I don't have any specific numbers, but I've seen references in
various news media (CNN, Newsweek, etc.) to a shortage of computer
progammers and engineers in the U.S., as well as a low overall
unemployment rate. The latter is harped on periodically by financial
news shows in reference to fear of future inflation because the
competition for employees may start driving the wage-price spiral.
In this context, and in view of what I infer happened with Open
(loss of key employees?), and from my own experience as
a software engineer working on projects where anywhere from several
to more than a dozen programmers are involved over several years,
I have to say that keeping the VSGN programmers happy has to be a
priority for the short and medium term.
A few years from now, after the products have been integrated,
the Borland people have been cross-trained, some VSGN people have
been promoted into positions at Borland, and the normal turnover
has mixed the employee pool, it may be possible to get rid of the
VSGN headquarters without serious consequences, and thereby save
some money.
Right now, getting rid of it would probably precipitate a disaster.
I think good programmers often have the temperament of artists,
which is to say that they are a bit prickly: creative, independent,
indifferent to if not contemptuous of authority, and in the current
environment, not afraid of looking for another job.
Forcing a person who lives close to where they work to start
commuting 25 miles, in addition to the uncertainty you've
subjected them to by taking over their company, is a good way to
get them thinking about looking for another job. The really good
ones won't have any trouble finding another job, which are of
course the ones you don't want to lose.
There has to be a know-how transfer, and this takes a year or two.
Unless the VSGN code is documented unbelievably well, a Borland
programmer is not going to be able to just pick it up after a
cursory explanation. There has to be somebody well-informed,
preferably the original author, available to explain the logic
behind the design, the work-arounds in the code, the list of small
things which were left undone, etc.
So aside from any little empires that the executives themselves
may have, it is important not to turn the work environment for the
VSGN programmers upside down.
To use a little analogy which I'm sure some of you can have fun
with, when you bring a fish home from the store in one of those
plastic bags, you don't just dump it into your fish tank - first
you put the bag in to let the temperature slowly equalize, so the
fish doesn't get a shock. |
