The truths that products don’t like to admit
Please focus on the following lines:
Detective Spooner (Will Smith): A robot can writte a symphonie? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beatiful master-piece?
Sonny (Robot): Can you?
Detective Spooner (Will Smith): [silence]
Usually I try to writte articles with theoretical slant. So you the reader can relax assured that the opinion of this little guy is at least based on the literature with the best practices of software development, product practices and agile methodologies.
However today is gonna be a outburst.
Certain situations in the job market makes me think how much we have a wrong view of associating behaviors that are normal in other markets Vs the IT market.
High turnover is normal.
In Brazil it is quite true that we have a very high and long time offer of IT jobs. This was aggravated by the launch of new technologies that we have in Brazil (Pix, Smart cities, fitechs and etc.), as shown by the study by the Catarinense Association of Technology & Neoway and Finep in Tech Report 2020.
Before all this scenario it was already quite common to hear that the Brazilian market having almost 70 thousand IT vacancies open per year (TECCHIO, 2020), that it was difficult to keep developers in a company (MONTEIRO, 2020), imagine with the scenario do we live today?
The covid-19 pandemic forced companies in 5 months to digitize the equivalent of 5 years (PEREIRA, 2020). But in fact aside from the beaten discourse that it is difficult to find qualified labor which is true, what in fact causes this impact on corporations?
To explain the main one, remember that I asked you to focus on the lines of the film?
What the hell does this have to do with the impacts of high turnover on an IT company?
Writing code is like writing a book. There is a time of understanding the needs, translating them into something that causes action. So if you think it is simple to replace the parts involved in the construction of something as complex as a book and especially if you are Non-It person, why don’t you try it yourselve?
I’m not saying that a company cannot have people coming and going, that happens it’s life, but the impacts on a team change, on bringing people who despite being specialists to an activity that even been similar to their formation don’t kwoning the peculiarities can be disastrous.
In this same example of a book, before a developer starts making a line of code in a company, he needs to read this book, understand it, be able to mentally make the drawings before minimally leaving building new things in it or adjusting items that may have been created defective — the famous learning curve.
Obviously the level of seniority of a professional can shorten this learning curve, but even so I doubt that anyone who reads this article,IT-person with a senior-level, would disagree that without minimum understanding of the code that will solve he would dare to fix it, for example.
The learning curve is so serious that it was one of the causes of the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986. Employees who despite knowing well how a RBMK 1000 worked (World nuclear association, 2020), but who were unaware of the structural deficiencies that the model had, coupled with the lack of knowledge necessary to run the tests was responsible for the explosion.
Non-IT people think everything is easy
If my example above the book and the quote from a film as remarkable as I, Robot no longer speak for itself, I don’t know what it will do.
I have found myself making this mistake several times.
I see daily many Non-IT people or who despite working directly with developers do not know in depth how to program selling facilities that do not exists.
For these people I repeat the speech of the Sony robot from the movie “can you do it?”, If the answer is do not respect the opinion of those who know how to make that demand. Remember the other article that I just talked about? Team People’s Opinions Vs Our Ability to Trust? What did I call the mechanic syndrome (Duarte, 2020)? Well, selling a facility where you are not the best person to sell, or that you do not have all the necessary information to sell yourself, makes you need to assess whether you are making this mistake, I recommend you to know what is this disease that affects the market from you.
Thus, the IT professional is not cheap to have in a company, it is not cheap to keep him, and it is certainly not cheap to fire him. The time of open vacancy, filling, learning so that in fact this professional can contribute in the corporation is high and costly — in short: give value to the developers in the IT companies.
Bibliographical references
FRAGA, Érica. Pandemia acelera vagas de tecnologia e saúde e elimina de gerentes. Folha de São Paulo [caderno de empregos]. 12nd december 2020 at 23h15. Available at<https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2020/12/pandemia-acelera-vagas-de-tecnologia-e-saude-e-elimina-de-gerentes.shtml> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 19:41;
[Jornal]. Programador de sistemas se torna profissional ainda mais requisitado durante a pandemia. Jornal Hora Extra de Goiânia. 11st september 2020. Available at <https://jornalhoraextra.com.br/noticias/21995-programador-de-sistemas-se-torna-profissional-ainda-mais-requisitado-durante-a-pandemia/> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 19:50;
MONTEIRO, Lilian. Retenção de talentos é desafio da indústria de tecnologia em 2019. O Estado de Minas [caderno de carreiras]. 22th march 2019 at 12h35. Available at <https://jornalhoraextra.com.br/noticias/21995-programador-de-sistemas-se-torna-profissional-ainda-mais-requisitado-durante-a-pandemia/> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 20:01;
Associação catarinense de tecnologia [ACATE] & Neoway & FINEP. Tech Report 2020. Setor de Tecnologia Catarinense. Available at <https://www.techreportsc.com/> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 20:05;
PEREIRA, Renée. Com pandemia, digitalização nas empresas avança cinco anos em cinco meses. O Estado de São Paulo [caderno de economia e negócios]. 13rd september 2020 at 05h00. Available at <https://www.estadao.com.br/infograficos/economia,com-pandemia-digitalizacao-nas-empresas-avanca-cinco-anos-em-cinco-meses,1119274> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 20:10;
PROYAS, Alex. I, Robot. 20th Century Studios. 2004. Available at< https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 20:51
WORLD NUCLEAR ASSOCIATION. Chernobyl accident 1986. Updated in april 2020. Available at <https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx#:~:text=The%20Chernobyl%20accident%20in%201986,in%20many%20parts%20of%20Europe.> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 20:47;
DUARTE, Daniel, A pior doença organizacional para Startups do século: a “Síndrome do Mecânico”. 28th august 2020. Available at < https://medium.com/@dannduart/a-pior-doen%C3%A7a-organizacional-para-startups-do-s%C3%A9culo-a-s%C3%ADndrome-do-mec%C3%A2nico-5963a6a7dae0> accessed in 01/08/2020 at 21:07;
