The only things that CIOs are really any good at are 1) taking orders from other CXO's, 2) discarding talent in favor of cheap 1B's, 3) parachuting out of failed/failing projects, 4) kissing up and cr@pping down, and 5) making sure that everyone else gets pink slips before they do.

I could go on.

H1B'ed...you've got my vote....most CIOs are clueless and are just looking out for those fat checks and bonuses...

They will do ANYTHING to maintain them!

See Nielson Co. for a recent view...

H-1B'd took the words right of my mouth...

I guess it can be hard to spot and retain good talent when you make decisions based on a spreadsheet.

Where I used to work ("used to" being the operative term), it was all politics -- the good old boy system. Former colleagues of the CIO got the good jobs regardless of qualifications (which were often nil). Qualified people got the dregs, if anything at all. Is this typical of the industry? I don't know. But I do know that I'm glad to not be working there now.

Having been a manager in the technology field, and in recruitment for nearly 17 years, I would say that most of my clients do not know how to hire the best available talent. The clients that I do have who are really focused on hiring the best available talent force themselves and their team to really determine what are the most critical hiring factors, and they make it a reasonable amount of criteria, not everything including the kitchen sink.

The other thing they do is we validate that the requirements are real, and everyone agrees on them before any interviewing is done so they eliminate wasting time.

They also compare the skills requirement to the actual market based on the date we provide and make changes accordingly drastically speeding up the time it takes to fill the role, and not wasting a lot of time of potential candidates with changing the job requirements over and over and over.

In addition, these firms look at what are identifiable items they could train people in to provide an incentive for people looking to work for that company also making the requirement more reasonable, instead of looking for the picture-perfect fit. These managers realize that when you hire someone who is a perfect fit, you get the immediate benefit of someone hitting the ground, but are likely to have then be bored. A bored employee with nothing much to learn is likely to leave in 12-18 months, and if they don't, bored employees tend to have lower morale, have less enthusiasm, have greater tardiness and absenteeism because they are less challenged, and are more likely to stagnate.

I wouldn't lay the blame on the CIO or any one office/management role in IT. I would say that basically most hiring managers have fallen into a rut of wanting a perfect fit, or they have or allowed their staff to build a job description that is in conflict with the marketplace, or tried too hard to combine jobs resulting in creating a purple spotted zebra that rarely exists.

When IT managers do this, they really negatively impact succession planning and make it hard for IT organizations to provide career advancement opportunities.

My clients who have eliminated the option of using consultants to bridge the gap have forced their IT hiring managers to get serious NOW about hiring. The companies who have taken it a step further and only allowed them to have approval for 30-60 days (use it or lose it), have really seen good results. Jobs are getting filled. The small minority who have taken my advice and tied their managers annual bonuses to getting hiring done as a NOW priority have seen miraculous results. What is interesting is that tying management bonuses to hiring metrics makes all the problems practically go away (fast response on resumes, far less evidence of inconsequential objections, much faster timelines, and these managers really push their staff to get real about hiring too). This is a win-win for everyone I have observed.

What IT professionals can do is not add to the problem when working. If they are teching people out during the interview process, stop looking for someone to be perfect in 11 different tools while being proficient with 23 different languages, on multiple operating systems, etc. Give pushback to the management team on the skills criteria requirements. Find people who have a good core tech background and allow them to grow. Technical folks often do not want to hire people who do not fit all the requirements because then they have to train them, or help pick up the slack.

Back in the day, prior to 1996, companies hired people who had a good attitude with good aptitude. If everyone got back to that again, many of the jobs open could be filled with less conflict, wasted time, and people on both sides of the fence would be happier.

As far as avoiding the H-1B dilemma, that is not going away, and to focus on it is a waste of energy. It is like people in the coal industry complaining about the oil and electric industry as unfair and bad for America years ago. The IT space is evolving and those that can will need to adapt.

Find environments that will train you in the hard to find skills like J2EE, .NET, SAP, SAN, and look at Department of Labor future-demand estimates and migrate your skills in that direction, even if it means taking a pay cut or going back to school to get there.

Only you can be in control of you career, and if it is in IT, you have to take charge.

Keep in mind, IT professionals have put more Americans out of work that any other factor since the beginning of the century.

Since the advent of automation, more Americans have experienced job loss than through all other factors combined.

Much of what we are seeing today, is what accounting, manufacturing, and other career areas saw happen when automation and technology was introduced. When computers were introduced in corporate and manufacturing settings, millions upon millions lost their jobs and/or had to retool.

Now it is IT's turn. Stay ahead of the curve.

Greg...Or just go find a non-IT career where you can have a life and make a reasonable wage for the work...like I and thousands of others have or will be doing...H1Bs and L1s have won...and it will only get worse as CIOs push to boost those bonus metrics!

Tell the CIOs to require the H1Bs to successfully complete "English as a second language" so that their co-workers can understand them. I actually had a co-worker use "tolked" when she meant "talked" in am email and I am sure this was not a not simple spelling mistake. Some of my coworkers have taken "English as a second language" and their English was much better after taking the course.

Greg, CIOs try to wear teflon whenever they can and will do anything they can to preserve their empire. There is no more incentive to get into IT anymore because people like Bill Gates want H-1B as they are 2/3 the price. Check out who employs the most people in India?? And you wonder why I run LINUX???

What CIO is going to agree to performance clauses? You are joking, right?

Here's the reality as I witnessed it while contracting through the banking meltdown... get rid of as many IT as possible and replace with H-1B, or outsource overseas ...

Get a grip ... keep voting those liberal senators in to office and watch all them Gates-dollars flow into their pockets... You doubt, check it out.

I'm a director in IT, started as a COBOL developer more than 20 years ago, so I've been seeing this problem for some time.

First, IT looks for fits that are way too specific (e.g. not talking to someone because they know VB.NET instead of C#). Where I work, when I post for a staff poosition, I put the languages as preferred. And, I'd hire a LAMP developer with solid development skills for a C# ASP.NET position before I'd hire someone who hits the technologies on the nose but who has mediocre development skills.

Second, it is difficult to validate development skills through interviews. There are many methods that are used to try to get things right, but it remains hard. And if IT professionals have difficulties; how can HR do it, especially if we don't help them but rather complain about them?

And third, too many IT organizations don't view themselves as an organization there to support the business. Rather they view themselves as being there to support applications that support the business. The difference, while small, is critical. If we don't serve the business, if we don't help the business meet it's goals, be stronger, accomplish more, we become a true expense. And, when things get tough, it's easier to outsource in an IT organization that doesn't do much for you.

In other words, to fix this problem, we need to look inward and fix the issues we have relating and supporting the business.

Mr. David writes a very good letter. The others basically trash management. The rank & file see their work-life getting harder, their compensation stagnant and less opportunity in the IT field. We see the high management being given stock shares, seven-digit bonuses even when there is "no money in the company to base bonuses upon" and their requesting the "kitchen sink" and complete devotion 7x24 for the company bottom line. Management declaration that "money is king" seems to be a shortsighted view of what running a company needs to be--a community brought together to create something (hopefully something beyond simply money generation) that benefits all members, not just the top, and this is what's lacking in American business today.

Companies are not being managed to provide employment and all the accompanying mental & physical benefits of working to the community. It seems like all the profits go directly to their pockets. They claim they must make money now for their shareholders. Why? Hasn't stock purchasing always been part of American business? Why is it so dominant now? Because the "big guys" are raking it in in unbelievable amounts! Do they really need 100 million dollars a year? Does it really help the whole (the buyers/workers/stockholders/community) that CEOs fire half the workforce, make the other half do double the duty and they pocket the salaries that were eliminated?

The best company I ever worked for was a small consulting firm named Paranet. Our corporate culture was to hire "Eagles" rather than "Ducks" that just sit there on the pond quacking that what you were asking "wasn't their job" or "wasn't their responsibility." We were bought by Sprint and their leadership had us doing important things like emptying trash and other janitorial services rather than the UNIX system and network admin we were pretty good at.

I think this article is spot on as it highlights the fact that even when a lot of leaders get the talent they need, they don't know what to do with it. I also think the whole H-1B discussion highlights the fact that once you drive people out of the career field, they aren't coming back. Initially in the 2000 downturn, there were a lot of people in IT jobs that didn't belong there. By now, most places have cut thru the fat, thru the muscle and into the bone. Leaders complain there isn't enough talent available to do the jobs that get increasingly more complex every day. My response is to quit acting like cerebral pimps and sucking the life out of your people. I work for a good company now, but I sure see a lot of pain out there. A lot of our managers are forced to go thru Dale Carnegie courses to formally learn how to lead and treat people ... what a novel concept. Not all of our company leaders are great, but most try pretty damn hard and that is good enough in most cases.

My experience is that CIOs (indeed any senior management) who have spent time 'in the trenches' of IT make better IT related decisions than those who have not. The worst CIO, in my experience, is one who came in from finance, sales or marketing, without any real knowledge of IT beyond how to use Office and do email on Windows. I'm not saying that CIOs need to be l337 geeks who cut their teeth with card punches and can program in 5 different languages (including z80 machine code). They do need, however, to have an understanding of what all those big boxes in the air-conditioned room do and how that translates to how the business runs.

Too many CIOs don't know IT, that leads to bad decisions on how the business can get the best from its IT.

Stephen

Is it just me or has it become next to impossible for English-speaking applicants to be even considered for a job.

As a longtime computer consultant and employee for several major national/international corporations, I have found that every job I have applied for has been fronted by a non-English speaking person working at a U.S. address. The last one was an Indian in Cincinnati.

How successful do you think I was trying to sell my qualifications to someone over the phone when neither of us could understand the other?

There will always be shops where the relationships between management and workers depends on from where management came. Those managers and CIOs who started 'in the trenches' and worked their way up know first-hand what techs are faced with on a daily basis. For those who came in from other branches or disciplines, the depth of required knowledge is unfathomable, but more importantly, of no consequence. They only understand results, not how results are achieved. This is always the divide between any technical and non-technical person. The non-technical person assumes that all the pieces just fit together, nice and neat, and it just works. You, the tech person, are just a necessary evil, and assembler of parts. It is often mistakenly assumed that a trained monkey could do the job just as effectively, and obviously for less money. But when the monkey starts flinging ____ and it hits the fan, those qualified are left to pick up the pieces.

The real question is for the IT worker, asking 'what kind of background does the CIO come from, and will he or she 'have my back' when it comes to crunch time'? Those who have fought the good fight knows what it takes, and it's usually a lot of hard work, research, a little self-doubt, and a lot of perserverance. When we are not given the opportunity to eploit the resources we need to get the job done, the CIO without a technical background then assumes we do not possess the talent required and can therefore be replaced with the less expensive monkey.

For many managers without a technical background, we are just the grease for the cogs, a faceless mass best avoided so their shirt doesn't stain. We rank only slightly above the cleaning crew, another necessary expense. Is there even any point to explaining the difference between high and low quality grease, and how one will make your machine run less efficiently and break down sooner?

Getting the right resources is really a four-step process and failure in any one of the steps means failure in the entire process.

First, priorities must be set correctly. Second, there has to be an understanding of the tasks needed to enable that priority. Third, there needs to be an understanding of the skills required to complete those tasks. Finally, there has to be the ability to determine if a candidate possesses those skills or can be efficiently trained to possess those skills.

I have met very few CIOs who possess the skills to carry these steps out successfully. And even if they were to get to this point, do they have the skills to retain the valuable skills they have just obtained? Basically it's obtain, retain, retrain, retain.

CIOs have been the problem even before they knew to call themselves something important sounding, like CIOs. The typical CIO is the paid ass-kisser of some techno-moron CEO who doesn't want to look stupid (as though operating a large company and not understanding how to improve its operation with technology isn't criminally stupid).

So "Job-1" for the CIO is to attend meetings and find ways to NOT make the rest of the overpaid managers in the room look like complete idiots. At HomeSide, now defunct because they were, well, stupid, this was elevated to a new level. The President and CEO would brag about how their time was too valuable to touch a computer -- like that really expensive typewriter in their office was the alpha and omega of technology to them. The entire idea of technology as a business enabler was totally lost on them.

They were just pissed off because it made them look bad that they couldn't start their computer to read their email, write a memo in Word or figure out how to add a column of numbers in Excel. Their clever solution was to hire a pretty assistant to do these dirty little chores so they could move on to more important things like their tee-off time at the golf club. Nevermind that because they knew NOTHING about technology they were incapable of understanding how the whole environment they were blind to might actually help get things done.

So you think a CIO working for these idiots was going to know anything about tech? How to identify talent? How to retain it? I keep thinking this generation of techo-morons will die off soon and be replaced by a crop of senior management that can think and knows tech. Outside of the producers of tech, like in Silicon Valley, this seems pretty optimistic to me now -- 15 yrs after I first stated discussing the issue with co-workers.

Unfortunately, the downside doesn't end there. There has been a huge dumbing down of the average IT shop since the dot-com bust because idiot CIOs can't identify talent; they just look for the cheapest cost per body. Most people working in IT shops today couldn't write the tools they use every day if their lives depended on it. Sad, very sad.

There was a time when the ability to do so was something we took great pride in, and most of us threw out a good part of the libraries that shipped with commercial products and wrote our own when performance or elegance was required. I doubt a tenth of a percent of IT workers today could do that. It's why ugly, inept, clunky bloat-code clogs up astounding hardware for results that leave me shaking my head.

Greg David:

Great post! The idea of hiring NOW and the 1996 timing on the decline of IT are spot on.

When I had C & SQL positions to fill around that time-frame I copied code fragments from K&R, changed the variable names, and asked the prospect what he was looking at. Then a discussion of various data structures and appropriate uses. For SQL I asked about ACID, CRUD, DRI, ect.

In 25 years I have to say the most valuable thing, besides attitude, was the ability to solve problems. I want to know, if I give you enough time, will you figure out how to get it done? The alphabet soup will change every 3-5 years, but the ability to use DS&A and think your way through a problem will be sought after skills forever.

CIO's do not generally make rank-and-file IT hiring decisions. They may hire director or even senior managers, and are often in the loop on promotions, but for basic IT functions, especially software development, it's generally a first-level manager that makes the hire (but often needs multiple approvals, from HR, director and occasionally exec level).

That being said, the executive level certainly influences the hiring culture. Sometimes it's quite explicit: 'hire H-1B or other cheap labor, or send the work offshore.' These organizations will wither, because H-1B and offshore developers simply aren't very good.

Yes that's a politically incorrect statement, and there are occasional exceptions, but having been both a senior developer and a manager at several large companies, I speak from experience.

At whatever level, in whatever context, you get what you pay for. Period.

As a tech manager at a brand-name software publisher, I found that the 'management by spreadsheet' mindset of the executives undercut the ability of the organisation to hire and retain top talent and to produce quality products. Unsurprisingly, they still struggle to expand market share and even their 'evergreen' products are losing customers, as the quality continues to suffer.

Given the prevalence of this mindset, open-source software is making great inroads among users of all types, because QUALITY MATTERS!

CIO's and companies that pay lip service to wanting top talent or complain about skills shortages should heed Mr. David's post (above) and get real.

It's not that hard to spot talent if you come from the background, and don't have Dilbert-esque constraints.

I haven't had a boss in years (decades, probably) who could recognize talent if it came up and bit them on the ankle. How to recognize talent if you spend all your time in your private office with the door closed, while the "talent" works away at their cubes? Or sitting in endless meetings with other managers, once again with the door closed? It's hard to get a handle on talent in only two hours once a quarter during a parachute-in "death by powerpoint" corporate earnings status report.

IT management often only looks at the bottom line numbers without understanding them. I was working for an outsourcing company at which time 80-90% of my time was direct bill to the client; that is, I performed my primary function in only 10-20% of my time and the other 80-90% I was working on direct billable projects for our customer (that is, we were making a large amount of extra income from these direct bill projects I was working on). However I was also paid a bit more then other persons in my department [mostly because I had been working for the same company 14 years]. I was laid off because I was, per the company, overpaid. The CIO basically said to cut all of the people that were in the top 25% of the pay scale for the non-managment job codes -- of course, the fact that persons who were technical were seldom promoted when they reached the top technical codes because they were needed to do the actual work never seemed to dawn on the company.

The the person that replaced me could not do the extra direct bill work and the client eventually booted out the outsourcer I was working for. This is only one example of management at that company not having a clue. The company eventually lost most of the contracts because of this CIOs "rightsizing" mentality.

Great comments... the business leaders, as always, have sold out their employees, shareholders and country in an effort to maximize their take at the expense of all others...

Our shop runs about 50% development offshore in bangalore central... the current code yield is 1:3 ( ie., takes 3 india developers to do the work of a well-trained U.S. guy), is riddled with defects that the U.S. guys get diverted from the their regular work to fix (who are all salary exempt, so the time comes out of their hide)...

All in all, if properly cost accounted, and if a yield calc is done, it actually costs more to run code from India than the U.S. due to management overhead, direct lower yield, high India turnover/re-ramp rates, etc.,. We also use third-party, offshore software developers, and contract at a flat rate... a typical job may need 3 people to do the work, but they put on 6 in anticipation of 50% turnover during the project - good thing it's flat rate...!

And I like the post about the English test... We now use an application that when it's performing an update cycle, it provides the following message :
pending ' updation ' ... Jesus...

I think CIOs are like so many managers in American business -- they are promoted to the position not for skills or actively working in the area they will manage but because they know how to politic and play golf. Corporate America needs to reduce management wages/benefits and return them to working in the field. I have worked in several environments in the last decade where the best and brightest seldom received the economic rewards that the 'good buddies' received. The management positions were frequently held by individuals that thought a lot of themselves and very little about work or their staff. Frequently gone for long lunches, late into the office, early out and most of the day surfing the net or reading email jokes. These individuals are the same ones receiving huge stock options, massive bonuses and open ended travel budgets. While jetting about racking up frequent flyer miles for their planned family vacations they burn through the technical staff's training/travel budget. At one point I was responsible for monitoring internet/email services and was shocked to find that the 'long hours' managers were as often as not managing their financial portfolio and attending to personal business. It is time to disgard several layers of management and put those wasted dollars into R&D, training and incentives for the people who provide the goods and services that the corporations are surviving on. How can we expect CIOs to select the right technical people or retain them when we look carefully at the CIOs and their management teams? They don't have the skill or involvement to do so.

In all fairness I have had some great managers and some ruthless but well visioned CIOs. They taught me a lot, which has benefited me personally as well as professionally. Unfortunately they are a very small percentage of the ones I have encountered in today's work environment.

I saw many CIOs come and go at the phone company. Most of them came from marketing, finance or some other department that had nothing to do with IT. My take is that the CIO sets the tone for the IT department. The evaluation of talent depends upon what the CIO wants to achieve. Since most executives are driven by bonuses, then "cheap" wins out over "talent." This lack of understanding of the role of IT leads business executive to view IT skills as a commodity -- all IT people are interchangable -- they all have the same skills. This is a critical mistake.

This "mantra" also spills over into the HR department. I can't begin to count the times when I would interview with a "technical" HR person and find out that they knew nothing about the business of IT or the skills needed. I think their main purpose was to weed out the overly expensive and talented applicants so the claim could be made that no qualified people could be found. Thus, the negative reinforcing loop continued. Cheap, offshore labor was hired, qualified people were let go, then suddenly no one know how to run the business.

We have a fairly large IT department in a major corporation. We got a new CIO about a year ago. She made a few changes right away. First, she updated the dress code policy. Second, published new geographic strategy. And third, hired a CTO, who left the company a few years ago from a lower-level position (the guy with no skills at all).
Still awaiting news on technology direction.

I am a consultant, which means that I am between semi-reitrement and joblessness. :-)

One of my views:

1) Fundamentally, for most IT jobs (and most engineering jobs for that matter), there are very meaningful avenues for career advancement. The job-skill obsolescence rate is brutally fast. One is lucky if one is not becoming less valuable (per unit salary) to the company as one continues to work there. Bright people will get bored and fustrated -- it is just a matter of time.

2) The nature of most IT jobs is doing chores for people who are either too busy to learn to use the IT tools or too techno-phobic (in the sense they they are afraid to be branded as a technie, which would be detrimental to their careers). Rarely is IT entrusted to build tools and others taught to use tools. In other words, most IT tasks are in fact business tasks deemed too mundane for those above technies.

3) IT managers typically get to their position by their business knowledge rather than technical skills. Very few understand the technical issues, much less how to manage a bunch of technically oriented people. OTOH, they are often promoted on their skill to drive the technical slaves efficiently.

4) The influx of H-1Bs is no less a result of bright young US citizens not wanting to go into a technical field than a cause for it.

5) In many companies, IT is treated as a necessarily dinosaur rather then an integral part of the core capability of the company. Most CIO's (and IT departments) are in fact rather powerless in influencing the long-term strategies of the companies. Many are mired in formulating policies, implementing compliance and other high level rigmarole. OTOH, they are not allowed to handle issues such as compensation for excessive workload in a way that is particularly suitable for IT people.

In a country where everything depends on IT we sure are not willing to keep good talent around. The CIOs are solely responsible for this mess.

Today the company I work for -- their IT has been decimated by layoffs and outsourcing. We hired cheap (that means low-cost and poor-talent) slave labor in India and Brazil. Every three months during quarter end our supply-chain systems go down and we have to scramble in the U.S. to fix them because our so called low-cost talent is incapable of doing it.

The only way to fix it is to cancel all H1-B's completely and force companies to retrain staff.

There is absolutely no shortage of well trained, highly motivated, smart IT professionals in the U.S. There is a serious shortage of CIO's who can look beyond $$ and can make smart decisions.