http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/
[Copyright 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Adapted from
Surviving Complexity (forthcoming).]
There are many reasons why large organizations, public and private,
struggle with information technology (IT) development. One, which I've
already discussed here and here, deals with finding and hiring the
best engineers you can. But even if you do find and hire excellent IT
engineers, the real question is: can you hold onto them?
There is an anti-pattern that I've seen in large organizations which I
have come to call "the Dead Sea effect". The Dead Sea, of course, is a
large body of water between Israel and Jordan, located well below sea
level. The Jordan River empties into it; water leaves only by
eva****ation, which means that over the eons, the Dead Sea has become
very salty (e.g., 8x saltier than the ocean). As such, it is generally
unable to sup****t life, except when spring floods tem****arily lower
the salinity.
Many large cor****ate/government IT shops -- and not a few small ones --
work like the Dead Sea. New hires are brought in as management deems
it necessary. Their qualifications (talent, education,
professionalism, experience, skills -- TEPES) will tend to vary quite a
bit, depending upon current needs, employee departure, the personnel
budget, and the general hiring ability of those doing the hiring. All
things being equal, the general competency of the IT department should
have roughly the same distribution as the incoming hires.
But in my experience, that's not what happens. Instead, what happens
is that the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most
likely to leave -- to eva****ate, if you will. They are the ones least
likely to put up with the frequent stupidities and workplace problems
that plague large organizations; they are also the ones most likely to
have other op****tunities that they can readily move to.
What tends to remain behind is the 'residue' -- the least talented and
effective IT engineers. They tend to be grateful they have a job and
make fewer demands on management; even if they find the workplace
unpleasant, they are the least likely to be able to find a job
elsewhere. They tend to entrench themselves, becoming maintenance
experts on critical systems, assuming responsibilities that no one
else wants so that the organization can't afford to let them go.
I'm painting with pretty broad strokes here, yet I've seen this same
effect taking place in different companies and different IT shops.
Large companies tend to lose the really talented IT engineers and hold
onto the less talented ones, when they should been actively seeking to
do just the opposite. And the effect tends to be self-reinforcing: the
worse an IT shop becomes, the harder it is to get really talented and
effective IT engineers to join it and the harder it is to retain them
if they do. It can reach a point that the really good talent only
comes in as entry-level personnel who don't know any better -- but once
they do wise up, they're gone.
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