Slashdot Mirror
The Laid-off Techie
LazyBoy writes: "ZDNet News has this article entitled "The world of the laid-off techie". Yikes! Things have been bad in New Jersey for a while (telecom slump). How are they elsewhere?"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
(telecom slump, dot-com bubble pop)
... is bad. Don't be looking for a contract here anytime soon....
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
But after eight months without a job, the 37-year-old Raleigh, N.C., resident had burned through his 401(k) savings and was nearing the end of unemployment insurance.
How did that happen? $401k in 8 months? Am I missing something here?
Maybe he should try relocating to find a proper job.
Yes - graduated 2 months ago (BS in comp. sci) with a 3.77 gpa. I have a lot of experience. (I used to own my own business.) I have applied like 20 places, and I haven't even gotten a rejection letter yet. They just don't say anything.
/. at 5:00 am?
:)
If I had a job, would I be reading
Please hire me
Someone's got to say it:
How many of these people are MBA's vice-presidents of marketing or business analysts.
They don't mention anything about out-of-work programmers, sysadmins and webmasters. I'd think that a lower percentage of real techies are out of work.
Replies welcome any out-of-work C coders. Anyone?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
These are quotes from the article about the jobs that people were laid-off from :-
"Here I am throwing mail with an MBA"
"sharpening her resume as a marketing manager "
"write scripts for now-defunct Web soap opera The Spot"
"quality assurance (QA) job "
"product manager for software development "
With the possible exception of the QA job, none of these sound like techie jobs. They are all just fairly unskilled jobs that happen to be in a technical company. This article is very misleading.
Sig is taking a break!
Some years ago, 1995, I got through a 5-month unemployemnt period.
It was quite hard to keep in a good mood but I went through by doing as many benevolent work as I could (development, Acorn/RiscPC User Group, continuous self-teaching of things like web development, GNU/Linux hacking...).
As these activities involved lots of professionnally valuable material, I ended finding a job as a Macromedia Director teacher for unemployed, then as an interactive devices developper, then as a webmaster...
The hardest thing was gather some money to buy some book but I benefitted from my bro's Internet access, in the university and I could print many many RFC's, man pages, etc.
So, my advice is that one should remain busy learning interesting potentially emerging new technologies so that this unemployement period appears to be constructive, after all.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
So with all of these way-overqualified former dot-commers taking up all the blue collar jobs...where does that leave me and my fellow struggling student workers looking for summer jobs? (Don't even get me started about the severe lack of the "necessary" internships.)
Even more troubling, where does that leave me once I graduate with a BS in EE?
~~as one famous philosopher once said: GADZOOKS!~~
(c) Telephone sex?
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
bad.
tech jobs are rare and you have 10,000 ppl applying for 1 position.
good luck =\
That's why I spent seven years learning programming, object-oriented design, business logic, server admin, web development and project management: so I could attain the dignified and much sought-after title of:
"techie"
Kinda answers the whole question of the importance of the software engineer, doesn't it?
The rest of the rant would be redundant. It's all been said before. The only people who matter to a business are management and the HR department. Everyone else should just be prepared to watch their kids grow up in poverty right under their college degrees on the wall.
god bloody awful.
I think my resume is quite good. I have electronics/telecoms/computing back to the late 80's including defence and stock exchange network support, but now I need to resort to getting certifications to get work.
In Sydney, no MCSE, CCNA, etc, no work.
The market is saturated with newbie wanabies who have plenty of cert but almost nil experience, so it's hard to get noticed when companies are expecting cert.
So, I'm fixing that now but I kinda wish I would'nt have to. Most MCSE's I've met would'nt know a kernel if it blue screened on them.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
With the end of start-up dreams, times are now bad for techies. One year ago, finding a job was a easy as posting a message on Dice (or equivalent sites), and waiting 24 hours. Then, you just had to choose for the best offer.
Nowadays, finding an IT job is *difficult* , especially as opensource techies. Not a lot of company are hiring. Either they already have their technical staff, or they moved to external consultancy services.
There were plenty of new jobs because there were a lot of new companies popping up everywhere. Now, it's over.
I'm looking for a job for weeks with no success...
{{.sig}}
We all became convinced that things that people at "normal" jobs take for granted - eg working at the same office for more than a year - were irrelevant. Hell, why work hard or show up on time when the recruiters will swarm your phone as soon as you put your resume on Monster? Before 2001, I could literally find a job within a week of starting my search, and the quality of my references or the reasons for my newly-found state of unemployment were mostly irrelevant. Imagine my horror when that all changed in April 2001. Ahh well, at least I'll get all of those taxes back thanks to making less than $10k last year.
On another note: is it my imagination, or do most of the people in that article seem like the same marketing wonks who should be the first people to be 86'ed from a failing organization anyway?
I'm lucky. I got a programming job at a 2-year college in 1982. I grew through the ranks and am now in charge of a 25-person tech support team. (Management sucks, but that's for another /. story comment.)
My pay is around $50K and I sat by in my safe job while others I knew, many of them my students from my evening classes I taught, some my former employees, many friends, flew off and made huge bucks and taunted me endlessly about what a fool I was to stick in my "low pay" job.
I've also known a lot of them to use their income to buy $40K+ cars, huge houses, and saddle themselves with all sorts of debt.
As for foolish me, I will be able to retire in five years with a full state pension, medical benefits for life, and still be just 47 and able to do some of those high-risk high-return jobs later.
A bit of gloat? Yeah, perhaps. Human nature. Doesn't mean I don't feel bad for them nonetheless.
However, tech is still the future and the job market will turn around and the big rewards will return. So while it might be necessary to throw mail around and make $13/hour for a while, just don't fall behind in your tech skills. One day they'll pay off big again.
My advice, however, is next time around (or if you still have a fat job), squirrel away some cash for a rainy day, keep expenses down, and stay out of debt. Then next time a dry period blows through, you may just have enough saved to not have to work, go back to school and learn those new skills you've been wanting to get, and then come out the other side stronger and end up in the long run, much better than I am. Because everyone knows, intelligent risk taking, while it often has short-term losses, over the long run, pays off much better than the guy (like me) who plays it safe. No one gets rich playing it safe...
If you're still looking for an IT-job, the smart thing to do right now is to be searching for an IT job in a non-IT sector. Think banking, insurance, consultancy, ...
According to Gartner, the only IT-sector that is currently booming, and that will continue to do so with almost absolute certainty, is the anti-virus sector. Jobs over there are however relativily scarce as there aren't a lot of (big) companies in this sector. Not something to place your bets on.
All in all, take what you can for the time being. While searching for the perfect job for over a year shows a lot of tenacity, corporations usually value things like experience a lot higher.
<Sig>The good thing about having a good memory is ... euh
Although this was a pretty good article, it smacks of the whiny 'I went to school! I deserve a great life and a high paying job' attitude that many of us have come to despise in those MBAs who think they know anything about running a business.
It's enough to make sucessful business people puke, to hear the lame ass excuses people who have supposedly been trained to TAKE CHARGE, and generate PROFIT, for a company come up with.
After years riding high end, high speed networking jobs, using my expertise and experience to the max, I got caught in the Nortel 'halving'... I had spent the last 5 years of my career kicking ass, and taking names doing high end routing, high end security, and integrating optical technology...
Unfortunatly for me, jobs like that are now hard to come by. Luckily, I started out small, with my own ISP, and find myself somewhat gainfully self-employed supporting a lot of small 'mom-and-pop' ISPs,(and thier new crop of high speed customers, who cant stand the customer non-service of the larger carriers) who find that thier conservatice business plans are now paying off in spades. (ie, thier 'smarter' competition ran themselves out of business trying to do DSL for the same price as the phone company)
I believe that doers do, and whiners don't. My last day at nortel was in december, and I am very grateful to them for treating us like human beings, and letting all of us down easy. I know that hasn't been the case for a lot of people who got 'down sized'.
I hope someday to return, but in the meantime, I will continue to bust my butt, and make my own destiny.
(PS. Health insurance for the self-employed is remarkable affordable, if you shop around)
...pretty much a no go zone if you don't have years of experience.
I agree times are hard (having got laid of by a biggish now smallish teleco equipment manufacturer) but managed to find a job before my contract ended.
In the UK at the moment there seems to be a shortage of real-time software engineers with a number of companies I know having a shortfall in that area.
However in the IT support, web development, etc. areas then I agree times are very hard and not really showing signs of recovery despite what our blinkered politicians try to say.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Well. No wonder the article is full of stories of people out of work for a year. Hell, if you interview people who are "vaguely looking" for tech jobs, of course it's going to seem like there are few jobs. Employers can tell who is "vaguely looking" -- these people have weak resumes to begin with, they don't follow up, and they're discouraged easily. What employer wants to hire people like that?
Now, that's not to say that it's wonderful out there. As an employer, I've been used to begging for resumes for the last 3 years. When I had an opening 3 months ago, I was seriously inundated with resumes. The job market is swarming with candidates. Of course, quite a good number of the candidates I saw shouldn't have been in the industry in the first place. It was obvious from the few hundred resumes I went through that the layoffs throughout Silicon Valley have been mostly about letting go of dead weight. But even that is bad news for qualified people. Think about it: even if you're a genius, your resume is buried in a pile of 400 other lackluster resumes. If you want to succeed, you'll need to be aggressive.My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Come on lets be real here, how many people during the
The reality is that
Welcome back to 1995. Talent counts, experience counts. There are still loads of jobs out there if you have the right experience, if you spent 2 years developing a "cool" website that went under using non-core languages (i.e. not MS, not C++, not Java) then you'll struggle, because the companies who work like that went bust.
Some would say that John is lucky to have a job at ......... hang-on ..... oops Juliette Katz.
My mistake. Continue reading.
The telecom slump (crash) hit Denver pretty hard. I've been out of work for over 9 months without a good lead in sight. Right now, I'm working a $12/hr temp job that could get canned at any moment, but I'm glad to have it.
Colorado seems to have this tendency to put all of its eggs into one economic basket. Before the telecom crash, there was the petroleum industry crash, and other economic downturns before that.
I'd have to side with the pessimists. Many of the jobs during the golden years are gone forever. And forget the crazy salaries! $110K for an NT admin?! Sheesh.
WWW
anyone who uses their 401k as their emergency fund is on crack. they should get crappy temp work before they touch their 401k/ira funds.
Can anyone with a stronger stomach than me tell me roughly what that new picture is????
Man, some of these articles really hit close to home!
One of the problems is finding where the jobs are. In the economic boom, the recruiters helped everybody out. But although I consider myself a savvy job hunter, I'd had difficulty figuring out what companies are out there. National job boards are mostly useless because only a small percentage of companies need to advertise heavily to find a suitable candidate. Individuals need a good directory of company links in their local market.
IT people are used to thinking of themselves as belonging to an exclusively IT company. In actuality, a lot of non-IT companies need help managing their network. Not as glamorous maybe, but at least it's a job.
The real problem with IT unemployment is that people are reluctant to accept non IT positions. Why? You stop gaining new skills and quickly lose touch with what skills are in demand.
I'm a technical worker out of work for 9 months, partly by choice. I used some of the time to update my skills. If only I had a crystal ball that allowed me to see what skill will be necessary for my next job, that would simplify things. As such, I'm busy learning about everything. A job interview revealed my ignorance about Win Active Directories, so I check out a book on the subject. Another job interview asks about XWindows, and so I pick up another book. Learning about this stuff is not very painful, but it's frustrating not having a clue what skill will land you the job. It's also frustrating trying to balance the time you spend job searching with the time to update skills.
Is anyone spooked by all the defense jobs out there? As it turns out, I can't qualify for security clearance because I'm seeking dual citizenship. But if you looked at the postings, you'd swear that a good 50% of job opportunities are related to defense contractors.
I had a good job with Dell; they treated me very well and there were lots of perks. In a day I'm going to a job fair for contract Dell tech support jobs, probably without benefits or job security. Hey, if it pays the bills, I'll be happy. (Just cancel that trip to Mexico for this year).
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
1. Resumes don't matter in any way shape or form.
2. If you're over 25 you are obviously "burnt out" and of little
use to any company.
3. If you have 5 years experience of exactly the API that your
future employer seeks then you might get the job as long
as you don't try and fuck them over by asking for a decent wage.
4. In the UK I.T. is obviously booming as our IT minister still
insists that everything is rosy and let's get that cheap labour
in as fast as we can, as well as training up toilet attendants
to do Y2K work.
Bitter? You bet
Unemployed? What do you think?
Experienced? Only 20 years but hell I'm not 25
and don't know every parameter of every function in the J2EE spec so I'm screwed.
Hmmm. This is bad. I had plans to get a jobb in the US after my master. I can forget that now, right???
A lot of the people I know were "paper techies" who used to brag about how much they made. Well, who has the job now?
:)
On the other hand, I also know plenty of good people who got let go "just because". They were adequte to stellar performers, who were in the wrong business unit at the wrong time.
If your skills are marketable, and you're lucky, you'll find a job. Bottom line. If you have so-so skills (see oddtodd.com for a good list of so-so skills) then you won't find a job. A professionally polished resume doesn't matter if everything "interesting" you did was for a bunch of fucked companies that didn't deliver anything.
I think that's the crux of the biscuit. All the badass experience doens't matter if everyone looks at it and says, "but this company didn't *do* anything, and it failed". OTOH, if you delivered (more or less on schedule and at budget) a (blah blah blah buzzword) then you have something. You'll find work. Software is still being developed, web sites are launched, the world is still turning.
We're just at the bottom of a cycle. At the end of the hype, everyone was saying "XML this" and "Web Services that". Well no one really knew what to do with all that. Once people start to figure out how to hook up the latest tech with the consumer/end user, the same way Netscape brought the web to the masses, you'll see it pick up. It may take 2 years, or 5. But it'll happen. The VC will go back to insane spending. All the MBAs and "Director of Multimedia Development" types will work again. Don't worry.
Just make sure my latte is right, OK? Working in the NOC takes good Joe. It won't be long before you're bossing me around again.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I know this has been mentioned a lot the past couple months, but gov't is where its at right now. I'm currently in the process of converting my military TS clearance over to contractor and giving serious thought to doing gov't work again (I'm a sysadmin).
The company I work for makes equipment for telecoms and we've been hit HARD the last few months with no sign of letting up (at least not for another 12-18 months...maybe).
Say what you want about working for The Man, but The Man will provide me with a salary 1/3rd greater then I'm currently making (have clearance, will pay). Its a 5 year contract so unless I'm fired, I'm safe from layoffs. How many others can claim that right now?
If the market improves, then maybe I'll go back private sector. But right now, gov't work is safe.
is there actually anywhere at the mo which is a good place to be?
Pretty horrible. I've been out of work since August. Sad, and lonely :( .....
Before the bubble burst, I had a measly B.A. in Spanish, but I still got hired at startups for various jobs, mostly web-oriented stuff like search engines. I made as much as $650/wk for a short while, which ain't too shabby for where I live.
Since the bubble burst, I'd got a non-technical temp job at the county tax office. When I got laid off from that job a friend got me hired at a convenience store, where I do 9-hour shifts with no lunch break for $5.50/hr. I've lost my wife and son because I am unable to support them on a near-minimum-wage part-time job. I'm living with my parents because I can't even afford to support myself. Oh, yeah, and I have about $20,000 of college loan debt to pay off.
So, I've decided to use up my remaining financial aid (even though it will add to my debt) to return to college for a B.S. in Computer Science. I'm hardly learning anything, since I already learned plenty on the job. (Unfortunately, my university does not count life experience for college credit.) Some professors have even told me that I am capable of teaching their classes, but that won't get me out of the credit requirements.
I'm planning to get my B.S. in Spring 2003, and hopefully by 2004 I'll be seriously working and living with my wife and son again...but who knows. I don't want to get optimistic.
By the way, I'm not alone in my neck of the woods. My best friend is in a similar situation. He has 12 years of programming and network administration experience. However, he has no degree, so nobody even wants to interview him. He's pushing 30 and has just entered college as a freshman.
Ride the wave of prosperity!
Mi klopodas varbi por Esperanto.
Well in 2000 I jumped to a telecom company, partly for the 25% raise (and the lure of potential bonuses each year) and the opportunity to gain some experience in a field that was booming and seemed to have no where to go but up.
Well after about six months of nowhere but up, it was all no telling where the bottom is, and I got laid off.
Fortuneately for me, I was able to fall back on my previous experience to land a job rather quickly (at a somewhat reduced salary), so I consider myself lucky when I read stories like these. Also there are fellow engineers that I worked with who are still looking also.
I am CEO of a small company which specialises in web development. It is still true (at least in my part of the world) that many "web design" companies have staff whos only qualification is to have taught themselves to "program" in HTML. Many of them are from non-techy backgrounds, often design or Mickey Mouse degrees like Media Studies. These companies often offer all types of services (such as those that really require real programming or project management skills) which they don't have the skills and experience to offer. So if these people are being made redundant and having a hard time finding new jobs - well, tough.
To get a good job is hard. Always has been, apart from temporary crazy blips like the dot-com boom. Just because it is now hard to get a good job does not mean that good jobs do not exist, rather it means that the brief period of crazyness when mediocre people could get good jobs is over!
Here in San Francisco - the epicenter of the dot-com boom and bust - the market is grim. Finding work, even if you are highly qualified and experienced is a slow, brusing experience. If all you have is a reasonable degree and a couple of years experience at some failed dot-com, then its essentially impossible to find work in the high-tech sector and damn hard to find it elsewhere.
Over the summer of 2001 the City was flooded with laid off tech workers. For several months you literally could not hire a moving truck from any Bay Area rental company. Every one was hired and heading back east as yet another dot-commer left the City.
Its not all bad news, however. Housing costs in San Francisco are falling back from the ludicrous heights they reached a year or two back. Its now possible to rent in the City for less than $1000 a month. You can now buy a decent home for less than $350,000. Neither was possible two years ago. The City is also becoming more civilized again as the white heat of the boom years cools down a little.
Its also possible to detect a very slight improvement in the job market. This is partly because so many people have left the local market: noticeably fewer people are competing for the few jobs that come up. Its also true that as the economy slowly, slowly begins to come alive again, a few companies are starting to hire again.
But it will be a long time before we truly recover. Anyone remember the mid 80's?
Sailing over the event horizon
This is the 90s effect. Not only is everybody taught to believe that they are a somebody, but everyone thinks they are a genius. (Just do it!!!)
The real problem is that the whole IT field, was and still is a joke, since everyone, overnight, who can read, including dummies, can too become EXPERTS in less than 24 hours, and then get certified.
Kind of like those building superintendents, who have a diploma hangind in their office, for every stupid little bs.
And as a result of too many people calling themselves "experts", it undermined Computer Scientists and Computer Engineers, and now everybody has to suffer.
Plain and short, any 2 year computer science/engineer major could do an IT's job, and if they can, they have the ability to pick it up on their own. There was never a need for IT, the jobs should have gone to the less than stellar computer science/engineer majors, you know, the guys who were never able to understand recursion.
ive just left school, and being the poor unemployed student that I am, tried to get into the IT industry with only my years of experience. All employers want to know is weather I have a MSCE. Ive heard many a story of MSCE idiots scewing up jobs that I could of done well in my pre-teens ;) Oh well, such is life...
Gnome wasnt built in a day.
I was laid off with about 100 other contract workers last july. The market here is so depressed that the recruiters are leaving in droves. The few programming jobs that are getting posted are very vertical niches and as someone that always had a broad background in development, the positions are going to the couple of people that have been doing one thing for 15 years. it's tough going from $160k to unemployment when you've been working steady for 20+ years. Doesn't help when your kid's financial aid forms go back 3 years for income. So, here I am working with agencies that used to call weekly with people I've never heard of that have no idea what any of the buzzwords they get asked for mean. You want fries with that?
Bush is a weenie!
For a moment I thought I read "A Techie Gets Laid..." oh how I wish. ;)
All the people interviewed in that article are wimps. They clearly say they are looking for jobs similar to what they had before. Tough luck chumps, go look somewhere else. They think that because they are taking commitment-less jobs while they look for another "fall-back-into-a-shitload-of-money-job" we should feel sorry for them? Get up and tough it out and look for a different type of job. I can't imagine someone with a MBA is limited to dot coms.
Needed Reforms to re-establish a viable tech workforce:
1) Get rid of lower capital gains tax rates. The NASDAQ boom was artificially spawned by the insane
act of Congress. Tax cap gains as the same rate as dividends and labor gains.
2) Roll back H1-B quotas to 1990 levels. There is no reason to single out programmers for competition from overseas when lawyers, doctors, teachers, firemen and policemen don't face this competition.
3) Make health insurance portable. More people would leave their state and to to another state
where there are jobs if they didn't lose their health insurance.
I began working at a private manufacturing company several years ago. It's not glamorous, but making $45k in a very rural area (read: low cost of living) doesn't seem too bad to me. Actually, I probably got hired on at a good time; I expect the salary offered would be lower now. Anyway, as the only "techie" here at this plant, I've been able to watch the tech industry crash and burn knowing that the only thing that could take my job away would be the plant closing, which isn't going to happen.
Read:
What Color is Your Parachute and
Martin Yate's Knock 'Em Dead series
apply them.
go find a job for real.
Resumes DON'T work on their own except in a great (c. 2000) job market. All of the good jobs I have had have come from networking (not the technical kind, the human kind) with friends and associates. All of the sucky ones came from the standard job hunt ritual. Even during the great depression 80% of the work force was still employed anyway.
How are things in Melbourne? for entry level?
I'm thinking of having a look up there at the end of the year when I finish my Tafe Diploma/Cisco CCNA.
Not many jobs turn up here unless ya wanna work in the gov departments. Even those ones are hard to get.
(d) Telephone sex with a mere. :)
I'm in London, UK.
/ever/ been unemployed. It's pretty fsckin' crappy, I can tell you. The only bright spot is having plenty of spare time for reading (Slashdot, Bugtraq, Incidents, Vuln-Watch, ISN, nanog,...), and finally getting round to writing some actual releasable-quality Free software - which is tons o' fun. Otherwise, frankly, it's damn depressing. And reading posts here saying "anyone who can't get work must be a loser or a prima-donna or a MCSE-mill twit" doesn't help! ;p
I wouldn't have believed it possible a year ago, but I've been out of work since my last employer went bust in August 2001. OK, I'm not a hardcore CS-grad C programmer - I'm mostly a Perl programmer, with a minor in "anything-todo-with-security", and basic (NT, Linux, BSD) sys-admin skills. I'm not asking an insane salary. I've never been unemployed since starting in IT professionally in 1995, and this is now the longest I've
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
While major telecom companies like Global Crossing, Network+, WorldxChange, even WorldCom and Qwest are all in financial trouble, the company I work for, NOBEL, has been growing by an order of magnitude every month since its founding in 1998.
Many of our competitors, especially larger ones, made the mistake of overspending on technology infrastructure and on marketing-- blowing through billions of dollars in debt and equity financing. NOBEL is both extremely cost efficient (i.e. we make sure every expenditure is justified by generating additional profit), and we are self funded.
The attitude in our team is that we are going to take over telecom in the USA over the next 5-10 years. We are ALWAYS looking for people with strong telecom experience, both on the business end of things and in technology.
I am find it real hard to even believe that the MBA degree is worth anything. Let us look at what it says, Master of Business Administration. Doesn't this sound like a glorified secretary? If the degree imparted any real knowledge, then the holder of such a degree should be able to run his/her own company/business. Since this is obviously not the case, why then does such a degree exist? Management, management comes the chorus! Most MBA's go to work fo SOMEONE ELSE, rather than starting their own company. What kind of mastery does this imply? None, IMNSHO. Working for someone else may pay the bills, but I know of no business where a newly MBA'd individual would be allowed to MASTER the business right out of school. Work expierence is what counts. This guy is a ME, yet he is not doing ME work from the get-go. This looks like someone who can pass tests and get grades, but who is NOT working in a field for which he studied to be a part. This guy seems confused, someone told him that you get an engineering degree coupled with an MBA and you can go places. Look where he went. That fact says it all. Valued contributers to any organization are retained, or re-trained. Real world seems to be intruding on the fantasy world once again.
just check Mojolin...There are not alot of international jobs listed, but they're out there.
There's always defence. Ok, it can be slow and pay is never going to be amazing, but the drive to use more COTS equipment is making it easier for people with commercial skills to get in.
Ofcourse 'fake' techies are screwed, a degree in Media Studies or Aromatherapy with 6 months HTML 'Programming' is unlikely to get you anywhere.
enthusiasm goes a long way in an interview. doing things like writing distributed applications or transactional websites on your own time shows potential employers you know and love the technology. I've also worked at a wide variety of jobs and know how lucky I am to be programming for a living. A lot of people in the tech industry never had to sweat for a living. Once a person does hard manual labor, it puts everything in perspective. How many programmers know what it is like to change the wax ring on a toilet, work construction in blazing heat or clean bathrooms 8 hours a day?
I have plenty of friends and acquantances that were working as web developers with very little skill. In some cases they were IT hazards and would do stupid things like post the companies IP numbers on a news group. It's all part of the maturation process. People shouldn't be surprised. You can't always do what you love for a living, but if you really want it, there's nothing stopping you. It might take blood, sweat and working crappy jobs to get there, but in the end the journey is worth it.
I'm an adjunct at a local major university in New Jersey and part of my duties include teaching classes in the CS department's continuing education arm. At times, it is difficult for me as an educator to make students face reality. Many students that enroll in our certification programs believe that all you have to do is sit through some classes to become a tech wiz and get a great paying job. The reality is that many of them don't have what it takes to become a good technologist. A student recently told me that he was very discouraged in his job hunt because he "spent three years making between $65K and $80K as an HTML coder". He now seeks a similar job with similar pay, but the fact is that he's has not demonstrated to me that he's even worth half of that salary in any technical position. While I am often tempted to use a "Here's a dime...use it to call your mother and tell her you'll never going to be a lawyer (or techie)" speech, I still must encourage my students to work hard to improve their skills. But it becomes difficult trying to get them to believe that they'll no longer get high-paying short-returns in this over-hyped market.
Yes, times are bad. A lot of people out of work - even the good ones. But the moral of the story is that many so-called techies need to re-evaluate their career path and their place in the industry.
Why, oh, why, don't all of you out of work open source hippies try to sell your software!!!
Don't get me wrong--I'm not a xenophobe, and see nothing nefarious about the idea of allowing people from other countries to fill positions for which there are no Americans available.
But it doesn't make sense to provide jobs for outsiders when our own can fill them.
At this point it's pretty obvious that the purpose of the H1B program has all along been to depress IT wages and skew the job market in favor of corporate employers. Employers have been making up "special skills" or listing jobs with low salaries to show an "effort" to hire a U.S. citizen, then hiring indentured H1Bs for 1/2 to 2/3 the salary. This should come as no surprise, since the same employers used the same tricks to not pay the market wage for U.S. electrical engineers in the 80s.
The program needs to be ended now. Current H1B visa holders should allowed to stay to the end of their terms, then they should return home to bring up the level of IT skill in their home nations, as the lobbyists and Congress said would happen.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Times are esp. hard because all these companies, like tech skills, new horizens, etc. keep advertising that you could be making 65k with your MCSE! Everybody making less thinks, why not go get my mcse, and make more money. WRONG!
Now, I know that is not entirly true. I know as a 18 year old, your not going to be making 65k a year even if you have nearly two years experence. I'm nearly 19, Have my MCSE, CCNA, Hell of a lot of experence. It took me two months to find a job after I was forced to leave my previous job. Two Months, I know it does not seem like much, but the problem I had was the age factor. I would get somebody calling every couple days wanting to possibly hire me. But when they found out my age, I would get the "Well keep trying, Good luck" line, and that would be it. The job I have now, I have luckly due to the fact one of my mom's very good friends is a part owner at a small IT firm thats been around since 94/95. I still get emails from my monster.com listing, but rarly replies.
One small tip, The work is out there. The issue is the cost, location, and quality. Companies don't see one person as being worth what they think they should pay, so thats why small consultation firms are pulling in lots of cash.
Also, I see people who have their BS in CS, and maybe one MCP cert, thinking they could be making 48-65k a year with no experence. I work with one. I may be going to college working on getting a BS in CS, but Being that it's a libiral arts college, I think I may just drop out of the local university, and enroll in a distance learning program from some private school, I can just about afford it.
Microsoft Certified SOFTWARE Engineer? Bullshitdotcom.
SYSTEMS engineer actually. Sorry to butt into your rant.
On the other hand, I'm not too worried about my future as I'm pretty sure I'll find something relevant, even if it means halving my salary as the UK tech market seems to be fairly stable (somehow the UK is riding out the world recession better than most other countries).
is now people want MORE for LESS. Most jobs you see advertised now are for, say, a Systems Administrator versed in Solaris [ok], AIX [ok], IRIX [ok], Linux [Alright...], MCSE Certified [Okay, i can see all of the above for Sr. Level..] almost-DBA Level oracle knowlede [ ditto.. ] J2EE [WTF?!@] 10 years experience [Righto] a Bachelors [!] and some_unheardof_application_that_nobody_uses [Broadvision!]. For $35,000/yr.
A tad exaggerated maybe.. but thats where its going. I got a job april of last year, and the conditions are less than ideal. I come in making as a UNIX administrator what I made as a helpdesk rep at one of my first jobs. I felt insulted. [but, i didnt have much choice].
It was rough out there for a while, but I managed to land a brand new job this month coming from a .com - belive me, I was worried that noone would want a .com sysadmin. But I believe that there are always jobs for competant people, most of the people who are unemployed now shouldn't have had jobs in the first place. Most of the tech companies hired WAY too many people, and then let them go. Imagine if they never hired those people to begin with, then they would still be slinging lattes at Starbucks. I'm assuming that with these positions came some pretty nice salaries, did they bank any of it? You shouldn't have to win money on a game show to be able to survive after losing your 150k/year job. Maybe if they just swallowed their pride and took a real job instead of sitting on their ass for a whole year looking for a job, they'd still have a few bucks left in the bank.
The article fails to actually quantify "looking for a job". What did these people actually DO? Send out resumes to companies they hope maybe to work for? Follow up with a phone call or snail mail? What kind of resume - most resumes are bad advertisements, written with badness... Did they go out and TALK WITH PEOPLE every day while drawing unemployment? Or send out a couple of resumes a week? Did they go over interview questions and formulate answers? Did they then get interviews?
Basically did they do the same thing over and over and expect different results (insanity) or professionally execute "finding a job"?
This is not a true picture of anything, this is one person's perception (author) of several other people (sought out for their failure to find a job - undoubtably one of the prerequisites for showing up in the article was that singular failure... How many people did he find who were unsuitable for the article (i.e., found a job in three weeks rather than the next day)? Remember, this guy starts with the premise that this is bad, that people (preselected for failure) can't find jobs... He works very hard to find supporting examples and facts, pointedly ignoring and minimizing that which does not support his premise.
I preferred the boom economy, who wouldn't? I saw demand for my specific skills slow to a crawl for about three months (September to November 2001) - then gradually pick back up again. No corporation can expand/operate/move forward in any way without technology, even just basic office networks. There is still a shortage of tech guys who can do as opposed to talk about doing or hang certificates. MCSE - Mine Sweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert...
because I failed it. I took the civil service test in Harrisburg, and I had a hard time with it since it was so outdated (it must've been printed in the mid 80's). Plus, I bombed the COBOL section of the test.
If you're the greasy guy who works behind the counter in the "PC Repair" section of Best Buy, you should be laid off if you haven't been already. The industry is overrun with "technicians", a bumper crop of losers fresh off the boat with Sally Struthers School of PC Repair degrees, i.e. dime-a-dozen dorks with no formal training or experience in anything beyond building or tearing down PCs. You think you know alot, but, you dont.
Meanwhile, if you're one of the few who actually treat your career as a discipline, then you should have either held onto your job, or have found work by now. UNIX is a discipline -- If you have an O'Reilly book within 15 feet of your bed, count yourself among the lucky ones who decided not to ride the Win32 train. I know guys with Windows-only skills that haven't held a job in 8 months. If by chance you're still out of work, use your time wisely. Don't sit around and pick your ass. Get your certifications over with, register with ACM and USENIX, and start piling on the lines in your resume'.
Simple as that.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
You cannot, cannot, cannot get a tech job unless:
- you get it through personal networking (before the job is "posted"), or
- you have done the exact job before.
I know a software development project manager (a real techie with assember, C/C++, and VB coding experience behind him) who looked outside telecomm and applied for a job in the pharmaceutical sector. Forget it; there are so many unemployed techies out there, the employer was looking for a certain set of skills and experience in the sectorI know another company that needed people to support a certain telecomm software system. They could afford to ignore everyone who could come up to speed on it, and hire only former developers of that system.
I'm still employed. If I'd been laid off last year (and I ducked two bullets by inches), I wasn't even going to look for a job; I was going to live off my wife's salary and write for a while.
You bet, though, if both my wife and I had been laid off, I'd be flipping burgers with the rest of them
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Things have been bad in New Jersey for a while (telecom slump). How are they elsewhere?
As an adopted citizen of Buffalo, things are pretty rough up here. On the up side, though, there's a recession coming up.
Hey, when your city's been in a depression for the last thirty years, a recession is actually a step up.
--saint
Yeah, here in Europe (Belfast -N.Ireland to be exact) things have been screwy too. I graduated in 2000, and went straight into work for Nortel Networks ,as a telecoms engineer. I lasted about 6 months before they could no longer afford me!
Then I went to work for a smaller local telecoms company called AePONA , but times became hard for them too: made redundant just before xmas (boo!).
I've decided to leave telecoms behind me, and am now working for a bespoke software company Avalanch , and life is grand! .... so far.
-=danny=-
Man Needs God Like Birds Need Helicopters
As a person who was laid off last October from a optical networking company, I have seen these types of people before. Here are their misconceptions about finding a job, and how you can keep from falling into the same traps.
First of all, there is no way that you can use the same method of finding a job as you did in the late 90's. You can't just call some recruiters and post your resume on Monster. You have to get out there and talk with people. Yes, it sucks, especially for an engineer like me. However, you have to get you name out there. Call people weekly about positions you know are open. Ask if you can come in to talk to them about the position. If you don't get the job, ask for a meeting with the hiring manager to discuss where you need to develop and what you need to do to get a job in that company in the future. For the companies you'd like to work for, research companies and call them about products that they're working on. Ask to make an appointment to come down and talk to them. Make yourselves some business cards (Avery makes some nice perforationless that almost look professional) and hand them out to everyone you meet.
Look, there are jobs out there, but companies aren't falling all over themselves to find employees anymore. They don't need to print ads or hire recruiters, because the people are already coming to them. I know that you've heard it a hundred times, but only 20% of jobs are found in the clssifieds, 7% on the internet, 5% by recruiters, and only 1% by mass mailing your resume. That means that you are missing out on 2/3 of the jobs by only using these sources.
It's taken me 5 months to realize these truths, but now I'm on my way and I have a job offer. You can, too.
-=-Girmann-=-
Nietzsche is dead. --God
I keep hearing about how hard it is to find an IT job, yet I have more offers to do contract programming work than I could possibly handle. I'm not a guru, I don't have a degree of any kind, and I don't live in an IT hotbed. I've just used some of my spare time over the last 5 years to (1) continue learning anything I can get my hands on, and (2) cultivate working relationships with software companies. Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe it's just that I took time to prepare for my future. Go figure.
:)
As for people having to take jobs they don't like, waaaahh F*CKING waaaah. Stuff happens.
anyone know what is going down in Toronto, Canada?
What is the tech job market like there???
I'm seeing a really disturbing trend in here. It seems those who have recently lost their jobs are taking a lot of heat for their situation. Some people seem to suggest that unemployment is almost always a result of poor skills, poor performance, poor planning, or a combination of these mistakes.
This pious "I have a job, they're easy to get and keep if you're as good as me" mentality smacks of a selfish immaturity drawn from too little interest in others' situations. These same people that are saying things like:
I believe that doers do, and whiners don't.
A lot of the people I know were "paper techies" who used to brag about how much they made. Well, who has the job now?
All the people interviewed in that article are wimps.
I'd bet if (when?) these people lose their jobs, they won't be blaming themselves, but instead the President, Congress, Alan Greenspan, bad managers, stupid customers, El Nino, anti-technology conspiracies, and anything else that might lessen the impact on their over-inflated egos.
Give these people a break. You may need one yourself one day.
I'm in the 10th year of my software development career. I've done large-scale custom middleware for most of that, and web architecture and development for the last two. Last spring I was laid off from my contracting position with a major employer, one of its first round of cuts. I was at least given two weeks of notice. I spent that two weeks calling people I knew, hitting all the local employment sites on the web, and stopping by to see what the big firms around had to offer. This was the start of the big down turn.
I was lucky at that time to move into another contract, and even fortunate enough to keep my $100k pay rate. This contract though was not in my core skill set, and I was not doing a good job at it. I used my networking skills to learn of another project at the firm that was having trouble and that needed my skills. I consulted on their floundering project a bit while I floundered on mine, and eventually got myself transferred. Now nearly a year later we're fielding a groundbreaking project that's going to have a big impact on a national pharmaceutical distribution firm.
Alas, that contract is done, and I'm being pushed into the market again, at still a worse time. I've seen this coming though, and I've spent the time to know the market. I know what people are making. I know that there are over 100 other contractors in my field applying for every job that I see. I know they're getting $15-20/hr less today than last year on bill rates. I know some of them have been out there for months.
That's why I've done the same calling, the same web searching, the same drive-by interviewing. I've done the planning for when I'm done here in three weeks and am a month from selling off the car and the house to downsize my own liabilities. I've spent the last couple of months making giant payments on other things to lower monthly outlay. I've started my wife looking for a job and daycare for the two-year-old boy.
And today, I've heard from old colleagues, I should hear that I'm being offered a position that is at once a career step up and a salary step down. From being a highly paid contractor I'm going back to corporate life as a senior business analyst, the guy who whips sales people back to reality and IT folks into a frenzy to keep sales people selling. It's what I want to do, but it's not going to pay me as well. And I'm goign to be working in a couple weeks, which is a good thing.
I've gotten that position by managing my career in the local IT environment. I keep in touch with old colleagues and managers. I read in the papers and keep up on the firms. I know their challenges and their objectives before I go in for the interview. I find out who the managers are and I learn who they've worked with, who they've promoted, and who they've canned. I know whose coat tails they're riding. I find out what technology the firm is using, and what technology battles are going on. If you can't find out which side of those your prospective manager is on, you've gotta find a comfortable spot on the fence and find out which way to lean when you can.
The bottom line is that Skills Are Not Enough! At least 75 of the 100 people applying for the job have the skills. Fifty are probably experts. To land the job you've got to offer more. You've got to show insight and planning. Today you've got to be an industry expert, not just a technology expert. You've got to show them that you're going to keep them from making the same mistakes that you made at your last job. Most of all, I think, you MUST make them believe that you're taking the job not because you're about to lose your car and your home, but because you want to be a part of that firm. You need to be part of the firm because that's what's going to make your career grow. And if that's the case, then you're fortunate. If you're up on the local scene you're more likely to find that.
- Sig this!
O.k. this might seem reduntant, BUT you have to look hard for tech job's but it is not hopeless. The market in America might be tough, but has anyone thought about overseas? Do you to this day European, North African, and Middle east countries are looking for tech-people? Most of the times you don't even have to speak their language. Yeah most people might say they don't wanna leave, or it's to difficult. SO what? If you want it bad enough you'll do it.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
because employers know that they are at a disadvantage.
But even if they are the best in the world, America and whatever jobs or work it has to offer, those jobs should go to American citizens, not to noncitizens...
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Periodic bouts of unemployment are a feature of the modern lean and mean, just in time economy. It's inefficient, wasteful and demoralizing but it's not likely to change anytime soon either.
The trick is to prepare for it while you're working.
Turn the inevitable periods of unemployment into growth opportunities. Learn new skills or expand old ones. See if you can find a worthwhile volunteer job in your skill set. Read widely. Remember that having and keeping a job confers no moral superiority so your feeling of self-worth must come from somwhere else.
We're doing just fine. Heck, my program is HIRING new people. Why? Because most or maybe even all the major programmer employers do Defense Contractor work. I guess I'll stop there so I don't say something I shouldn't. :)
I live in upper Bergen county. I have been working for a fortune 500 company for almost two years. I started as a co-op. When it came time for me to graduate, before I actually graduated in May, the company put a hiring freeze on. I figured "oh, what the heck, it can't last that long". Boy was I _wrong_. I worked over the summer, and then took up a few graduate courses, just so they could keep me on. Now it is the beginning of the school year, the hiring freeze is still on, and I have no idea when they will cut the co-op budget. There was only three positions opened up by upper management this quarter. The uppers are really so disconnected from what is going on here, it is not even funny. They (the uppers) are all down in Atlanta, Georgia, and have not seen, or heard about what is going on here in NJ. We are so short staffed, that one of the projects I was working on actually had a production error that had to be re-staged because it was not caught in the QA faze. Now we are running into the problem that there are not enough developers to keep the projects that have not been cut on schedule. Because these guys don't have enough resources, the QA dept is just about doing nothing. The business requirements group is writing requirements for clients that could not possibly implement that functionality with the current amount of people. This is all for "cost-cutting" even though we still grew 5.6% percent this year, including Sept. 11th. Ridiculous.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
I'm surprised noone else noticed this....
From the women working at Bath & Body Works
"At first, I was like, 'Why am I here?'"
Uhh....maybe you should work on your communication skills while you're shelving lotions. Using "like" as a verb doesn't impress the HR types.
JoAnn
I can but agree. Just out of interest though, what skills would you be looking to aquire for your company right now?
I think that only the fluff jobs are in short demand.
People who are _actually_ useful (such as programmers and other true techies as you mention) can still find a job these days. Maybe they won't be at a place that lets them come in at noon and play foosball in their slippers, but they will still be able to find a job.
Just out of interest though, what skills would you be looking to aquire for your company right now?
We've just recruited a very experienced business development manager. Other than that, we're not recruiting, but we're not laying off either.
Well, maybe there is, but often enough those people are usually overpaid and underworked. They are basically 'fluffers' that produce nothing real. Their only purpose is as buffers between the very 'socially proper' people that run the show (read: rich and snobby CEO's and the like) and the geeky techies that aren't as clued into the proper way to go about being a jerk. Geeks are themselves and are misunderstood for it.
It's a pity the actual programmers aren't recognized as much as they deserve. All the stupid fluff positions exist only because business types don't relate well to techies.
The music has officially stopped; hope you're happy with the company you sat down with (Assuming you were lucky enough to find a seat.) Expect to be with them for a while. Things were just starting to look up when Enron drew our attention to the fact that some companies out there are a big scam. I suspect investigation will uncover about a dozen more fairly large companies doing the same thing, which will leave investors with the heebie jeebies for another year at the very minimum.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Read this article about the sort of folks more likely to be laid off. Here's its headline:
And so it goes.
the first thing you have to do is pay the rent,
feed your kids.
EVERYTHING comes after.
studying philosophy should come at a time when
survival is easy.
Working for necessity's mother.
"...the brief period of crazyness when mediocre people could get good jobs is over!"
Yeah, like when my dad was a warehouse laborer making $15.00 an hour in the 70's. It's a good thing that this 'middle class' madness is coming to an end.
enuuuuuuuuuuugh Bluuuuuuuuuuuuueueeeeeeeaaaaagh *and other asorted stomach emptying sounds* :D
After reading the article, the trend seems to be that the people being laid off are at the non-technical end of the industry. Quality Assurance People, Marketing Manager's, News Writers. All of the jobs mentioned in the article are typical white collar jobs, that exist in all areas of employment, not just the "dot.com" and tech areas.
The moral? If you are truly a techincal person, it seems that you are not being laid off, at least that is what I get from the article. If you stay on top of things, and keep your skills sharp, you should be able to ride out this down-turn without too much damage.
Things will improve but it's going to take a lot longer than we are all hoping it will. It will most likely mean career advancement will be much slower than in recent years. It's depressing when you're experienced in a well paying field and good at what you do and then end up working in the proverbial "McJob" where there seems to be no end of the downturn in sight. Lets just hope that we don't have to wait too much longer. I'm lucky to still be working in my field and I just hope things turn around soon.
From the article: She is versed in programming, account management, and customer
You may be horrified to hear this, but not all programming is computer programming. In this case it probably means organizing marketing programs.
bp
Ottawa and Toronto aren't too bad, despite media claims of a tech slump. Back in Oct, I started at a new company - during the interviews they actually offered me $10k more than what I was asking.
Now, I'm finding a message a day from local and remote headhunters, looking for Linux software developers to work in Ottawa and the Toronto area. Doesn't seem so bad here.
Thats about the only good result of the slump :-(
Sounds like a good move.
BTW I wasn't after a job or anything :)
Todays NY Times (free registration required) reports that teacher applications are up 45% this year. Many districts have a fast-track program of teaching after a couple intro courses, although you have to takes about a years worth of courses for certification eventually. In the L.A. area where I have some teacher friends, pay starts about $3000 a month and hits $6000 after a dozen years. (This is for a nine-month year where you moonlight or vacation in the summer.) Same thing happened during the 91-94 recession.
In KC they suck.
Lots of laid-off Sprint workers who still haven't found jobs since the big lay-offs in October.
I know lots of good techies who have been looking since then with not even a nibble.
Tech jobs use to cover two or two and a half pages in the Sunday paper, there were three columns this weekend.
I've heard that one can expect at least 100 resumes submissions for any tech job you advertise.
Hey, techies losing their jobs, that's rough. But it's not as bad as my situation - I got laid off at the local grocery store so that they could hire a techie to do bagging!
Joking aside, the economy is fairly stagnant in general. My father's (civil) engineering company has had a difficult time finding work, because nobody wants to build anything in the slump (not like it's easy to normally find work out here - indept farmers don't exactly have a lively income).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
hacker: knows assembly language.
professional software engineer: knows UML.
Who are you going to hire to impelement your project?
When I see a story titled "The World of the Laid Off Techie" I expect to hear about people laid off from actual technical jobs. Instead there's the Aggie "throwing mail with an MBA" (it doesn't say what his former job was, but I doubt it used his mechanical engineering degree), a former marketing manager who might know a little programming, etc. I'm sure there are many actual techies laid off, and their stories might be worse than these ex-suits described in the story, but one thing is very clear: the reporter doesn't even know what a techie is.
That guy needs a re-write of his resume and to work some headhunters.
Why?
I just moved here (NJ) from Illinois in Nov of last year. Within a month I had secured well paying employment with a Not-For-Profit in downtown Manhattan as their IT/IS Manager. Hell, I don't even have any current certs...
All I did was apply to every job opening on a dozen websites and in the papers every day, with a professionally written cover letter and resume (which I wrote thank you very much). I have a great experience base (very broad and spanning 10+ years) but no formal ed (I am a PoliSci grad) and current Certs (My A+ and MCPs have run out)... I actually had to turn down interviews and job offers (two of those)!
While there is a slump in the area, companies are not shy about hiring... they are just conservative on expanding or spending big budget dollars on upgrading existing systems that otherwise function. I personally don't know of any one in the area that has that hard of a time... when I watch TV, especially right after we moved into the area, there were lots of blurbs and reports on displaced workers due to 9/11 and the following stock "crash"... but if you looked at the people and listened to their stories, they didn't look like the kind of people that would work in top level, dress in a suit and tie, make good money but have a lot of responsiblity IT jobs... even if they claimed to the contrary. Hell, I just checked Dice.com and there must be like 2000 jobs in the NJ/Manhattan area alone that are currently listed open, and that is just in IT/IS management, tech support, and web developement.
Cry me a river...
During the DOT CON days I watched as people came in and out of my employer as if there was a revolving door. They kept telling me that I was dumb for staying put. I was starting to wonder if they were right. I even interviewed a few other places but nothing panned out. I started working here in the summer of '96.
..."We are looking for Superman type who know everything about every technology under the sun and don't want anyone who is money motivated.." - no kidding, I saw one on DICE that looked almost like that! I am lucky to be needed where I am but if I didn't have this job I might be in the same spot. Makes one think about what company one joins. Its more than the bottom line paycheck. My company (a rare doing pretty ok tech company) pays 100% of my health insurance, I still have stock options in case the company stock ever goes up again, 3 weeks of vacation (nothing for you Europeans, I know..), they let us use our cell phones for personal use, the comfort factor that comes from 5+ years in a joint, they still buy us things like company logo clothes even in these tough times, and my pay isn't too bad. I always thought I was worth 15-20k more, but in these times I can't really demand anything more. We also have no dresscode, so I can wear my facial hair and ponytail with pride. I just keep learning more and more *NIX and hopefully some Oracle soon.
Anyhoo, most of those people are now unemployed. I'm glad that I am not b/c I have a wife and baby to support. My wife is now looking for a job so that we can hopefully afford to get a house soon. I live in northern New Jersey and I know of many people who are out of work. Add to that the fact that the cost if living here is WAY TOO HIGH and you have a recipe for financial disaster for those out of work. My brother in law's cousin, who know ALOT about all kinds of intenet and networking stuff, hands on with routers and such, has been unemployed for over a year now. This guy can't find a job. He says that they all tell him that he is "overqualified". Love that one, huh? Now he is joining some union and going into some trade that escapes me at the moment.
Not being the tradesman type, this is unsettling. Browsing DICE.COM and others all I see are ads for so called jobs by headhunters who want nothing short of Superman (TM) for every job.
Bottom line is that in New Jersey times are tough for alot of techies and my sympathy goes out to them. I hope the overall economy picks up soon. It is hard to imagine that there can be a shortfall in IT, since every company needs some for of IT just to run.
Thank you VERY MUCH George W.... for plundering our national economy.
Here, here, I agree!
I took a slightly different (and slightly more profitable, in the short run at least) tack. I stuck with a dull internal IT network management job. We're about as far as you can get from high-tech, dot-com, but I've managed to keep my hands involved on internet tech and UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD) in addition to the typical Windows stuff, whiny end users, and so on.
I *did* have a state University job before I came here, and I kind of regret not getting a full lifecycle on that gravy train. 25 year retirement w/full bennies sounds awesome. But when I had that job, I felt kind of trapped -- the money absolutely *sucked* relative to my living expenses. And too many people I worked with said "private industry while they'll still take you", since they felt that too long in a state job meant weak private industry hiring prospects. Glad I made the switch -- a slight reduction in security for a definite increase in earnings..
I always felt a touch jealous of the dot-com people, the money they were making and the whole dot-com lifestyle. Now that these people are delivering my interoffice mail or whatever, I don't feel so bad anymore.
Things here in the southeastern US are still moving along quite nicely. The industry seems to have taken a hit, but appears to be on the rebound. My former DotCom is still plugging along (and yes in the black), and even handed out bonuses. The rash of recruiters that used to call is over, but I still get hits on my doc from time to time. Programming and DBA are still the hot ones, but there is plenty of work out there for someone who is willing to put forth the effort.
My 2...
You and your friends in the democratic party who didn't regulate the markets and keep an eye on the bullish bs that we are now suffering fall out from. You and your friends with liberal leanings who ignored the Al Queda threat of terristic attacks on our country and have time and again gutted our SigNit and HumInt assets in the NSA and CIA in favor of giving it to crack addicted innercity trash in the form of welfare and other BS subsidies to foriegn nations.
Get a life moron.
That doesn't mean other people aren't qualified or smart, but when jobs are tight, people with lots of experience and credentials get the jobs. Think of it this way: during the dot-com bubble, companies desparately retrained and attracted workers from anywhere they could, but these are likely the first ones to go again.
I used to feel pretty secure with my network of co-workers who were still connected to their former employers -- a who's who of the world's tech giants. A few weeks before the company laid off a large percentage of its employees, it announced a new policy: anyone supplying a reference for a former employee would be subject to termination (and possibly legal action). They had the power to do this because all but the execs were "at-will" employees.
When the layoffs came, I was led into an office where an exec reminded me of the company's new policy. He offered to "bend the rules" for me for $5,000. "We understand how hard the job market is now, we'd like to help you because you've done such good work for us." Suddenly I realized why the strange policy had been implemented. They were robbing us of a fundamental entitlement so they could sell it back to us when our backs were against the wall. (I'm not saying I was entitled to a reference from the company, but my co-workers and I were entitled to provide references for each other.)
I wonder how many other companies are doing this. How many people paid the price, and how many people are out of work because they didn't pay that price.
There have been booms and busts before, but there is something different about this bust. There used to be a certain understanding between employers and employees in their treatment of each other. As the New York Times put it, "the old understanding is dead."
Ahh, but there is a big reward. For that 50k/year he probably works little overtime, which means time with family (if so inclined) or other hobbies. I'm in a similear situation, I turned down a .com job (acually it wasn't offered, but I had decided to turn it down shortly into the interview) a few years back because I want a life. At 25 I would rather waterski behind a boat that can just barely pull me, then to own a nice boat that I don't have the time or energy to use. I'm only getting older, already my body complains about things that 5 years ago were no problem. I'm not every 30! Everyone I know who is old enough to know tells me that things really start going downhill much latter, and I have at least 10 good years left, and maybe 30. I'm also appear to be about average as as far as how far down I am already.
Now you can take your choice, high risk, big bucks, no life when you can enjoy it; or low risk, still excellent bucks (average pay is around $30k/year if I remember right, and that is US, add in the rest of the world and it goes down), and time to enjoy life.
And don't forget that part of risk is not making it. A lot of .com people took the high risk jobs, and didn't make the big bucks, now they are sitting on a pile of dept that assumed they would make the big bucks. Not a good situation to be in.
Take your pick. Me, I'd rather have my life with low risk, and a rewaed I'm like to get, than the life of others who took the risk, but didn't get the reward.
Every old Tandy CoCo user ought to recognize his name, at least the ones that ran OS-9. I'd get my employer to hire him but we're poor bastards.
Well, okay, OS-9 runs on a lot more than the old 6809 CoCo's, but that's what I ran it on. Pretty sweet to have a multiuser, realtime OS on a "toy" computer you picked up at Radio Shack.
I explicitly said "systems" not "computers". The world (legislation, environment, external systems) changes. Systems have to change to incorporate that. This will happen to companies. I've seen it in the past where a company has deliberately moved a crucial system back to "maintenance" mode and then a change in the law means a major revision which the skills are no longer there to deal with. Ex workers beeing dragged back for $300 an hour was one consequence.
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
Get your teaching certification and teach mathematics or programming in public schools. You won't make a lot, but you'll mean a lot to the kids. My public school's computer 'expert' was my English teacher who happened to know how to turn on a powermac and print Word documents. I would have loved to have someone in the school who could actually teach me something. And for the linux zealot in you, you can influence a bunch of impressionable kids and maybe the administration as well.
Maybe not such a good idea, i can see it now:
"I pledge allegience to the kernel flags. . .
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I made the mistake of graduating mid-year, after the fall semester, a half-year early. There's far fewer companies hiring new grads, and many that used to do on-campus interviews have withdrawn.
Companies are much more selective about who they take on board, and don't expect any starting bonuses or exorbitantly high salaries. Job offers are take-it-or-leave-it, because there's another fresh grad that would love to have your job. Greater Boston used to have a slew of high-tech companies, all recruiting heavily, along with a handful of tech colleges to support them, but now the bottom has fallen out of the market. My advice is to get your foot in the door SOMEWHERE and look to move when the economy booms again with a few more years experience under your belt.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
I would have to disagree with you on that one, and have to say your comment was fairly pompous.
Having just graduated with a CS degree last May, I found it *incredibly* tough to get my first "real" job. Sure, I had internships and such during college, but when it came down to "proving" that I had 3+ years experience (which is what all too many tech jobs require off the bat), people weren't buying that working 20 hours a week part time programming during the schoolyear combined with fulltime jobs during the summers equaled 3 years. Coding in C or C++ for the majority of your school CS projects over the course of 4 academic years doesn't quite "qualify" as 3 or 4 years of experience, either.
Campus recruitment last year was way down, too. Hell, even some of the people who were offered jobs at large companies, like my best friend, had their start dates pushed back anywhere from a few months to a whole *year*.
I went to a strong academic institution, one of the top engineering schools in the country, graduated with a 3.43 and a BS in Computer Science, had a knack for coding, and was enthusiastic about starting a new life. Took me several months to land the job I'm at now, where I'm doing less-than-ideal web development stuff, getting paid significantly less than I or my family expected.
I'm happy to finally be working, but for those of us fresh out of college with significant college loan debt (I'm talking, $50k+, its pretty overwhelming).. the whole economic downturn is quite depressing.
Much as I sympathise with people who have lost their jobs and are trying hard, I couldnt believe the snobish attitude of these people who've never done any other kind of job, got paid a fortune for it, and then are embarrassed at the notion that they have to stoop to doing jobs that millions of others have to do for a living. Its such a shame that the jobs they can find are so beneath them. (Sarcasm intended)
I mean, having to deal with dirty customers in a store...how awful for them.
In addition I dont think MBA count for much if you've no experience or real skills. I failed my higher education (which wasn't even a degree), through a mix of lack of interest and the fact my mum died that year. I was lucky to land a job with a good company, even if I started out earning very little.
I've worked hard at my job and within four years I have more than trebled my wage and have a nice car to boot. I still have no degree, but I have plenty of experience, and that is all other potential employers ive talked to were ever interested in. I have never been asked about my higher education, but I have been offered other jobs.
But he fears his luck is running out. Last month he moved from a carriage house in Malibu, Calif., to a one-bedroom apartment in nearby Venice. His larger fear is that the best job of his life--writing for The Spot--is behind him, and his career will be a string of boring jobs. As a fallback plan, he's taking a real-estate course later this month.
... I got laid off when my software company went belly up (actually sold a product, not a .com, just ran out of money). This was not a wasteful, Aeron chair place, but it was a fabulous environment to work in. Really smart people and the technical guys were seperated from the marketing/sales by half a continent. Was definitely fun and the first place I've ever worked at where there were a sizeable number of people I thought were significantly smarter than me. Freedom was unparalleled, the work interesting and stimulating.
I found a job in 3 weeks working for a place doing government contracting. It pays the bills and I was happy to get it after 3 weeks of no return phone calls, let alone interviews (I have 4 years programming/web/database experience). Salary a slight bump down ($3K), but I took it.
But I really feel like it was so much fun. I miss it. I don't regret it. I don't even regret our CEO not selling out (I could've pocket $20-$40K in my paltry stock options if they took the deal after I'd been there around six months. But It would have cost me another year working at the funnest place ever). Sigh....
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
First off, I agree with most posters that this article doesn't really describe techies, but those who probably are unemployable in thier fields. How many of us worked someplace where more than half the people there were not qualified to do thier job let alone get the saleries they were getting? From what I have been able to see so far, this "recession" is a massive house cleaning. Unfortunately, some very talented, hard-working folks also got the shaft.
The article also states that some of us are "settling for contract work without benefits." Uh, I've actually been doing FAR better contracting this year than I had been last year making over $80k. And suprisingly, getting work is far less complicated than you might think.
Here are some tips that have helped me out:
Thats just my two cents. After my former employer stole my 401k money and failed to pay us our last 2 pay check, things have improved greatly for me. This advice has gotten me off unemployment and I'm now on the road to recovery :)
Maybe I would disagree on the order of priorities (first feed the kids, then pay the rent), but, overall, this is a most sensible post.
Philosophy? When there's barely enough money to keep you alive?
Come on!
Many workers got the ax when mass layoffs peaked in the summer and fall of 2001, and they coasted on several months of severance and unemployment insurance, which generally lasts six months. With the tech job market still in the doldrums, they're now considering new gigs as waitresses, bartenders, forklift drivers or baby sitters--anything to pay the rent.
They make it seem that doing anything other than tech work is the pits. I for one, work as a technican, Network, during the day, and Waiter at night. I don't appreciate having my choice of jobs classifieds as 'anything to pay the rent'. There are many hard working americans who are proud of their jobs, babysitting, bartending, operating a forklift, and without them, where would we be. Instead of whining and moaning, get off your @$$, and do something about it. Don't complain about your job, while you can say that you have one.
Errrrr.
This sounds like media FUD and that we're not getting the whole story on this guy. Unfortunately, the media is great at finding the oddball and making him the "norm". I would grant you that if this was geologists getting laid off in an oil crunch (i.e., those who are stuck working for one industry) that would be different.
I'm not saying some fields are having a hard time, but I find it VERY odd that someone with an engineering degree from Texas A&M AND an MBA is having a hard time landing a job other than sorting mail. I would love to know the answers to the following:
Have you look for work in other states? I have a stepson going to Texas A&M this school is about #5 or 7 in the nation for engineering. They also have a strong networking foundation as well as a lot of alumni in business locally. I can't believe he couldn't come back to Texas and find an engineering job. You can't just look in your town or even state. Sometimes you have to move to where the jobs are.
How old are you? If you're under 30 you may want to drop the MBA mention unless you're looking for a job in that field. Advanced titles can be a catch 22, i.e., employers think you're overqualified for lower positions, but aren't willing to hire you for the upper level positions because you don't have enough years of experience.
I would add: If you were some dot-commer management previously making a salary way above your experience/job duties from the regional average, I would list my salary as more reasonable if asked. Employers who look and see some 29 year old making well over the norm are going to shitcan the application because they are going to assume that's the range you're looking for.
Yes, these may seem like fudging or leaving out something on the application. However done creatively, this is NOT the same as declaring a degree you don't have.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
The article made me cringe, because it reflects my situation and the situation of some of my friends here in Montreal.
After twenty-odd years of a moribund economy, primarily due to the provincial government's questionable separatist agenda, things started picking up towards the beginning of the dot-com era.
Now, things are still pretty good ostensibly, but from what I've seen from being out of a job since May, things are looking quite bad under the surface.
We're still seeing a boom in construction, but it's mainly due to the completion of condo projects planned in the late-90s. The glut of condo construction is creating problems for an weakening economy; many were conversions and virtually no rental construction took place. This decreased the amount of rental space available and drove up rent. We're seeing 0.5% vacancy rates in a place that has traditionally been a renter's paradise.
In fact, things look kind of grim now. I'm not the only one amongst my acquaintances to be still looking after almost a year out of a job, and these include marketing people, managers, front-end people (you know, the JavaScript-and-HTML folks Slashdot readers seem to revile so much) as well as hardcore coders.
Part of the city's boom was due to the provincial mandate to bring in high tech jobs by encouraging companies to set up shop here, or to start up here. From government subsidies (we'll give you almost free money if we like you and you become our political friends) which brought Infogrames (of Civilization 3 fame) here to questionable projects like the Cité du Multimédia -- intended to be centres of excellence -- the high tech boom here really parallels that of the so-called New Economy": the ups and the downs.
A lot of companies that shouldn't have started up in the first place were sustained by government money. Or international companies set up huge programming shops here for the subsidies and tax breaks, and close up shop when they run out. We are well into the downside the Americans experienced several months ago.
What does that mean? Personally, it meant working at a record store, and living on savings to go back to school to finish my degree. It may mean more working at a minimum-wage job until things pick up some more. It's not that bad (well maybe it was; the record store, a country-wide chain with a great deal of fame, ended up going out of business this fall due to crappy dot-com style mismanagement), but it certainly is underemployment in the vein of the guy now working as a USPS employee.
I'm hoping things pick up this summer when I start looking for a job.
Aww! Now I get it!
My wife and children are hobbies! That's such as relief - I can't tell you!
They are all just fairly unskilled jobs that happen to be in a technical company.
Sigh. I know it's very popular here on Slashdot to denigrate any career that doesn't involve all-night coding sessions propped up only by acid rock and Mountain Dew, but just because you don't have the skills to get an MBA, write a marketing plan, generate publicity for a product, write a script, or plan and maange a timeline for a new product release doesn't mean that the folks doing those jobs are unskilled.
Yes, I am (well, was, until recent layoffs) in marketing. I chose to develop my communication skills rather than my programming skills when I went to college (despite getting a 5 on the AP Pascal exam, and having received high marks in my high school career programming in BASIC and FORTRAN.) I have worked with a lot of IT people who didn't know their ass from their elbow, so just having the job doesn't mean you are skilled.
Just like those ineffectual IT people, sure, I have worked with incompetent marketing people. But please stop assuming that just because someone isn't coding in their job that they are unskilled. I dare you to write a halfway decent press release, or brochure, or anything else that makes your market want to pay money to your company to buy the wonderful software that you just coded. It's not as easy as it looks. And the company won't be successful if either one of us isn't doing our job well.
All the fluff in the world can't create and sustain a market for a piece of crap product, and the best product in the world won't find its way to the masses without some sales and marketing efforts. Try to respect my work, as I respect yours.
Believe it or not, tech companies need non-techies to succeed. You do need designers, marketers, and managers to succeed in the web design business. It's not all just backend-coders.
A successful business requires a team approach. What made/makes the web a success is simplicity. It is the simplicity fo the web that made it a success. If it required people to know C++ or other "real programming or project management skills" then it never would have taken off.
I would think a CEO would know these things. But then again since I don't have a degree in Computer Science and have only worked in multimedia and web design/production since '94 I may be wrong.
I have absolutely no sympathy for any of the people being laid off by the "dot-com" bust. These are the same people responsible for the fake "dot-com" boom in the first place.
I have been interested in technology and computers since I was a little kid, (wrote my first first person perspective dungeon crawler in BASIC on an Atari 130XE when I was 10), and these "dot-com failures" make me sick with their whining. I remember I started university in '95 and I remember noticing a *HUGE* increase in techie wannabes entering computer science (my program), information technology (overview of computers for those people not smart enough to be accepted in CS) and related degrees.
The one thing all these "wannabes" had in common was the mantra "money money money". It's all they cared about. None of them were there for the love of the field (as I was...) and as a result, most of them were not very good at it, but knew how to exploit their slim knowledge of current buzz-words.
These were the people that fueled most of the "dot-com" hype and jumped on the first "dot-com" bandwagon that came along. The hype was fake, the demand was fake, the products were fake, their business plans were fake, their revenue was fake (burning VC cash) and none of them really knew what they were talking about.
Frankly I'm surprised that it took so long before they got fired. And I'm not in the least bit surprised that they can't find an IT job anymore, I wouldn't hire these wannabes either. In my close circle of friends I know several of them were in IT for the love of it, and a couple of them were there for the money. Not surprisingly, all those in IT for the money got fired in the "dot-com" bust and *NOT A SINGLE ONE* of my friends who really have a love of technology got fired. The demand for the excess IT workers (and I use the term loosely as most of them were probably hard pressed to edit HTML or bang out a Perl script...) was artificial, and now people are surprised that the wannabes are getting canned????
The ones who got fired thought that IT was their easy ticket to quick riches. Then they found out the hard way (after five years of fooling everyone) that high tech jobs are *NOT* easy, and that real riches cannot be had without real work or real business plans.
Nor am I surprised that these people are now whining about it.
Do us all a favour. Go back to slinging burgers and leave the IT field for those of us who actually like it.
We're tired of being grouped into the same class as the "dot-com" failures.
I used to work on the 83rd floor of a target.
On the plus side, I'm still suckin' air.
On the minus side, I haven't earned a dollar in salary since September, '01.
It not for lack of mailing out resumes, getting interviews (even second interviews,) or chopping my income requirements, moving to get my expenses down, cashing in the 401k to get rid of all my debts [actually, they were leaking close to a grand a month before that anyway so it waa cheaper to cash 'em in than hold on to 'em,]
Its just tough out there. I'm in a depression. The economy's in a recession.
Before the crash(es, two planes and an economy) I worked for somebody who believed that systems are maintained by oral tradition, never wrote down things like specs or documentation and was ignorant of the glaring flaws in the system and in her managerial abilities.
This person was a DE-motivator. The biggest kick in the 'nads you can ever get is a whiny voice intoning "But I 'TOLD' you." Yeah, like I have time to listen to every word of your endless stream of conciousness and engrave it in my memory.
I'm poor, going on broke but I'm still better off than if I'd stayed there.
Now I sleep nights (mostly,) and I've stopped worrying about planes and falling buiuldings but I still get nightmares about "But I TOLD you..."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Now Delaware is about to be Slashdotted!
;-)
What this country should be doing is bring talented people to this country to stay!
If we truly need the manpower & the skills we should be welcoming these folks into our country as permanent residents & eventual citizens. Not only does this retain their talent for the long term BUT it eliminates employers from bringing H1B visa holders here as virtual indentured servants. A permanent resident is free to change jobs, will enter the job mnarket at a competitive wage and not depress the labor market for their skill set.
It's what has always worked for the US before. It's one of the founding principles of our country. Why did we abandon it for H1B?
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
This area used to be a magnet for techies, and not just .com wanna-bes. VB knowledge? Yeah, fine, but we'd prefer people who know protocols, RTOSs, embedded systems, and how to successfully slap together high-availability servers and telecom gear, thank you very much.
But things have changed. It's not uncommon around here to see a Sam's Club manager who used to be a firmware engineer at one of the larger employers in Research Triangle Park. Some companies are even relocating, which is really weird, considering how cheap it is to live here (compared to SF, Boston, or even Atlanta). I know engineers, even ones without the standard obligations (family, kids, etc. etc.) who would rather wait tables than leave. Yes, this area really is that nice.
I'll be out on the street myself sometime this year, in all likelihood, so I'm looking around -- and it's pretty sad right now. I'm just hoping things pick up around here by the summer.
Note to interested employers: Digustingly skilled work force, cheaper to live here than most other places, three great universities nearby. Open a damn office here already!
".sig,
The Programmers Guild is a recently established organization aimed at American programmers working together to safeguard their profession, their craft and their rights.
On their website, they state the following reasons for why they started the organization:
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Yet again, the Slashdotter postings are not what one would expect from IT vets. Like me. No, you seem to have no idea what rights you have as a worker in the public sector. Nor are you aware of the realities of working period, let alone this industry. Instead, there is post after post attacking the guy who lost his job.
You people are really something.
Having worked in this industry for over 6 years. There is no job protection. There are no solid companies. There are no standards in the entire industry for anything let alone employment standards. There is no regulation at all morons. Managers regularly fire staff for fun. Whole companies have been robbed blind by the people who created it (Enron, being the most recent example, wasn't the only one and not the last).
The funniest thing is hearing the low office *gasp* of those people watching their companies stock die one day. This is much more common in the IT industry than any other, though obviously there are parallels. You are all afloat on a sea of stocks and quarters and market. Feigning any sort of personal control only makes you look like the mark that IT manager took you for.
I'm at work as I type this. I make 23k/year doing small time network stuff(UNIX and Windows), PC repair, and whatever else Mista Bossman wants me to do. 23k/year is enough to pay my rent and bills, as I don't live in a posh neighborhood or have such things as cable tv(I do however have DSL. You have to prioritize, dammit). The question that come up in my mind from time to time is, if this where 2 years ago, would I be making this little? Probably not, no. I'd probably be making 40k, like they where paying the three people they hired to take over half of my job when the company I was laid off from last year split in half. It ammuses me that the half I got seperated from paid out 120K/year to cover half of my duties. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.
I am lucky. I have employment, and am able to support myself. I am not rich beyond my wildest dreams, but that was never really my goal anyway. My goal is to go back to school, finish my CS degree, and attempt to find work as a code monkey. I am well on my way to that goal, and at least now I have something I can doctor up on a resume.
Tonight, I will go home, take off this tie, and relax in front of the warm glow of my very own 17" CRT and be secure in the fact that, while I'm not some high-paid tech wiz kid with a salary that rivals that of an MLB player, I'm not doin' too freakin' bad either. Unlike the tools who where getting paid an outrageous sum at my old company. Last I heard, they where still seeking Employment. One of which has found employment in the form of Asst. Manager at an Arby's. Make of this what you will.
I was considering for a while to go on an H1B into the US, but then decided to go to Canada instead.
:|
The difference? Not much, besides that they pay us here with funny money that is not worth much outside of Canda
But besides that: income etc. is on the same level as my canadian collegues (and it would have been the same if I would have gone to the states).
In the end it is a "waste" of money for the company who hires you as they paid my lawyer and the immigration stuff, which means: They threw around 10K out of the window before I sat down at my desk the first time.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Yeah, now we just need to get rid of mediocre CEOs
who think that a full time software engineer should also be able to do the full time jobs of a sysadmin and web designer.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
It's far, far worse than you think. I currently write device drivers and systems level code for a living. Right now, I'm having to deal with an employer that's struggling to make payroll (Been dealing with that for 8 months now) and trying to find a job in this stupid market. Few prospects in the Dallas area- and the ones I've sent off resumes to have returned dead silence.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I discovered the wonderful world of full-time employment. So instead of contracting and having no rights and not knowing if I'm going to get paid or not, I come into work at a set hour and get a nice credit in the bank account each month. There seems to be lots of work needing to be done (although perhaps not much money to pay for it).
Your first job was in 2000, hahaha, ok,
you speak from a huge, vast, immense,
base of personal experince .
Dood, ur a kid, glad you got a job, hope
you keep ur job .
You were at Adyava for only 4 months,
why is that ???
Niiiiccceee...
Ex-MislTEch
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
That's about all I remember from the mid-80's. Wait David Lee Roth/Van Halen. lol... Oh yeah short shorts in the NBA (Larry Bird / Magic Johnson)!
I mean they *ARE* trying to cut costs, and a guy with an MBA probably expects to get paid more than an equivalent programmer without the Paper...
Taking a job is a lot like investing.
The more risk exposure the greater the potential reward.
These people rolled the dice and lost. Boo hoo.
I stayed in the Midwest after graduating from the U of I,
with a rather unglamours tech job (which I still enjoy by the way).
Less pay than on the coasts, but a much lower cost of living area.
I confess that just before the dot com bust I considered moving off
to the west coast to play with the big boys, but now it seems I made the
far smarter move by staying put.
Speaking of moving, there other areas of the country with tech jobs -- still unfilled,
because the coasts ate up all the good talent. Now maybe talent will be more
evenly distributed across the country. `Course you'll have to give up that
I-Made-It techie life style in the valley.
Letter To Iran
Given the recent Enron fiasco on top of the general Bad Economy Thing (BETtm), things in Houston are pretty bad. Compaq, one of the areas larger tech employers has done significant layoffs, too.
;)
I am still employed, thankfully, but my company has also done layoffs, which means more work--fewer people.
I moved down to Houston a year ago, and damnit, I want the economy rebounded already so I can get the hell out of here!
You know, I just had to sit down marvelling at your stunning intellect. Really, that argument just blew me away! How could I hva been this wrong? Truly a man for the future this guy! :)
a bad product with good marketing will have a much better chance of its company surviving that a company with a good product but lousy marketing. As a techie who's the son of a marketing guru, I can assure you this is simply untrue. If it were true, I'd be buying high schooler-coded projects and $10 million dollar marketing teams. One of the first tenets of marketing is that nothing kills a bad product faster than good marketing. Similarly, nothing bolsters a good product faster than good marketing. These two entities, marketing and development, are codependent. If there's a scaleback, intelligent convention dictates that both be scaled back equally (that's how our company handled its most recent round of layoffs).
Though there are a lot of people as quoted in the article ....
.. and the hope..
It is bad to see the state of mind of the author who wishes to only propagate negetive thoughts.. I would have been better if the author took time to actually find a person (just 1 single person) who has succeded in this tough time... It will defitinely give many people confidence
Believe it or not, tech companies need non-techies to succeed.
No! You don't say! Thank God for that. I'm doing something right! I've got business managers, graphic designers, a journalist and marketing specialists on my team, and only a couple of techies.
What made/makes the web a success is simplicity. It is the simplicity fo the web that made it a success. If it required people to know C++ or other "real programming or project management skills" then it never would have taken off.
Yes. Google is wonderfully simple, for instance. But that doesn't mean that it is simple to create a system like Google. Buying a book on Amazon with one-click is really simple, but that doesn't mean that it was simple to create Amazon's web site. I could go on...
We use graphic designers on all our projects, believe me. We specify the requirements of the interface, the designers do drafts, the clients approve them, and then the techies make the system look like the designs. But the graphic design work is often only about 10% of the overall project, both in cost and importance.
Look at pretty much any major, successful web site. They are often driven by complex content management systems, linked into ERM and CRM systems, and often legacy systems.
The fact of the matter is that many people in the "web design" industry up until now have been neither professional graphic designers nor professional programmers. Knowing 'now to make a web page' is not difficult. Being an excellent graphic designer or programmer is difficult. That's why I do not feel sorry for all these people who are finding it difficult to find work now. It's because they were getting well paid for a relatively simple job.
I would think a CEO would know these things. But then again since I don't have a degree in Computer Science and have only worked in multimedia and web design/production since '94 I may be wrong.
You are a web design/production specialist? Can you make me a site like Slashdot then? Can you create a site on top of a clients in-house created CRM system? Can you create a site with a single point of data entry, but output in HTML, WAP, and WebTV format using XML and XSL? I would have thought a professional web designer with so many years experience would know these things... Or are you really just a mediocre graphic designer that knows HTML and a bit of Javascript?
I'm guessing you're a troll, but I'll reply anyway out of the need to vent. It's certainly not just the fluff jobs that have gone (at least not in the uk), in fact the fuzzier folk seem to find it easier to get another job.
For myself I'm fairly hardcore with 15 yrs+ coding and systems experience, algorithm development and even good old fashioned mathematics, mainly in research. My qualifications/positions are all top notch international names. Fluffy I ain't, unemployed I is (damn I hate being a born loser!).
There is no point in half assing life. Either bust ass or get out. This is weak. I work 80 hours a week and have plenty of time for a life. I just dont dick around with my spare time (ie watch TV). $50 says this dipshit goes home at night and has the "shows" he watches circled in his TV Guide. I have cable for 1 reason, sports. If I want to watch a TV show I'll go download it sans commercials. (alt.bin....) Family Guy is great. I mean really how much fucking time do you estimate you waste watching commercials? Every Family Guy episode I download is 21:50!!! so that leaves 8:10 for commercials every fucking 30 minutes!!! Unbelieveable
Am I the only one that laughs when programming and html are used in the same sentence?
I was coding like a madman last night in Frontpage, man I was an animal. I used tired by 5 am that I couldn't tell from a
. It was all worth it when I brought that page up and all the hyperlinks worked and background color was the exact green I wanted.
I'm a `techie' -- software engineer -- who's been actively looking for another job for over two months now. Of all the resumes I have sent out for positions that I qualify for, I have received only one *real* response: a rejection notice. I've had less than a dozen automated responses saying their computers have received my resume. Many dozens of others never responded in any way whatsoever.
This is in sharp contrast with my situation 4 years ago, when I had just landed a great programming job, and I still had recruiters calling me at work every week practically begging me to come work for this or that other company.
Yet it seems almost exactly like the boat I was in ten years ago, fresh out of college with a BS degree in CS, and despite all my job hunting I couldn't find anything besides measly clerical temp jobs. I eventually settled for working at a fast food place. (Sigh)--maybe I should go renew my food handler's permit...
Yeah, now we just need to get rid of mediocre CEOs who think that a full time software engineer should also be able to do the full time jobs of a sysadmin and web designer.
Did I say that? No, I didn't.
The point of my post was that there have been a lot of people who wouldn't cut it as professional graphic designers or programmers who have managed to make a good living during the dot-com boom as "web designers", when in reality all they really know is HTML and understand a bit of Javascript. There are a lot of these people around, and frankly they are just mediocre people doing a realively simple task. That's one reason why they're having so many problems getting work now the dot-com boom is over.
Here in the Silicon Desert alot of jobs have dried up, but mostly they were the bubble gum and popcorn type positions. I'm a lowly technician (mostly because I don't have a sheepskin attesting to my programming prowess), and I've watched the number of available advertised positions drop from some 20 a day to scarcely 1 a day (monster.com, dice.com, azcentral.com, jobbing.com, etc). However, hard core technoworkers like C programmers, sysadmins, and the like still have jobs a plenty. Since the .com bubble burst, tech businesses had to get realistic about their expenses.
.com rainbows, I've decided to instead go into one of the few recession proof occupations around. I figure, either way I'd wind up shooting people, but this way it'll be with the blessing of the American government (note: given my computer experience, it's likely I'll get stuck behind a terminal under a mountain somewhere).
I for one am lucky enough to still be young. I've always wanted to go into the military, but have managed to allow myself to be lured away by the easy money of the job market. Having wasted 8 years chasing
I have been experiencing the brunt of the economic downturn from another side. As a worker just entering the workforce, I am finding it impossible to get an entry level IT position due to the glut of more experienced candidates willing to work for less money. Right now, I work with no fewer than four really skilled programmers and a number of CS students at Old Navy. I feel really sorry for those who have to work menial retail jobs after doing something much more challenging and intellectually stimulating.
After a contract with IBM helping with logic testing on the Game Cube and other projects I got the boot with only two weeks notice. I did carpentry and painting for a few months but now found out my wife is pregnant. The biggest problem is that there are too many over qualified applicants for the few positions that open up. If it dosn't turn around soon I'll be screwed.
If your Cisco Systems trying to sell small rack mount switches for $3,000 - $4,000 . And Juniper, Extreme, and others...come along for alot less, and start taking ur pie what do you do ??? Lay off the Engineers and programmers!! Yeah, that's it, its there fault, they demanded expensive components, and and and..... B.S. Good Sales ppl should be kept, Good programmers and Engineers should be kept . I saw crap Engineers and crap programmers kept, and All of the marketing maggots and sales maggots keep their jobs . Some "INCREDIBLE" ppl were let go becasue they had tactical options, tactical 401k, tactical salaries . Alot of this went down and is being used to de-value the labor force, and the H1-B's are just part of that . We got 30,000 Middle Eastern worker visas in this country that are expired, and the governments plans are to question them . Not deport them . The cheap labor is the key, the fact that the average H1-B can be pressured into working REALLY long hours . I can do 10 - 11 hour days, but doing the 13- 14 hours days 6 days a week like I saw some do at Cisco Systems, no not for the Suits playing their shell game that pumped and dumped and sold huge amounts of stock right before there released SEC filings . Its happened at MANY companies, it is going to continue to happen . The house and the senate prior to 9-11, even in the face of the DOT COM bust !!! VOTED... To DOUBLE, from 100,000 to 200,000 per year the number of migrant H1-B visa workers coming into the country per YEAR ....
It passed by how much ????
98-1 on the vote....
My god, when is the last time ANY vote got
98-1 in that corrupt flea ridden bag of
lawyer perpetuating scum .
Come to find out a professor at Univ. of Davis
from Calif. went and complained to them, and
called them out on the fact that the Tech
Industry lobbied them with $22 million in
cash ( and prizes, of the record ) on the
record .
12 mill to the republicans
10 mill to the Dems
So, if you want to know where your american
dream went, it was sold .
I want the ppl overseas to have jobs too, but
here is the deal, you do not like americans
in your countries workign high paying jobs,
and actively seek to end it .
Don't play the hypocite with me, and cry what
a pig I am , we voted the senate and the
house in to REPRESENT us .
They are getting piad by us, to REPRESENT us .
They are really little corporate whores ,
that will sell out at the drop of a hat . ...I need to calm down ...
peace Out...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I saw one position (on Dice?) that wanted 10+ years of Cobol and Java. Like the number of people who have used both Cobol and Java professionally during the past decade can be counted on more than the fingers on one thumb.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Yes, I'm probably over simplifying it here, but isn't that the way it should be? I mean, heck, I love doing tech work for the sake of tech work, but I don't expect to make any money from it. The real money in IT, IMHO, should be made in the pursuit of using IT as a leverage to make a business stronger and more efficient.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Ok, I'm a tech head. Hold a BS in Comp Sci from GA Tech, a Java certification, and 4+ years experience in Java and internet related technologies with lots of breadth. I was on a contract position which was supposed to last 6+ months. Well, the client changed their mind and nuked all the contractors after 3 months. That was mid-October. I've been out since then and am struggling. I know SOOOO many other programmers here in Atlanta that are out of work too. These are no "lightweights" mind you! The market just plain sucks.
After 6 years of boom time where we were able to pick and choose companies and pay, now the tables are turned. I used to get 4-5 calls from recruiters a week back in 2000. Now I can't even get them to return my calls and answer my responses to their job postings! Companies are being VERY picky about who they bring in now. If you don't have EVERY skill they list on their want list, you're thrown in the trash. For instance, I've done DB2, Informix, SQL Server, MySQL, but NOT Oracle. As a Java developer, it really doesn't matter what the database is because you talk through JDBC. When I talk to recruiters though, and they say that the client is looking for somebody who has Oracle and I say that I have everything but and it would be no problem picking it up, they say "Sorry! No can do."
Basically, it SUCK out there!
BTW, if anybody knows of a position for a 4 yr Java Developer with server side experience..... Write me! makopack@yahoo.com
Maybe I should take that requirement off my resume..
Dear Programmers,
In a world where more and more people are competant programmers, perhaps it would pay to be able to program and have some other skills. In the physics community (where the internet started) most custom programming isn't done by a programmer, but a physicist who just so happens to be able to program. Point is that just being a competant programmer was sufficient when no one could program, but now that librarians can write ColdFussion, SQL, and VB why would anyone pay a programmer who doesn't even know what a normalized database is (well, if they liked to spend a month migrating the database everytime there is a new application they might.)?
IMO, this was very forseeable. Obviously this will offend a lot of people, but I personally think today's so-called tech skills have been grossly overvalued. How many people here know of (or are) the all too typical arrogant MIS manager, that really knows nothing about nothing, but since the general public has been convinced that the computer industry is so scary and complex, these people are held to God-like status. Let's be honest: how much do you really think you learned in your 3 month MCSE program? I've looked through the books. Believe me: not much. For example, a professional engineer in the United States must complete a minimum 4 year accredited engineering program, taking math courses harder than the math students' courses and science cources harder than...(you get the idea). Next comes 5 years of working experience, then comes two gruelling separate 8 hour exams. For all that , you can call yourself an engineer. Obviously similar stories can be told in other traditional professions. Now all of a sudden you think you're a "professional" because you took those ridiculously easy Cisco exams? Please. Please don't think I'm painting everyone here with the same brush, obviously there are many talented people in the IT area.
Things are strange here in Dallas.. The telecom market is bad bad bad.. I have one network admin friend who's been out of work since July.. I have another friend who works for a _very_ large ISP and just found out that he's about to lose his job, along with everyone else at the NOC.. But the company I work for is different.. Our business is in the semiconductor market, which has been the shitcan for quite a while now.. In the past year we laid off basically the entire manufacturing team, as well as numerous admin staff.. However we've been hiring engineers (software mostly) the whole time. I think this situation has served to generate some animosity towards the engineers on the part of the staff members who work upstairs... Such is life.
They show the bad times for an MBA, not a true tech person with a Bachelors of CS. Most of their examples are just busniess degree. If they have a business degree then there are other lines of work besides the tech industry. Just more zdnet trolling...
That article was straight out of the 1970s.
Today some people job hop, but many more people sign on for a project and move on when the project (or their part of it) is finished. If you stay on as a "staff programmer," not only do you not get the tasks that help you develop your skills (they go to experts brought on board for the project), you also have a harder time getting your next job because HR departments increasingly expect specialization.
The older developers tend to be in project management or senior guru roles, something that takes much more time than any simple development task.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The Associated Press reports that "U.S. companies and other groups applied for 342,035 H-1B work visas in 2001, up 14 percent from 2000, before the economy tumbled.", "The number accepted also rose by 40 percent..." and "About half ... are for computer related jobs." The article cites research by UC Davis Professor Norman Matloff saying that "wages of computer programmers and engineers working in the U.S. on the visas
are 15 percent to 33 percent lower than those of U.S. citizens".
Mark Shevitz of VisaNow is quoted as saying, "I think it surprised everyone. All that you hear about in the media is these huge layoffs and the tech industry is just shedding workers."
Finally, the article reports "Bay Area companies Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel and Sun Microsystems were among the top users of the program in 2000, as were universities such as Harvard and Yale. The INS did not have numbers available on how many applications the companies filed last year amid layoffs.
----
BTW: It is illegal to use the H-1B program to lower wages from the rates prevailing in the absence of the program.
Here's information posted by an anti-H-!B activist at another site:
Additional information provided by an h1b activist (although I encourage people to avoid political action, there are far more effective things they can do with technology to deconstruct the edifice that did this to us because it is, after all, in existence because of technologists -- the real ones, not the Wired magazine ones):
80% of the US public opposed H1-B expansion. Part of what makes the bill increasing H1-B Visas so unusual is that it was so unpopular and was passed with very, very little debate.
Zazona is the most comprehensive site on the H1-B issue. Corrective legislation is now in a US congressional Committee. The philosophy of HR 3222 has been supported by a diverse group that includes Buchanan Supporters, Nader Supporters, and the National Urban League. HR 3222 is a compromise-it roles the level of new H1-B Visas back to 1998 levels and puts in place an unemployment adjustment mechanism.
H1-B Visa expansion was advocated by the ITAA. Organized opposition to H1-B includes:the AEA and the Programmers Guild.
You can Look at H1-B applications by company,state,city. You can write your Congressional representatives if you have a problem with the current H1-B situation. You can also write your state representatives. The only aspect of the H1-B issue that is in state jurisdiction is use of H1-B labor at state institutions. However, state representatives are influential in their parties-if your state representative writes a letter to congress it could mean a lot.
Seastead this.
I think you havea good point about a company needing good marketing - however, if a company is failing then wouldn't it make sense to adjust the marketing dept. first? After all, as you say a good or bad product can benefit from good marketing so that should be the area of first concern. If the product itself is just bad you can at least try to use the people there to fix it, though you may need to get people who know what they are doing to lead them.
As for my own experience, in any company I've been at I would have said laying off lots of the marketing and middle management types would have been a lot more healthy than laying off the technical staff. Almost all technical staff I've worked with have been very productive and done good work, which I've seen a lot of slacking or just simply inept (some actually creating MORE work than if they were not there through needing to fend off poor ideas on the tech side) marketing people in my day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm on my third job since March 2000 and in each case the company failed out from under me. I found that while I could sell the skills I had I've also had to learn totally new technologies each time to stay afloat.
I started out as trainer and MCSE and VB programmer, then changed jobs and was eventually doing Unix system administration, heavy HTML and Javascript (coding the front end for an app), and picking up Java as fast as possible to get into Java programming. When I changed jobs again I used my Unix, HTML, and Java experience to get the job and had to pick up PL/SQL and even more Java. There were/are months when I'd work all day and then come home and code all night just to learn some new technology. I'm still scraping by on a below-average salary for what I'm doing, but that's the trade off to get the experience. At least I'm working.
The job market really sucks, but you also have to be adaptable. You also have to take every opportunity to learn new things because your next job could depend on it. This isn't so much advice for the hard-core programmers and sysadmins out there because you probably do this already. I.T. is not an industry where you can learn a set of skills and then make a career out of it. What you make a career out of is learning itself.
After my last brush with unemployment I've started working on a CS degree at night and I've latched onto a minor Solaris box as an administrator, which I'm going to use for all it's worth to learn LDAP and NIS.
Whats funny is all the get rich quick IT training companies are folding up.
Whats sad is all the people who still think they can get a MCSE or CCNA and get a job, much less a job for more than $25,000.
You are a web design/production specialist? Can you make me a site like Slashdot then? Can you create a site on top of a clients in-house created CRM system? Can you create a site with a single point of data entry, but output in HTML, WAP, and WebTV format using XML and XSL? I would have thought a professional web designer with so many years experience would know these things... Or are you really just a mediocre graphic designer that knows HTML and a bit of Javascript?
Oh how cruel! But I like it!
I took a job at UPS for the same reason. I recently quit because it wasn't where I wanted to be. However, just because the jobs aren't available does not mean you can't MAKE the job. Contract consulting isn't such a bad game. And you can purchase the monthly benefits that are so coveted with typical employment. So that might mean you can't live the lifestyle you're used to, but at least the subject of the article was able to go 8 months on savings before getting desparate. At least he seems like a smart guy. At least he's not afraid to swallow his pride and get a job, even if its less than desireable.
Why he's embarrased about it, I'll never understand. Its work. Its money. I used to love telling people I was a supervisor at UPS when they witnessed some technological marvel I was working on or had produced. With the resulting shock and explaination that I should consider a career change, I ask them if they're hiring. The subject doesn't typically come up again.
Its not all bad. The blue collar industries are delighted to get a flood of competant employees during a downturn. People who are used to working 80 hour weeks make wonderful workers. They show up every day, they never complain about working too much.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Here, try actual journalism Slashdotters.
The Washington Post
The Young And the Jobless
By Carrie Johnson,
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 11, 2002
Many of them are from non-techy backgrounds, often design or Mickey Mouse degrees like Media Studies.
You're right on about the web development industry. Professional shops who've been doing it since before '99 were probably a little better prepared for the current slump, so hang in there. I have a friend who runs a 5-man web design shop, and they're now hustling to catch up on the "harder" aspects of web development, ie databases, online ordering, etc. It's a tough business right now, but they're pros and they know how to compete.
I worked for that company when I was in high school, long before the web boom, when their core business was interactive CDROMs and video production. I was grateful for the opportunity to work on "Mickey Mouse" stuff like banging out HTML, as it was just the opportunity I needed to get into Perl, C, and networking. While not every one of your hires will have the skills and experience you're looking for right off the bat, I hope you'll keep your eye out for motivated young guys who want to learn. They just might turn into the star coders you need.
Everything is ok here @ AOL Time Warner. Sad post
for inventing the Internet and giving this moron a voice.
I got a month's severance pay. Unemployment in California is a massive $230.00 a week! The COBRA payments for my family's health insurance (court ordered) were $797.00 a month. You do the math. I survived by selling lots of stuff, living frugally (and I mean cutting out EVERY unnecessary thing), and sending out literally 500 + resumes. I finally found a job 500 miles away in Tucson that has five times the work for 75% of the pay. Now my credit is beyond shot (I'm barely staying out of bankruptcy), and some weeks I still have pocket change for $$. In a way it's funny when a credit card company calls up and demands 400 bucks and you have 40 cents in your checking account....then they wonder why I'm lauging out loud on the phone. But...I had a wonderful girlfriend (who is now my wife), who shared her house, her food and her money with me. I start a new job in L.A. on 3/1 that pays more then I was making before all this happened (and they recruited me!). My advice? Keep hanging in there...there is a light at the end of the tunnel...just make sure it isn't attached to a freight train!
"It's so hard, I lost all my status and my high-paying job and now I'm here with all the other (holding nose) regular slobs."
Welcome to the rest of the world - most people do throw mail, flip burgers and stock shelves. That's in this country, in others jobs are fewer and worse . Yes, it is very hard to be back out money and feel like the progress you worked so hard for was snatched away. With persistence and a litte luck, you'll make it back up. Just lay off badmouthing the people who do the grunt work, and try to learn from being outside the air conditioning of corporate tech work.
No kudos to the ZDNet editors who spun their woes so sensationally, either.
I still have a good job, even after a disconcerting number of layoffs in my old department (which no longer exists), and a couple of rounds in my new department. Then it occurred to me-- what the hell am I doing reading Slashdot, when I'm supposed to be working on the new release? If you still have a job (and you're currently "on the clock")-- get to it!
"There is a diminishing return on caution."
Not always.
So basically you want the government to save your ass and thus your cushy IT jobs?
For a minute there I thought you were an 80's industrial auto worker speaking there for a minute instead of a supposedly upwardly mobile highly educated IT professional.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I graduated in 2000 with a BS in CS from an accredited big 12 school, decent gpa. I barely got a temporary job, and have been working them since.
Of the last 3 entry-level jobs that I stood really good chances of getting, I have lost them to someone with a Masters degree, Doctorate, and a Masters with 15 years experience. These are all entry-level jobs in the Kansas City area, too.
It's a glutted market and it's hard everywhere. If you don't have a job offer on the table by the middle of your graduating semester, assume for the worst. (Lots of options are available, military service, taking the necessary classes to become a secondary education teacher, graduate school). It's tough everywhere, be flexible about it, there is no cure-all that will fix everything. Hell one of my friends that graduated top of his class with a Chemical Engineering degree went to work for Goodyear. Now he's selling insurance for a small company.
As for internships, with my degree, and almost 2 years of experience, right now I'm filling an internship position to pay the bills. After this ends...
Good luck in school, and remember, your last semester gpa does not matter, so drink it up!
Spare me... I have been doing intermediate to high level "tech stuff" for 10+ years and hold a degree in PoliSci. Everything from IT/IS Manager of smaller firm to do it all web designer/master/manager/artist/coder and all the support jobs you can think of in hardware and software... both as a journeyman contractual employee and as a full time employee averaging 2 years+ per job and leaving on my terms.
It's bull to think that CS degrees confer instant tech status. In fact, until VERY recently, CS degrees were frowned on over experience and outside certs... most CS degree holders are 2+ years out of date and have been ingrained in one or more industry no-no practices by their professors.
> There is no point in half assing life. Either bust ass or get out. This is weak.
I find I must protest your implication. His implication is not to "half-ass" life, but to expend less of his life on his job. At the expense of financial reward, he's getting more time to spend on things other than his job. If he chooses to spend that extra time watching TV, that's his choice. I wouldn't do the same (actually, I don't do the same) but this does not necessarily mean he's a layabout.
I've had a lot of people tell me that I could do better than I have if I'd get a job at a bigger company, but since money is only a part of what I want to get from life, I'm instead working for less of it. In trade, I get to work at a great little company serving a niche market, making decent money doing what I love doing. If you think that means I'm "half-assing" my life, my sons and my instruments will disagree with you.
Virg
>come in at noon and play foosball
heh heh... you've obviously been to Verio.
The average 401K isn't very large. People with families and average paying jobs save just enough for the match if they can spare at all.
My dad was laid off from Nortel last year along with 20,000 other people. They didn't pick and choose who was worth saving. My dad was a device driver programer and his project was axed. He was laid off. His boss was laid off. It went all the way up to headquaters and a few levels up there got axed.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
For one thing, I have multiple physical disabilities and IT is my field. What frustrates me is that others and I can't find a job because employers are afraid to hire us. They think we can't handle the job because of our physical abilities. I read that about 80% of U.S. citizens with disabilities are unemployed (from a few years ago and I am sure it is worse now). Yes, there are laws but we're are still being discriminated with almost every employers.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Escpecially as you get older. A new-brand insurere like ACM or Blue cross is about $120 * age-in-years per year when all the deductables and co-pays are factored in. Someone in their 50s may be looking at $6-7K per adult in their family. 20-somethings may just need a couple thousand a year.
If you buy something from one those street-poster ads, or a company you never heard of, you will never get a claim paid. Matt Damon's movie Rainmaker is about this.
> Both may be more physically demanding then what you are used to, but still will be a paycheck.
Good reading. He's got a job, you dimwit. And, since it's a part time, $5.50/hr convenience store job, I'd have a hard time saying he feels any particular job is "beneath" him. I find it easier to believe you're just more full of bluster than comprehension.
Virg
I live in Canada, so I'm familiar with the NA situation. What's it like in European IT centres (London, Amsterdam, Dublin, etc.)? Let's say I wanted to find a contract as a Java or C++ programmer, with lots of Linux/Unix experience (I'm not a web programmer). What's the deal over there?
In NA, it's a funny situation: there are a LOT of web people out of work (Flash, Javascript, etc.) but there is still plenty of work in the higher-end tech stuff (C++, Java esp. J2EE, and so forth). It seems like there is still something of a shortage of programmers -- I still get calls from headhunters, though not like before, I admit -- and the people who are really hurting are the web developers.
Totally agree with you! Keep on keepin' on, brother.
I'm glad I'm not the onlt one noticing the dissapearence of the Middle Class.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I have ten years of OO design and development experience, but I don't have a degree. As you can expect, I've been out of work for a while and couldn't seem to get anyone to even call me back. One company did call me back. After the preliminary interview I had a second one with the CTO and DirEng. When they asked me what I had been doing I didn't have to say "Sitting around on my ass, mostly." Instead I pulled out my latest project, a little portable device built out of off-the-shelf embedded computer components and held together with some C++ and Python I wrote (not unlike the popular car MP3 player projects.)
Guess what? I got a job doing embedded development work at my old salary despite not having any real embedded experience at all! In part because I was able to demonstrate that I am resourceful, creative, and hard-working, even when nobody is holding a carrot/whip over me. That is what employers want.
So write some software, build some hardware, do something, anything, to differentiate yourself from the hordes of people who have been catching up on playstation between jobs.
burris
I was with you until your last comments... this all dates back to a few previous threads here, "to have or not to have a CS degree". What do you suggest people do if they want to be a part of this industry, listen to you rather than professors? Your comment seems to generalize all of us who have a CS degree to be stuck in problematic practices and out of date. 2+ years out of date as opposed to what, a person who works and doesn't have a degree?? You seem to make the assumption that no learning is done outside of the classroom? Have you forgotten the fact that many CS degree candidates Co-Op in order to get the experience you talk about? So what, is a CS degree gonna be the second hated thing to Slashdotters next to to MS??
I have been laid off for 7 mouths now, during that time I have gone back to collage, learn two new programing langs... and used up all my saveings. And working at WalMart but I actuly am haveing a lot more fun now then I ever did before. Of cours when I start to rember that I could of made what I get now for a month in a weeek I get a little down but oh well.
Where I live (USA) in today's newspaper alone there are 5 adds for experienced linux techs and tons for others. Ive inquired about them all but all require a college degree (4of5 in anything the 5th wants CS/CI but I told them im working towards a spanish / italian major and they said if I was getting it in may, id be in). There are quite a few other non l33test tech jobs available here as well
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I'am a Unix sysadmin I have no degree just alot of hands on. I live in Northern VA. No problems finding jobs here. The key was when I got out of the Air Force I didn't just go get the best paying job. When you take a job and the CEO is 18 you might want to think twice.
I am not sure what to say. Having worked with people with rather severe disabilities in order to get them up and running on a computer and productive again for their company, I feel for your plight.
However, while it may be discrimination, put yourself in their shoes for a moment. The economy is tight. Disabled people on a full time staff raise group rates for insurance, have more away time typically due to healthcare and personal needs, have additional equipment needs and facilities needs in the office, and are some times less productive (volume) than a fully enabled person.
I am truely torn as on the one hand I feel that people with born or gained disabilities should be made comfortable and as productive/happy in life as possible, protected by law, etc... On the other, I do not understand why companies cannot hire whom and who they want doing their work...
The IT job market is the best it has been in a decade. Companies are seeking and rewarding highly qualified applicants. It's the no - talent, degreeded but unable CS degree folks left out in the cold along side the incapable "techies" with degrees in like Art who call themselves techies but are as useless as tits on a bull.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
There are several problems with this article besides its fundamental sensationalism and straying out of the technical realm, but I only have one big problem with it. What big whiners!!! To me, a job is a job, whether you like it or not. Sure, the cream is if you get to do something you like and were trained for, but all work has value to me. Of course, I'm not overly impressed with degrees either since most of the people I know who are the movers and shakers tend not to come from the Ivy leagues. Besides, I think that people are more creative when they are forced out of their comfortable cocoon and that the best things come that way.
Lisa
lisa@radiomind.com
Yep... right here in NY... I have a fresh new CS degree from the UofI in Urbana and this is my first job. I am to be programming Flash modules for a new .com site here in Manhattan. The pay is okay (better than my last job in McDonalds back home) and it lets me eat and pay my rent on my 450sq foot loft in the Bronx. I only have to work 80+ hours a week, and they pay for the subway and provide me with all the Jolt I want. In fact, in 3 years I am optioned into the 401K and get a share of the profits and stock options.
The cool thing is my CEO and boss is an uperclassman from my old school. He plays alot of quake on the net, so I know he is cool and can get this show on the net. I am so stoked!
I was just laid off two weeks ago, in Denver Colorado. Entire company went down! About 30 people. Maximum Charisma Studios, www.maximumcharisma.com, and www.mcszone.com. I think website and stuff are still there. Some systems property is being sold to a company in Asia, so our "product" (maybe byproduct) is still kind of going. The public is not really aware of what is going on.
Need me a J-O-B, in the gaming industry!
Really, have you been out looking for work lately? Because I've got 2+ years of c/c++ development under my belt, and I've only managed to get one interview in the three months since I got laid off. There just aren't many jobs out there.
is just as bad as every other tech city mentioned probably... i haven't had a tech job in a year, not since usa.net...
most kids like me have been hopping from call centre to food job and back again as much as we can stand each one before walking out...
and call centres don't give rip about your education or experience, you probably could put that you frigging *wrote* UNIX all by yourself and that you have a PhD in mathematics and they'd be like, "hmm, but how much sales experience do you have???" drives me insane.
Yep! A recent report from satanicnews.com states for a fact that if you sell your soul to satan, you can have the best *nix job imaginable with free soda and pizza, a QIII tournament every day, and half naked *nix guru chicks to wipe the perperation from your beaded brow as you work dilligently at hacking your kernel of choice.
I don't know where all this negativity comes from... I am going to hell and get me one of those jobs!
And I just quit my job today... damned Verizon tech support managers... they wanted me to actually work on fixing a customer problem! Damn dirty apes!
Dude at least you got a job. I know people who graduated with higher gpas (from MIT) and similar experience who are still looking.
And no they didn't turn their noses up on work that was 'beneath' them.
For the daily dose of lies, damn lies, and statistics, here's a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps tabs on the US unemployment rate, among many other numbers. The current rate (5.6%) is historically low; between Sept. 1974 and March 1988, it did not go below 5.6%. Now that's a dry spell for ya.
As for IT, I got out of consulting last year; when I had lunch with my firm's recruiter, I told her that IT consulting was a dying field, and when she mentioned something about going back to school to become a teacher I said 'go for it'. I think she did... more power to her.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
I worked at Intel (one of their software development houses in the mid-west) up to January 2001. I was actually part of a cross-platform Linux/Win32 apps group. In Jan. 2001 we were scheduled to move to a new building, but instead the division lost some 500 employees (myself included) due to budget cuts (now the new building sits half-empty with some of the tightest security systems installed I've ever seen ;-)
In addition to that, several other semi-local (one state over) businesses layed off large numbers of people (IBM and TI). Due to this, I, and many of my friends and former coworkers, found themselves in dire straights with poor job-outlooks. Perosnally, I spent nine months without work (and I didn't have a 401k or any real savings due to an automobile accident the previous year that wiped out my savings).
I eventually got lucky and found a job at a major University as a minor SysAdmin, making a fraction of what I was being paid before ($15/hour, but with benefits).
So, yes, things are really bad out there. If you are a techie and still have a decent job right now, consider yourself very lucky!
(signed annonymously and with no reference to locations because, in spite of the massive decrease in pay, I do feel very fortunate that I have my job, and my current manager was actually a friend who pulled some strings just to get me it)
I work independantly. I've owned retail stores, done numerous service-type businesses, and now work as a freelance programmer.
Life has never been easy, but it's never been impossible, either. Generate something of value that people want or need, let people know you have it, and people will buy. It doesn't matter whether you are writing software, building information systems, or cleaning carpets.
The hard part is to always keep your eyes open and look for something of value that you can deliver that somebody else will pay for.
Ask people you barely know questions like "If I could NNN, would you pay XXX for it? How many would you buy, and why?".
Or, "What is it about NNN that you find most compelling?". The answers often surprise.
Once you get that figured out, $40 at the local kinko's will get you some business cards - then it's just a matter of communicating to prospective clients.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
a beowolf cluster of unemployed techies!
--
If Microsoft is the solution, I want my problems back
Actually, that's not true. I consider myself a true techie (cross-platform application developer perfectly comfortable in Linux/Win32/MacOS/*nix/etc. with some 15 years experience), and yet I found I was out of work for 9 months (previous job was an app. developer at an Intel software house). I now have a job again, but it's as a small sysadmin (under other sysadmins) at a Univeristy making a fraction of what I had made previously. (See my other rant here)
No, things are really bad right now. It's hit posers and wannabes as well as the real, seasoned professional. If it hasn't hit you, you should feel very lucky.
Health insurance is remarkably affordable, if you lie about your medical history.
The problem is that insurance companies are so risk adverse that they'll take minor things and blow them up into life-threatening illnesses. I could go into a doctor today, have a complete physical, and be told that I'm in pretty good shape except for slightly elevated cholesterol - something I'm already addressing with changes in diet and exercise. But to the health insurance providers, I'm completely uninsurable for two separate reasons, both minor and both years ago, and only have insurance because I qualified for the state's uninsurable insurance pool. It's insane to say situational bipolar illness (basically, if the stress gets too high I start to show mood swings, so I've learned to control the stress!) or a viral infection that 99% of the rest of world has a childhood illness with no ill long-term effect puts me in the same risk category as late-stage AIDS patients and recent cancer survivors, but according to the insurance companies it does.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This guy makes me mad. he's not laid off. He has a job, something I'd love to have, and at 13 bucks an hour too! 8 months unemployment? I'll only get 6. 401(k)? No way in hell was I tapping that. factor in the withholding and the taxes and it's all gone anyway. Cry-babies like this need a real clue.
All O'Reilly Windows NT books - $10
I agree with your main point, but you say you've *never* been in a job interview that you thought was "torturous"? All I can say is count yourself very lucky!
I can remember several that were painful. One was at Mastercard, some years ago. I was being interviewed for a support position, but the portion of the interview related to my PC knowledge and troubleshooting skills was a 2 minute long thing where they sat me down in front of a Windows '95 PC and asked me how to "select a file" and "shut down the computer properly".
Then, I got escorted into a training room where I was given over an hour's worth of psychological exams, including this ridiculous "personality profile" where I was asked to circle adjectives that I thought described my behavior, and cross out ones that didn't describe me. (I was supposed to mark words in some other way if I didn't know what they meant, or thought they were made-up words.)
What the hell was that crap supposed to prove? Anyone with a little common sense could circle the words (like "motivated", for example) that management would like to see - and it would really have no bearing of whether or not the interviewee possessed those attributes!
for their boss to program with (you may replace 'program' with 'network' or whatever is appropriate). Thats what the job boils down to. Content Management Systems, or at least the better (from a non technical user's standpoint) ones are the first steps in the replacement of the meat and bones HLLs with automation. The endpoint of the CMS (the name may change in the process) development cycle is the replacement of 'techies' with a system that can interpret concepts into code.
Unless you are working for yourself, developing your own original concept which is intended to fulfill some need you alone have identified, you are just drawing on a knowledge base and using it to implement someone else's ideas and instructions into machine usable form. Functionally, this is no different than what a compiler does. You're the steering wheel: a most important part of the car yet not the driver, indeed not even the same kind of thing as the driver. I say this as a recoving 'techie' myself.
Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
Roofle. Owned. Scrub.
Incompetents? Incompetents? Hah! I've got three-odd years of development experience in the usual things (C, Java, etc.), and I've been out of work for four months. I've been sending out 6 to 10 resumes per week, and I have yet to get a single interview. This is in an area where the local paper used to have more than five pages of tech-related job ads and now has less than one. Don't tell me that only the "fluff" jobs are in short demand. It's getting brutal out here.
>>And no they didn't turn their noses up on work that was 'beneath' them I apologize if I came off that way, it wasn't my intention... I feel sorry for everyone who still doesn't have a job, its a crappy feeling. I get equally insulted when people say if you dont have a job its because you don't have any skill. Best of luck to your friends at MIT..
I've been lucky to have enough work [consulting for engineering design (antennas), and scientific programming] through the economic downturn. I have noticed that in the last few months the number of emails and phonecalls from head hunters/recruiters has started to creep up. Maybe 3 or 4 in January, 1 or 2 December, and 2 in the year before that. These are targeted recruiting efforts primarily for RF/Antenna engineers, from all over the country, though maybe concentrated a little more in CA.
So by this metric, the job market might be turning around. Any others notice similar trends?
Where are you based?
A guy I used to work with made a similar argument when he was made redundant a few weeks ago. He claimed there was nothing around, that no-one was recruiting, and so on.
And then the reality dawned.
Ironically enough, the same guy previously spent much time having a laugh at me because I valued skills and doing things properly, because I commute a significant distance to work, and because I usually only apply to jobs personally.
I know another guy, similar experience in similar fields, also recently made redundant. He lives in somewhere more tech friendly, used his contacts and made an effort, and found a new job pretty easily.
I'm also in the market myself at the moment, not redundant luckily, but certainly looking for a move. Strangely enough, by being prepared to make fair compromises, I'm having no trouble finding potential vacancies. I just don't expect to get paid twice what everyone else does, with zippo qualifications and limited experience, and have all the perks.
There's a certain generation out there who "grew up" with massively overpaid web programmers flooding the market, and high salaries because skilled work was short. These people seem to think that this is normal, and that it's somehow unfair for them to have to actually do some work to find a job. Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way.
While some people clearly have been genuinely unlucky in this climate and I have sympathy for them, I can't help thinking that many of those complaining are the freeloading types (MBAs, MCSE-wannabes, 2-minutes-of-HTML-and-I-deserve-to-be-rich kids) and they're just getting what's been coming to them for several months.
Sorry about the rant, but this prevailing attitude is really annoying me now. I've worked very hard to get where I am, and watched freeloaders keeping up or exceeding me in pay and conditions for the past two years. I don't think it's an accident that I still have a job while the freeloaders are getting binned, and I don't accept the argument that there isn't work around, because all the evidence I can see says there is.
No joke. Coders think they know all and can do all.
Malarky.
They can't write their way out of a paper bag.
They write like grade schoolers.
But, they still can be arrogant idiots. No wonder dot.coms go under when they cut the non-coder members of the team.
Having just graduated with a CS degree last May, you don't know what you're talking about.
Of course people with no experience (or "3+ years", or 2 weeks, or whatever junior level) are having trouble finding work in the midst of economic slowdown and lass layoffs. What does that have to do with the context, which was "people who are actually useful"?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I have been working _steady_ in this industry for the past seven years in network operations for about 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year.
I have worked for AT&T, IBM, major utilities (sp?) and major ISP's, can do no more when it comes to codeing than sh, grep, awk, sed, expect & a bit of perl (oh, and I know switches & routers; no certs tho) and I cannot understand how anyone with as much knowlege and experience as the average slashdotter has difficulty finding a _good_ job in the current enviorment.
maybe I am wrong, but is evryone setting their sites too high?
./Anonymous Coward 'cause I like my job.
We're the ones paying full social security taxes but not eligable for social security.
We're the ones paying full unemployment insurance premiums but not able to collect unemployment if we get laid off.
We're the ones keeping your so-called social system afloat!
I've posted below my last year's experience as a 10-year IT vet in the contracting market. I was laid off last spring and am now finishing an extended contract. I've got a verbal offer for my next job, so I'm one of the lucky.
I've interviewed for four positions in the last two weeks. Two were a Java and server side developer. One an infrastructure C/C++, CORBA developer. The one I got the offer from is for a Senior Business Analyist.
Each of the interviewers lamented that they had over 100 resumes to go through, and most of the people were kidding themselves. Some were dot-commers who had a year or two of client-side development and thought they made the web work. Others were java guys who thought they could solve real middleware problems inside a JVM.
Many though, and two of the managers had the same comment, had no real enterprise-class experience. They had experience, but not with working in a large-scale, diverse environment.
Skills only get you so far. So you're a certified Java developer, architech, or whatever. If all you've done is a notepad application you've not really seen much. If all you've done is one web site or a simple app it's not likely that you're going to manage on a business app with 300 tables averaging 25-100 million rows and 5000 users, all functioning in SEC, FDA, or FCC regulations.
That's why in the job market Oracle experience trumps MySQL. It's why Weblogic or Websphere trumps Apache and Tomcat. And it's why HP-UX and Solaris trump Linux (for now). Most often when you've worked with the big, expensive tools you've seen a project worth knowing about.
For those of you out there still looking, try to qualify your experience as well as quantify. Why is your four years of Java or web work worth talking about more than someone else's? What did your year and a half with a startup teach you, and why is that important to someone you're trying to get to hire you? Find that and make your resume tell it to whomever is looking at it.
Skills are easy to come by. Character, insight, and work habits that make a good team member are harder to find. If you've got it, flaunt it! If not, work on that burger flipping technique. They're checking all your references, and a lot that you may not know about.
- Sig this!
Back in June i was laid off from a cushy easy to do Job at Knowledgenet (A 'online' training co). It took me almost 6 months to get a new tech job. In that time i relied on family, Unemployment, and working a crappy but cool retail job at the the Ballpark (GO DBACKS!). I finally got a job as the only tech guy at a realeatate co. Pay is less then what KN was paying me (base+Salary) but the benifets are way better. Look outside of IT.. these people are easy to keep happy.
works behind a cocktail bar in the evenings. He says it helps him "get lucky" rather often.
I don't want to evoke Schadenfreude either, but what is happening to the tech industry is the same thing that happened to all other production and manufacturing jobs over the past couple decades: the value of their work decreases as productivity of systems increases, as markets saturate, as margins thin, as processes become easier to automate. In a recession, the people who are really worth their weight in gold are people who can grow demand. That's why sales organizations, and those who work at a strategic level, get compensated so far beyond the rank and file, modulo a handful of hotshot engineers. I think it's wrong, mind you, but it's pretty much inherent in the way of things.
But that link definitely moderated any sense of sympathy or pity I had for the lay-offees - and made me grateful for the fact that I'm enjoying a standard of living and security that, frankly, I don't inherently deserve.
I find your reply demeaning. Of course developers should know XML systems if your infrastructure requires it. Specialists need to bring detailed information to a project. But to think that a project will succeed because of its infrastructure or other technical requirements and that if a team member doesn't know that they are somehow mediocre is the epitome of hubris.
Are you going to have your developers create the page template? Is it your graphic designer? Is your graphic designer or backend developers going to conduct usabilty testing? Does your designer need to know SQL to design a web-based interface to modify your DB? Or do they just need to know what is possible and appropriate for each screen?
I may have nobody to blame but myself for not having a job, but if I was going to interview for a web designer job I shouldn't be expected to know network administration, Java, COM, and SQL. I should know how to successfully communicate via the web. If I know HTML, XML, the principles behind database integration, browser limitations, DTDs, JavaScript and the like then I should stand a good chance of getting that job. That's because I know how the system works together, I don't need a specialized knowledge in HTML output via XSLT, that's what the developers are for.
Thats what I tried to say. All I hear you say is you demand everybody know what your developers should know.
I see a bit of a reality check. For the people who lost their jobs and KNOW that all in all, there are no shortcuts, I'm tempted to exercise a little empathy. But for what the dot-bomb era brought us, I have none.
I am STILL amazed when I think about how fast and furiously many of these companies burned through someone else's money. I'd say that for those whose skills were marginal, even non-existent at the time they were hired, they were living in a world every bit as phony as the companies themselves. Don't cry about it, just learn from it.
Now he's throwing mail on the night shift at a
U.S. Postal Service distribution center for $13 an
hour.
I don't know about you folks, but as a college
student studying for an Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science degree,
I find that $13 an hour is pretty good (well, for
me anyway). I've got two jobs, one tech, one non
tech and they BOTH pay less that $13/hr.
And don't you get some sort of benfits working for
the USPS? I heard they have some really sweet
retirement plans.
The same A&M that produces engineers responsible
for the "Logpile of Death"? Is it really one of
the best?
I bet you kick homeless bums and tell them to get a job. Your day will come buddy, and you better hope future potential employers aren't reading your dumb-ass comment
Absolutely. That's because they're not. I'm sorry, but we had this one a few weeks ago, and the picture hasn't changed. Vacation work and fun stuff are all advantageous if you're looking for work, but if you think your part-time jobs are going to square up to 3-4 years of professional experience, you've got a rude awakening coming: no-one who's recruiting is going to share your view.
I'm sure it is. It's depressing for us all, including those of us with several years of full-blown professional experience, many with mortgages to pay and/or families to support. Being new out of college does not make your life any easier, I'm afraid, but I promise that you're not alone in suffering hardships in the current climate.
I am an ex-Ask Jeeves employee that was able to pull in a small 6 month contract in New York after months of looking everywhere. Now, I have spent almost 4 months looking for another job. The San Francisco Bay Area industry is very painful. I used to receive 10-20 calls per week from recruiters, now I never receive them and I am the one making all the phone calls. I am not one of the paper techies and have abundant skills in many area -- computational linguistics, information extraction and retreival, 7 years of Java experiences, databases, FreeBSD kernel development, and I could go on -- but nobody is hiring.
From what I've heard in few off the record conversations with hiring managers, companies are mostly in a looking phase; they are trying to feel out the market and see what kind of talent they can grab in their price range. I used to make over $100,000 a year, but now I am being asked how I feel about large salary cuts. I wish that I could say that things are looking up, but I still here of all this pseudo-interviewing going on. I sometimes call recruiters back a month or two later, and often the positions are still open. Either the companies are becoming exceptionally careful of their candidate choices of they are still not really hiring and feeling out the waters.
My contract ended Dec 12, still looking. I've taken a couple of side jobs but nothing full time.
I can fix anything Win NT/Win 2k, pc/laptop hardware. Let me know if you're interested.
stonent at hotmail dot com
No, what I said is MEANT to be torturous. I have been through at least one torturous interview, but that was because the interviewer was asking me about technical issues that I had gotten very rusty on. Fair, obviously important to the interviewer, and not meant to torture me. My response was to make sure for the second interview that I had boned up on the issues he raised.
The process eventually ended in a job offer.
What you describe (the psychological tests, etc.) is certainly objectionable, but I wouldn't call it torturous. Just boneheaded, and a good sign that you wouldn't want to work there.
I am worried about them.....
cost wise that sounds much like Texas. The IT industry is moderately healthy here, mainly from "old school" IT job sources like sysnet admin for big companies (Houston, Dallas, etc.). Plus there are the state and .edu jobs in Austin, with a smattering of startups here and there (mainly Austin and Dallas).
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Those of you saying this article is misleading and the layoffs aren't "techies" obviously have not been reading the news or the financials. The tech sector is IMPLODING.
I got the axe March 2nd from UUNET, where I was working as a Network Analyst in the Houston DC. A week or two before I got my walking papers, I was commenting to my coworkers that I was glad I was in the money making part of MCIWorldcom. I didn't think I was going to get hosed like the onsite MCI telecom guys did. ALL OF THEM. A buddy of mine worked in the MCI call center in Houston, doing help desk, he got layed off March 2nd too. 15% of MCIWorldcom got layed off. Those are techies that got it, telecom guys and network engineers.
We're hurting here in Houston, we got hit hard. Compaq layed off a couple thousand, Dell layed off a couple thousand, Nortel layed off, Enron melted down, Cable and Wireless and TXU **shut down** their call centers. IT shops all over town have gone into the crapper. There are so many techies out of work in Houston that its nearly impossible to get a CALL BACK, because there are dozens of applicants for each open position.
This isn't just the administrative assistants being layed off.
Wow...I wasn't expecting so much of a response.
I didn't post this to be a sob story; I posted it as an example of a techie who can't get a tech job. I don't think I got treated any more unfairly than most of you.
I can tell by many of the responses that most of you live in cities. I live in rural Pennsylvania. (That's why I said $30,000 isn't bad.)
People have weirded out on me about getting a Spanish degree for years. I won't bother going into how that happened, and it's fairly irrelevant. The point was, back in the day, I (like many others) didn't need a degree to get a job. Furthermore, for some time, I made more than I needed, so I wasn't worried about having a family. I made all these decisions before everything went to hell. My other reasons are personal and irrelevant. In any case, scolding me for not being able to tell the future is silly.
I lost my wife because she was immigrating as my wife (as opposed to as a student). Thanks to some laws passed a couple of years ago, you have to meet certain income requirements, which the available local jobs could not meet. Sure, you might want to call me stupid for not learning this until too late, but like I said, these laws are quite new, and neither I nor any of my friends had heard of them. We got and immigration lawyer, but that didn't help much. These are details, and tangental to the topic. The point here is that if I could have found and maintained a job like a couple that I had had before, we would have our own apartment in the States by now.
Some of you have mentioned that even the degreed guys aren't getting hired. I know. I've thought about this myself. However, I distinctly remember that when the headhunters turned cold on me, the specific pretext they kept using was that I didn't have a degree. That's why I'm giving it a shot, taking it a step at a time.
Lastly, it's funny, but it is next to impossible to test out of the classes I'm taking, mainly for administrative reasons. You can laugh at me for going to such a lame school (I've been laughing myself for a long time), but I'm here for strictly financial reasons. And speaking of college, I have to get back to class. Thanks for your input.
Mi klopodas varbi por Esperanto.
Coding in C or C++ for the majority of your school CS projects over the course of 4 academic years doesn't quite "qualify" as 3 or 4 years of experience, either.
Of course all of that experience doesn't count.
School and work are fundamentally different.
In order to succeed in school:
Convince your instructor that you have learned the subject that is being taught.
In order to succeed in business:
Build products or offer services that customers will buy.
Some may say that the instructor of the class is a consumer, so that keeping the instructor happy is the same as keeping a customer happy. An instructor has nothing to lose, no financial risk. If what the students produce doesn't work or is not cost effective it will not have a negative effect on the instructor.
However consumers are extremely conscious of the cost. They are always looking for the best deal. Weather or not something is neat, or theoretically perfect, doesn't matter to the consumer. They only want to know if it will make or save them money. If it doesn't then they don't want it. A customer wont care if the code is 'perfect', or if it has 10,000 unit tests, or even what language its written in. They want a product that works and that is cost effective.
Unfortunately it is impossible to teach this in school. Only private sector work experience can provide this knowledge.
Sorry, gotta disagree there. You're violating the "20 second rule": if they can't read enough to be interested within 20 seconds and without looking for it, you get binned. Sad, but true.
I've made some suggestions for writing a good CV on /. before, based on personal experience from both sides of the fence. There's also a link in that comment to "Susie the Screener", which is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in getting a job. I suggest anyone having CV-writing dilemmas take a look.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
good post. speaks from the heart.
I am a very expereinced Oracle/ Java/ Perl/ Reports developer with some (but not enough)CRM experience.
Last year I was hounded daily for positions. I opted for what I thought was the best company here in Vancouver, BC, Canada and was paid back by being laid off 3 days short of when they would have had to pay me off a lot bigger than they did.
Nevertheless, I have been laid off since last April. I got a job as an Implementation Specialist and I was then promptly laid off again.
Things suck out there. Especially for developers.
The one thing that has been a bright spot is that I have been fortunate enough to go back to school and get some more education under my belt.
I have started looking at Open Source solutions for small business...Open Source CRM, contact management and such. There is a lot of potential out there for IT specialist that can save people money.
I had noticed that even the companies that say they cater to small businesses don't.
I don't know a lot of companies that can afford $100K for new software.
I offer to support there exisitng equipment, where possible, full on-site servbice and anyone who has less than 15 employees gets an automatic 25% off my rates.I have had several short term contracts like this in the past 2 months and I have also had 3 support contracts signed and I have been able to gove some other people a little work as well, which makes it all the sweeter.
I don't want to be a number ever again and I don't want to stand in the unemployment line ever again.I decided I like being my own boss and I really hate the way most of the software/ IT companies I worked for treat people, especially when times are tough. Then its everyone for themselves.
Viva la entreprenuer!
"Amen to that, only incompetents are out of work" is pretty darn insensitive, not to mention extremely ignorant, but one thing I've learned is that most geeks aren't exactly known for their social grace.
My situation is that I worked for a company that was purchased by another, then our parent pulled the plug on us this past summer, not because we were incompetent but because of internal politics that aren't worth going into detail here. So all of us (engineers) have been unemployed ever since because there aren't enough jobs to go around. And although a couple of us were rather incompetent (every company has 'em), our team varied from seasoned guru to talented intern. Still, NOBODY has found work in our field yet.
"Juliette Katz spent the past seven years sharpening her resume as a marketing manager at America Online, Food.com and other Internet start-ups."
;-)
Darn it, and here I was thinking that Jon Katz was finally out of the picture! Oh well, one Katz down, one to go
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
Spoken like someone who hasn't actually been on the job moarket. If you're soo damn confident, why not give up your job for one of us who dont' have one, and lets see how long it takes YOU to find a new one.
didn't think so...
Have a day.
Clearly people who have jobs that allow them ample time to spout bullshit on slashdot threads are going to be out of touch with the job market realities that the rest of us wrestle with daily.
You'll notice that none of the people used as examples have actually technical advanced degrees. They all have MBAs. MBAs are overpaid and useless in today's business world. They will find a hard time finding jobs like they used to have. Now if they actually had advanced degrees in some form of engineering I bet they would have found jobs by now...easily.
At a recent job fair for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, there were the IT layoffs, and then there was everyone else. In fact, if you were primarily an IT skilled person, they put you in one line to meet the recruiter, and if you had any other substantial skills that were not IT related you were placed in another line. It was pretty creepy.
Of those "IT" skilled folks, I was able to easily catagorize three groups of people: The first group were the real "nerd" group. You could see who they were because they had the body language and appearance that they didn't usually dress in a suit. There weren't many of them. Then there were the recent graduates. They were more numerous. They were the fresh faced folks who looked as if they'd been coached pretty well.
Then there were the folks who had clearly ridden the dot com boom up as far as it could take them. They often had a few worry lines on their faces. And they were the most numerous. Just from idle chatter while waiting in line, I discovered that many of them tended to emphasize what projects they had worked on with what packages, instead of what they'd done. Many of them may have been pretty good at what they did, but without much to show for what they'd done, they were in a terrible bind.
I was there to shop. I have some background in RF and control systems as well as software.
And the recruiters clearly were looking for more than just an IT background. Yes, software engineering and programming experience is good, but they were looking for other skill sets as well. The recruiters seemed to be quite happy to have the pick of the IT litter. The job fair was put together just before the really big dot com cuts sank in.
Anyway, I've been working for the same company for over a decade. It's been comfortable, if not exactly lucrative. It's not sexy work, but it's stable. Draw whatever conclusions you want.
I went from a dot com in Jersey to a period of unemployment, until I got picked up by a medical research company. Lots of friends had a similiar fate, landing jobs doing jsp,php,asp over backend in a pharmeceutical or medical organization. Any similiar experiences, or just a NJ coincidence? My father used to say to work in medicine; people will always get sick. 6 degrees of separation between there and computers, but whatever.
The bit about Juliette Katz wondering why she's where she is starts with:
Juliette Katz spent the past seven years sharpening her resume as a marketing manager at America Online, Food.com and other Internet start-ups. so that's at least 3 different companies in 7 years... or more likely at least 4 if you assume "other" means at least 2,and I'd bet it was more then that. That means she probably spent perhaps a year and a half at each place.. maybe 2 at one or another.
I've seen this over and over in the whole of IT space.. people that have zero company loyalty and will jump at the slightest higher offer. Companies aren't going to do what they can to keep you if you're likely to just jump ship yourself. I saw a group of people I work with jump for a new startup, and the kept asking me to go with them, but I knew it wasn't smart so I stayed. Now most of them are either not there anymore, or overworked and/or worried for their jobs.
Personally, I've been in my current job for over 4 years, and have no plans to leave. I'm loyal, I work hard, and I'm rewarded for it.
Maybe if some of these other people would've stuck with a company for more then a few months, they might've had someone above them that knew them, knew their worth, and fought to keep them if/when layoffs happened.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
>From what I understand of sociology, this translates into a 6-month countdown before a year-long spike in violent crime and suicide rates begins.
hey would you mind sharing where you found that information. I don't have it anywhere in my forecast/patterns notes ( I collect patterns and cycle notes as a hobby, funny thing is I got this unemployment/market pop cycle right but I don't have the corrating crime data to go along with it.)
Onepoint
p.s. if there are any lunix guys that need part time work via telecomuting I have a few projects that need cleaning or tightning not alot of money but it would be for some quick cash. send me an email and they are like $200 projects that can be done very easy.
Mike @ mojobuzz dot com
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I was working as a network systems admin/helpdesk manager/desktop support supervisor in a college at a major university. Wasn't the greatest pay ($35k less than what I could have been making in private sector), but it was stable. I left in May to move to Pittsburgh with my wife, she was to finish her MBA (accelerated 1yr) at PITT. I started looking here in Feb. 2001. It's Feb. 2002, and still nothing. I was made one offer of 27k per year for a Network admin. I can make more at the Quick Lube Oil chnage station down the street. Since I never finished my 4-year, I decided to go back to school. Actually, I HAD to. The only way for my wife and I to pay rent was with the extra student loan money. So I'm finishing my BS in the evenings and on weekends so that I CAN work. Still unemployed. Maybe I should become a welder.
i totally agree with you. f**k the parent poster.
Even worse -- the guys who exercised stock options, couldn't sell them 'cause they were either greedy or stuck in the quiet period, saw the stock drop before they could dump it, and now still owe taxes based on the inflated worth of the stock at the time they took posession.
No money, piles of debt to Uncle Sam, and they didn't even have the big boat in the drive!
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Back in 2000, I was still in college. I am a Civil Engineer and work for a construction company. I build bridges for a living. .com inflation, are still chugging along, looking stronger now that the market's internet honeymoon is over.
One of my interdisciplinary project partners was a MIS (management of Information Science) major, and did some part time work for EMC. Now, to his credit, he was pretty good with computers as far as I could tell, but used to brag about his $100/hr "consulting" job, working for a buddy as a sysadmin. He, like so many people who couldn't see the tech forest burning for the trees, never really tried to push himself or actually develop any work ethic skills.
All of us civils were goaded by the CS and MIS people, our starting salaries avaraged 10-15K less, at the time. Well, every one of us still has a job. All of the civils graduating now can find jobs.
Our companies, which became artifically devalued due to the
There are a couple of old maxims that are appropiate, and a couple of common sense statements that apply:
-slow and steady wins the race.
-never risk what you can't loose.
-things that seem too good to be true, are.
-the key to riding the big waves is to get off before the crash.
I think I need a new sig here.
>>I get equally insulted when people say if you dont have a job its because you don't have any skill.
Its just a really really tough time. My older brother graduated in 91 with an EE degree and 2 internships with Pratt and Whitney and Electirc Boat. He couldn't beg for a job and it had little to do with his skills -- there just was nothing available.
We are going through the same thing now in the tech sector.
It's only going to get worse. This is only the tip of the iceberg - for hardcore techies, not the Web script kiddies.
Hell, the code is gonna bang itself in five years or so. Companies will import from India or China at minimum wage the very few still-needed programmers.
IT is no longer a viable career field.
Isn't it funny how business and management justify low wages with free market capitalism platitudes; yet when Addam Smith's invisible hand smacks them around with a scarcity of workers and high salary demands, they complain that it's bad for the economy? I'm all for free markets, but I think that you have to take the good with the bad no matter which side of the employment fence you stand.
Perhaps if the job market is so crap, it's time to go a-travelling or living the hermit life style in Sri Lanka until the market bounces back? Go backpacking around Europe and just work for your food and keep.. a lot of people do it, and it can be an enjoyable way of keeping out of the industry for a while.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Now i'm far from techie
Computer savvy, but not techie in Slashdot terms.
I am probably younger then most of you. I just started University at Waterloo. If anyone has it bad, it's the students. 1st year co-op, little or no working experience, seeking gainful employment. HA HA HA, i even have to laugh at my self.
You see, i wish i were laid off, why? because that would mean i would have to have a job in the first place!
Laid off, IF I WERE LUCKY!
If you were growing an order of magnitude every month since 1998, that would be between 36 and 48 orders of magnitude. So if you started out with one person, by now should have more employees than the population of the planet.
I bet you work in Sales ? Management ?
We were notified that we will be getting laid off at the end of May. A few months notice is better than the 36 hours Intel had given me before.
Unfortunately, I sent out about 30 emails -- with no one ever replying. I got one auto-response, and that was it. Last week, I made a couple phone calls then sent 3 emails.... At least got an acknowledgement letter from them this time...
But the market is REALLY not looking good. DICE went from 18 Java jobs in the area a month ago to 30 now -- as opposed to over 300 a year ago.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
It isn't hard to write a script that checks an email and then autoresponds with a "yes we got it" or requests more information-- Yes, some HR departments *want* Word documents even if they don't tell you. They claim they're flooded with resumes- sure, because they're not adding any automation to the process. But there are many ways to handle much larger floods of incoming emails- HR simply has to ask for help from other departments.
Is it your company that is behaving this way? You should find out now and get them to change, because
Sorry to hear about what's happening to you; my job will be moving away from me, and I'm fairly sure I won't be following it. (Can't tell you much more, sorry.) Don't cry too much for me though, since my personal circumstances are far better than those of many people close to me here. (I won't bore you with the whole story.)
One thing to bear in mind: HR department are gatekeepers, and not much else in terms of hiring. Submitting a resume to HR is tantamount to plopping it in the circular file or the bit bucket.
You do have the Valley to your advantage: instead of resume spamming, do a little "face spamming"! Be aggressive. Show up with your resume in hand, get it in the hands of the VP of Engineering (or reasonable facsimile thereof). Chances are, you could hit 50-100 offices in one day where you live; a lot of us simply don't have that advantage (see my post: "Bad in Raleigh/Durham, NC").
The Valley is crowded, rude, overgrown, overpriced, and just plain nasty. But I'd kill to be there for a week or two, if I could convince my better half to do it. There's always at least a little more hope when you're closer to Sand Hill Road.
".sig,
Yikes! Things have been bad in New Jersey for a while (telecom slump). How are they elsewhere?
Bad. I've been trying to get a minimum wage job to pay the rent for over a year, but because of my technical background I am treated as a pariah.
I'll be homeless soon.
It pays $18/hr plus benefits, extremely flexible hours (basically pick your hours). Simple sysadmin/netadmin stuff (Windows/Mac hybrid environment) for less than 200 users on 100 machines in less than 5 separate offices. No additional IT staff, you are it. Job duties include being able to install/configure Windows and Office, set up SMB printer shares, run manual backups of accounting data, browse the web uninterrupted for hours, and that's about it.
No college, certs, or experience required (I had none of these when I was hired). Just be friendly to the big boss and his highly-paid do-nothing cronies (division heads), and compliment him on his "creative" ideas about IT, like getting rid of half the machines in the organization and setting up kvm switches all over the place. Must be able to chitchat on end about gadgets that only management would love, such as overpriced Palm clones and overpowered laptops.
I'll be quitting this Friday to go back to school. Any interested parties please just reply to this post. Job is in San Francisco, very close to Japantown and all the gastronomical goodness that lies thereabouts.
Posted anonymously by a capped user; offer is serious.
Coupled with the fact that there are quite a number of CS graduates out there who can't even install their own Development software (I know, I had to do it for a whole gaggle of them, and my CS graduate roommate was computer illiterate as well), it's no wonder that people are antsy about picking them up when there's already enough talented people out there waiting to be picked up.
Not to say that you're not talented or know your stuff, but when a profession becomes an "educational fad" the market gets diluted with wanna-bes who dilute the market.
Safer to be a funeral director these days. At least business is going to be booming there for at least one more generation.
Sadly, that's how most people in the field are reacting right now. College graduates simply aren't useful enough to hire. Therefore, they don't deserve jobs.
I've got two responses to this:
* What does it take to break into the field, then? Is it only when companies are spending money ridiculously and irresponsibly that newbies, no matter how competent or promising they are, can get jobs and make a living?
* Is a college degree in comp sci completely and practically useless? Is it becoming like majoring in Art History, where people go, "What kind of job can you get with an Art History degree?" People assume the opposite about CS - that you can get rich if you know computers no matter what. (This is oh-so-infinitely-wrong, but that's besides the point) Right now, I see it as the opposite... you can be quite the "starving coder" if you can't break into your field in a very big way. So basically, it's a useless degree if you can't get a job in the field. And right now, without good connections, it's really hard to get a job in the field no matter what your credentials.
Don't forget, a lot of other professions discriminate against CS degrees... usually CS majors don't have a diverse background (I can hear "Why the hell do I have to take breadth courses?!?!" echoing in the background), prospective employers try not to hire anyone that might be too smart, and who will subsequently get bored at an open position, and furthermore everyone thinks "Well, don't you REALLY want to go into computers?" Simply put, people from CS may have a lot of potential, but simply don't look like the most suitable candidates on paper. Kind of like how more experience beats less experience even if the more experienced candidate sucks.
I know everyone's going through a tough time, fresh college grads and middle aged programmers alike. But this whole thread is obnoxious. It's obvious that half the people here want to viciously yell at people who feel sorry for themselves... while the other half pretty much feel sorry for themselves. I rarely see anyone in these threads actually thinking about the problem and trying to work with others on a solution.
Ironically, that's supposed to be one of the strengths of a programmer... the ability to analyze complex problems and develop solutions. If nobody here is able to do that to help out some fellow unfortunate professionals... well, maybe none of you people should have a job right now.
because he doesnt want to. That is my interpretation, but that is what it sounds like to me. I have no qualm with someone being lazy I just dont like it when they do it because they are afraid. That's weak.
A perfect example is in my sorry state they had to lay off 2% of state workers b/c a shortfall of funds due to the "recession". If they laid this guy off b/c they could hire a 23 year old that would accept 30k/year what would he do then? Probably starve b/c he hasnt shown anything by his statements that he would fit in anywhere but a job thats 8-5 no OT no real work. If you think working at a University is work then I'd like to see what you consider my job(s).
With an attitude like that, it's no wonder that you don't interview well. Anybody who's ever been in the situation of having to work with an incompetent hired via a "friend of friend" deal without a technical interview knows just how lousy that situation is. I'm not paid to teach someone the basics of object-oriented programming, I'm paid to design computer software.
Yes, I'll ask "zinger" questions, and questions that don't seem to have anything to do with the job. Having endured the "Employee from Hell" once, who despite having no industry experience felt he was God's gift to to the computer industry, I don't want to repeat that experience. So you get an attitude test. You got a problem with that? Not my problem.
And yes, I'll ask you open-ended questions about things on your resume, and if you don't know something, you better not try bullshitting me because the interview will end shortly afterwards. I want to make sure you know the fundamentals, and that you have a history of learning new things. I don't want to work with someone who can't learn new things, who's been doing the same thing for the past ten years.
Bonus brownie points for working on Open Source software in your spare time. That shows dedication and willingness to do different things and ability to work on your own. That's one of the most important things in my book.
But NONE of these questions are aimed at simply putting you through meaningless hoops. The success of a team depends upon its members, and we can't succeed without members who are competent, capable of getting along with each other, and who can work both as part of a team and as individuals as required. Prima donnas and keyboard monkeys (people who learned one thing ten years ago, and have been repeating ever since) need not apply.
So: Are you enthusiastic? Have you done good work in the past, in a variety of areas? Do you know your stuff? Can you get along with people? This isn't bullshit, this is the lifeblood of a development team.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I've been in this industry for 10+ years and I can't find a job. A job beneath me? Should you expect an out of work doctor to work at Mickey Ds? And By the way, Mickey D's by me won't hire you unless you're an illegal Hispanic. And since I am not Indian, and will refuse to do my job for $30,000, I find it hard to get work. The corporate world is globalist, and not thinking nationalistically.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Actually, I found it the opposite. They would rather hire someone with less experience who will take less pay. Do you know how many jobs I was overqualified for??? To me that makes no sense. I am applying for a job in my field, with the exact qualifications I have, yet I am overqualified. The funny thing is, lately I've been very insecure, and think I am underqualified!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
If being hired as a solo programmer, personality becomes less of an issue. But for team projects, prima donnas and slugs both are irritating (prima donnas because they don't listen, slugs because they don't contribute and require constant guidance). Having skills is a requirement, but if you can't work with the team, all the computer skills in the world are useless.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
It's not that they don't deserve jobs, more that I don't feel I personally should have to hire them. I'd far rather pay twice as much for someone who isn't going to waste all my time or my other managers' time.
We recently posted some positions requiring a fairly specific skill set. If I get one more resume that suggests some dumb one-semester course project that was turned in and immediately forgotten is a viable substitute for years of experience in the relevant areas, I'm going to go over and smack someone.
Plenty of careers require lengthy periods of "getting up to speed" before the gravy starts pouring. Consider the long and painful residency periods that doctors go through. Or apprenticeships in many crafts.
The problem, I think, is that the last few years of crazy spending have left people with a sense that they deserve to get paid all sorts of money for poking at a computer, just because they were so incredibly smart and far-sighted to choose to study computer science.
The fact is, in the real world, in normal conditions, you have to grow into your success, fighting for opportunities to prove yourself, and then actually being better than some other people. No reason it should be any different for computer folks. Even during the boom times I suspect we all would have been a lot better off if random idiots weren't able to get paid mad ducats for performing minimally useful services to the IT department.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
From 9 - 5, I look for work. Job boards, newspapers. Everything. I fire off on avg 15 resumes per DAY. For the past 2 months or so. How many interviews? One! I was overqualified. :(
In the job listings, they don't list any phone numbers, so you can't call! And many, MANY companies don't accept un-solicited calls.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I agree with what you say... and yet, I don't think the current situation is the way to deal with these things.
I think that you bringing up doctors' residency brings up a very good idea... since college grads are not exactly ready for prime time and aren't worth as much as an experienced tech worker, why not provide solid growth and learning opportunities to them rather than cast them off to the side? There is little to no existing reference for setting up a "computer residency", but I firmly believe that such positions should be widely available... considering that colleges are very steadfast in eschewing the practical in favor of professing the academic, and employers are very demanding of prospective employees in terms of requiring specific skillsets. Why not provide something that bridges the gap?
This benefits everyone - it takes the onus off of colleges to provide technical training to high-tuition students; it provides employers with a way to employ young, promising individuals without spending a fortune on them or taking unnecessary risks in hiring them for crucial positions; and finally, although CS grads might start out with less money, at least they have an opportunity to make a decent living this way.
Does any of this sound horrible?
Guys, I know everybody likes to make money and live fancy, but if your goals are "I want to eventually make more money than I do now" then maybe its time to re-evaluate why you got that CS degree, because it sure isn't doing you a lot of good now.
If you're in Houston, it sucks. Don't look for Enron to hire you. They just laid off over 1,000 technical types and compaq laid off 2,600. All in all, a heavy over abundance of tech workers and not enough jobs to go around.
Almost all technical staff I've worked with have been very productive and done good work, which I've seen a lot of slacking or just simply inept..
I'm sure your technical coworkers were productive and did good work, but that does not sell a product. That only makes a product which isn't moving. Perhaps the marketing & middle management types were more worthy of the axe, but their job is to make the company a profit. The tech's job is an abstract creation of product to sell.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
" It's all been said before. The only people who matter to a business are management and the HR department."
Ummm...you forgot accounting. Someone has to keep track of all the money. It can be rough (GF overworked), but every business who wants to stay in business will need one.
Business is still business, and SAP has plenty of consultants out there still earning big $$$. All you have to do is get into the German way of thinking and learn a genuine retro language from the '80s, ABAP. (It's kind of a cross between cobol and a 4GL.)
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
After reading the above. Why am I reminded of the "tortise and the hare"? Seems there's really nothing new under the sun.
Does not hiring foreign soldiers into
the US Army make countries like India stronger?
By your logic we should accept lower paid
foreign soldiers so that the US Army would
be stronger and India weaker. Why single out
programmers for H1-B program. Why not
policmen , firemen , lawyers, doctors, teachers,
soldiers, etc? America is stronger by encouraging
American kids to study computers becasue they'll get
market wages.
How about, the porn industry?
Or the funeral industry?
Enjoy the former.
Get buried by the latter, because you enjoyed too much of the former.
If you want to improve your viability, what's the one thing you can advocate, yet still be a sycophant to your boss? The answer is skills. In fact, most bosses would be delighted if all their workers spent their free time polishing up their knowledge of C++ or Solaris memory or whatever.
That's the only thing I hear here. "Oh, well this will only effect lower skilled people". I'm 28, but I have been programming (originally in BASIC and machine language) since the early 1980's. I have enough knowledge to work as a DBA, network admin, system administrator or programmer. Of course, I only specialize in one so that I do it on a "senior" level. Nonetheless, the idea that your skill level is a panacea to everything is a lot of ca-ca. It goes against economics 101. If it didn't, why has the ITAA (and NTSA) made a war against engineers for the last few years for their paymasters? Bringing in 900,000 H1-Bs, doing away with FLSA for computer professionals, sticking section 1706 in IRS tax code to screw over independent consultants and so forth?
What's the result - people working 60 hour weeks, with a beeper oncall 24/7 for not that high of a salary and thinking that's normal. I guess if the geek stereotype I brough up is true, and you have no social life, you won't mind being a sycophant for your boss because you have nothing better to do. You sure will never be able to have a normal social life under such conditions. Pay freezes, pay cuts, hiring freezes, layoffs. Even if the less experienced people are being laid off, that's still a workload that you're going to have to pick up.
I can not fathom why people who consider themselves professionals do not have organizations to represent them like lawyers do (ABA) or actor's do (SAG, a union actually) or doctor's do (AMA). The ITAA is in Washington, DC changing the law so that IT workers get paid less, get their overtime increased where it doesn't get paid for (with FLSA) and have a higher unemployment rate. And because of the NTSA IRS tax code change, are financially forced to work for body shops instead of independently. The only reason I can come up with is that the slam that a large percent of engineers are socially retarted and wrap all their self-value in the idea that they are the greatest programmer is true.
Anyhow, the Programmer's Guild, Washtech and CESO are three organizations interesting to look at. IEEE-USA tried to lower the H1-B cap but their corporate funders squashed that. I hope my fellow engineers will look at my web page - http://www.geocities.com/oncallguild and begin educating themselves, and then joining engineer organizations which are fighting the ITAA's attacks on engineers livelihoods, which unfortunately, too few engineers know about, mostly because there are few engineering organizations, and the few that exist are mostly financed by the corporations how employ them, and thus like the IEEE flap over H1-Bs, ultimately answer to them
H1bs can qualify for social security.
H1-Bs are "guest workers". This is an alien
concept to America. American public opinion
is massively *against* the H1-B program. The super-wealthy in this country have decided that
they are going to create multiple classes of workers: "guest workers" and "citizens". They singled out programmers for the "guest worker" program to hurt the wages of middle class Americans. Programmers were making too much money and acting independently: "unmutual" behavior in they eyes of the monied elite who run this country.
Most folks have nothing against H1-Bs personally,
it's just that there should be a lower number of them. Jobs should go to young college graduates and older workers should be retrained. We didn't need "guest workers" in the dot com boom and we don't need now that we have a tech bust. There should be some immigration but not employment based and it should be severly limited. This is acutally a pro-immigrant policy since it would benefit immigrants already here.
It's not good.
Let's just say it's a 'baby' picture.
I've seen worse, though.
1) Why tax capital gains lower than dividends or
labor gains? The over-investment in NASDA
stocks to get quick lower taxed cap gains is
a huge reason for this current fiasco.
2) Why single out programmers for "guest worker"
competition? Shouldn't immigrants be given
full rights?
3) Roosevelt was not a fascist.
This assumes a rudimentary ability to think about "what management would like to see." Shockingly, there are people who don't have this ability at all. A second consideration is that the test may have included a "lie scale" - some response could be considered "too good to be true".
My opinion on this: they are burning bridges... say you apply to slashdot.org and they never even say thanks for the resume... then later you are looking to advertise on technical web sites in your next job... I make sure to avoid rude companies like that.
I actually was able to use that once a couple jobs ago... I applied at a hardware reseller and never got a call or a postcard, then 2 jobs later we were looking to buy about US$300,000 of printers... guess who we never called for a bid?
YES, there is a McDonald's in Hanoi Square.
(* Would you rather have the H1Bs working in the US economy and paying US taxes and spending money on goods and services in the US, or back in India/Russia pitching wholesale offshore outsourcing to Corporate America? *)
It is not quite that simple. PHB's are more comfortable seeing and managing butts-in-chairs. The type of jobs that are outsource-able overseas are often not quite the same as those that go to a physical person. It takes more effort to communicate with somebody you don't see face-to-face, at least for many managers.
Table-ized A.I.
Agreed. This is news and a hot issue
in the programming world. Hundreds of thousands
of American workers replaced by "guest workers".
Taco, are you reading this? Wake up!
Yep, richest man in the world is the main man behind "indentured servitude". Harris Miller, hed of the ITAA, was hired because he created massive increases in "guest worker" migrant labor to America. That's right, the same guy who busted the poor immigrant United Farm Worker's Union was hired to fuck over American Middle class programmers. Write that sucker ...
ITAA Contacts
Harris Miller President 703-284-5340 hmiller@itaa.org
Jack Babbitt Dir., Finance 703-284-5319 jbabbitt@itaa.org
Kim Baker Workforce Dev. Prog. Mgr. 703-284-5314 kbaker@itaa.org
Kevin Bertram Mgr. New Media & Webmaster 703-284-5337 kbertram@itaa.org
Shannon Bickford Conf. Mgr. 703-284-5330 sbickford@itaa.org
Lauren Brownstein VP, Workforce Dev. 703-284-5318 lbrownstein@itaa.org
Amy Callahan V.P. Western Reg. 650-859-3469 acallahan@itaa.org
Joanna Cassarino Admin. Asst., Software Div. 703-284-5316 jcassarino@itaa.org
Carol Cayo Dir., Gov't Affairs 703-284-5352 ccayo@itaa.org
Bob Cohen VP, Communications 703-284-5333 bcohen@itaa.org
Kelly Cutler Manager Conferences 703-284-5341 kcutler@itaa.org
Jon Englund VP, Software Division 703-284-5301 jenglund@itaa.org
Martin Ennis Director, MIS 703-284-5346 mennis@itaa.org
Tonya L. Fresch SI Division, Administrative Assistant 703-284-5306 tfresch@itaa.org
Paul Green VP, Marketing 703-284-5307 pgreen@itaa.org
Olga Grkavac Sr. VP, SI Division 703-284-5311 ogrkavac@itaa.org
Heidi Hooper Director, Year 2000 Program 703-284-5312 hhooper@itaa.org
Eerik Kreek ITAA*2000 Certification Program 703-284-5326 ekreek@itaa.org
Susan Marshall V.P. ITS Division 703-284-5353 smarshall@itaa.org
Anne Marie Munson Executive Asst. 703-284-5338 ammunson@itaa.org
Sheila O'Neill VP, Global Affairs 703-284-5329 soneill@itaa.org
Marc Pearl VP, Gov't Affairs 703-284-5331 mpearl@itaa.org
Lisa Wallenda Picard Gov't Affairs Manager 703-284-5330 lpicard@itaa.org
Sam Reed Sales Mgr. 703-284-5320 sreed@itaa.org
Kevin Roth Prog. Mgr., SI Div. 703-284-5324 kroth@itaa.org
Douglas Sabo Prog. Mgr., Software Div. 703-284-5325 dsabo@itaa.org
Linda Schnell Conference Manager 703-284-5322 lschnell@itaa.org
Peter Smith Dir. Elec. Comm. 703-284-5317 psmith@itaa.org
Susan Spoto Prog. Mgr., ITS Division 703-284-5308 sspoto@itaa.org
Mark Uncapher VP, ISEC Division 703-284-5344 muncapher@itaa.org
On the other hand, maybe we are just doing what we have always done, leveraging standard software (e.g. compilers and OSes) so we can concentrate on higher level functionality?
Comments?
A thirsty man at an aquifer
You make it sound like rental pricing is actually bearable in the Bay Area. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead of being on the outer rim of the Seventh Layer of Hell, rents have fallen back to the the middle of the rim of the Seventh Layer of Hell.
And I'm not sure if I would want to actually see the location of a place you could rent in the city for under a thousand per month.
And housing for under $350,000? Again, where? Seriously, I want to know.
Abraham, Hatch Create Bill For More Foreign Workers
Newsbytes
February 10, 2000
Flanked by a platoon of their Senate colleagues, Sens. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, and Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., today officially announced legislation (S.2045) that would significantly increase the number of visas available for foreign-born skilled workers.
The legislation - which in addition to nearly doubling the existing cap on H-1B visas, identifies new funding to train US-born workers for high-tech jobs - "seeks to address both the short and long-term needs" of the US high tech industry, Hatch said today.
The high-tech industry, which is suffering from a serious workforce shortage and has long clamored for an increase in the H-1B cap, was quick to applaud the Hatch-Abraham proposal.
"Increasing the availability of highly skilled workers to American technology firms is one of the most positive steps Congress can take this year toward continuing the robust growth of the New Economy," Information Technology Association of America President Harris Miller said in a release shortly following the Hatch-Abraham press conference.
The American Electronics Association had similar praise for the legislation, calling it "clear sighted action" to address the workforce shortage, in a statement today.
Specifically, the bill raises from 115,000 to 195,000 the cap on H-1B visas in 2000. The legislation includes larger annual increases in 2001 and 2002.
The bill also calls for a $500 application fee per H-1B visa, directing that money to fund training and scholarship programs geared toward allowing US workers and students to obtain high-tech educations.
While the bill would mandate a substantial increase in the availability of H- 1B visas, it does not go as far as legislation proposed last year by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., which would eliminate the caps entirely.
Such a proposal is infeasible, say supporters of the Hatch-Abraham legislation.
"I agree with Senator McCain absolutely that in an ideal world there should be no caps," Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, said at today's press conference. But such a proposal would probably face insurmountable opposition from immigration opponents and organized labor, Bennett said.
"The bill we are supporting here can (garner) bipartisan support," he said.
In addition to lifting the cap, the Hatch-Abraham legislation would exempt H-1B visas granted to the employees of universities and research facilities from counting toward the 195,000-visa limit. Visas granted to recent PhD graduates from US colleges would also be exempted from counting toward the cap.
The legislation also would direct the National Science Foundation to study the so-called "digital divide" between information haves and have-nots.
The legislation already has more than 20 Senatorial co-sponsors including Democrats Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida.
Seastead this.
I'd be willing to bet that Taco is, in effect, bound and gagged when it comes to the H-1B issue. It is no surprise that this is too hot for Slashdot. Taco sold out a while ago. The money was spent to purchase Slashdot for a reason. This issue is exposing why that money was spent and the sorts of things bought.
Seastead this.
Your post reminded me of the fact that all workers for a company should start reading the balance sheet. Future problems start to announce themselves their.
A usefull tool is industry directories. Most come on CD-ROM and are usually free. Know were a company is. What they make. Number of employees and other stats. Subscribing to newsletters and other lititure. Try at least to be in touch with what's happenning in your chosen field even if you can't be a player.
No way, I don't think Java was out in 1992. I think it was called Oak and was out in around 95/96 maybe. I could be wrong.
American's should learn a lesson from what is happening now. Save your money. Don't spend all of your paycheck on useless toys like a playstation 2.
Here's the delima though, alot of jobs depends on you spending money for that playstation 2. So if we save our money we are hurting the economy. What????? Yep this is true. Don't buy that $350,000 house and you are hurting the economy. Spending is good. I don't see how this fly's. Our whole economy is based on stupidity. Boy Enron was sure playing the game good. They were deffinately spending and helping the economy.
So what do you think... I welcome comments to does that will see this........ Chances are nobody is going to read this so what the heck.
L8r
Thats what I did at Origin...most of the coders there couldn't even update their anti-virus software on a windows machine. It was sickening.
I like your suggestion and a great many places offer summer internships for grad students. Take a look at IBM's job postings on Brassring.com sometime.
IT is so fundamental to the way companies operate these days
This statement caught my eye. Today I was reading the paper (up north in frozen Canuckia), and it reported a recent survey that touches on this. See what you think.
The survey reported that over half of major companies (as in, big players in the Canadian stock markets... I'm not an economist, so I sure don't know the proper terms) have no plan in place to handle data loss/crashing/etc. 36% of surveyed companies admitted that all internal operations would cease within 24 hours of system loss.
There was more, but I won't get into it. I guess my point is, eventually some huge company is going to lose millions from data loss, and that could spark new hiring in IT. Makes me glad to suffer through my gawddawful AS/400 classes here in college if it means making big bucks as a sysopr (or even better, secadm).
I work in the IT Dept for a local govt agency.
The pay is slightly below the mean for this market and my skills, 5 yrs exp., A+, Linux+, MCSE.
Private sector guys are always whizzing by me in their new SUVs while I hum along in my Saturn.
There is disdain in this town (Charlotte,NC) for anyone making less than 100k or anyone whose car is more than two years old or gets more than 10 mpg.
Now, the hotshots are stay at home Dads while I'm still employed and quite secure.
So, which is better? 90k per year then a layoff? Or, 60k per year but a stable job with low stress, and home by 4:30 every day?
You make it sound like rental pricing is actually bearable in the Bay Area. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead of being on the outer rim of the Seventh Layer of Hell, rents have fallen back to the the middle of the rim of the Seventh Layer of Hell.
I was merely pointing out the direction of the trend, not its magnitude. I agree the Bay Area and particularly San Francisco are still amongst the most expensive places on earth to live. Its just not quite as extreme as it was. Prices are noticeably down.
And I'm not sure if I would want to actually see the location of a place you could rent in the city for under a thousand per month.
Agreed, you'd have to look around the Mission or (shudder) out west in the Sunset, land of eternal fog. Friends of mine just rented a large 2 bedroom house with parking a couple of blocks from the ocean and just off the N Judah for under $1400 a month. One bedroom apartments can be had for under a grand in safe, decent but unexciting neighborhoods.
And housing for under $350,000? Again, where? Seriously, I want to know.
SOMA. Really. All those "live/work" lofts that were fetching way above half a million last year are now sitting empty. I'm seeing a lot of them advertised around the $350,000 mark. Look on Potrero Hill, particularly the east side - a lot of new development there that just can't be sold, so is going at (relatively for SF) firesale prices. Look out on the west side of the City, the Richmond, the Sunset, there are bargains to be had. Even neighborhoods like Glen Park are getting cheaper.Of course you won't find a luxurious 3 bedroom apartment with views on Telegraph Hill, but if you are prepared to compromise you'll find good housing in decent places for much less than I paid for my house 18 months ago (sob :-)
Sailing over the event horizon
Mises Institute
The Austrians lay the blame for our problems on too much easy credit.
On the other hand, Gamecube is not that expensive as long as you keep your spending within your budget.
Non-IT companies are not as glamorous, but the real issue is that they're a great place to commit career suicide. I had an outfit that for $50K a year wanted me to be a one-man IT department for 70 employees and seven geographic locations, stripped of management title and authority, spending most of my time telling people to either hit Enter or stop drawing on their keyboards. They had no growth, no interest in growth, no training for their employees, no interest in training, and most to the point, no interest in assisting in training for me so that I wouldn't degenerate from a network monkey into a DOS monkey (yes they were still using MS-DOS).
I'm not saying all non-IT outfits are like this, but there are a *lot* that are. You get no respect, no appreciation, and basically you're an afterthought that only comes to mind when 'the computer broke' (your fault, because you understand computers). Even if the pay is OK you eventually wind up demoralized-- and if you've followed their tune, in a career dead-end.
So those are some of the reasons why staying in IT looks good to most in the field. At least if your company is in the industry, they understand that you don't tell a skilled employee he's "the computer person" and pay and treat him like the building's electronic janitor.
Pardon me,
but I got told tons of times (by developers) that we SysAdmins aren't needed at all, after all: it is okay that their compile process (on a production system) is taking up all the CPU and memory, after all, THEY are the developer *I* am only a SysAdmin who doesn't let them do their work.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
What are you talking about?! We dumped our H1Bs ASAP.
It was awful. We might as well have deported them.
Please don't say "Western Society" when you mean "American Society".
I found it really bizarre when I moved to the USA and discovered that everyone was obsessed with knowing what my job is. Nobody in the UK gives a crap; I certainly wasn't held in higher esteem for being a software engineer.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I wouldn't consider Britan to be 'western society' so much as 'British society.' But that's just me. Sorry for the confusion.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Dittos on the whole government contractor vs. private shop thing. If you're disciplined, you can exist peacefully and get a nice paycheck workin for the Man. You just have to be able to work with a wider variety of people...people who don't necessarily have every episode of Trek or Babylon 5 memorized.
BTW, can anybody out there comment on PBX tech work now? Anybody out on the field in a truck, punching stuff down that was doing a higher-level job last year?
We got some
With an engineering degree (from Sydney Uni), Computer Science studies to BSc level and 15 years experience in IT in Australia and the UK I went out as a contract NT systems administrator in 1995. Did pretty well out of it as well and got myself MCSE + I by self-study on the way through. Had a great reputation with both clients and contracting firms.
;-)). How do you get a security clearance? As a contractor you can't; the process takes 6 months, under current "user pays" guidelines it costs $10k and so no matter how good you are the agency won't foot the bill! And no, you can't be entrepeneural and pay for your own clearance up-front; the application has to be connected to a specific position. The only way to get into this closed shop is to get a permanent job where your clearance will be given to you and then later go out contracting :-(
Come the year 2000, and the phone calls dropped away... I used to get 2-3 a week, then suddenly almost nothing. Each contract became harder to get, and for the first time there were gaps between contracts. My second-last contract was terminated a *week* early after I'd been virtually promised a three month extension when the startup I was working for (the now-defunct Asia Online) hit a cash crunch. The last straw was my last contract: the arseholes I was working for sacked me six weeks early while I was interstate and to justify it submitted to my contracting firm an "evaluation" that a lawyer friend of mine advised me was actionable.
After two months out of work, and only one nibble at a contract, I bit the bullet and went permanent. I'm now at a local university, earning about 40% less than I was than I was as a contractor but having a ball and picking up some great skills (notably picking up Unix again). At the very least I'll be prepared when the market picks up again (based on the 1989-'92 IT recession, I reckon in c. three years time).
If I'd sat around looking for contracts I'd still be unemployed. With a squeeze on and IT outsourcing in much of government as in Sydney all that people want is a cheap MCSE; they are not prepared to pay extra for people with experience.
Morals:
1. there are good times and bad times; the good times don't last forever.
2. don't go mad on financial committments (eg leasing flash cars) when the good times are on; live modestly and build up a nest egg instead and ensure that your lifestyle can be maintained on a lower salary and/or a prolonged period of unemployment if need be
3. be flexible; remember by its very nature contract work will be more available when the IT job market is tight. At the moment it isn't and won't be for some years.
4. your skills are everything; in this situation if you have the option of a much lower-paying job that allows you to build skills do so. If you are unemployed, perform voluntary IT work to keep you hand in; it also looks good on a resume.
5. Avoid the siren call to go into management; as people in that article have found out, managers are always replaceable. Good technicians with up-to-date skills much less so, even though they may earn less and gain less kudos. Better to stay a good technician than become an average (and hence disposable) manager.
6. Remember also that bad times don't last forever; unless you are a born entrepeneur, this is a time to hunker down and ride out the storm so you'll be ready to take up the opportunities that open up when the market recovers in a few years' time.
PS: one peculiarity of the Canberra market is that there is a whole separate IT contract market for contractors with a current Defence security clearance. That's still quite buoyant (for seeing who to bug next
Dead right...
;-) Revenge will be sweet [evil chuckle...].
Here in Canberra there are mission critical, nationwide NT/W2K government systems that are being run by outsourcing companies who hire graduate MCSEs at minimal cost and work them into the ground. From what I've heard of departments where this has happened, *real-world* knowledge is negligible; they know how to keep the system running if there's no changes but God help anyone if a major upgrade is needed or the system goes wildly wrong (as NT/W2K is wont to do...). They're living on borrowed time.
I'm looking forward to a couple of years time when these systems come crashing down around their ears and I'll be able to name my price to clean the mess up
MCSE [Microsoft Certified Solitaire Expert/Must Consult Somebody Else] may be (rightly) seen as a joke by itself, but it has become a necessary minimum in (too) many fields.
No MCSE? Don't even bother applying in some cases. In these times it's a means of doing a first cut of lots of applications for an IT job.
"The German way of thinking." Hmmm...would that include staying the hell out of Switzerland???
We got some