Today we have an editorial from Mar 22, 2006 as Steve is on vacation.

Terrell Owens signs with the Cowboys and I'm not thrilled. As a longtime fan of Dallas, I'd have preferred that they get someone else, despite his talent. Too much baggage. Alfonso Soriano refuses to play outfield for the Nationals this week, disobeying his manager who asked him to go out there during a game. Lots of people are upset with this "spoiled" athlete who makes $10 million a year and won't listen to his boss.

There's way more stories of this type of behavior than there are positive ones. But how do these individuals get away with this behavior and still command such high salaries?

It's called economics. There are many people, often sports or entertainment stars, that have a supply of something: talent. And with the demand out there to see them, the price goes up. It's a simple graph from basic Economics 101, like the one shown below. I learned about this early in my college career, as the supply goes down, as in one or two superstar wide receivers in football, the price goes up. In this case to $10 million for Mr. Owens this year. If you can have that kind of demand for your services, than you can easily get more money. And it's not limited to sports.

I have a friend that manages a development team. This manager requires the team to read software development materials from the team library, which contains books, magazines, etc. that pertain to their business. Often there are magazines passed around and the developers are asked to read for an hour a week and note a sentence or two that shows they read something. My friend even gives them the hour during work hours as a way to encourage personal development and growth of the developers.

Recently one developer said that they didn't want to read one week. Since it was a busy week, the team working overtime, my friend didn't complain too much. However the developer went further in saying they didn't think they should have to read and that if they did, they should be able to pick anything, not just from the library. No suggestions or, hey, could you get a copy of Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services, nothing other than a complaint.

My friend was a little put off by this. After all, my friend is trying to help the team grow, looking to ensure they do not become stagnant and wanting to foster a professional environment. And giving away work time to do it, not requiring the developers to find time at night or on the weekends.

I've seen this behavior more and more over the last 7 or 8 years than the 7 or 8 prior to that that I've been in this business. As the demand for IT services has gone up, many people have gotten inflated salaries and the ego to go with them. Too many IT workers think they're above some work or don't think they need to improve or companies should place additional demands on them. This goes from requiring certifications or training to not being willing to help out in lesser skilled areas.

Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm from a different time, but I think that requiring you to keep learning isn't a problem in IT. After all, technology changes rapidly and it benefits you. And requiring it on company time shouldn't be an issue. Asking me to help out with a ticket queue and assigning ACL permissions to individuals won't generate a complaint from me.

Heck, it's much easier than doing SQL work and the pay's the same.