A Good Fit

[Homer Phillips]

Have you ever heard the industry say they need a strong team player or claim they would not hire somebody because they were not a good fit with the team? Often these slanders are applied to older workers.

"So much of psychology and sociology emphasizes the importance of communicating and creating strong bonds to improve group performance, but in a lot of situations that is just not how it works," said Dr. Calvin Morrill, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied group behavior in competitive corporate situations

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Homer Phillips:
Have you ever heard the industry say they need a strong team player or claim they would not hire somebody because they were not a good fit with the team? Often these slanders are applied to older workers.
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There is zero evidence in your posting or the article suggesting that "often these slanders are applied to older workers." Please don't state opinion as fact.

--Mark

[Homer Phillips]

It's not an opinion. Moderation could call for one to challenge defensibility of the assertion. What is belittling hard to support assertions as opinions?

One could try a search on dice or monster for team player.

It's no coincidence a smart college kid has no track record for team playing.

Now findings by university researchers are attacking another time honored reason for failure to hire older workers poor fit with the team.

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Homer Phillips:
It's not an opinion.[/i]

When you don't provide hard evidnce or cite an expert source, it's an opinion. Given how heated some discussions become in this forum, everyone here needs to be careful. I am happy to let discussions get heated, but only when people are debating with facts. If many people in a thread simply provides an opinion with no supporting evidence, the thread is much more likely to get closed when people start arguing.

--Mark

[Mike Gershman]

Mark Herschberg said:

There is zero evidence in your posting or the article suggesting that "often these slanders are applied to older workers." Please don't state opinion as fact.

I have heard two recent first hand and one second hand statements from actual hiring managers directly backing Homer's posting. As for head hunters, they don't often give rationales but they are unanimous on client behavior.

Anecdotal evidence based on personal knowledge is valid input to public policy debates. In the absence of hard numbers, this will drive decisions being made right now in Washington. However, you have to at least agree that the hiring model of paper consulting companies, unpaid benching, and programmers coming to the US with a paper employer and then seeking an assignment - all well documented on this BB - is not how the H1B program was intended to work.

I think you will also agree that the only way to induce employers to hire substantial numbers of middle-aged American legacy programmers, self-taught in Java, is to cut down on imports. I know this won't make employers like yourself very happy, but it has worked very well in other areas.

One question, Mark, is how comfortable you are combining the roles of advocate and moderator. It's good that you have a personal interest in this topic, as do we all, but that requires a very light hand on the trigger. With one possible exception (which you did stop), I have seen no cases of personal or ethnic abuse. Strongly held views on topics directly affecting peoples' families and livelihoods are to be expected.

BTW, did you see the work done by Prof. Norman Matloff of UC Davis?
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
Dr. Matloff has published several extensively researched and documented studies under the general heading "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage". I haven't made it through all 300+ pages (I'm studying hard for my SCWCD), but his summary document is pretty impressive.

Mike
[ March 07, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:

One question, Mark, is how comfortable you are combining the roles of advocate and moderator. It's good that you have a personal interest in this topic, as do we all, but that requires a very light hand on the trigger.

I'll simply say I disagree with most of what you say, but I'm tired of this and have better things to do with my time.

As for your above comment, this is Paul's site, if you've got a problem with my moderation, take it up with him.

--Mark

[Homer Phillips]

Dr. Matloff has published several extensively researched and documented studies under the general heading "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage".

BTW, as far as the shortage goes I have not finished reading all of the Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary I did find time read the report from the Rand Corporation Is There a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers? How Would We Know?

Cutting to the chase -

We have seen that the production of American scientists and engineers is not low in the sense that it has fallen over some years from previous heights, nor in the sense that employers are driving S&E earnings up and unemployment rates down in a scramble to hire more. However, in another sense of shortage�that of competitive foreign gains�American production does appear low.

In four of the five definitions of shortage, including what Rand calls the most important definition, data indicates there is not nor has there been any shortage. In the other category, US growth vs the rest of the G7, the US is producing fewer science and technical grads. One might claim the free market is at work in the US. IMO, comparing US rates to the rest of the world is just political appeasement.
[ March 08, 2005: Message edited by: Homer Phillips ]