John Linton ....only the inexperienced expect the good times to be unending.
I read this earlier today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304567604576451911276767854.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
which I found a little surprising because the US wireless providers are rolling out LTE across more and more of the major cities and, as it notes business is booming, there seems to be no reason why employment wouldn't be increasing rather than decreasing. Perhaps the US wireless companies have developed new levels of efficiencies? Perhaps they are preparing for a downturn? I am receiving an increased number of resumes from people who have worked/are working in the communications industry for various lengths of time over the past few months to a level of approaching one a day so that seems to point to some sort of overall decrease in the number of people employed in the industry in Australia. To date we have employed one very senior person from this increasing number of enquiries though we have been tempted to hire others on more than one occasion.
One of the major problems that most/all Australian communications companies are facing at the moment is what to do with all the dead wood they have accumulated during the easy years of easy sales of first mobile telephones, then wire line re-selling followed by the boom in ADSL. The easy dollars concealed the poor hiring and even poorer management of the growth of most Australian carriers and providers and the growth also went on long enough to permanently obscure the capabilities of the people that were hired and the ability of any level of management to do anything about that ongoing problem. The perceived need for more and more people together with inadequate hiring standards and management involvement in the hiring and subsequent personnel development processes has built a major ongoing problem starting with the 'dilution' of standards and continuing on through that self consuming scenario.
This is nothing new nor is it 'reprehensible' - it is a common problem experienced by almost every company that goes through 'a boom period' which makes even bad decisions appear to be almost good because the markets keep growing. But then the music stops - saturation of markets eventually stop the growth dead in its tracks - it is almost never a graduated slow down. When the easy dollars stop pouring through the door any company has to make 'adjustments' but few actually manage to make these 'adjustments either in a timely manner nor do they make the correct 'adjustments'.....because the decision making management seldom actually know the capabilities of the people they employ and any knowledge they do have is now enveloped in the panic and subsequent obfuscation of the managers they have put in place during the good times. How does this sort of task get done?
http://gigaom.com/2011/07/18/cisco-layoffs/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8645864/Macquarie-urged-to-cut-1000-jobs-as-shares-slump.html
Every part of any company facing this scenario is simultaneously and suddenly negatively effected....except Human Resources who I have observed over the years increases in numbers disproportionately while a company is in a 'hiring boom' but remains the same size, or gets larger, during the inevitable firing 'boom' - there is even more work, and a lot more expense, involved in getting rid of employees than there ever is in hiring them in the first place. Yes I know, a very cynical view, but as night follows day this is what happens when a company has been stupid enough to allow anyone but senior managers with an in depth knowledge of the company's requirements become involved in hiring decisions. Would there be anyone at Cisco who would know whether their planned 9% employee reduction was going to only get rid of unproductive employees? Would anyone at Macquarie Bank know which 1,000 people to fire?
It seems that I am now not the only person who recognises that NSW is in a recession and has actually never recovered from the GFC. As I have noted in these ramblings several times over the past two years business conditions have been increasingly bad in most of the State. It will continue to get worse for all the starkly obvious reasons that are now being reported but have existed for a very long time. I take absolutely no pleasure in making that assertion - indeed I only commented on it over the last 2 - 3 years because it so negatively affected Exetel. I guess that was why I commented on the cited articles - even in booms, sensible companies look at their personnel growth because they know there will inevitably be a bust.
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