But it'll never happen in IT... Yeah!

Recently I saw an article on the CNN website indicating that the Oil industry is having a hard time trying to build up its employee numbers. It has tons of cash, it has lots of lucrative projects, it has great opportunities, it has everything a potential employee would want... and it has a terrible past.

Back in the 1970's and 80's, when the Oil industry was going through it's last major expansion, it hired the best! (Well mustn't brag on that too much, you know, but they did get me!) It had great jobs, it tossed money at employees like it was going out of style. Then the price of oil nose dived. The late 1980's saw the Oil industry shed hundreds of thousands of jobs. Times got tough, the tough got gored.

Over the last 10 years the price of oil has reclaimed former territory and zoomed into a place of prominence in our lives. $90 a barrel prices will do that. The Oil companies have been making more and more bloated profits for almost 10 years, but over the last 3 or 4 they have been massive.

But now we hear the industry has a problem: It can't hire enough people. I'm sure there are plenty of people to hire, but this is an industry with a tainted past and a questionable stance given the new political "climate" of global warming and all that implies.

The oil industry took a decade and a half to think about hiring people back, by then the door had closed on peoples desire to join the industry. Now old guys design platforms and plant, and the companies face the prospect of having to re-educate a whole set of fresh new faces in what it takes to get Oil and Gas out of the ground.

But what does this have to do with the IT industry?

I think lots. Public perception of an industry is critical to the people that could potentially be employed in it. If the industry is seen to be cavalier and ride roughshod over the employees, and there is nothing to be gained in such situations - no great opportunities for big pay, glory or early retirement - then young people go elsewhere with their skills. The IT industry, and how business makes use of it, are critical to a new generations' perceptions of what they will get out of it all. If they work hard and are Great, are they going to be rewarded or does their job get sent to South East Asia? Are they going to see the possibility of early retirement, or an early layoff?

Keeping people happy with the direction an industry is going is not just a matter of paying them when times are good, it also requires paying them when times are hard. If industry and business don't do that, then the IT industry will become very rapidly a second rate job. A forget and fire position. This will stop people with any interest in technology going into businesses that use it but abuse the employees, it will rob business of the life line it needs to pursue new prospects, to the detriment of the entire country.

We just got through a nasty IT recession, some jobs are indeed back, but the fact that the industry has seen layoff after layoff, now means that less and less are inclined to look at it. If we are to reverse this perception companies have to start hiring locally, not in India and other places outside the national boundaries. The jobs have to have substance, not just be a place where people can find abuse, 24*7.

I get a kick out of IT, I have done this stuff for many years now, I'm getting old and gnarled, but I still love what IT stands for. It stands for innovation, risk, development - both business and personal; and it stands for doing something for people that people themselves can't do.

IT has to look over its shoulders and take a long look at the Oil industry and see where its problems rest, and see what it can do to avoid that mess.