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Technology Spending On The Rise
securitas writes "After the technology industry's so-called nuclear winter that has resulted in thousands of lost jobs over the last three years, the New York Times' Steve Lohr reports that technology spending is finally increasing (Google / mirror). Much of the investment in hardware and software is spurred by the natural corporate replacement cycle, but the positive change offers a glimmer of hope for techies everywhere. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano says that IBM plans 'to add 10,000 workers in fields of emerging demand over the next year.' Based on IBM's current Linux advertising campaign and market projections, this will probably mean hiring staff who are knowledgeable about Linux and open source software. Is this just a blip as some analysts believe, or is it the beginnings of a resurgence for the technology sector?"
I know there seems to be a little pickup in helpdesk and support IT around here, I think it may be related to machine lifespans. If the average company upgraded most of their desktops in 99 out of y2k paranoia, how long before they all start dying and need replacements?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Personally, I think the last tech boom was simply all about the hype. People got excited. They blew money. We prospered :)
It took the last few years for everyone to catch a breather and realize that amidst all the hype, there might actually be something in all this hype...
My father (an economist in his day...) thinks that the job market by this summer will be much better than it is now... supposedly the US growth is around 7% of GDB in the *last quarter*
[translation: 'off the charts']
not an expert opinion, but he predicted the bust a year ahead...
Don't get your hopes up... but don't lose hope...
This is just the market in action. Companies hire folks when they need them and release them when they cant afford them anymore. Every other industry operates the same, its just new to us :) In a few short years, there will be a recession of jobs in the technology industry and the whole cycle will repeat itself
I'm sure many people will flame over this but I think the economy is generaly on it's way up anyways. A lot of the early warning signs have started to show up (Real estate is at a 60 year high, manufacturing is showing vastly increased earnings etc.) I've often been suprised that many people blame the current administration for the downturn in the economy when to signifigantly change the path of the economy takes at least 3 years of work, in my opinion this is just the initial effects of the current economy plan coming in to action.
:-)
Flame if you want but remember, getting the economy to work has never been a set in stone progress... maybe Bush's plan really will work
This is not a sig
However, in the real world, it doesn't quite work that way, especially when you're talking about industries that require skilled workers. For one, it takes effort to seek out qualified workers, so companies will only do this if they really need more workers and they think that they will continue to do this in the future. For another, firing employees damages goodwill, so companies are rightly reluctant to do it when not necessary.
If companies really operated like you suggest, there would be a constant stream of hirings and firings of engineers and middle managers from week-to-week, as demand and earnings projections change.
I think IT is still "where its at", its just that this time around it will be without all the bogus hype. Think about in the early days of the car industry, when there were hundreds of auto companies. The economy just couldn't sustain it and they fell apart.
I have to laugh when people act as though software jobs will never return. We just have to learn what niche of software we fit into. Software QA, management, and specialized programming jobs will continue to be available, and I think they will grow tremendously. Its natural to be pessimistic, but I think there is much reason to be optimistic if you are a kickass techie, so this new should come without surprise.
[FromTheMorning]
A better question to ask is how does corporate spending NOT translate into more jobs?
Every time corporations spend more money someone, somewhere along the line has a job and more jobs are being created. Even if company A is only buying new computers, someone, somewhere has to be employed to sell the computers, build the computers, build the software to go on the computers, support the computers, and on and on and on.
[FromTheMorning]
Shit don't stay good forever.
If you're one of the boo-birds that dismisses every indication of improvement, you're an idiot.
If you're one of the optimists that ignored every indication of the "dotcom's" impending collapse, you were an idiot.
Stuff has been bad. Stuff is getting better.
Weither proprietary or open source, the vast amount of programming jobs revolve around custom applications (or customizing applications) for corporations. People have been thinking like you have for at least twenty yars and the amount of programming work has only increased.
Right before I went to college I saw an ad in a compter magazine for a program called "The Last One" meant to replace programmers everywhere. I still got a CS degree, and lo and behold!! There were still jobs, just as there are, now and will be for some time. Even nanotech will not change the need for programming jobs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unless you propose the historical cycle is broken, that is what always happens. Put differently, people purchase boxes with new capabilities or more processing power, and they usually want new applications to take advantage of those features. People buying new boxes to run their old applications faster does occur sometimes, but isn't the historical norm.
I think there's chinks in most of the other big company's armour because they each have a 'religious' ball and chain holding them back:
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Some cycles are routine enough to be usable any time.
The simple fact that there is a growing population as well as a growing government in the US indicates there will be at least some sort of spending to accomodate these people.
Further, the growth of government and associated functions (e.g. financial, medical, personal records accessable for Patriot Act requires more technology) indicates added spending.
The backbreaker is how to make predictions which show growth in one venue (business IT spending) when, on the other hand, so much is being exported overseas, resulting in fewer workers earning higher salaries and fewer total workers contributing proportionally to the tax base.
Bottom line?
Just because some companies are buying more stuff does not necessarily extrapolate to a better life for the worker bees.
In fact, evidence would suggest the typical worker in a civilized country is at greater risk of financial ruin and more likely to be unemployed or underemployed in order for the companies to internalize profit by pillaging the world.
Cynical? You bet!
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano says that IBM plans 'to add 10,000 workers in fields of emerging demand over the next year
Of course he failed to mention that those jobs would be in India.
I don't understand who "us" is. Not just Americans read /. Why does the hard working American deserve a job more than the hard working European or Indian or . Whatever happened to the American dream that *anyone* who is willing to work hard can get a decent job? Since when does anyone include just Americans?
.. but I'm not sure how relevent it is to this article. I'm an artist, not an IT dude. So why am I even posting? Well, I've noticed a trend in recent weeks. There's a lot more 'gotta have' deals floating around. Just today I purchased an upgrade for Lightwave. They're about to release version 8. By pre-purchasing it, I'm getting another piece of software for free (made by another company, it's sort of like After Effects, costing around $1400...) and I'm getting a free subscription to a magazine that normally costs $100.
In recent weeks, I've also noticed that DVD prices have gone down significantly. Both the Hulk and Matrix Rebloated were $15. I bought another DVD player for the house for $40. I bought a good DVD burner for under $200, whereas months ago it would have been $300-400. I got a cell phone for $150 where not long before it was a $300 item.
I think what has happened is prices down the board have gone down. Your hard earned dollar buys you more stuff. If this trend continues, I think we can expect more positive growth. It's hard to spend $500 on something that has questionable usefulness, but when it's $200, then it starts getting down to the "I can afford to experiment this" range.
"Derp de derp."
Whatever happened to the American dream that *anyone* who is willing to work hard can get a decent job?
It ended about the same time that people who were perfectly willing to work hard couldn't get a job at all, let alone a decent one.
- fader
Perhaps a bit tongue in cheek there, but my upgrades have usually been due to the software I already "owned" which would run annoyingly slow ...
Yes, I think the grandparent poster has it backwards. I buy new hardware because of software I already own. Or, in other cases, I buy new hardware because of software I would like to own. I don't go out and buy hardware and then go out and see what I can run on it. That doesn't make sense at all. I buy hardware to satisfy a need, not to create a need.
"Is this just a blip as some analysts believe, or is it the beginnings of a resurgence for the technology sector?"
Have you Meta Analyzed lately?
Re: The Economy
by Anonymous_Analyst on Thursday, October 30 ,@8:32 AM
I think this is just a blip.
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair/Fair
As many as it takes to meet Wall Street's earning expectations. Sam is know as a "slash and burn" guy. One way or another he'll make the numbers. I was one of those slashed and burned right after Lou retired. Lou had a plan for the future that involved spending money to hire/train people. Sam sees them as individual cost centers he can remove at will to make numbers. I read something else recently that indicates the hiring in the IT biz is mostly going to be in India. But I also hear that India is now scared of losing jobs to Malaysia, China and Eastern Europeans. The increase here (USA) is going to be slow, and I suspect that wages will remain low as well, so much for my new Porsche ;)
Merril Lynch was doing a survey of large (i.e. stagnant dinosaur) company CIOs. Their ability to predict the future has been wrong for the entire history of the IT industry, and has been proven wrong in this specific case for the simple reason that government figures are reporting exactly the opposite of thier consensus.
Away overseas. The republican administration doesn't seem to care either. Our trade balance is terrible also . IT industry is turning out to be like the TV and other manufacturing industries going overseas by countries that target the US . I see the handwriting on the wall.
Warren Buffet has commented on the IT situation and has said that there should be a tax on companies that send jobs overseas.
It always seems to come down to benefits of cheaper labor making goods less expensive which does help an economy out by making it more competitive . I get kind of confused by it all.
Massive amounts of data storage capacity for the buck. Storage capacity growth has been increasing at greater than Moore's Law rates, and at the same time we have been accumulating 800 MB of data per every man woman and child on the face of the Earth every year. The need to manage all of this with software is a staggering business need, and will lead to lots of new software development.
The vast majority of that data is untouched, and will remain untouched, by business. No business has any interest in storing a duplicate copy of every book on your shelf or a duplicate copy of every CD you own (on a one to one basis).
Only a few megs per person is a business concern.That's still a lot of data.
The technology to handle this amount of data (indeed any amount of data) is already known, although poorly implimented.That's a market issue, not a computing one. A proper implimentation would requiring the hiring of more well educated people, but fewer people overall than is now required. Business resents a dependence on education ("training" is not education. A dog may be trained. A dog can't perform analytical logic), but will resort to it, however reluctantly, when it shows significant financial advantage.
You can always pray for more XML "technology." Yeah, that'll create a lot of jobs for awhile. Pointless and annoying jobs, but jobs nonetheless. (Type "Hello World" in Kword and save as raw XML. Count how many pages of text and files it takes. Virtually all of that text is redundant, but must be stored and "managed").
Eventually, although maybe not this business cycle bandwidth growth will trigger ANOTHER software revolution where people will truly become walking network nodes. When that happens most offices will totally disappear.
And in what way will this increase IT jobs? Remember the context of this discussion is IT jobs.
It will also require a social revolution. Social revolutions happen slowly. Much of our social structure today is medieval and completely out of step with our technology, and even how we want to live, and yet it persists.
As an example, phone tech support can now be outsourced to anywhere in the world, and yet most people doing such support must travel to an office to perform their tasks even though the technology could just as easily support their jobs from their homes.
Most jobs aren't really about performing tasks. They are about hierarchical control. The people who wield the control like it that way. For some reason that escapes me so do the controled.
The boss also likes his fancy office in the fancy building with the fancy receptionist. Wall Street isn't about to turn into a gathering of little cottages with English gardens within our lifetimes.
KFG
This 3rd quarter GDP boom is all George W. Bush's fault .... wait a sec ... the GDP boom is probably a good thing .... George W. Bush had nothing to do with it!
On a serious note folks, when things were not looking very good I heard a lot of people on Slashdot (and everywhere else) placing the blame squarely on Bush. Now that things are looking better, and if they continue to get better, will the same people give him any credit? I highly doubt it, but it will be entertaining to see how they can justify not giving him credit for a good economy when they could justify giving him grief for a bad one.
I personally belive that the president doesn't have all the much control over the economy. Don't get me wrong, he has some degree of control, but not much as many people would like to believe.
I see what you're saying too, but sadly, I just haven't seen this. The good managers tend to not be too tech savy...
I think the tech savy managers get ideas about how stuff should be implimented and end up running the show, which means you get a bunch of guys working in the one way that won't get them fired which means they also make the same skrew-ups that would never have been made if they had a say. And even a technical interview just can't get you past a good BSer...
Sadly, many of the managers within IBM tend to be of 2 types...good manager, no technical abilities...and bad manager, good techie...problem is given the choice, I would rather work for the former. A good manager knows how to listen to their ppl and can at least try to keep them happy...Not all fall into one of these groups...I've worked for all 4...
Bad Manager, Bad Techie (the worst kind)
Good Manager, Bad Techie (like I said, they know how to deal with people and extract the info they need)
Bad Manager, Good Techie (Regardless of their technical abilities a bad manager is still a bad manager.)
And my favorite...
Good Manager, Good Techie (These guys never stay in one place for a long time...they tend to be on their way to the top and bigger paychecks won't keep em in a lower position.)
Large companies account for a huge number of jobs. Yes, small companies are numerous but large companies are where the jobs are. If corporate CIOs say things aren't good, then I don't see things improving :(
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Small companies are the backbone of this country. There are more small companies then large companies and more people employed BY small companies then by large companies.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.