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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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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!
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
THANK YOU!
same here... unless you are guru level unix/linux. but the problem is that I made a very bad career move in 98 - managment. worst mistake ever!
I had teams of people that were all guru's in their own right - and still are - that worked in my departments (linuxcare founders among others) - and i was the mis/it mgr... and I was good at it. very good... but I had to spend way too much time managing - and all the good work went to the people on the team. (as it should) but in this market I cannot find a thing... and the longer you are out of a job - the less likely the companies are to hire you, as they see the gap in work a very bad thing (tm).
problem is that most of the people doing the hiring are clueless and scared.
too much more can be said on this issue...
.
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.
Its is bad - gone are the days of peeps who knew HTML+JavaScript making 100k on contract - hell these days even making 50k on contract is difficult given the amount of peeps on the market. And the permie jobs are few and far between and again there is one hell of a lot of competition. However it is possible to get a job still or contract - I'm just finding that I am having to weigh in with prices at the low end of the market and deliver a high end product/service on several small contracts rather than one big one.
;)
The real problem is that things are probably going to get worse rather than better - big companies are still shedding, the remaining dotcoms are running out of money, there are no really BIG ideas out there for companies to focus IT investment on - I dont see a REAL recovery until mid 2003 when Im hoping 3G will pull the market back up. *sigh* In the meantime at least I get to read a lot more than I used to
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?
Very true. There are three ways of getting a job - personal contracts, through an advertised position (direct or agency), or cold-calling. If you are looking for a job you must be doing all three, especially in the current employment climate. After you have a lead the next thing the prosepective employer sees is your CV. Most CVs suck really badly. You must (and this really cannot be overstated) get information on the first page of your CV that makes the reader interested in you. If you do not get this interest you will not get the job.
Common Mistake 1: Having a shopping list of abilities on the first page (e.g. Languages: A, B, C...).
They don't care that you know these languages - if they are needed for the job then you won't get the job without them, but don't use up prime CV real estate with a list. Instead, descibe what you have done with those languages and make sure the description brings out the abilities you are trying to sell - these abilities are things like problem solving, project management, tenacity, being methodical, broad range of exprience etc.
The first page of the CV should be a pen portrait of what you have done and why your skills are relevant to the company you are approaching. It must make them interested in you, or it'll go in the bin.
Common Mistake 2: Having one CV.
Your CVs job is to sell you and get you to the interview. When approaching a company you should not be afraid of customising the CV to make make a better match between your skills and their requirements. For example, if you are proficient in both Java and Perl but the company your are sending the CV to is a Perl shop, then your all-important first page should be emphasising the Perl side of your skills.
Common Mistake 3: Lying.
Never lie. If you are caught in a lie (and it is quite likely you will be) then you will not be hired. This also includes the hobbies section - if you don't read books, don't say you do - an interviewer will ask and you will look shifty. He may not even realise that you were lying, but you won't feel quite right to him, and that's you canned before you start. Lying about technical abilities is even dumber - here they will know you are lying.
There are lots of other tricks you can do - for example research the company and find out who you'd be working for and contract them - don't contact HR. When you contact them, explain why you would be a good choice for them (briefly) in a cover letter and attach your CV. The CV (or at least the first page) should be printed on high quality thick paper for two reasons: it gives the first impression of quality and care before anyone has even read it; and it looks good even after being passed about a dozen people.
Happy hunting.
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!
One can also spend the free time to expand one's horizons.
:-)
It takes a huge psychological toll [...] Imagine making $100,000 a year and then foaming lattes for a living [...] they're taking jobs that aren't glamorous, but they've taken the first step.
To become who one is requires a lot of risk taking and looking at hard truths. A lot of dot-commers spent there time in pursuit of money; a lot of geeks in the pursuit of tech.
The slump is an opportunity to do other human things, for example, philosophy.
What is my role in society?
What can I hope for?
Who am I and what is my destiny?
Is it tech? Is it being rich? How can you be sure?
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
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 find this attitude interesting - if a company is in trouble it's usually because it has cashflow problems. The "techies" will refuse to accept that there are any problems with the product, and maybe there aren't. But the people who get money into the company are the salesmen and the people who work out what you can produce that the market would be willing to buy (and at what price) are in marketing. At the end of the day, 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.
You're in trouble if you are graduating soon. I won't bother trying to raise your spirits. We had an Engineering Career Fair here last week and it was truly pathetic. Few companies bothered showing up (though they registered months ago), and the ones that did were only hiring a few people (if any). And no, this isn't a small school out of the way--this is a Big Ten University, with good rankings in engineering.
So, if you are graduating soon, you should really try to find yourself in grad school. When all this blows over, you're going to be much better off coming out with your Master's (if not your PhD). In EE, a BS just may not be enough to get you doing whatever it is you want to do. Many big companies hire BSEEs just for marketing and uncreative tech work. If you want to actually design things or lead others, you need an MS--though an MBA works, too.
Just make sure that you get a support offer from a professor before you apply to a school. If you've already got a job, you are nearly guaranteed to get accepted (even with a low GPA, okay test scores, etc). The main limiter to how many grad students there can be in a given department is the funding. If funding has been found for you, you're golden.
Good luck, though, with all your studies. Also, if you're interested in the material aspects of EE, there will be more jobs for you as they are still in reasonably high demand. Same with the analog design jobs. And microwave design. If you can, transition yourself into these types of specialties. There aren't nearly enough people who can do well at it, and they aren't quite as sensitive as the IT, programming, or even digital logic careers.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
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.
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].
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.
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.
then they should return home to bring up the level of IT skill in their home nations
Believe me, that's your worst nightmare if you're worried about American jobs. 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? Rather than actively supporting the US economy and indirectly providing jobs for Americans, the result would be permanent destruction of American jobs.
I'm nearly 19, Have my MCSE, CCNA, Hell of a lot of experence
There are people who have more years of experience than you've been alive, and they are struggling to find jobs. Just trying to inject a little perspective.
This is so true. If your programmers are great but your salespeople have no good leads or management is more interested in promoting their own career than about where the company is heading, then the company will probably tank despite the great employees they may have.
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.
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.
I don't see how you could "lose" a wife and kid because of that. Did she move back in with her parents? And they won't let you stay there? That's really sad considering that there's people on welfare that manage to keep the family together... I'm sure there's some way you could work it out.
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!
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.
The H-1B program only requires that the visa holder be pay above the average wage for the kind of work they are doing. Check out the US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The first problem is that all computer programmers are lumped together by USDLS into a single "computer programmers" category. This fails to take into account highly specialized areas that employers are claiming that Americans do not have and that they need to hire H-1B workers for. Assuming they found such skills in a foreign worker, they only need to pay that worker the average salary measured over all computer programmer jobs. This loophole is one of the big flaws of the H-1B program ... you can hire someone who is trained in specialized area, and pay them as if they were not. Then on top of that, you can force them to work extra hours and on weekends because they can't go switch jobs to a decent employer, and always have the threat of being sent back home.
While the smaller businesses probably are paying decent to H-1B workers, and probably treating them more fairly, the big corporations do know how to work the system. This is where the wage problems are. While I don't believe the figure of 1/2 salary, I do believe 2/3 could very well be happening in many scenarios.
The smaller companies do genuinely hire for talent. The larger companies often hire for warm bodies ... cheaply.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Those of us who do professional C++ development in software houses in the UK are mostly on about that. What do you do that makes you worth more?
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.