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dot.com Bust Gotcha Down? Try the Gubmint!
dsoltesz writes "This coming week is the Government's first Virtual IT Job Fair. A number of agencies are participating, including NASA, the Smithsonian, and the National Gallery of Art. While government jobs aren't exactly the highest paying in the nation, IT positions do rate in a special pay category (see tables 999A-F depending on where you want to work). The online job fair lasts from April 22 to 26, and hopes to fill 230 positions. Here's a quick list of IT Series 2210 specialties, or if you want a little light reading, try the 155 page, 1.7 MB detailed spec."
No offense, but since when does a posting for 200-odd IT jobs qualify as a decent news item? Heck, most state govt's are looking for IT people every day.
What's next, McDonalds on 4th St needs 3 new fry cooks?
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Most (ca 95%) of the government tech jobs open are in defense-related areas and with the DoD being the biggest poster of jobs. If you are out in the boondocks (more than 100 miles from DC) with no big military base around, not much chance of a good local job with the feds for you.
Note that this job fair is for applicants around DC or for applicants who figure that they can relocate anywhere and often.
The Bush Administration is also trying to cut government employment by using a process called "competitive sourcing", because it is a good way of replacing unionized federal employees with non-union private sector wage earners. (Union employees seem to vote Democratic all the time, you know.) Competitive sourcing goes back over 40 years, but it is now being cranked up more aggressively. Competitive sourcing means that government employees have to write up their own jobs as if they were up for bids, because they are, and then bid on them in competition with private contractors. About half the time the private contractors win and the government employees lose their jobs or get offered a new job at a different "location nationwide". Currently, the entire Interior Department is scheduled to go through competive sourcing procedures over the next two years, so not all federal government jobs come with the job security that many people associate with joining a bureaucracy.
In addition, the old "double dip" benefits to those who spent part of their career in the government and part in private industry (being covered by and getting separate pensions from both Civil Service retirement and Social Security) have been eliminated by coordinating the benefits from the two plans. You might know some retirees who are very happily receiving the double dip, but it doesn't happen anymore.
You think government jobs aren't satisfying? Ask the guys who put men on the Moon and the rover on Mars. Ask the guys who designed some of the first software for processing satellite, spacecraft, and sonar imagery. Ask the guys who get to work in interesting environments with interesting people, like the guys managing electical and computer systems on ships involved in ocean exploration or on mountain tops and volcanos collecting climatological and earth processes data. Ask the guys working in the EPA, Forest Service, Park Service, and USGS who are part of protecting and maintaining the country's natural resources and natural beauty. There's a lot more to the government than just taxes, censuses, and human resources.
The national unemployment rate is still under 6%
I don't buy it for a second.
the tech sector unemployment rate is lower still
That goes against every single item of information I have heard, seen or read in 18 months. The tech sector is at ZERO opportunity right now. There are people with THOUSANDS of resumes out that have gotten nothing.
Stop expecting jobs to be handed to you simply because you are qualified.
Was that supposed to make sense? I must have missed it. What else am I supposed to be except qualified? Or did that question just define everything that's wrong with business today?
What part of "Should they need you they will hire you" did you not understand?
"They will hire you." Because it's not true. They WON'T.
that you are only taking this job to pay the bills and absolutely WILL jump ship when times get better.
Oh, so the employee has to be true blue but the employer can throw 5000 people out in the street whenever they feel like it. Sounds great.
Business are only in it to make money, right? Well, GUESS WHAT?? EMPLOYEES are in it to PAY THE BILLS.
just take a look over in Europe
No. That's not what I said. Nice red herring. I said RESPONSIBILITY. Companies should not pull the rug out from under a man providing for a family who is doing a good job. It's wrong, and they know it, but they do it anyway (by the hundreds of thousands), and then hide behind "we're just in it to make money" when someone calls them on it.
Either change your tactice, or change your profession/field/industry, whatever.
Yeah. Throw eight years into the trash and start over in an entry-level job and try to retire on time. Sure. Uh huh.
when you get lucky once again this time
People shouldn't have to "get lucky" in order to feed themselves.
I am betting that at one time you had a nice phat paying techie job yet handled the money in perhaps not the most responsible mannner.
...and you'd lose. Management handled the jobs in not the most responsible manner, and I wasn't the only one affected. I watched a man kneel down and wipe tears away from his four-year-old daughters face in the parking lot as she asked "are you sad, Daddy?" I can tell you that I thought some very ugly things about the person who fired him (and me, and two dozen other people) that day. 10 days later, they were advertising to fill our positions again, through an agency.
I haven't purchased a single luxury item in 15 years. I was making a few bucks here and there, and could barely afford about 3/4 of the basics.
I think it's time to stop stereotyping and start realizing there are some major problems here. There should never be this many highly educated and qualified people unemployed. Period.
One thing that I do not understand is -
Why _searching_ for a job while there are LOTS OF CHANCES that you can create YOUR OWN JOB ?
I mean, the slashdotters who are "unemployed" due to the "dot_com_bust" are people who have the SKILLS 99.999% of the human race don't have - in other words, they are TECHIES, right ?
Now, why waiting for someone to employ you, or even searching for a job, while THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS you can do now !
For instance - CREATING YOUR OWN JOB !
Please do not try to think like the rest of the human population - you are NOT those run-of-the-mill, garden-variety type - you are the one who possess the SKILLS to create.
Why don't you utilize your skill to CREATE your own job ?
If you are skilled in doing 3d animation, for example, instead of waiting for the movie industry or whoever to employ you as their animator, you can START creating VIBRANT ANIMATION, in EXCITING SEQUENCES, share the thing with the world, and you will see people flock to what you have to offer, and they WILL offer you lots of options - including, but not limited to, STARTING YOUR OWN ANIMATION FACTORY !
The above is just an example.
I am speaking from experience here. I'm in the field - the tech field - since early '80s. First I was involved with programming - it was hot then - and when uni started to churn out millions of programming wannabes, I branch into graphics, and when there's too much competitions, I then went into dot-com, and when that's busted, I went into consultation, and so on and so forth.
Don't just wait for others to employ you. EMPLOY YOUR OWN SKILL and CREATE YOUR OWN CAREER !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Like your degree or experience entitles you to live a life of luxury.
No. But my degree AND experience entitles me to a fair evaluation for a job.
Businesses have a responsibility to hold up their end of the social contract.
Right now there are millions of kids in school who are being told "get good grades, work hard, get an education and when you graduate you'll get a good job." I know that because it's what *I* was told.
It is a lie.
Good jobs mean people are productive and happy.
Real good jobs become CAREERS.
They can put down roots in a community, send their kids to school, pay taxes and build a home. They have something they can DEPEND ON.
Many people together doing this creates neighborhoods where kids develop friendships with other kids, community programs start, and people work together to build a nice life for themselves and their neighbors.
Sounds great, right? I haven't seen a community like this since the early 1980s, over 20 years ago. The only communities like this today are extremely affluent ones where the residents are almost never affected by mass random layoffs.
Take that same community about two years in and lay off 20% of the people. Homes are sold. Friendships lost. The neighborhood is diminished. People move away, or lose their homes completely. Those who remain fear for their jobs.
New people move in. Then the second wave hits. 30% this time. Half the neighborhood is gone. Everyone is confused. Nobody knows anyone. People work harder, and longer hours, thinking they might be next. The kids don't get to spend much time with their parents any more. People become gloomy and depressed. Community events are cancelled for non-participation. People spend a lot of time at home. People complain of fatigue.
More new people move in. Half the first group has already moved away because they couldn't find work. 10% more are laid off. Wages are cut elsewhere. People start to complain. Businesses fail because people either have no money or won't spend it. More people leave. Pretty soon you have an entire group of houses (no longer a neighborhood) where nobody knows anyone else. Kids aren't allowed outside any more. The neighborhood has died.
Everywhere I've lived since 1987 has been this way. That's what's wrong, and it is 100% the fault of businesses that don't keep up their end of the bargain. People have no incentive to do right if they cannot depend on the rewards.
Pretty soon, people will realize that nothing they do matters, and stop trying. Then we are really going to have problems. Banks, for example, will soon realize that having a job is no guarantee that someone can pay a mortgage. (This is already a fact, but banks, like all corporate businesses, are sometimes a little slow)
All a person has is their education and experience, and businesses have made both worthless. It took the hundreds of businesses I applied to only a few months to make my eight years experience utterly worthless.
"Put your education last and lie about your experience" is the accepted way to get hired now. Matter of fact, it is not much of a stretch to say it is the only way to get hired in a lot of cases.
Well, hired until management decides to lay off another 4000.
Reading some of these posts is depressing. I'm currently finishing up my M.S. in Computer Science. I've got an Electrical Engineering degree and 2 years of work experience for a Fortune 50 company. Is it that bad out there? Are there people educated similarly to me who can't find a job? And to think I left a great job to go back to school....I'm starting to regret that decision after reading these posts! Someone tell me it isn't true!!