Tech by PC

There is an article on eWeek about how to keep your tech job. There is some good advice if you happen to be working in the IT industry. Many of the ideas center around saving money for your business. The thing is that not every business is doing poorly. Saving money should always be a priority, but look too far into it and they will start saving money by cutting positions. It is good to be on the inside in such a situation, but none of these is a sure-fire way to keep your job.

I wrote an article recently about being overworked that was also based from something I read in an eWeek article. It is a good place to be right now in times of uncertainty. If you are overworked then they can’t let you go without removing some of the work.

I worked in a job once where I felt I was overworked and then was suddenly part of a reduction in force. They eliminated me and changed the duties of the job I had. No one is safe in such a situation. For example, as necessary as you are to the business, think if there is a way that they could change the way the business works in order to eliminate your position. Say you are a help desk person at tier 1. Could they push tier 1 support onto the tier 2 people? Could they outsource tier 1? Say you are a server administrator. Could they consolidate servers to a central location? I’m losing the Exchange administrator position due to a similar consolidation effort. Glad to lose it though – it should be consolidated.

Outsourcing is always an option. It can fix some costs and make the company more agile. A contract with another company is typically much easier to limit or break than a contract with an employee. Most contracts with employees list very little that the employee has to do to maintain their position. There is no uptime, availability, cost, or performance guarantee built into the contract. If an employee doesn’t perform the business is usually forced to find another job for that person rather than eliminating him. If a contractor doesn’t perform, then they are easily removed and replaced.

The summary being that my job isn’t safe no matter what I do. All I can ever do is to do my best and keep my eyes open. Constantly worrying about losing my job is a sure way to lose it. If I spend more time trying to find ways to cut costs than doing my primary job, then my employer might follow my example and cut me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.