I look around and realize most of the team has been here for decades. No fresh talent, no mentoring, no future pipeline. It’s like leadership never thought ahead. What happens when everyone retires? We’re running on borrowed time.
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Note on “no one wants to work anymore!!”:
Weekend releases are completely unnecessary in the modern software world unless you’re dealing with highly sensitive, specific processes, or wide-ranging applications with high-impact. Weekend-evening releases, especially when it’s the same group or even same specific people doing the releases every weekend, are inexcusable.
We’re so behind on infra that we’re missing CI/CD on all production products, which make releases unnecessary painful. We can’t afford to pay one onshore DBA which forces releases to be scheduled for weekend evenings, starting sometimes at 12 or 1am (US) Eastern Time. This is not sustainable and will lead/has led to burnout among developers and support groups. Not because they’re lazy, but because if they’ve worked anywhere else they know it’s completely unnecessary.
Is this the case for other groups too?
@xm explain “should retire”?
@xm I'm curious as to what you think are the criteria for someone that "should retire". It seems like such a personal decision based on an individual's circumstances. Just trying to understand.
@xm Maybe the folk who should retire are just waiting for their employer matching contributions to be paid ;-)
There is a lot of gatekeeping going on at my location, and there are a lot of people who should retire but don’t
If you want the real answer, getting an offshore "fresher" is about $5000 per year salary vs a us grad being $60-70k. College grads are ruined in the usa unless they have some extraordinary ability.
@OP I am one of the young talents. Neither me nor any young people I know are planning their future in the company. Everyone is just waiting around to get some more skills and find a better company. Why would you stay if the only thing you hear about are layoffs, cost cutting and other bad things happening? There is no chance of getting a good raise. No chance of a promotion because everything is immediately filled in India or the position closed. You do just enough to get by and keep looking.
With all the layoffs, young talent is not going to stick around!
We have some amazing young talent on my team though it’s just a matter of time before they start leaving. They are continuously being used and abused by FIS with no incentive to stay. They are expected to work at a senior level (and are excelling at it), but as management we’ve been told we’re unable to promote them because since job grades have been realigned, the jump in salary from their current position to the next job grade minimum would be too much (approximately $20k). As mentioned, it’s just a matter of time before we lose these exceptional employees and FIS hires in less experienced at a higher wage. Why not compensate and retain the talent you already have?!
@dz it sounds like im not quite the age as the rest of the audience here. But im also no youngin'.
However, I disagree. I dont think its a generational lazy. That's just some bs each generation comes up w to make excuses to say they are the best generation. It happens in every generation.
Plenty of hard workers and lazy workers i've met, old and young alike.
The difference with the younger generations is they have no need for commitment to a company that won't meet their needs. I can respect that. How many companies do their very best to bleed their employees dry for the least benefit?
If you hopped on a ship, and not far from shore you noticed the ship was sinking, would you not jump to head to another ship?
Would you try to save that ship single handedly? When not even the captain cares to?
This is a big ship, with a lot of fires. And they're already throwing everyone overboard.
They aren't lazy, at least not all of them. They've learned to respect the boundaries of their needs, a work life balance and more.
First hand experience with this one. Cross training 5 young talents.
1 quit abruptly,
1 kept quipping that she wasn't learning fast enough, but was not available at all for actual cross training and did not work with her peers!
1 was a superstar with lots of potential, but resigned.
1 also showed lots of potential, but resigned right after superstar left.
1 is still with the company in another role.
All in all, I was having fun teaching them and structuring day to day activities and helping to build them up. 3 of them got to the point of doing production releases without my needing to be online (I was a phone call away, though)
Now...yeah...don't see much of that opportunity.
I agree completely. I don’t think this is being talked about enough. There is very little succession training, tenured staff not RIF’d are aging out, and too many single points of failure.
Those old timers are holding down the fort. No one can afford to retire working here. The young folk spend more time trying to figure out a way to leave early or not come in to the office than they do actually working. And like others said there is no advancement opportunity, just out the door.
Disturbing lack of young talent, for sure! But it goes both ways, you have to want to work and learn to grow, we have a number of young people on our extended team and while there are a few that are excellent and want more the majority are waiting to be spoon fed and happy to just sit back and collect a salary. It’s really hard to think that any of them will have the capacity to take over in the next decade, they don’t want to work! I can. To tell you how many have she’ll shock when they learn that they have to work in the evening or weekend to validate code or test off hours…….oh nobody told me that I had to work more than 40 hours in my interview…….what do they think happens we bring the fin tech world to a stall midweek so that they can have their weekend, seriously a generational issue of lazy!
We cannot offer anything for young talent IMO. We're not allowed to promote or keep pace with salaries. So many layoffs that there's basically no career progression unless your manager is cut, in which case expect to be dumped upon with no recognition in salary or title. In my area, they figure this out in 2 years and leave. Same in all geographies.
@OP I had a good conversation on this while interviewing for another position. If you don't feel secure in your role, you certainly won't be looking to line up your replacement. Young talent who doesn't feel valued or feel like they have a way to progress in their career will eventually leave for places where these opportunities exist. Young non-talent will get told they're lazy, given no patience or time to grow, and laid off. It's not an intentional vacuum to me, but it's one that's highly present at FIS.
Young people can't afford to work. Between transportation and rent it's cheaper to just stay home.