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More Than 500,000 High Tech Jobs Lost in 2002
stoolpigeon writes: "A study, released today by the AeA, shows that the U.S. high-tech industry lost 540,000 jobs in 2002, dropping from 6.5 million to 6.0 million. However, a preliminary look at data for 2003 shows that the decline in high-tech employment has slowed considerably this year."
I was an electronics tech for the Navy. Did maintenance on comm gear and other electronic equipment. Went through a variety of schools. I feel the education is very good and the hands on experience is great. I worked with a variety of test equipment, receivers, transmitters, communication gear, etc.
.mil, of course these are the ones you never hear about until they're released to civilian use.
:-)
When I was in, the most technologically advanced jobs were CTM (Crypto Tech Maintenance), ET (Electronics Tech), DS (Data Systems), among others (more specialized).
One individual I met while in was a Senior Chief ET at Treasure Island. As far as I know, he was one of the people to first develop laser listening devices for civilian purchase, or at least one of the first that I've heard of. I didn't see a working model, but he explained what it was and how it worked to me.
At yet another installation, I met a group of Navy Petty Officers and Air Force Sgt's that were developing a means to render video to CD, at the time, it wasn't common place (I hadn't even heard of the technology at the time) to find video on CD's.
There's many "cutting edge" tech gadgets being used in the
It's like the old story about the guy that invented the first "radar gun" for highway patrolmen, he also invented the first "radar detector" for civilians.
I could have *sworn* that the political PR machine has been pumping out stories that the economy is improving and has been since November 2001 (!)... gotta love revisionist economics! 8P
/. readers could). What I'd like instead is an honest accounting of where our economy is, is going, and what the heck is being done to make sure we keep it moving in the right direction. Then when that data is available, I'd want to get good answers about why we are or aren't on target. I'm just fed up with all the crap^H^H^H^Hspin being put out on news feeds about a recovery that (obviously) isn't happening yet... or, at least, not to the degree that's being reported.
;)
Of course, this news goes with my experience; I know plenty of talented developers/tech-people who've been unemployed or lost a job to outsourcing with nary a replacement in sight.
I could rant about the loss of jobs (as I'm sure many
Nope... instead I'll get to read in news papers 3 years from now how there never was a recession between 2000-2003 (or 4). >8(
Doh... that wound up being a rant, didn't it?
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
I've been in the market for a good developer for over half a year now. As part of the standard interviewing process, I give the applicant my laptop, with a series of programming problems that should take no more than 15 minutes to solve.
Without exception, everybody fails or takes WAY too long to solve. This, in my mind, is a sign of incompetence, the reason of which I still have not filled the position.
The vast majority of the applicants got their BS in CS or CSE because they thought it would be a good way to make money; very few of the applicants have been truly passionate about technology, and those that were, were incompetent.
For all of you who bitch and complain about how hard it is to find a job, perhaps you ought to sharpen your skillset and seek out the employers who will appreciate it. And for those who got into computing because you heard that there was good money in it, but you'd rather be out windsurfing, get out of computing, get a job windsurfing, and leave room in the market for those who actually have skills, so resume reviewers don't have to waste time with you.
This could have been an Indian, Chinese, whoever.. this is the future where we cannot hold anyone in the third world accountable yet we expect them to handle sensitve information and intellecutal property.
/ ch ronicle/archive/2003/11/12/BUGI52VMQR1.DTL&type=bu siness
I'll get modded down but here's the article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
Breaking her silence for the first time, the Pakistani woman who threatened to release UCSF patient files on the Internet says she had "no choice" but to breach the hospital's security after being cut off by the Texas man who'd made her the final link in a long chain of clerical subcontractors.
Lubna Baloch said by e-mail from Karachi that she is "not an opportunistic person who willfully did that to gain some attention."
She said she is instead the "worst sufferer of this situation" because she was only trying to secure UCSF Medical Center's help last month in obtaining money that she was owed.
"I feel violated, helpless," she wrote, adding that she is "the most unluckiest person in this world."
Doctors at U.S. hospitals routinely dictate notes about patient visits, consultations, operations and discharges. Those notes in turn are frequently handed to outside firms that specialize in transcribing them into written form.
The case involving UCSF's patient files represents the nightmare-scenario- come-to-life for the medical industry. For about 20 years, UCSF has farmed out much of its transcription work to a Sausalito company called Transcription Stat.
Transcription Stat outsourced many of the hundreds of files received daily to a network of 15 subcontractors. One of these was a Florida woman named Sonya Newburn, who then outsourced the files yet again to a Texas man named Tom Spires.
Spires outsourced the work one more time to Baloch in Karachi, who agreed to do the transcribing for a small fraction of the amount UCSF originally paid Transcription Stat, thus allowing everyone in the chain to walk away with a modest profit.
But on Oct. 7, Baloch attached two patient files to an e-mail and contacted UCSF. She demanded that the medical facility assist her in squeezing outstanding funds from her employer, Spires.
"Your patient records are out in the open to be exposed, so you better track that person and make him pay my dues or otherwise I will expose all the voice files and patient records of UCSF Parnassus and Mt. Zion campuses on the Internet," Baloch wrote.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Far from it, they were purposefully relocated to a more hospitable economic environment
This is not always true. Not every job that was "lost" was moved to a more hospitable economic environment. I know many people that lost jobs because the company had lost customers, got bought out, or just otherwise no longer needed the service of said employee. Of course *some* people lost jobs that were sent to more hospitable economic environment, but it is silly to say that all fit in that category.
man
No manual entry for
Funny thing is, I started out in this field because I'm a natural programmer (doing it since I was 8) and it looked like I could make a decent living and pay back my college loans. I'm good at what I do, and I made it my career to go beyond the call of duty and ensure that today's product had hooks for next year's functions. Twice that habit has saved the unit's ass. I'm also a good technical writer, and have no trouble communicating with our international colleagues.
Today I was told by IBM that I have thirty days before I become a permanent layoff. Supposedly my skills aren't what IBM needs these days: WebSphere (3/4/5), J2EE/EJB/JDBC/SOAP/XML, DB2/Oracle. Hmm, that seems to be precisely the software IBM is selling. And last year I was told that my compensation is exactly the competitive market average for my skills, i.e. I'm not overpaid.
I'm afraid your optimism about IT is unfounded. Sure, there are jobs: in the IT departments of companies that make concrete products (not computers though). But the big players who are focused solely on computer hardware/software are hell-bent on turning their developers into a white-collar servant class. "Do all this stuff, for less money, or we'll just move your job across the Pond."
This is not pessimism but realism: you will not be able to make a living wage on your Jedi skills alone. Get the hell out of IT before the tsumani takes you and your family with it.
I saw it coming months ago and will be enrolled in a real engineering program soon. And I'll be one hell of an engineer too, since I have no trouble automating complicated problems. And I'll tell you what: If I ever see IBM across the table in my second career, I'll tell the rep to go fuck himself.
The fact that the job-loss rate has slowed is not necessarily good. It's always pointed to as a sign of economic recovery, when in fact all it means is that the rate of deterioration has decreased.
I think that the layoff rate is going to accelerate again. The fact that the dot-com boom produced hundreds of thousands of 19 year old CIOs means that there are that many people-- young, hungry, flexible-- who are willing to work much cheaper, and perhaps smarter, than old fogeys like me and maybe you. But hey, I'm sure the Bush administration will fix everything...
I'm using this time as an opportunity to go back to school and finish a college degree-- in my case, biotech. I think there's going to be a boom in biotechnology that's going to dwarf the dotcoms, and it'll be a subject that's going to be far more difficult for the average person to learn, both because of subject matter and because of the much greater infrastructure required for learning. It's going to be harder for them to fake knowledge by submitting resumes packed with buzzwords to hundreds of companies knowing that one of the fish is bound to bite.
That is, until Microsoft comes out with gel-chromatography equipment. That's kind of a disturbing thought.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
As an Indian in the IT industry I resent your charecterisation of us as starving slave labour. You just compare our salaries on an exchange rate basis without factoring purchasing power parity and then say that we're being made to work for a pittance. Well guess what? A thousand dollars a month is a very comfortable salary in India.
You're just desperately trying to find some excuse so you can oppose outsourcing "in principle" when all you're really worried about is your job.
I feel sorry for people in the US hit by outsourcing and the job crunch. But it's hard to feel bad about it seeing the good things it has done in my country, giving it a chance to come out of its poverty and maybe into some kind of economic parity with the first world.
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.