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Tech Slaves in the IT Jungle
By Dyanna Culp, 2005
A Slave belongs to
another, to the master.
The lower slave caste
is the underbelly of the web, receiving the bare minimum for survival:
food, shelter, and clothing. They know they are dispensable, easily
replaced. Upper caste slaves live a more pampered, more luxurious life
style and know they are valuable to the masters. They are sometimes under
the illusion that they are in control, that they are not one of the
slaves. But a slave is still a slave. The company owns you all day and
all night, every day and every night.
Are You a Tech Slave?
Three or more yes
answers and you qualify.
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Is your social and
family life non-existent because you spend more time with computers than
with people?
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Does your sweetie
email you because face to face conversations are so rare?
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Chained to computers
a minimum of 8 hours per day?
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On salary, but
working 50 hours plus every week?
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Are you a minimum
wage tech support phone worker? If so, you’re a slave even if answers to
all other questions are no.
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Carry a beeper or
cell phone at all times- in case of an emergency, at 3AM on
Sunday?
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Vision failing,
requiring stronger and stronger geek eyeglasses?
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Frighteningly pale
from a dark life in front of the PC?
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Is your mouse finger
the most exercised muscle in your body?
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Becoming flabby,
maybe overweight?
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Coffee or caffeine
loaded sodas your primary food group?
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Stress levels off
the charts?
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Does your self
esteem rise and fall based on employer praise or criticism?
Lower Caste Slaves
The success of
technology rides on the backs of Dilbert like drones and carpal tunnel
suffering freelancers.
Their
glamorous pipedream of Internet riches often translates into grueling
hours, broken promises, and enslavement.
Lower caste slaves typically enjoy grueling and
humiliating working conditions. A yearly 200% turnover is
not considered unusual in high tech sweat shops such as tech support call
centers.
One in four U.S. workers, over 30 million Americans earn $8.70 or less an
hour. At this rate full time workers earn about $18,000 a year,
the current official poverty level for a family of four. These workers
typically lack health care, retirement pensions and vacation benefits.
Upper Caste Slaves
Upper caste slaves
work hard, make big money and are in high demand.
The upper caste of the IT jungle commands salaries from $40,000 up to
$100,000 or more. They almost always work on salary rather than by the
hour, which has its drawbacks. The Meta Group
found that salaried IT employees work an average of 55 to 60 hours a week.
The same study found that employee burnout is a major corporate problem.
In a 2004 techies.com survey, the top reason for senior employee
discontent was being overworked. About 20 percent of those surveyed suffer
from long hours and increased workloads.
Slave Occupations
Thousands of IT
positions are listed at major tech job boards such as
www.computerwork.com or
www.computerjobs.com.
Opportunities include:
data warehousing,
database systems, Ecommerce, hardware, help desk support, legacy systems,
networking, project management, quality assurance, programmers, sales, web
design, SEO and marketing. In big demand are the upper caste system
administrators and engineers that supply
in house tech support - chained to 24
hour beepers and the low paid tech support workers. It takes lots of
Dilberts to supply tech support for the masses, think AOL or Dell. Help
desk workers receive from minimum wage up to $10 per hour for advanced
levels of tech support.
Freelance, contract
and perma-temp jobs
are rapidly replacing traditional full time positions.
This strategy boosts corporate profits because workers receive no
healthcare or unemployment benefits and are typically paid lower wages.
Entrepreneurs spend
sleepless nights developing and marketing their dream websites.
It’s a great deal
like the actor or sports professions. You hear of the big names making
millions a picture or game- not about the masses of starving unemployed
and bit part players. A small percentage hit the big time. Amazon
and Google were once small time shoe string start ups. Now they’re what
all entrepreneurs strive for- "robber barons" with massive wealth and
scores of their own slaves.
Where are the Tech Jobs Going?
Forrester Research states 28 percent of IT budgets are spent on offshore
outsourcing.
This is
up from 12 percent in 2000. A major reason for an increase in offshore
outsourcing is the large tax break given to American companies that move
operations offshore. One wonders why we reward large corporations for
moving jobs overseas, especially in the high tech industry.
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The
outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas found that
approximately 1.2 million tech and non-tech job were cut in the past two
years from the telecommunication, computer, electronics and ecommerce
industries. This accounts for nearly 32 percent of all job cuts in the
past two years.
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The American Electronics Association reports gross losses of 560,000
tech jobs in 2001 and 2002. Another 234,000 are expected to be lost in
2004.
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Bureau of Labor Statistics: Computer software engineers and systems
analysts are projected to be among the fastest-growing occupations from
2002 to 2012. Software applications engineering jobs are expected to
grow 46 percent -- to 573,000 -- in that period. Systems analyst jobs
will grow by 39 percent, to 653,000. Computer specialist jobs (including
programmers, software engineers and systems analysts) are projected to
grow 35.8 percent. But many of these jobs will be going offshore.
Techie Blues
Techies.com survey
finds widespread worker displacement has techies singing the blues.
Support workers to IT vice presidents were included in the survey. Their
sources of unhappiness included:
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~30
percent attributed depression, stress, anger and boredom to being
unemployed or under employed
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boring
unchallenging tasks
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layoff threats
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difficult
coworkers
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being overworked,
with 3-9 year experienced techies suffering the most from work overload
The new American dream
is to be one of the upper caste slaves or an elite robber baron.
Tech workers have
technology running though their blood. They may switch focus but can’t
leave the tech arena. It’s an integral part of who they are. The number of
tech positions is expected to dramatically increase over the next decade,
but the outsourcing nightmare affects both low and high paid workers from
Dell customer support to corporate programmers. Perhaps we need a new
dream, independence from the slavery of the Internet Jungle with the wages
and respect our creative technologically savvy minds deserve.
Resources
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