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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?"
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Yeah - looking at Computing, they've got 8 pages of job advertisments. This time last year, it was ten times that.
I've got a feeling though that over the next six months, systems are going to start going wrong or need to be updated and a lot of companies will realise that they do need some people with some skill. IT is so fundamental to the way companies operate these days - it's not going to go away any time soon. There has, in the past, been a problem with IT being regarded as an end in itself - resulting in millions of $ being spent on systems which don't actually help companies very much. This will have to change.
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
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
"A year ago, Jose Carlos Cavazos was enthusiastic about his new career in telecommunications and his position with Nortel Networks. Now he's throwing mail on the night shift at a U.S. Postal Service distribution center for $13 an hour.
Geez, you only have to read the first line.
He was working in an unnamed position at Nortel. The article goes on to describe that he's got an engineering degree from Texas A&M (one of the best) and while he was operating with an MBA (probably because he wanted to move into management where more money was) he still has a tech background and is a direct victim of the tech slow-down. And in this case, since he was working for Nortel, it didn't matter if he was pushing a broom under their roof, it was a tech company he was released from.
Reading the following details, you will see that it's an artical that illustrates that it's the tech 'industry' that's failing, not merely tech 'jobs.' And again, these people still have 'tech' backgrounds. As managers and leaders, do you think the people under them kept their jobs or do you think they fired management and kept the underlings?
Peter Peets has a different take on layoffs. The Chapel Hill, N.C., resident took a job in December 2000 as product manager for software development in a regional office of Cisco Systems. He got laid off four months later in a downsizing that eliminated 8,500 Cisco positions, and he spent the summer fretting about his mortgage and how he'd fund the college education of his three children.
Again, a person showing technical ability but happens to have been in a managerial position... why? Because most people (not you) realize that when management gets the axe, the people under them have already gotten it.
It's not misleading, you're misreading.
I suspect you're quite comfortable in your position..? Don't fool yourself into thinking they axe management and marketting before they lay off the "line workers." It's the "workers" who get axed first. They show management getting it because it's more dramatic though they ASSume the reader understands that in some of these cases, hundreds and thousands of people below them got the axe first.
How did that happen? $401k in 8 months? Am I missing something here?
I'm assuming that you're not American, a 401(K) is the mechanism used to save for retirement. In UK terms, it's a bit like a private pension, but it's also like an ISA, because you get to choose directly what goes into it. But it's not like an ISA because there is no maximum limit.
You can access the money in your 401(K) for a number of things, off the top of my head, education and buying a house, and I guess unemployment too.
Read this article about the sort of folks more likely to be laid off. Here's its headline:
And so it goes.