Employment

I am a network engineer. I specify, design, deploy, and support data networks. I like what I do, and my goal is to continue to do it, and as the technology advances and matures, learn and grow with it.

That is not the problem.

The problem is trying to find one single employer that I could work for until I retire. I don’t like looking for new jobs, I don’t like interviewing, and I don’t like working to establish my reputation at a new place of work. All I want is to work for the same company for a long time. That way I have some stability, and I don’t have to deal with the whole problem of finding a new job.

The problem is that in the IT business, it seems that there is no stability available. Whatever happened to the jobs like my parents had. My dad has been working for the same company for 40 years. That is unheard of these days. My longest run of continuous employment was working at an auto parts store for 5 and a half years, not even within my chosen carreer.

I think the root of the problem is that companies still don’t seem to understand how IT works, or that the industry is still too unstable to support long term employment at a single employer. Companies are either going out of buisiness, laying off due to lack of sales, or outsourcing. I have not yet voulntarily left an IT position in the 10 years that I have been doing this for a living. I have tried working for IT companies, and companies that have another main line of revenue, and need IT staff just to keep the infrastructure working, and neither of them are capable of supporting long term employment. Part of the problem may be the cost of labor and hardware. They keep getting more expensive and most companies like to the their overhead costs go down all the time.

So does this all come down to loyalty? It seems that many of my co-workers and peers in the industry would not hesitate to switch employers as long as the salary or benefits were better. I don’t know if that attitude is carried over to any carreer or just in IT. Does the loyalty have to originate with the employees first, or should the company extend it first?

There probably isn’t a solution to this. I will continue to work at the career that I enjoy, and continue to attempt to seek the employer that won’t lay me off, go out of business, or outsource my job to a foreign country.

The cycle continues.

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