell* will NEVER be in vogue. Please, guys, for the sake of the few geekgrrls around you, *bathe*.

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19

Sparky - 04/07/07

I'd like to know where this supposed shortage of tech workers is. I've got a bachelor's in computer science and I've sent hundreds of resumes in the past 2 months for junior level software developer jobs, and the only offer I got was from one who wanted to pay me 28k a year. I have 3 friends in the exact same situation.

Shortage my foot. They want everyone to believe there's a shortage so they can import more cheap foreign workers who'll work for 28k a year.

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20

Sparky - 04/07/07

I'd like to know where this supposed shortage of tech workers is. I've got a bachelor's in computer science and I've sent hundreds of resumes in the past 2 months for junior level software developer jobs, and the only offer I got was from one who wanted to pay me 28k a year. I have 3 friends in the exact same situation.

Shortage my foot. They want everyone to believe there's a shortage so they can import more cheap foreign workers who'll work for 28k a year.

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21

Mick Too - 04/07/07

John S, while I personally agree with you that "having a programmer aka Developer sitting next to you is ten times more valuable than somebody in India 10 hours away ...", the accounts that run Australia's biggest airline DONT!!! And that my friend is the difference.

Over 350 IT Developers and BAs will lose their jobs to Indian outsourcing companies. So what are we doing? We dress in business shirts and ties, work hard and keep our head down to try and keep our head off the proverbial chopping block. The reason? We also have families to feed.

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22

Jhon - 04/07/07

see http://hotshadow.com/Take_off_your_suit_pants_and_jacket.aspx

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23

Matt - 04/07/07

I moonlight with my own small web development company (www.mcmediaonline.com) while working full time, and my favorite thing is when people say "well, can you just do this for me this one time, we're friends ya know?"

Unless your friendship can pay rent, cash is king. One thing I hate is when employers try to low ball you, if they want a quality person to do a quality job serving the company with up to date work skills and can bring personality and 'fun to work with attitude' to the table, you pay for what you get.

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24

Joey Smith - 05/07/07

Baby boomers are leaving the workforce in droves because THEY'VE HAD IT!
10 to 14 hour workdays, conference calls at odd hours to interface with offshore programmers, AND, then MORE WORK!!
There's a tech worker shortage because techies are being treated like CRAP! Sure, there are 100k starting salaries but at WHAT COST? Tech is NOT the place to be folks. Tell your, friends, kids and grandkids.

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25

John S - 05/07/07

ok, i'm back for another post. sorry, i'm currently on vacation, i got to take 6 weeks off because i am a contract to hire employee. honestly, if you can't find a job, you should take a look at your resume and cover letter and networking skills. you say "I sent me resume to 600 places", well guess what, that's not how you get a job, you have to network and make a good resume and they will find you. and the baby boomers are retiring, not because they are fed up with it. have you guys ever heard of agile? well, that is the new thing, and do you know what it is about? 40 hour work weeks... so it's your choice complain that the market sucks for it people, or get a nice job with good pay and no overtime. it's all about your attitude.

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26

MYUKESH - 15/12/09

3. Hi
Thank you for a wonderful article.
Can you please clarify to me, what impact will, if into force form will have on a company like for an example Ralph Lauren Polo, that have a registered trademark in China? Can the Company force a website selling counterfeit RLP items to remove them.


<a href=http://www.ibowtech.com>IT provider</a>

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