Came across an interesting blog post tiled: The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect
It's an interesting post using the Dead Sea and it's evaporation water and concentration of salt as a metaphor of certain IT environments. The evaporation was the 'good' iIT people leaving and the salt was the 'less capable' IT staff staying. The net effect being eventually it will become too salty to support life (a well functioning IT environment). It was interesting to me because I've been in those situations and have watched it happen. Talented person after talented person leaves and what's left behind is a group of people who can't get a project across the finish line. Or if they do, it's way over budget, over time, under featured and under tested.
The comments on slashdot and in the blog post itself are also worth browsing. There's some interesting nuggets. Like this one from wjaf who takes exception to being called residue, since he's one who stayed behind and considers himself water. Well, the article never said the sea was dry and all salt. And by sticking around and "...we work our backsides off keeping the company afloat." he's enabled the problem to continue. A comment by Will.Rubin is also off the mark a bit. Mr Webster responds quite well to his comment, I feel.
One thing that strikes me funny is is notion of "TEPES" - Talent, Education, Professionalism, Experience, and Skill. When I read that, i read TERPES (an inserted R). One of the many local sports teams around here are the Univ. of Maryland Terrapins, abreviated as Terps. And then Terpes sends me down a childish rhyming path.
Nothing in IT is every this cut and dried. Nor is a salt-free IT shop possible. So it's important to remember it's an analogy. It's used as an allegory about IT hiring and talent retention.
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