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Dot ComBack, Or More Of The Same?
adamsmith_uk writes "The FT features Wall Street's renewed love affair with dotcom stocks on Monday with the latest in a $6bn string of acquisitions that has helped set light to the once-defunct online commerce sector. Could this be the signs of the tech ComBack ?" But hold onto your hopes; ekarjala writes "According to this CNet article, a recent survey by theInformation Technology Association of America indicates that IT hiring in the US is expected to remain flat or decline slightly over the course of 2003. The main drivers are lack of demand for IT products/services and outsourcing IT functions offshore."
Who fails to see how a buncha people buying/selling shares will determine if a company sells things or not?
Its not a comeback for some, just some more growth: Not all those DotComs were DotBombs. Look at Ebay, quite possibly one of the most successful internet businesses ever.
IT hiring in the US is expected to remain flat or decline slightly
Just because people are not being hired in the US does not neccesarily mean the industry itself is going downhill. I know the US is a large chunk, but the IT industry could stage a comeback in the rest of the world while staying flat in the US, couldn't it?
The dotbomb has detonated... RELOAD!
Nothing to see here; Move along.
I'm just about to graduate. This may have come at just the right time for me. I thought McDonalds might be looking at a new employee for a while! :)
Beer prize bungle is hard to swallow
Even if the economy starts growing faster, it'll still be a while before companies start hiring. That's usually the last thing that gets better after growth resumes. Even now there are signs that things are getting better, but there's still a hell of a lot of people without work. That sucks. I didn't work between August and December of 2001, and that was bad enough.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Seems that the money folks have forgotten that a CEO with no employees is as worthless as tits on a bull...
I think we should ship all our jobs overseas for cheaper costs. Then the companies can wonder why the fuck no one is buying thier products. It might be because we can't afford them.
Make up your mind people.
/. Nothing to see, move along :)
Just pointing out the humor of two (sorta) contridictory stories here on
OK it's a boring day
I wear pants.
...I've been looking for a summer job for a month and a half, and considering I almost have my Bachelor of Computer Science you'd think I could find something...hell no!
My only prospect told me they didn't have the money to take anyone on for the summer.
How the hell am I supposed to pay rent, let alone save enough for my outrageous tuition for next year if I have no options but flipping Big Macs??
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I am not trolling! honest!
-phaeton
Looks like someone's got their eyes on Slashdot.
Up 22% today...Hmmmm.
(Yes that's right, Slashdot's ticker symbol is LNUX)
I used to work for what could be termed a .com company that is listed on the NASDAQ.
.com boom are probably more likely to survive in the future as they have had to re-work their business plans and be more conservative about their growth prospects and, as such, not leading (misleading) the market makers into over-valuing their stock. This then generates these companies some respect and their stock rises.
:-)
I got made redundant with 2000 or so shares which I still happen to keep. Those shares have risen 80% or so since I left the company late last year.
I realise that I can't place my experience as the norm, but it is at least one example of a company recovering and nearly reaching profitability.
Overall, in my view, the companies that have thus far survived the crash of the
Go figure
It is not possible to send all jobs overseas. There are real limitations such as communications, schedules, culture, and language differences that serve to mitigate the cheapness of labor. Also, the more jobs that are sent to India, for example, the higher the price labor will demand there. There's not that many places in the world where you can find large supplies of high quality programmers, so once you exhaust a particular region, you have to move on. At some point every company is faced with the fact that they can get better programmers for a lower total cost right here at home.
It sucks to personally lose your job because it went overseas. But there's no reason to panic about all jobs moving overseas. It just can't happen.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Seriously, it's a matter of stocks getting back to realistic values. Investors are taking a look, and seeing a realistic chance for profit--so they're returning, albeit cautiously. Where there's money, the market will follow, eventually.
There's a new group of companies that are doing a lot of the same things as the original dotcoms did, they're just not hiring 100 people to implement online want ads or make an invitation web page. A small amount of individual angel investors are willing to sink a couple hundred grand into starting a small company now that you need something better than a business plan drawn on a napkin. Most are under 10 people and either profitable or have immediate revenue.
It's not like 1998-2001 showed that internet-based companies can't be successful, it just showed that you don't need to be a publicly traded company to sell mail-order dog food.
Wakuan complained when he saw a picture of bearded Bodhidharma, "Why hasn't that fellow a beard?"
can be found in my little rant in this thread right here.
Back in the day, before globalization, before the demise of family-wage jobs, before the unions were smashed flat there were other possibilities.
One of the purposes of tariffs and trade agreements, back in the day was to keep jobs from leaving the country.
But that day is past. The race to the bottom has been enshrined not merely as a matter of current policy but the cornerstone of international law (cf. GATT, NAFTA, WTO and so on). Here in the States most educated White men vote Republican. Most IT people educated White men. If we voted against our best interests we have nobody but ourselves to blame.
Early on we thought that we would be safe. Steel and textiles might go overseas, but not high-tech. Then semiconductors moved away. And consumer electronics. That's alright, we said, the engineering and design, the programming and the day-to-day business of managing information will stay here. They followed. Because jobs like those are even easier to move - you don't even have to absorb the fixed costs of a factory, just phone lines.
And the jobs that stayed? Wages are sinking there because we weren't politically active. We let the big employers pervert the H1-B visa program EXPLICITLY to cut our wages and job security.
The action by Sun employees to fight back against job destruction fell off the screen. Largely because we didn't keep attention on it.
So look for a recovery in the IT industry. But don't ever look for a recovery in salaries or security. At least not until people pull their heads out and undo the disastrous effects of the Reagan "revolution" and its sequels.
For a couple good if older references take a look at "America, What Went Wrong" and "America, Who Really Pays the Taxes".
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
The main drivers are lack of demand for IT products/services and outsourcing IT functions offshore.
You're forgetting a huge factor. Our President's economic policiy has completely and uterly failed to help anyone but the very rich.
I calculated my potential savings from his dividend tax cut. $60 last year. And I'm one of the few people I know who actually owns stock that pays dividends.
Half the people I know are unemployeed, I've been looking for work for 4 months (average time of unemployment around here is 8 months, with an unemployment rate of 10%), I'm in danger of losing my house, and this dumbfuck is telling me to enojoy a dividend tax cut.
Fuck you Bush, you're an asshole. Now that the war is over, people will stop supporting you with their 'rally to the flag' additude, and will start questioning your policies. You better be prepared.
What good things have you done for the country since you've been in office? I see nothing but a path of destruction and nepotism...
Lets just pretend that this dotcom come back is really happenning and there is no possibility that it won't.
Did the rookies and experienced dotcommers learn anything from their experiences or those of others; or, will they do the same thing - make a little money, think they're all that (no offense to all you failed dotcommers) and hire people to do things they could easily do themselves and buy a bunch of equipment they have no need for? Thus putting them into dept which they will never recover from and putting their dotcom on that big server in the sky.
A few years ago, pundits said anyone who didn't perceive the internet's magical power to mint money "just don't get the internet."
Shortly before the first dotcom boom went bust, I saw an enthusiastic stock analyst on one of the financial news shows. He defended his extravagant valuations of companies that had never made a profit and had never articulated when or how they intended to start making a profit. Profit and loss statements and P/E ratios were archaic and obsolete relics of the old economy, he said. "Now it's all about branding."
Who didn't get it?
It's likely that the bust left some tech stocks undervalued. There may be some bargains to be had. There are undoubtedly opportunities for real businesses that figure out that the interenet, like the telephone company, lets a company communicate with its customers. That doesn't change the fundamental fact that a company still needs to find some way to actually make money.
(Personally, I don't think we've let all the hot air out of the bubble yet. Time will tell.)
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
There isn't going to be a second boom like 1999. The collapse took out all the smaller weaker companies and we're pretty much left with the survivors: Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, heck toss Microsoft, AOL, Dell, Apple in there. Now it's just time for the big companies to pick and choose what stragglers that are still left treading water (which, implies they have something worth owning) and buy 'em. We're just going to see the bigger companies get bigger. Sometime in the next century there will be another speculative boom but I'll doubt it'll be web-based. Anybody pumping net stocks today probably lost a crap load the last time 'round and is bitterly trying to make up what they lost ... or they're just dumb.
For the folks who have already gotten the degree/student loans/pink slip, here is a rant I wrote about dealing with unemployment insurance in the US.
See what I've been reading.
Correct, the key is figuring out which jobs are going to stay here and which can be done elsewhere.
Political correctness is all well and good, but don't let it blind you to reality. I'm getting the bulk of my telemarketing calls from Newfoundland and India (try asking sometimes, before you hang up), and calls for support seem to be going out of country too. How much of the stuff you buy says Made In USA on it these days?
Of course the IT industry isn't immune. We ought to fix things by requiring companies who use foreign labor to pay equivalent U.S. for each overseas position into a fund used for improving living conditions in the countries these companies are abusing (or similar causes).
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
"These are jobs that should be available to citizens of the U.S."
Why?
The thing is, 'sending jobs overseas' is seen as negative. Why is that? Why shpould they be saved for US citizens?
If I fixed your job (and, if extended to everyone then everyone's job) for life, you would get no productivity increases. You would therefore get no pay rises. Where are the increases in revenue for your job if everyone is like you?
Research would achieve nothing, as if everyone is fixed, we'll never have anyone to increase productivity.
So... if you don't want jobs sourced overseas, then equally expect no change in job, no productivity increases, no economic growth.
Do not earn more than your father... be condemned to a life of what has been achieved before.
The shame is, economists post Ricardp have realised... IF YOU OUTSOURCE YOUR JOB TO SOMEONE WHO CAN DO IT CHEAPER (not only increasing their standard of living) YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ELSE EVEN MORE PRODUCTIVE (unless you are a leech upon your workforce and refuse to change). This ACCOMPANIED WITH DISCOVERY (research) results in ECONOMIC GROWTH.
Sorry for so many caps... just ppl either don't understand basic common sense or are so lazy they want to preverse their present position without thinking al all.
It depends on who you are and why you are doing this type of work. I like programming.. solving problems.. and implementing stuff.
I program at home as a hobby. Just got some more source to compile. Hit a milestone. I plan on going to work and programming some more. You mentioned you are 23 (IIRC). I'm a little older and started at an early age.
In all honesty, if you love to program, the only thing that will affect your opinion is where you work. Some people work in small companies. Some work in large. Some in large groups, some in small. Just gotta find where you fit.
-s
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
And economic growth, I should have added, means more income FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.
ITAA is to programmers as Tobacco Institute is to smokers. The ITAA has been lying to you about some mythical programmer shortage, while with their other hand paying off congress to bring in millions of H-1B's and L-1's. Their goal is to push the supply of IT workers through the roof, and we all know about supply and demand. In the process they lie like 10 rugs to naive college students. The multinationals just want indentured servants from the third world. See http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
Part of the web revolution was supposed to be low overhead. Guess what, low overhead also means less workers. There's simply no reason, when you're focused on-line, to hire a marketing guru, HR guru, caterer, DJ, masseuse and all that other useless crap the .coms got into. What's being found out is these days you have one guy doing five different jobs and he'll do it, because he's paranoid about getting laid off. Did you know all the cool logos that change every day at Google are done by one person? Back in the day, you would have hired an entire design department, each person earning 70K to do that. Seriously. Times have changed ... for the better, in some ways.
my father was an unemployed pipe fitter most of my childhood. he told me not to go into the trades, as the unions (here in the west anyway) are all getting railroaded by the politicians and the greedy ass developers and people are willing to pay an illegal $7.00 an hour for crappy but cheap labor versus paying an American a union wage. He told me to go to college.
I think that is good advice too. But, I'd add that to major in something industry specific is not a good idea. Major in something portable like business or marketing. If you're in Marketing you can switch industries without switching careers. Sure there are specifics to learn, but a marketer can go from selling Windows(tm) to selling windows.
Hell even help desk/IT/network administration is industry portable, as all modern industries use computers.
Software development/Hardware development on the other hand, all the CS/EE grads are screwed - unless they go into the defense industry. We don't like to outsource missile controls.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
After several months I actually recieved a response from one of the resumes I sent out. I was kind of excited. A real lead! The recruiter said everything looked good except for the year and a half gap in my employhment since my last job. She implied it might be a problem if I couldn't find something to put in there.
Anybody else get this? What are you supposed to say to a recruiter when they ask this?
It's funny how many people, who went to college in the hopes of getting a white collar job are now second guessing for whatever reason and thinking maybe they'd be better off being a carpenter or assembly line worker because of unions. Well ... those jobs aren't all that, either. They are murder on your body, working in dangerous areas, noisy areas, and there's just as much corruption and back stabbing and business politics crap as any other profession. The primary reason why people think these other jobs are better is because of the union.
What we really need, which I don't get why people can't put two and two together and see, is a freaking tech worker's union. But there are enough people still clinging to the options dream that this obvious solution will be really hard to advertise.
Here is the letter...
Dear Sir / Madam,
We are pleased to introduce ourselves as software-coders, consultants, programmers and allied services providers, based in India, providing software coding and development services. We already have clients in India, Germany, Switzerland, UK and the UAE to whom we provide the best quality at very low costs as outlined below.
SERVICESWe provide software services ranging from complete software development of a complete project to providing pure coding services based on a previously analysed and prepared structure. This thus includes the complete spectrum of software development, be it custom or Internet software development. The various software services that we provide are -
Custom Software Development, Internet / Intranet Software Development and Website Designing and Development Database Maintenance and Handling Testing (Manual) Documentation (Help, Tutorials and Manuals, Demos) Customer Support Services via E-mail and Customer Correspondence Management Representation in India for various purposesPRICING
Other Services:Software Coding and Development: We offer rates depending on the nature and complexity of the work, but to give an indication we have per man-hour rates varying from US $ 1 to US $ 18. For bulk assignments the rates are worked out accordingly. Generally speaking, the rate for pure coding job is less than a programming job.
This depends entirely on the requirements and services required.
LEAD AND DEVELOPMENT TIME
Other Services:Coding:
For pure coding assignment, when the program structure is clearly defined and outlined, the lead-time is about 7 days and after that a daily update can be sent.
The lead-time and development time depends on the labour involved and complexity of the software project.
TECHNICAL SKILLS AND KNOW-HOW
OS:Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ XP, RedHat Linux 6.2 and above .
Programming Languages:
Java, C/C++, SQL, Basic, Fox Pro, PL/SQL
Internet/Intranet Technologies:
TCP/IP, Servlets, Applets, Flash, Shockwave, ActiveX, COM/DCOM, SSL, CORBA
Java/J2EE Technologies:
Enterprise JavaBeans, JDBC, AWT, RMI, Servlets, JSP, Swing, JMS, Applets, JNDI, JNI, JavaMediaFramework, JavaSound, JComm, Image handling and processing, JavaMail, JAXP
Scripting Languages:
JSP, ASP, CFML, JavaScript, VBScript
Markup Languages:
HTML/DHTML, CSS, SSI, WAP/WML, XML/XSL/DTD
Application Servers:
BEA WebLogic, Macromedia ColdFusion, MS Internet Information Server, Apache Web Server, IBM Web-Sphere, JBoss, Macromedia JRun
Tools:
Application Development:
Visual Basic, VC++, GCC, Developer 2000, Delphi, Power Builder, MS VJ++ 6.0, Oracle JDeveloper , Borland J.Builder, Sun JDK 1.0.x - 1.4, VisualAge Java
Web Development:
Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw
DBMS and Database:
MS SQL Server, ORACLE 7.x-8.1.x, mySQL, Sybase, Informix, MS Access, ODBC, JDBC, PostgreSQL
GUI Systems:
Win32 API, MFC, AWT, JFC
Software Libraries:
MFC, ANSI C++ STL, ATL
We are sure that you would find these rates very competitive and our services up to the mark. However please let us know if you need any clarification.
Thanking you in anticipation,
Yours faithfully,
Navdesh
beta infosoft services, # 741, Nelson Square, Chhindwara Road, Nagpur , Maharashtra, India 440 013
Email: betainfosoft@sify.com
Everything can be done elsewhere. There is nothing special about where you live to make it possible to do something ONLY THERE. (Ok, there might be a few exceptions)
:) Wow I got offtopic there.
You have to figure which have a decent likelihood of being done elsewhere. Management tends to stay in one spot, since they don't like to vote themselves to having to relocate, and they wouldn't outsource themselves. Lower levels get moved to cut costs.
Especially if management sees you as a blue-collar worker, you're going to get moved. Unfortunately, programming is often seen by people who don't program as a rather easy process. Ideas go in, program comes out. The programmers are just more people on the assembly line. It's a different kind of factory, but still a factory in the eyes of the management. Factories are staffed by monkeys, monkeys can be hired for cheaper in other parts of the world. Therefore, outsource.
So yeah, the key is figuring out which jobs management thinks require intelligence and skills, and can't be done by just anyone. Programming isn't one of those.
I blame the # of people who tried to prove them right by rushing to get a degree in some computers/tech field and polluting the job pool. If your answer for "Why did you get a degree in X" is "For the money", I hate you. I program because that's what I like doing. I don't care about the money, as long as it's enough to eat. Unfortunately people who got their CS degrees (or whatever your university called it) and might have maybe learned the mechanics of writing programs and how comptuers work, but not how to design programs that work well are the problem. Eventually they'll be fired as the incompetents they are, and the people who know their stuff will get hired/promoted.
At least, that's what I keep telling myself while looking for a job.
at least according to this Computerworld article, "Postwar Iraq seen as big potential tech market."
"Every business-minded person is looking at Iraq after the war because it is a very rich country," said Riad Safar... Iraq's market potential, as it moves to replace out-of-date business and health systems, is bigger than that of many of its neighbors, including Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Saudi Arabia....
The senior official at Kuwait-based systems integrator International Turnkey Systems, said in a telephone interview today that he thinks "it's going to be a huge market."
And that's just one of a number of articles I've read lately salivating over the prospects of Iraq as a market for American goods.
Maybe the broadband Internet will be up and running before the water is.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"How much of the stuff you buy says Made In USA on it these days?"
Yeah... I really want cheap plastic toys made in the US of A. Isn't the point of economic growth to mean the USA (and other 'rich' countires) make the complex expensive stuff, our workers are freed to make these 'value added' things by outsourcing cheap things to other countries.
I really don't mind call centres sourced from other countries... imagine if all Americans had to stitch your clothes instead of all those Mexicans!!!
Let me do a more valuable job.
The unemployed in the US are the lazy, stupid (neither which have any sympathy for) or unlukcky (who have fallen on har times and should be helped back on their feet).
Don't complain your server admin job has been sourced overseas. Accept lower pay or do something that takes some thinking.
Don't work for the bureaucratic mess that is government operations!
"It's Dot Com!"
I tried help desk, pc repair, copier repair, and merchandising.
I sucked at every one of these jobs except merchandising where I did ok.
I have a mild form of autism which makes my eye/hand cordination bad and social skills mediocre at best. Many geeks have this supprisingly and studies are underway to prove this.
Anyway for me this means the only skill I have is my brain. I am going back to school so I can have a job using it.
My point is your post is a great idea for those who are good with their hands or can talk really fast( sales ).
We all have strengths and weaknesess and with the combo of the
http://saveie6.com/
I remember back in the 80's every body who was working on the assembly lines making cars was freaking out because the jobs were moving to asia, namely, Japan. People thought the US would be owned by Japan in a decade.
I take two things from that experience. First, bitching about your job being lost to someone somewhere else for less is futile. It's gone, the company holds the keys to your job, not you. Corporate America cares only about profit and if you and your union job costs ten times what a worker in some third world country will charge; too bad for you. This will never change; politics is corrupt. Hate to break it to you but it's time to move onto a new line of work. So be flexible. Don't expect you'll have one career your whole life. Second, the mighty can and will fall and there is always something else that will rise to take the place of the old. Right now people are scared that India or China will become some economic powerhouse and rule the world ... like the Japanese were supposed to. Didn't happen. Some people are predicting the US economy will run out of steam like we were supposed to in the 80's, or end up like Japan today. I wouldn't bet on it. A turnaround will come from somewhere. Just be ready to work when it happens.
I'm a technically inclined dude with a relatively useless history BA. I've been contemplating going for a Master of Library Science, but with all the bullshit going on with the budget in my state, I'm losing some of the passion for it.
The Business IT track at my local Uni is looking a lot more fun at the moment. Since I've already got a liberal arts degree, I could probably get out with a Bachelors in about 2 1/2 years vs. 2 for the MLIS.
Am I completely stupid for wanting to get in to IT right now? I mean, nothing will preclude me from getting a MLIS in the future, but I'm not really keen on memorizing Dewey for the next two years.
hang brain.
But when I want my grass mowed, some guy in India ain't gonna be able to do that for me. :)
>>>
"These are jobs that should be available to citizens of the U.S."
>>
"Why?
The thing is, 'sending jobs overseas' is seen as negative. Why is that? Why shpould they be saved for US citizens?"
Umm...because we OWN this country and we, the people, having a govt for the people and by the people...etc etc...
If we want OUR GOVT to do whatever it can to make sure EVERY SINGLE JOB available in America is goes to an American, then we can do that. That is one of the benefits of being a citizen of a democracy.
And if we decide we want OUR govt to punish corporations that outsource jobs, then we can do so. You see, we OWN THIS COUNTRY. It belongs to AMerican citizens.
People, it is time we drive this fact home to people like the above, and like our elected officials. I say we try for economic treason some politicians who have facilitated outsourcing. And if they are found guilty, hang 'em.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Hey jack-ass. The people who are doing it for the money hate you too since you are trying to make programming seem as if there is something more to it than there is. Get off your high horse and relieze that programming ain't some type of artistic pursuit.
I certianly understand your position. I couldn't ask people like you to not program any more than I could ask an artist not to paint. If it's what you love doing then you're going to do it regardless of employment prospects.
My post was intended more for the people who got into the field for the money rather than for the love.. and I know that they're out there. A number of my friends who have tech degrees didn't know a thing about computers before hand.. they just knew that tech was (supposedly) where the money was, and jumped on board.
Oh. well.. um..
:)
[ insert long flame here insulting many parts of your anatomy ]
Damnit. I hate being in agreement
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
I'm a Gearcutter, which is more or less a very specialized branch of machining.
I'm sorry to hear about your condition.. and you're right, it sounds like you're physically not suited for trade work. A passable level of hand eye cordination is required.. for both precision requirements and safety reasons.
You have to remember, however, that the sterotypical "computer nerd" (physically weak, poor cordination, etc.) is no longer the average tech graduate. Since the mid 90's, more and more "average" people have been getting into tech. While, yes, for some tech graduates trade might physically not be an option, it still is for a large number of them.
Also, as mentioned in earlier threads on different stories, there are a few real profit-generating (though I think overvalued) companies (eBay & the like) that have a proven business model and have expressed stable, steady growth.
People will still be "eBaying", or something like it in 20 years.
People in 20 years will still go to the grocery store and not buy their groceries online. It's inefficient, and to me represents the sheer economic waste that went along with the dot.bomb.
And will anyone be paid $100/hour to make crappy webpages ever again? I don't think so.
This is the 'interview bible'. This book goes through every situation possible in an interview.
Dolemite
______________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Am I the only one who has developed some sort of Pavlovian reflex where I immediately despise any organization named "Blank Blank Association of America"?
I know, I know, (- a billion, Offtopic), blah, blah, blah...
sic transit gloria mundi
I worked as an Apprentice Electrician for Local # 6 IBEW, in San Francisco. One of the reasons that I left was that the bids for jobs were so ridiculously under bid to get the contracts. This meant that the companies had to make up the money in other ways.
The corners we were told to cut by the foremen in electrical construction ranged from minor (dont bother wrapping that outlet or wire nut with elec. tape) to major ("I know the inspector who will look at this...dont bother putting covers on those junction boxes or using conduit on those cables...he wont look at that).
I was always told be the older journeymen that San Francisco's union electricians were proud of their quality of work, but now times had changed.
So, I guess my meandering point here was to show that all types of industries are doing everything possible to scrimp and save money, no matter the cost, or who or what gets screwed.
As many out of work IT techs, I really loved my IT jobs...I felt that was / is my passion in life. So, I hope and wait that somehow, the industry will pick up.
The real power in the world pulls the strings of both democrats and republicans. So engaging in partisan arguments gets you nowhere. It only diverts your attention and efforts. Quit regurgitating the stale political slogans and have a look at the world around you. Republicans have sold you down the river, democrats have sold you down the river.
The two-party system is a sham by people who know enough about the system to play it like a tin whistle. Contribute several million to both parties and what does that reduce the two parties to? That's right, a one party system for those who can afford it.
This sham will continue so long as there are people like yourself who believe, and revel in the ficticious "debates" between left and right.
RANT
/RANT
Maybe this simply shows that having "MCSE" on your resume isn't exactly desireable.
Yes you are completely stupid for wanting to get into IT right now. If you would like to discuss it in detail go to Austin TX, downtown to any of the nicer resturants and order dinner. Ask your waiter what the IT job market is like and I bet you the price of your dinner and a nice bottle of wine that your waiter IS an out of work IT guy.
No shit.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Venture Capitalists aren't giving out chuncks of money to Business Models written on a proverbial napkin.
Dolemite
____________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Not those damned sock puppets again
Table-ized A.I.
Have any ever seen how many Class A's the DOD has. If you freed up like half of them we could go another decade with IPv4. :)
Go vist http://www.arin.net/ and check some Class A's the DOD has like over 18 that I counted.
Atto
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
In an industry where you find it neccessary to have a room full of people scanning medical documents into computers - yeah, outsource that to some other country. It's difficult or impossible to find that many Americans willing to work even minimum wage to do that day in and day out.
But what about the recent examples wherein a bank has an older system and a team of people who have been programming it for thirty years? They realize that soon these people are going to start to retire and want things like retirement and so forth, plus they want increasing pay scales as time goes on. Instead, fire them all (lay them off) and outsource to India. You pay the Indian workers less and you don't have to worry about retirement benefits for the tons of people you just fired. This is what people are afraid of.
Plus the modded-down poster said "jobs that should be available to citizens of the U.S." - probably what he really wants to mean is that there are a number of jobs right out of college that can either go to U.S. Citizens or foreigners needing things like sponsorship. It seems like a bad idea to some to sponsor foreigners when so many U.S. citizens are without jobs at the moment.
Schnapple
Oh, absolutely. I've been saying this for a while. Here in St. Louis, Missouri - you can find a pretty good-sized list of "I.T. job openings" in the Post Dispatch (or on their stltoday.com web site, if you prefer).
Many of these are from the same company (which I'll refrain from naming) that apparently has a policy of collecting up resumes into an H.R. database well in advance of actually having the advertised openings available. The listings aren't exactly "fake". They're simply for positions they could theoretically have open, if existing employees left.
It probably makes good business sense from their point of view. Why risk missing a superb candidate just because he/she didn't notice the want-ad when they ran it for a few weeks? Instead, get all those people into the database! Then, just search on what you've got when you need somebody, and give them a ring. In today's crappy economy, there's a pretty decent chance they'll still come in for an interview, even if you're calling them 8 or 9 months later than when they first responsed to your listing.
From the article, sixth paragraph:
LemonTree? That's classic. Maybe Diller will re-brand as MoneyTree ...
-- Dossy
Dossy's Blog
What we really need, which I don't get why people can't put two and two together and see, is a freaking tech worker's union.
Hell, if it gets strong enough to have any influence, I'll join. If I had money, I would join just to help start it.
While unions are annoying with their silly rules, unemployment is worse.
While I agree with the other post that marketing is a safer career, it is also something that many geeks don't like and don't have a nack for. We want to *build* things, not persuade stupid people to buy stupid things.
Table-ized A.I.
Let me do a more valuable job.
What is it that makes you such a valuable commodity? Be specific. You make some pretty bold claims with very little supporting information. I think you're living at home with mommy and daddy or relying on them to some extent. The way you talk is unusual from someone who has actually had to sink or swim on their own..
Put up or shut up.
The thing is, 'sending jobs overseas' is seen as negative. Why is that? Why shpould they be saved for US citizens?
The offshore programming scares me. Another entire segment of American middle class is being wiped out. I actually am in favor of globalizing the wealth, just not "Harmonizing Down!" the way we're doing it now. And the execs getting grotesquely richer. Ah well.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
All protectionist tariffs do is protect a certain segment of the economy (those who make things domestically that are imported and therefore tariffed) at the expense of those who buy them (by making those goods more costly in the market) and those who export goods (scarcity of your currency in foreign markets drives up the value of your currency in relation to other currencies, making export goods less attractive.).
We need a union, or your children are never going to work in IT if you live in the USA. First the production / assembly line jobs went, and now the skilled labor / tech jobs are going to go also. Soon, this will be a country of only owners and janitors. I would love to see a list of companies who outsource their IT jobs, I would boycott them in a second. Proudly.
What's even more ironic about this boom and kind of scarey to me is the same companies that are producing SPAM security/prevention software are also (a few) producing mass mailing software that tricks sendmail. SPAM advertisers are hiring lots of IT people right now, particularly in Texas, from what I can see on hotjobs.com
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Could it be that people simply make up stats to put in their articles? You be the judge.
Through the magic of Google, here is a definitive list of what ~65% of IT managers thought, through the ages (of the net that is):
65% of IT managers report that their websites were unavailable to customers over a 6-month period
65% of IT managers surveyed by InformationWeek Research say Windows 2000 won't reduce their number of system administrators or related costs a year from now.
65% of IT managers said it's very important for vendors to offer consistent PC configurations over the course of a multiphase PC rollout.
Over 65% of IT Managers and CIOs in Southern California expected their level of hiring to remain the same or even increase in the post-Y2K age
67% of IT managers have been contacted by headhunters in the last year
67% of IT managers would rather pretend to understand an acronym than admit they didn't know what it meant. [tlu - here's one that sounds low to me]
66% of IT Managers have experienced "complete project failure" [tlu - hopefully not in bed]
(66%) of IT managers said the best solution for preventing monopolies in IT is a combination of moderate government regulation and market forces
I can tell you that as a server admin it requires
a great deal of work and considerable thinking
skills.
Now for a MCSE job maybe not but you try interpreting a man page without thinking.
I manage >200 machines, write custom scripts
and programs in shell, perl, and Java and
maintain 99.9%+ uptime.
Sorry, but my job requires a brain, obviously
your post didn't.
> Those shares have risen 80% or so since I left the company late last year ... but it is at least one example of a company recovering and nearly reaching profitability.
Yep, sounds like history is repeating itself...
For fifty years Americans have been crying about jobs being lost for a variety of reasons. The two biggest culprits are technology and globalization. It hasn't killed the American economy as so many people claimed (and are still claiming) it would. Instead the American economy has only gotten stronger. It's called evolution. As less unskilled jobs are available, it forces people to obtain more education and higher skills. This is a good thing. Software has been just as responsible for this as South American farm workers, Chineese textile workers, or Indian programmers. Now we see some of the people who have benefitted from job evolution, software engineers, cry that they are being replaced by cheap labor in India. It's time for you to feel the flipside of evolution, adapt or die. Increase your skills, increase your education, whatever it takes. Adapt or die! As for the American economy... Just as there a billion people saying the sky was the limit back in 2000, there are now a billion people saying the economy will never recover, or its recovery will be diabolical in some respect. The fact is that the economy is very unpredictable. Nobody knows what the economy is going to do yet. Nobody knows what kind of technologies will be important in the future. All the "experts" do is either spew self-serving advice, or just try to apply some small subset of past historical data to the future. That is what produced the tech bubble.
--I'm not sure on ebays long term viability. As soon as the tagging and tracking and TAXING infrastructure is more in place, I think you will see a serious drop in ebaying. Most people like the "no tax, little or no records" idea behind ebay, plus the low overhead. Once that overhead becomes a normal pain in the tush like any brick and mortar shop, I think it will just be a few (relatively speaking) companies doing it. The US, contrary to popular shilled notion, is NOT friendly to small business, it's a regulatory and over taxed bureaucratic nightmare. Ebay has been a sweet dodge for some people, but the tax man is smelling blood in the water now.
I've been here for years, rockin' my peers!
The LemonTree deal is the biggest financial services website acquisition, apart from online stockbroking deals, since the height of the boom. Mr Diller said the deal was the beginning of a new era for the group, taking it beyond entertainment and travel retailing. "It is the next evolutionary step for us in being related more to consumers and what consumers do in terms of the acquisition of consumer services."
...
"We ought to fix things by requiring companies who use foreign labor to pay equivalent U.S. for each overseas position into a fund used for improving living conditions in the countries these companies are abusing"
Well, if we do that, then the US companies will go out of business as other countries' businesses will be operating at a much lower cost. You can't beat a free market. Just can't be done, and fighting with it will put your contry behind competing countries.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Just do what you like to do. If you like what you do then chances are you'll work to be better at it. Then happiness and hopefully earning a decent living will come. I think this is especially true in IT. If you don't enjoy constantly reading computer books in your spare time, you may be quickly left in the dust.
I started out in the tech sector. Unix helpdesk manager was my previous job. After the bubble burst and the WTC went down I quit the desk job and bummed around for a while until I became a bicycle messenger (that's a whole nother story).
Anyhow, because of my new job, I've met a lot of ex-Kozmo messengers (in Chicago). They talk about how great it was to get tipped (messengers generally don't) and how dangerous it was to ride at night (when everyone was at home ordering movies). They talk about the times they spent bumming around their base getting paid to do nothing and seeing the company buy progressively more and more shit that wasn't going anywhere. They saw management buy scooters that nobody used, hire extra messengers they didn't need, and all manner of completely idiot things that management types tend to do.
Coming from this all discussion betwixt the lower ranks is a simple conclusion: the people who started it had no idea what they were doing. It's not a matter of having a business plan drawing a napkin as you say; I mean Kozmo had marketers galore and real potential.
Too big, too fast. How did they grow so much without profit? Enormous Venture Capital flow. Sure, it seemed like a good idea, heck it was a good idea, but greed was the real impetus and thus its downfall.
My point is that Kozmo could have succeeded, like ebay, and radically transformed the world of home delivery options. Unlike ebay, it was grown way too fast because of investors looking for quick returns. And possibly CEO's and VP's wanting to make it to that IPO and cash out quick.
[pink beam of light]
When contemplating the worth of the name "Dot ComBack," I think it's important to remember this quote from bash.org.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
...will be when broadband wireless access is universal, very cheap (or free), and "always-on".
When your phone, PDA, notebook, computer, watch, gameboy, or whatever can instantly access the internet, anytime, anywhere, and at high-speed then the flood gates will open.
We're not there yet, but it's not far off.
The Information Technology Association of America. The same group that, in the midst of the dot-bomb bloodbath insisted that there was a shortage in available IT labor and lobied for raising caps in H-1B visa allowances. The same group maintaining that there is a current 500,000 worker shortage and expected to champion maintaining the current temporarily increased H-1B visa cap.
I love trolls. *smooch*
Who said it was art? I said it requires some specific skills and ambition, that are hard/impossible to teach. Anyone can learn to write programs. Learning to write programs WELL requires the desire to do so, and probably a specific personality (mildly autistic/majorly masochistic) type and brain patterns as well. (Though the brain-pattern argument depends on the type of program. Obviously people tending more towards artistic stuff aren't going to be working on a pure number cruncher, that's for the mathematically inclined. But if they understand the system well enough, they might make good program designers -- people to plan the overall structure, and supervise.. to make the overall picture look good, while the mathematically inclined lead to 'beautiful' algorithms, etc.)
But above all else, to do well at something you have to WANT to do it. Doing it just for the money isn't enough. I could probably cram enough to pass the bar exam, given enough time. I could probably win a couple cases. I wouldn't like doing it though, and I wouldn't be as effective as someone who wants to be a lawyer. THAT was my point.
Money is not enough of a motivator. You can get money by doing it 'good enough'. You can get personal satisfaction by doing the best you can. But if you hate programming and do it only for the money (and I've met so many of the delusional fools, now without the promise of any sort of paycheck after graduation, let alone a decent one), then you don't derive any satisfaction from doing as good a job as possible. Or at least, (probably) not as much as you could.
If you like what you're doing, you'll do it better.
You don't suppose that this stock analyst had anything to gain by making wild claims with no ground in reality do you?
Speculation bubbles like this are nothing new. There's no reason for that kind of thing to stop now.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Nice buzzword. Too bad it means "really small leap," and not "fundamental change in the way things work."
And no, economies suffer because of blowhards and the massive speculation bubbles they blow, not because of the natural order of things. Unless you include massive, sheep-like stupidity like that as part of the natural order of things.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Yes, everything can be done somewhere else, but it will never ever happen - not because of communication, skills, language or plain patriotism, but because outsourcing cuts the branch you are sitting on.
Imagine a software company that is 99% outsourced. What happens with your product when your partner decides that someone else (your competitor?) is paying better and says bye-bye?
When your core competence is outsourced you have placed your balls in the hands of the people you never saw in your life, and for most managers or "managers" and other control freaks that's not the most comfortable position. So, if you are out of job, wait a bit till they wiggle their way out.
yeah.. you see this is why I keep a list of offending agents and companies :-D
We ought to fix things by requiring companies who use foreign labor to pay equivalent U.S. for each overseas position into a fund used for improving living conditions in the countries these companies are abusing (or similar causes).
There are no "overseas positions". Companies are paying for services. If you outsource to India for example, you basically can't tell if they themselves outsourced it to China or not.
I have been looking into this (I am still employed), but if I were laid off, I may take my savings and go to central america or mexico. You can absolutely make money in mexico teaching english. The best thing to do is teach at a school for a while, then go to private lessons.. YOu can stay in mex for up to 6 months on a tourist visa and can even get health ins. on that visa.
Your savings may not be all that much when compared to teh average US citizen, but if you have 30K in central america or parts of mexico, you are a rich rich man.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Since the government has a hard time handing out clearances to foreign nationals; at least while they remain in their respective countries; and there's a big push by big government to secure all their systems, if you don't mind working for 'the man', then I guess you have a future as a contractor instead of a consultant...
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
The problem with dotcoms is the amount of money and people poured into them in the first place. Someone will start off with a great idea and then run a successful website for a few months or years and then decide that they want to grow. A bunch of venture capitalist money is poured into the company and spending goes out of control. Then, when the company realizes that other companies are not willing to pay their advertising costs, membership fees, etc they go bust.
i p.biz/geekmom
What is unfortunate is that it costs so much money to retain good people. I'm not saying that people should be paid any less because a lot of people are worth the money they are getting paid.
Every company wants a mindspring dialup Internet service or a Yahoo! or eBay dotcom but small companies can't afford the employees and large companies are just too large to think like small companies any longer. Where is the middle ground for all this?
AND WHAT'S UP WITH ALL THE YUCKY WINDOWS STUFF OUT HERE IN THE MIDWEST??? Don't mean to scream but I come from a UNIX world and out here in the midwest everyone wants to attempt to run their business on a windows network. Is it time to actually LEAVE the computer industry????
Beckie
http://www.geekmom.net
http://www.ispv
They used to pour money into a dotcom just because its a goodlooking dotcom, but its different now. You can buy a dotcom domain for $10, install J2EE servers, register the business and an ecommerce account and pay some marketing people, but the Investors would look at what youre trying to sell. In that sense the dotcom has merged with the rest of the industry, no longer clearly outlined as just IT. The winners should be niche markets like accounting software etc, and maybe video games would move to cottage industries, but their success would depend on their material, and they would have to fight over whats left of IT investors now.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
There is only one sure-fire way to make a lot of money online. Only one. Start a porn site with an attractive hook, like for example, a webcam about an actual couple which sets up a voyeur-type experience. You'd have to build a solid membership system, of course, which is difficult for people to pirate/crack, and that would be hard. But it's doable. Also you can probably get kick-backs from all the adult-check registration systems (which you'd need, anyway, to protect yourself from liability). You could set up "special events" like a threesome with a barfly, "viagara experimentation", "Roman Orgy Night", etc. Plus, you could sell DVDs of clips, and syndicate your better content to other adult sites.
;)
I'd do this in a second if I could figure out a way to arrange for a female partner (either kinky girlfriend or ambitious non-romantic low-inhibition type). But, I'm a slashdotter -- no girlfriend, no prospects, and I haven't been laid in two years. Oh well... But maybe one of you guys will have better luck.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it thus far.
There are IT jobs that can never be outsourced. Why? Because they require security clearances and those can only be given to US citizens. While they may not pay you top commercial dollar, they will certainly pay you well. However you usually must already have a security clearance, but you can't get a clearance without sponsorship. Chicken and Egg.
However I believe if you are willing to move, you can find a secure job. Possibly even companies that will sponsor you for clearance. Most likely this will mean that you are working for the government or military, and will have to put up with background checks.
But it keeps you employed, no?
Ahh, a college student. He still thinks the fundamental aspect of an economy is based on the scarcity of goods.
What _is_ it based on, then, genius? If no good were scarce, there would be no need to work for anything. An economy is a system for distributing goods from those that have them to those that want or need them.
We realize that right now, wealth and prosperity is acquired by this thing we call "work". We can't have a society where there is no work, otherwise what the fuck is the point of living? The community is the reason we exist.
This sounds like a halfwit's Marxism. Are we talking about economics or psychology? Humans, like all other creatures, are capable of consuming more than they produce. (I'm talking about economics here, not food-goes-in-poo-goes-out conservation-of-matter stuff.) If you have some brilliant psychomagic that can make people produce more than they consume, I'd love to see it. History has shown us that the most efficent* way to get people to produce more is to dangle the carrot of more consumption in front of them. Oh wait, I'm talking economics again. Silly me! The Bolshevik utopia will be forever out of my reach.
The laws of supply and demand work for people too. Right now, the demand for human ingenuity and artistic vision is very very low, so the majority of people are corporate/government bureaucrats, impotent university drones, or modern day servants.
And this is different from history in what way? The vast majority of all people at any given time in human history have been engaged in drudgery. To think of some great human achievements: man on the moon? Takes an awful lot of nose-to-the-grindstone work to make a big-ass rocket. Pyramids? Takes slaves to drag all those rocks. And so on for millenia. The "ingenuity" and "artistic vision" gets all of the praise, but it takes more than ingenuity and vision to make things happen in this world. (Now I sound like the Marxist!)
The "cult of efficiency" of economics is interested in maximizing the amount of value that people get for their work. When it comes down to it, what's the fundamental value in the system? Human pleasure. The question of _whose_ pleasure it is, well, that's the sticky one, isn't it? It sounds like you think your pleasure is worth more than mine, or of whoever else might take your job. Thus you must be protected. Sounds like a brilliant (and morally justifiable) plan to me.
*efficient in the sense that you maximize, in whatever scale you are looking at, the values you...well, value. Other concerns (environment, "morality", etc.) might or might not be considered. Such is the nature of a maximization problem.
... they insist that you've used A version 3.915, B V 6.803, and C version 4.00001. Don't bother applying if you're off by a minor revision.
Part of that is probably because of the UT Campus ... Longhorns move in but they don't move out. Add to that the pretend tech boom of a few years ago and Austin was a magnet for just about anybody that wasn't going to Silly Valley or Silly Valley Jr (Boston area.)
Am guessing you are familiar with the Austin area, and as I couldn't hope to get more off topic, how about listing some of the good stuff (cause I have been living here 6 months, in the 'burbs, and am DYING to find fun stuff to do.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Economists have said that with the current trade deficit, the strong dollar will be impossible to maintain. Check out this graph of $ vs Rupee:. html
http://www.x-rates.com/d/INR/USD/graph120
If the government stops proping up the dollar, then we should will see the effects faster. A stronger Rupee (and other currencies) will mean cheaper US goods and services (i.e. US programmers will be more competitive).
Posting jobs that don't exist should probably be made into a crime, as it's not exactly victimless. It borders on out-and-out fraud.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
"There are IT jobs that can never be outsourced. Why? Because they require security clearances and those can only be given to US citizens"
Or to UK citizens. Or to French citizens. Or to Australian citizens. Or to Norweigan citizens. Depends whose government you're working for, really.
QinetiQ: retirement home for tens of thousands of UK graduates.
I am not graduated in CS, but I think most of you are all whining babies. All fields have tons of people who can't find a job in their major. CS and IT majors are notorious for demanding too much. My sister graduated in English teaching with a 3.96 GPA, and is earning 26K as a teacher. Would you be willing to work for 26K as a programmer? Heck no! I have a programming job earning less than that as I make it through school, but I am not complaining. Be willing to move, and work your butt off every day 8 hours a day if necessary getting skills and finding a job. I find everyone who can't find a job doesn't look too much. I have always had a job, and a year ago I had to work at a cheese factory, but I had one, and in the process found a web job with little experience, and this is a stable job that I will never lose. A girl here with one year experience just got offered 72k starting at Microsoft. If you want a job, don't just graduate, but get good grades, and prove to people you are worth hiring, otherwise why should they. IT professionals rarely have good people and resume skills. Be thankful you have a degree, and stop whining! And lastly, if you aren't willing to move, and find sectors that need IT(banking, networking among businesses, financial firms, etc) then forget getting a job. In fact, I hope you work at McDonalds.