Everywhere I turn, the same problem: “In my 30 years of business life, I have struggled with many problems, I have struggled with many fatal crises, but I have never seen anything like this. This is the first time I have been helpless like this.” Wherever I go, I hear these and similar complaints. It is hard to find qualified employees.
We are talking about qualified employees. Software developers, each of whom we have carefully selected and trained, are leaving one by one. Their projects remain unfinished. The deteriorating macro balances in the economy, downgrades by credit institutions, climbing inflation have started to eat away at our software capabilities.
We have a management style that excludes knowledge and humiliates those who know. If the person who knows is not one of us, if he or she is not one of our supporters, if he or she does not pay allegiance, if he or she does not belong to our own community, our own circle of relatives, we do not even care… We do not even notice if foreigners have not appreciated his or her dazzling achievements.
But the main problem lies in knowing, caring and working with people who know. The basic philosophy of low-qualified bosses in our country is: “How can someone I pay for be smarter than me?” It happens, brother; the problem here is you and your inflated ego that you adorn with your ignorance…
TWO QUESTIONS AND TWO ANSWERS
Why is the turnover in the sector so high?
In the software industry, turnover is down to 4 months. Everyone wants to improve their business and increase their competitiveness in new business areas. That’s why there is a high demand for qualified labor and those who are good at their job are being snapped up. We are now like a country that provides qualified labor especially to Europe.
What can be done in the field of information technology?
We keep saying “sir, let’s start coding in primary school”… However, the problem is too deep to be attributed to the cliché “education is a must”. A managerial attitude that does not attach importance to science and knowledge is no guarantee of success, even if you are Bill Gates. India has climbed to the CEO level at the top of the world’s IT giants with its software developers. We, on the other hand, have not yet been able to distinguish between “the man who knows or the man from us.” Then we ask with an insincere curiosity; “the ones who are leaving are not coming, why is that?”
Minimum wage debate is just a consequence
Since we cannot talk about the fight against inflation, we focus on the problems it causes us. For example, what should the minimum wage be? Should we try a local minimum wage? How many times a year? How much should the inflation compensation be? Should wage increases be based on expected inflation?
What I know is that if you don’t talk about the root problem, this will give a hard time to you. If you don’t discuss the causes, you will keep struggling with the consequences. This is exactly what we are doing in Turkey. In fact, we know that in order to reduce inflation, we need 1-realistic determination, 2-inclusive solution and 3-trustworthy implementer.
But our findings are not realistic because each of us limits our minds to the economic knowledge of the top management. We cannot come up with inclusive solutions because the general opinion is; “solve inflation but leave me out of it”… There are no reliable implementers because we never trust the implementers.
Meanwhile, TurkStat announced the unemployment figure as 8.5%. Moreover, it was the lowest unemployment in the last 11 years. If we make job seekers give up this bad habit(!), we can eliminate unemployment altogether with this mindset…
