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Tech Employment Drops Sharply In 2004
Cryofan writes "According to Information Week, the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that
the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has fallen 15% since the first six months of 2004.
According to IT World, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
Microsoft and others were right about OSS. It destroys jobs and is flatly Un-American.
You people have reaped what you sowed.
Could it be that IT professionals have moved up in organizations, and are now VPs, and such, thus they may not consider themselves IT when in fact they are, just with better titles? This is the case for me, where I started out being the only IT guy 10 years ago, and now considered more, but still doing IT work as well.
I don't really call myself an "IT Professional", even though I run the network, and in the middle of producing new applications for the business. I am sure this is not all of it, but I can't help but think its not all doom and gloom.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
...everyone is losing their jobs in nice, whole numbers. Keeps the statistics nice and pretty that way.
These 160 000 must have been people who were there for the money, and when they saw it didn't pay *that* much, they dropped.
Thus, the percentage of real enthusiasts among IT people must have raised.
perception is reality
- during the dotcom, a lot of folks called themselves 'IT professionals' but were hardly anything like it at all.
- the number of it-pro's itself is completely irrelevant : maybe they learned something new and make a living now. What counts is the percentage of unemployed it-pros versus all it-pros, and the number of unemployed it-pro's versus the global unemployment percentage
summary : this article doesn't mean shit.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
According to Information Week, the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years.
;-)
In other news, the number of IT professionals getting laid has increased, mainly due to lying about their geek stereotyped profession
The number of jobs in any market is not finite. There is one "one pie" that once job is taken, is empty. People create their own jobs. People start new businesses and create new jobs all the time. You statement reflects "zero sum" economics, and sorry, but it doesn't fly in a capitalistic economy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The number of jobs is always created at a faster rateaverage annual percentage growth) under Democratic Presidents then Republican Presidents
Here's another chart with the same data
You can get the raw BLS Establishment survey data here
No, the practice of trying to make every quarterly financial report add up to the right number by either firing half your work force or doulbing their numbers is what ruins lives. Sometimes it's so blatant the two above acts are only a single quarter apart.
by education levels. Are the programmers who were laid off college educated or did they take, "ITT teaches you how to write a web page and use visual baisc" type programmers? Is there demand for a masters/phd? The numbers probably mean very little of themselves without a breakdown of who is employed/unemployed. Maybe demand for college graduates has increased, but demand for Devry/ITT flunkies has plummetted. Hard to tell.....
Most computers are being used in offices and in homes. These are folk who, three years ago could get a PIII 700 running Win2k and Office. What reason do thy have to upgrade? What new features are on offer?
Hardware may be moving with leaps and bound, but at the desktop application level we aren't seeing that sort of progress. Nonetheless, things like 64bit computing with faster processors and obscene quantities of RAM will open up real-time desktop video editing to the masses - that might see a whole wave of upgrades. VOIP might see some big changes to POTS, but only if it can offer something new to encourage folk to upgrade. And, of course, we still haven't seen reliable speech processing, possibly the killer app but is there really a huge improvement from ViaVoice of 1999 to the software on the market today.
Frankly there's no reason to upgrade, and unless there is there's going to be a dwindling source of jobs in a consolidated market.
Am I unreasonable to see a lot of this as an overdue correction in the IT labour market? For a while here in Australia at least it seemed that someone with a 6 week vocational computing course could earn $50K+ doing front-line support. That wasn't a realistic or sustainable situation, and is certainly not reflected in any other industry I can think of.
I know a lot of former coworkers who have lost their job in the last year or two, and almost half of them are no longer doing tech work. Is it because the market is that bad? No, its because they were hired into technology even though they were underqualified during the tech boom, and now that its over and there isn't insane market pressure to hire anyone who can string lines of code together they've moved on.
I'd suspect thats the biggest group of people no longer in IT. I have most visibility in design and software development these days, but I'm sure the same is true for network/system administration.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with it, either. Most of the people I've known who did the major career shift after being layed off are much happier now. In a market where the people getting the jobs are reasonably qualified, its got to be hard to go to work knowing you can't really do what you need to well.
A company that sacks 500 programmers needs 500 more VPs to manage all those progra... oh wait that doesn't make sense at all!
I think you'll find the CIO calls himself an IT professional too, and that you are the exception rather than the rule in calling yourself non "IT Professional".
Even if it does represent people climbimg the corporate ladder, its not a ladder, its a pyramid with fewer jobs higher up than lower down.
So even then, it would represent fewer jobs.
My Computer Science degree in the UK is accredited by the British Computer Society (BCS), which is a Chartered Engineering Institution, so I would be classed as an engineer upon graduation, though my degree isn't a typical degree in engineering.
They are really baffled by the drop in unemployment concurrent with a drop in jobs. I think that quite a few people simply said: "Do I want to make lousy wages working 80 hour weeks in a high-stress deadline-driven environment? Or I could work 40 hours a week as a plumber and make more money? Hmm..."
But while you wait for those wonderful free trade jobs to be created, you can get pretty skinny during 50 years of flipping burgers or being unemployed.
You see, that is exactly the problem. You want to wait for a great job to find YOU. It doesn't work that way for most people. This is pacivity, and avoids taking responsibility for your own employment.
I have been too busy finding ways to create my own opportunities, both within my job and by starting other businesses. Just sold one of the three businesses I had started over the last 7 years (other two about broke even) and employs a few people. No one "gave" me that opportunity, I created it with the help of the wife, WHILE I held a real job. Oh, the job I have, I have been at for over 10 years, and I started out as a low level tech. Suffice it to say there are a lot more zeros in my check now, as I am in a position now that did not exist, but I created.
Success is not a RIGHT. It is earned through taking risks and working your ass off. Not every plan pans out, but I would rather fail trying than sit around and wait for somebody to "give" me a good job.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Well, there are really 3 main reasons that jobs "dissapear":
1. Decreased demand for your product. Check!
2. Increased competetion from overseas. Check!
3. Changes in technology/methologies that make your job redundant(as Vonnegut reffered to it, aculturation). Check!
With modern tools the amount of work that actually has to be done by programmers has been drastically reduced both by new tools and by new methodologies(like agile/extreme programming) call for a smaller number of people to work on a project. IE you spend less of your time speccing out requirements that will change next week anyhow, and more time getting things done. This is why I think that Indian outsourcing is just a fad, throwing bodies at a problem is rarely the correct way to go about doing anything. Like in the Pacifici in WWII, the Japanese would go blindly charge at a few marines, but the highly specialised and mobile marines would wipe them all out with a few casualties.
The work done by Indian/Phillipine/whatever outsourcers has to be the menial boring work because they aren't close enough to the customer to do the highly challenging/creative stuff(for the US market anyway, in India they are closer to the customer). The work that most of them do(there are obvious exceptions such as certain embedded products where you don't really have to be close to a customer) will be done by something cheaper than Indians: computers. Automated software writers are still at least a decade away, but it's kind of naive to think they will never exist.....
So yeah, it does suck now, but I guess this should act as a warning, find something else to do, because you may be able to use politicians to fight outsourcing, but you can't use them to fight machines....
My state's current unemployment rate is about 7%. It was recently at 9% and is still probably considered the worst unemployment rate in the country.
One of the problems with government and politics is that they don't count unemployment accurately. For instance, if you make $90k/yr in some tech-field and are laid off and the only job you can find is as a secretarial admin for $28k/yr, you're still considered fully-employed.
If you are on unemployment and it runs out before you find an appropriate job oppertunity, you do not count as unemployed (even though you very much ARE unemployed!).
Overall, this administration has overseen a greater job LOSS in the last four years combined than they have in jobs CREATED. And we're still seeing something like 300,000 immigrants into this country per month - so who knows how many of the 32,000 jobs created in the last month were actually filled by American workers?
The whole thing is frustrating. It's most incredibly frustrating to dedicate your life to a company for many years and then have them lay you off in a heartbeat and toss you aside like you are a rotton slice of lunch meat. Even more so when your politicians are gloating about how great the economy and job market is. The job market is never good when you're unemployed and having a hard time finding oppertunities. I've been in the same company fully employed for a decade and I've never been through anything like this before. The world is a very different place than it was in the 90's and while some are used to this cycle, many of us are not. And many of us wonder if it's still part of a cycle or an entirely new behavior since a lot of things changed after 9/11.
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they hide is vital."
- unknown
How odd to see posts that try to blame the open source movement for this decline! Surely the outsourcing to overseas concerns of some of these jobs is having more of an impact? My perception, however flawed it may be, is that people need to decide whether or not they like the idea of allowing the less developed countries to draw work away from the more developed ones and if they do not, find ways to put the pressure on those making the outsourcing decisions. Perhaps in this regard the open source developers are more of a solution than a problem. Even Microsoft can't compete with "free" and we in the west get to maintain a ready pool of IT professionals bad economy or not.
The answer to your question is in the second sentance of the article:
Read further and you will see the breakdowns by job category. Some are in more demand. Others, such as systems analysts like me, are in less demand. The net effect is an increase in the number of unemployed who call themselves computer professionals. If they had learned another trade - or had jobs - they would have answered the Census Bureau survey differently.
I've noticed that IT skills are now necessary requirements for roles in other areas. Employers are less often looking for just a programmer, but a statistician who can program, or a physics graduate who can program, or a graphic designer who...
Where once you would have hired a programmer to implement the specialist's work, you now expect the specialist to comprise the IT specialist's role as well.
I'm currently doing some work in data analysis, but they want me to do the SQL work on the databases myself (the cheek of it!)
That point made though, I don't think this accounts for major falls in IT work availability. I think if there are such falls then they are more a result the market being flooded with muppets who think they can program (done the correspondence or the nightschool course) and that less and less work is needing to be done from scratch. We have MS Office, we have Postnuke, we have Dreamweaver templates and anything else you might want, requiring only the barest customization.
My advice is to get good at a supplementary field (maths is always good) and get yourself into something that requires more skill than the college course kid can fake in an interview. Go for jobs with people who take things seriously, not the ones who are looking for someone cheap and can't tell the difference between you and the muppet.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Something must be wrong with the data. . .
The economy is doing wonderfully since the big tax cut. All those wealthy people who recieved thousands or even millions of dollars from the government went out and created jobs with that money, right?
I'm sure there are tech jobs being created, because there's a new McDonald's going up near my house. The new fryers are pretty high tech, so the fry cooks must be qualified IT professionals right?
And never mind the jobs report. Thirtythree thousand jobs is a shitload of jobs when you think about it. Besides, it was just a blip. The overall trend line is definitely on the upside, and we're sure to see some positive gains in the second half.
And I'm sure we'll see real cheap oil any day now. Just as soon as that Yukos thingie resolves itself. Or when we drill in ANWAR, as God intended.
You're all a bunch of pessimists, especially those of you that have been unemployed for longer than six months. And it's your pessimism that is dragging the economy down. So cheer up. Got that unemployed people? You're the problem and the American people aren't going to put up with it much longer. Get a job, hippy.
Oh, yeah, I'd blame it on Open Source, but it should be obvious from the above that I'm too ignorant to know what Open Source is.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You wrote:
>>>
Success is not a RIGHT. It is earned through taking risks and working your ass off. Not every plan pans out, but I would rather fail trying than sit around and wait for somebody to "give" me a good job.
>>>
OK, just suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off this past 3 months, and I take your advice to just "work my ass off". But you seemt o forget that there are also 131K other Software Engineers also laid off, who you say should do the same thing--just work their ass off. That worldview of yours is the Achilles heel of globalization/neoliberalism: we are all just supposed to "work harder" each successive round of outsourcing. But you seem to forget we are all competing against each other! And the numbers of laid-off increase with each round of outsourcing! Hello?? Ponzi scheme, anyone?
Are you familiar with the "Turtles all the way down" anecdote that describes a certain logical fallacy? For the edification of those who have not heard it, here it is:
>>>>
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a
public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the
sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection
of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at
the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish.
The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is
the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever, but you can't fool me,"
said the old lady. "It's turtles all the way down!"
>>>>>>>>
That type of flawed logic is the basis of globalization/laisseiz fair/neoliberal/free trade economics; and it really just amounts to a system of concentrating as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Exactly. When a neighbor of mine became unemployed due this off-shoring phenomena, he opened up his own business selling used and small goods. Household stuff mostly. His computer, tv, the living room furniture. Unfortunately, he didn't have the business sense to roll that revenue back into buying more merchandise. He unwisely chose to pay his electric bill and mortgage instead. But even that didn't stop him, he then start leasing his own body to those that wanted quick sexual gratification.
So as you can see, it's a blessing in disguise when you lose your job to an Indian that can barely speak english, and gets paid 14 cents per 16 hour day.
I think a lot of this is just self denial, a way of psychologically dealing when bad things happen to other people that could just have well happened to you. You just tell yourself that you're different and that can't happen to you. Ask any outplacement counselor and they will tell you that one of the big problems is people going into shock because they all thought it wouldn't happen to them.
The plausible stats I saw were:
- A 4.5% decline in the IT labor force since the peak in 2001. (IW article)
- IT unemployment currently around 5.5%, down from 6% recently, and up from 3% in 2000-2001. (IW article)
- "The overall number of people employed in computer-related occupations in the U.S. dropped by about 9,000 people from the first to second quarter." (IT article)
A lot of the other stats are based on random labelling of people (e.g. "computer programmer" vs "computer analyst" vs "software engineer".. the IW articles cites an 8% increase in the latter), and a relatively small sample. If nothing else, the reported 60% increase in IT managers should tell you something about these surveys.If we're just going for shock-the-readers headlines based on these stats, try this one:
InformationWeek reports that according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there's now one manager to every 1.85 computer programmers. At current rates, managers will outnumber programmers in a few years.
(InformationWeek reports 341k managers vs 632k computer programmers.. but that report based upon those numbers is obviously misleading.)
The folks I work with stopped calling me an IT professional some time last year... using instead the more apt term "IT Asshole".
Burn-out does that to you.
I worked my ass off for almost a decade and got laid off after escaping the axe two previous times in this company. Nobody put in more hours or contributed more value to the project than I did. Not only do I tell you this, but anyone I worked with or for would vouch for it.
You'll find that success most often comes to those who are superb bullshitters with great ass-kissing and "looking busy" skills but very little else. Shit floats.
Bottom line: the job situation in IT is absolutely awful. A lot of educated and experienced professionals can not find decent work. Take a look at the job boards, companies are asking for a list of requirements a mile long, and paying a janitor's salary.
I can't believe anybody has the gall to print these alarmist "BSCS graduate numbers are declining!" articles. Companies don't want BSCS's they want slave labor. Such labor can be in the form of:
1) H1B visas
2) Jobs exported overseas
3) USA citizens forced to work for reduced wages.
I wish I had the fore-sight to go to law school and specialize in IP litigation, that is going to be where the money is. Instead of making money by being productive and/or innovative, we'll all make money be suing each other.
I'm open to any career change suggestions. I have a degrees in math and business. But it's been a long time. I've worked in IT for 24 years. There is a lot I like about IT. But, it gets old being treated like a dog to kick around.
A Colossus With Weak Knees
By Paul Craig Roberts
If George Bush and John Kerry were aware of the problems that await the next president, they would be vying to throw the election, not to win it.
Job loss at home and failure abroad have already written the script which will sweep away the next administration.
Recession could return by the inauguration before the economy ever regains the jobs lost to the 2001 recession. Second quarter 2004 economic growth came in 20% less than expected. The consumer is showing weakness, and crude oil prices have reached record highs. Personal savings remain low by historical standards.
On August 3 the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that seasonally adjusted real per capita incomes declined in June to levels below those reached in April. Total personal real spending declined 0.9% in June to the level of last February.
As the Bureau of Labor Statistics made clear in its July 30 report, the US economy is suffering not only from weak job growth but also from a loss of better paying jobs.
Only 65% of the 5.3 million workers who were laid off from long term jobs during the first three years of President Bush's administration were reemployed by January 2004. That means only about 3.5 million of the 5.3 million laid off workers were able to find new jobs during two years of economic recovery.
Of those who found new jobs, 57%--about 2 million workers--took jobs paying less than their previous positions. About 1.2 million of the workers who found new jobs experienced pay cuts of 20% or more.
It is really disturbing that this job loss may have occurred in the absence of a recession. The conventional definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. However, on July 30 the Bureau of Economic Analysis released the revised GDP data for 2001, and the recession, as conventionally measured, has disappeared. The revised data does not show two consecutive negative quarters, and for 2001 the economy grew 0.8%. Did we experience not only a job loss recovery, but also a job loss nonrecession?
There was no recession in the second quarter of this year, but BLS data show 131,000 fewer American computer software engineers employed in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2004--a decline of 15% in three months. Employment of computer scientists and systems analysts declined by 51,000 in the second quarter. Employment of computer programmers fell 16,000.
Despite the horrendous job loss, the unemployment rates for software engineers, computer scientists and programmers fell, which suggests that technical professionals are discouraged and have ceased to search for jobs in their occupations.
The decline in high-tech professions in the US is also reflected in the collapse in computer engineering enrollments in America's premier engineering schools. Over the past several years, M.I.T., Georgia Tech, and UC Berkeley have experienced computer engineering enrollment declines of 43%.
More unprecedented bad news comes from the Internal Revenue Service. For the first time ever, the real incomes of Americans shrank for two consecutive years. In 2002 Americans repor
Seastead this.
I'm a software guy. I lost my job (along with a lot of other people) a couple days ago. My only talents involve tech and software. I'm not going to become a mechanic or a soap salesman and nobody is going to hire me for such things.
Not exactly true. If you are software guy, then you can probably manage a network for a small company, helping them become more productive, while developing new markets. Let me give you an example:
XYZ, Inc. sells hot tubs on the web, they have 12 employees. You are brought in to manage their computers. You setup a system to better manage leads and sales. You write a CGI interface to allow their potential customers to fill out a credit application while online. It auto mails them, formats the application for credit, auto faxes it to the finance company, and creates a database entry for the customer. Now, XYZ can have their one credit dept. person handle 3x the applications for credit, so they advertise more to create more interest. They get more sales. They upgrade systems. They want a nicer web site, with manuals online for potential customers, to make the site "sticky". This keeps going on, building for years.
This is EXACTLY what happened to me (not hot tubs) over the last 10 years. I showed them ways to increase sales and increase productivity. I was not trained to do what I was doing, I learned it on the fly, but I was willing to go outside my field, while applying skills from my trade as a secondary source.
There is opportunity out there, but you often have to go parallel to your skill sets. You usually have to wear many hats, with only one being your "skill". This is not so bad, to me, as I love to learn new skills anyway, since this makes me more valuable. You don't have to work for a "software company" just because you are a software guy. Other companies need software guys, and the vast majority of new jobs are in small businesses. There are many companies that can not afford an IT dept, a software dept. etc., but they WILL pay you good money if you can be the entire software and IT depts for their more modest needs. Its cheaper to hire you to wear 4 hats, than to farm out the 4 tasks to other companies.
This is one tiny example, but the possibilities are endless. I can easily promise you that once you open up your mind to other possibilities, you will find opporunity. Small companies are opening all the time, and while the risk is higher, so are the potential rewards.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I've decided to just run a cash register and be poor. It was good enough for my grandfather.
Nothing wrong with the rest of the people, I'm just not very good at being whatever-it-you-call it. Successful. Evil. Whatever. I'm over 30 now and through with programming as a profession or even giving a shit what happens in the industry.
I'm content to be a hobbyist dinking with Linux at night from now on and being a total Rodney Dangerfield. I'd rather just be poor.
By now you've all been told how MicroSoft makes all of it's profits on Windows and things like the X-Box are just money losers running as place-holders at the company's expense.
Well oil is to the world economy what Windows is to MicroSoft. Oil is turned into fertilizer so all high-carbohydrate crops and the livestock that feed on them are just an "X-Box" from an economic viewpoint.
All transportation, manufacturing, etc. are also 100% dependent on enegy from fossile fuels. All plastics, nylon, etc are made directly from oil.
When oil prices go up it's like Windows ceasing to be the "money printing press" for MicroSoft. The net effect is that the whole world is made poorer.
did the cops hassle you a lot at the pawn shop?
We were on a voluntary program that began here in Greensboro, NC (about 300k population, metro area of about 1 million within 45 miles). We were "authorized" to purchase stolen goods, up to $100. They paid us back for those stolen goods, up to $100. By working with us, they got their goods, they got the criminals along with our getting their DL # and a signature proving the guy had possession. So no, they didn't hassle us, we worked together. Its not always that way, but it was for us.
Did you have to report every item?
Yes, all computerized, including the buyer, DL number, singature, description, serial and model number. They picked up a disk every week to put in their database. If they called and said "Item #434394 may be hot", we put it back.
Did they steal stuff as I have hear that cops will do "We need this for a case and we are taking it" type stuff?
No, we were reimbursed up to $100 for every item they took. This was paid for by drug seizure money they got.
In a nutshell, if "Bob" stole a TV, brought it to us, we bought it for $50, then it was discovered to be stolen, the police solved their case for $50 (which is dirt cheap for detective work) and we were respected. I expect this type of setup to become more popular in other cities soon. It is already being used as a model in some other cities in North Carolina.
This allowed us to buy and sell freely without hassles, to remain in good graces with the police, and offer our customers the reassurance that all items were already checked against a database of stolen goods, so if they bought from us, it was very likely NOT stolen. Win-win-win situation. Our only risk was items over $100, although they have paid more than $100 before, but rarely. Most items we buy were under $100. We really liked this policy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I'm a former Northwest Airlines applications programmer/analyst with a BSCS and 15 years of pretty solid experience who has been looking for a new permanent place to work for over 2.5 years now, and my local area (the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro) has had a number of large companies lay off a large number of people over the past few years including my former employer (NWA), Unisys (which has a heavy airline/mainframe presence in the Twin Cities), Lawson, IBM, Qwest, Verizon, and a number of others.
:-)
In the case of NWA, many IT people were laid off based on the organization or project they were affiliated with, and whole trees of people were lopped off from the manager on down. I know several folks who I considered top-quality techie types who were let go in October 2001 because they had moved to a project that was more technically interesting or high-profile a few years ago, but which was considered a non-critical project by management in the post-9/11 airline environment).
In other cases (such as in my case), cuts were made based purely on seniority, and my 13 years put me on the bottom of the ladder compared to the remaining folks I was working with in Flight Operations (I survived the major IT cuts in late 2001 only to find myself nickel-and-dimed out a few months later when we all thought it was over).
Given the experience level of my peers I was a logical choice, at least by that measure, but I'll frankly put my general level of technical acumen against anyone here. Or there, for that matter.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the measurement used. Ability rarely factors into such choices, as two layoffs in the past 15 years have taught me, particularly when the layoff parameters are being determined mainly by bean counters rather than technical management.
With such a glut in unemployed techie folks in the local area, many of them quite senior, it's hard for someone with only 10-15 years of experience to get any sort of contract work because there are a fair number of 20-30 year people also laid off who are now competing for a much smaller number of positions. And contract work is almost all there is. A few firms seem to be hiring real permanent employees, but competition is so fierce that one has to be an almost perfect tech-skill+line-of-business match in order to get a first-level interview.
I know several folks who have roughly my experience level who are still out of work after more than a year, and it sure isn't due to a lack of technical ability or a lack of effort. From what I can tell, it's mainly due to a large number of people seeking a small number of positions, and to an increasing tendency for companies to require more and more specialized business and technical skillsets even for general IT positions.
The folks who have "left IT" according to common statistical measures are a mix of all types.
Some fit the stereotype of being "less skilled" or interested only in the financial aspects of an IT career, and I'm in agreement with those who say "good riddance" to such folks, but there are probably at least as many others who are hard-core bit twiddlers or talented designers or whatnot who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who are finding it difficult to obtain employment in IT at a time when companies are hiring specialized short-term contractors in lieu of more generalized long-term employees.
When an IT position isn't available, and when the six months or so of unemployment runs out, a former IT person has to do *something* in order to make ends meet. In my case, it will probably end up driving a truck or doing some sort of generic office work so I can continue to pay the bills.
That doesn't make me any less interested in IT, and I'll still be looking when I'm not working at a lesser position, but for statistical purposes I'll have dropped off the radar and will no longer count as an unemployed IT position. It's a very misleading statistic...
If this comes across as a bi
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Face it, Your Boss is a Rat
Who REALLY moved your cheese and why!
By: John Shepler
If you think something smells rotten in corporate America, you're right. It's a foul aroma wafting in from the executive suites, where the rats are jumping for joy at the success of their latest manifesto, "Who Moved My Cheese?", subtitled...get this, "An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and In Your Life."
"We moved it," they squeal with delight, "and when we want to, we'll move it again." Why? Very simple. Management has discovered that moving or removing YOUR cheese can be quite advantageous to them. But they've known that for a more than a decade. What they've just begun to realize is that it's possible to sell employees on the idea that this is perfectly OK. I'll elaborate, but first let me tell you how it all began.
It Takes Only a Minute
Management has a Holy Grail and it is known as "the silver bullet," also called the quick fix. It's epitomized in a small, thin book called "The One Minute Manager" by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. (piled higher and deeper) and Spencer Johnson, M.D. (mostly deeper.) The theme of "The One Minute Manager" is that business people, especially managers, spend way too much time mulling over problems, internalizing them, and debating on what to do next. Much better, proposed Blanchard and Johnson, to jump in, collect all the facts that are at your fingertips or can be coaxed out of your subordinates, and make a snap decision in one minute or less. Actually, the primary decision is which employees can best be made to take ownership of the problem, strategically moving the burning acid of responsibility from your stomach to theirs. If things improve, you allocate no more than one more minute to tell them how great they are doing. If the situation deteriorates, you allocate that same minute to making darn sure that they feel terrible about it and will work even harder to keep the problem from returning to you.
A Revolution in Business Thinking
Think this is funny? It's revolutionary. The enabling power of one minute management has caused the entire Fortune 500 to refocus from the concept of stewardship, with a responsibility to the community that spans generations, to a slavish devotion to the needs of the institutional investor, primarily an increased stream of earnings every fiscal quarter. White-collar layoffs, almost unheard of prior to the 1980s, are now a standard tool of expense management. With only a minute needed for problem solving, the span of control for managers has increased as much as ten fold and the number of people assigned to non-producing supervisory functions proportionally reduced. Productivity, as measured by corporate earnings, soared to create the raging bull market of the 1990s. Johnson and Blanchard are lauded in corporate circles. But the emphasis on rapid decision making has led to shortened attention spans. It's already time for something new...
The Big Cheese
The toll of one minute everything is burning out once naive and eager employees, anxious for their leg up the corporate ladder. The abuses of ever increasing demands have created calluses of cynicism that are best portrayed in the characters of Scott Adams' Dilbert. Now everyone sees themselves as an oppressed Dilbert or Wally and adopts a passive/aggressive approach to corporate survival.
Re-enter Johnson, sans Blanchard, with a new silver bullet, this one cleverly disguised as an irresistible morsel of cheese. And who can resist the power of cheese? It's a story that is designed once again to get the onus of action into the mind of the common employee. Without giving too much away, here's how it goes.
It seems that there are two mice and two small people living in a maze. They dine on a seemingly endless supply of cheese provided by an unseen benevolent caretaker. All are complacent and happy with this scenario, until one day the cheese is gone. The mice shrug and take off down the corridors of the maze to find more
I used to do the IT thing until I got laid off twice in one year from two different IT jobs. Now I am doing customer support (email with some live chat) and I am thinking about going back to school to learn to do something more hands on (like welding or being a machinist (sp?)). Why? Because, I have no desire to go back into IT (don't have an MCSE? Sorry, we don't want you!) Where I live, the employers who are looking for that want only Winblows experience and nothing else. It is not worth it for me.
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
Its more than job loss. My brother, who was a programmer and project manager, is finishing his MBA in (gasp) marketing. Many in his classes are former IT professionals who have left IT.
Although I've stayed in IT, I've seen quite a few friends and associates over the past couple of years leave IT for small business (real estate, insurance, home construction, landscaping) or MBAs in non-technical fields.
Why the change? In almost every case, their disgust and reason for a career change was predicated not on the disappointment with IT, but rather the realization that the cost center they worked for was decimated by the absolute posers and morons in alleged profit centers marketing, management, sales, etc. My own 2001 downsizing came despite our IT shop nailing project after project well under budget in a constant death march project. The company couldn't afford the damage from the marketing/sales/corporate spending on extravagant headquarters (complete with a parking garage filled with leased Ferraris and Mercedes), incredible perks for corporate employees, and a general knack for hiring complete clueless idiots (complete with their own staff of at least three or four executive assistants - god forbid a marketing assistant not have someone to get their coffee and bagals).
No, what has inspired so many IT people I know to go into the soft fields is that they're driven to make sure the next company they work for isn't rotten to the core in these areas. Armed with the knowledge that these areas are totally soft and seriouosly lacking competence and drive, they're eager to get going.
Watch for the next career segment upheaval in Dilberts favorite targets: marketing and HR.
disclaimer: If you live in india; Don't take it personally, i make fun of everyone for all the wrong reasons.
Slashindia.org headlines:
The number of people calling themselves IT-professionals have increased by 1175% and those calling themselves programmers 2500%.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
From the article:
this jives with what I've seen--a rise in software engineer jobs. My guess is that many of the less-skilled IT positions are being simply eliminated or outsourced.So we should all just give up, and not try then? Should we all worship the quitter, the one that was too afraid to take risks?
No thanks, I would rather fail while trying, than cry and die because I may fail. Guess what: life is full of risks, I would rather decide my own risks, rather than be a drone in a company where the risks are there but hidden from my eyes.
Yes, most start up businesses fail in the first few years. What you didn't mention was that most businesses fail from mismanagement, not circumstances. So the answer is that no one should start a business? No one should take risks? We should all abandon all hope and just go "get a job"?
No thanks. I choose to not live with such a doom and gloom outlook on life, making myself a "victim". Life has thrown me many curve balls (which I won't cover, because they are irrelevent, we all have challenges and mine are no more important than yours), but I have come out swinging and done fine. I am not better, smarter, better educated or luckier than anyone else. I just refuse to roll over and die, and willing to make the sacrifices for something that is important to me. Its more about attitude than anything else. I choose to not give up.
History is full of people who faced more adversity than you or I know, and the ones that gave up, we don't know about as they are forgettable and forgotten. The ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and succeeded in spite of the odds, should provide enough inspiration for the rest of us.
Abe Lincoln is the best example. Go read about all his failures, lost elections, failing law practice, limited education, for decades before becoming president. Just about everything he tried before becoming President was filled with failure, yet it was his unwillingness to quit that best defined him, and presented him with the opportunity to become argueably our most important President ever.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
One could also point out the correlation between America's major wars in the last century and Democratic administrations -- WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam. Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy/LBJ. So does that mean the Dems should get the 'credit' for wars that cost the lives of over 600,000 Americans? Or is it possible all these correlations don't actually mean much?
I think you're making a smart move, despite all the negative replies to your comment. The job of flying passengers from Chicago to LA cannot easily be outsourced to India. Right now, the air tranportation industry is having some temporary problems, but it will recover as it always has in the past. Whereas software development, or circuit design, will never recover because there will never be any reason to bring those jobs back from India/China/Vietnam etc.
History is full of people who faced more adversity than you or I know, and the ones that gave up, we don't know about as they are forgettable and forgotten. The ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and succeeded in spite of the odds, should provide enough inspiration for the rest of us.
What about the ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and unfortunately failed (as that's what happens with risk). They don't make for good copy, so the successes get more attention.
Abe Lincoln is the best example. Go read about all his failures, lost elections, failing law practice, limited [snip... see parent]
Please read this. I generally agree with what is said; namely, that Lincoln's achievements do not need embellishment with "glurge" to stand up.
BTW, I agree with some of what you said, but not the "risk-takers always win!" gloss you put on it. Sometimes you have to go in with your eyes open, accept that you might get squashed, and go ahead and risk it anyway.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
sure shows the appropriateness of a recent political cartoon from Ben Sargent.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Too any job number comparisons are made to the last peak of 3-4 years ago. But that was the height of the dot.com bubble. That was the point where the industry was too crazy to sustain itself. Outrageous money was spent irresponsibly, qualified engineers were hard to find, classic measures of business sanity went out the window. We don't want to go there again. So if things don't look quite so rosy compared to those days, it's because we're not yet at the point of another dot-kablooie. So it's not like "the good old days"? Good.
To blame Open Source for the problem shows you don't understand the problem;
.net, ASP/ASPX.
In fact, the costs of IT have ballooned, directly because of ignorant people, like yourself making IT decisions, or managing IT people.
The problem: Reinvention of the wheel at every business, and over-charging for obvious IT solutions.
Evidence of this:
Most BUSINESS related software is made using MS-related technologies, like VB,
Most OPEN SOURCE software is based on C, perl, php, Java. This means, businesses are paying more for obvious solutions, instead of using open-source software. Why? IT Staff and "consultants", who know only the microsoft way of doing things are lying to non-technical managers and business owners, everytime they tell them, that MSSQL/ASP/VB is the most viable solution.
How many inventory/CRM/ERP software solutions are way too expensive? Most of them.
Example:
ofbiz.org offers a full business solution for free, yet, I find "consultants" charging each company $1,000 per year for something as simple as a "work-flow" manager. This is module #6 in ofbiz. This particular consultant took MS Project, exported the results, made some designer-level changes, along with a customizable syntax by industry, and charges $1,000 a year as an "affordable" solution.
Businesses are over-charged by consultants.
Not only is the wheel reinvented every time a consultant builds a "cusom-solution", but the "custom-solution" has to be reinvented, if another business wants a similar feature. Imagine if Operating Systems were handled like this; Home users would pay for every driver they need by 3rd-party hacks. Lastly, if Linux didn't exist, MS prices for the home version would probably be closer to $1,000
The IT Business Sector is full of people who don't really know what they are talking about, and are costing american businesses alot of money.
I personally know tech-support managers, who don't know why we would want a centralized resolution-database for the techs! Everybody was writing-down their own resolutions, instead of sharing; The irony; The managers stayed, and the IT staff was cut by 30% in the middle of a code-change nightmare, where customers' average hold-time on the phone was an hour. You gotta wonder, how these people are even employable.
Companies pay several thousand dollars to run MS SQL? Why would companies with 1 server and less than 50 people do such a thing, when mysql/postgresql and others exist? Why? Because either an incompetent IT person doesn't really know how to migrate data, the company software isn't "supported" on that db engine (read: so what; most companies don't support the sql-side of things anyway!!!), or a dishonest consultant is ready to make a buck off of this company's ignorance.
American business can embrace outsourcing or open source. Outsourcing only lowers the labor costs for the company who is over-charging for their software; Thus, the rest of the industry still pays the same price, regardless of where it's made. Open-Source software not only lowers the cost of OBVIOUS solutions to zero, it will also get rid of so-called "consultants", who depend on customer ignorance to over-charge.
Remember "Value Added" Solutions?
Basically, this means, add-ons to an existing solution. American business will NEVER see the benefits of "value-added" software without open-source. There is no incentive to share code and solutions without open-source software (free to share/use/change). The alternative is the present-day situation, and man, somebody is ripping someone off big time!
I had the distinct "pleasure" of working with a lot of people who should not have been let anywhere near a computer, let alone pretend to do anything useful with them. I am not the least surprised there's less people in the industry now.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
How amazingly childish. Seriously, grow up, names like "dumbocrats" are not likely to win anyone to your side. I enjoy engaging in political debates, but not with people who have the emotional level of a 7 year old. Grow up. You just repeated a bunch of rhetoric without offering anything new or insightful. You say that democrats aren't even human, hardy har har.
When you are a big boy come back and maybe we can talk.
There is a neo-con strategy called "Starve the Beast," whose goal is nothing less than to push the government to near bankruptcy so that it is incapable of governing. The rationale is that this will force the government into laissez-faire policies. Bush's slash and spend policies are in line with this policy, rather than the traditional policies of conservatives, which is to match tax cuts with spending cuts.
But even the traditional policy can lead to disaster. Infrastructure requires constant maintenance. Think of a loose shingle on your roof. Replacing it will cost 50 dollars. If you leave it, the others around will will also come loose. Now you have to spend 500 dollars to fix it. Let this go, and you suffer water damage. $5000 to replace that section of the roof. Ignore this, and the water may get into the house, into the wiring, and cause a fire. Then you lose the whole house. Costs delayed are costs increased. Ignore the state of your highways, power grid, environment, etc, and the costs that you incur when you can no longer ignore it will be crippling.
The danger of 'Starve the Beast' should be obvious. The economy runs on the rails of infrastructure provided by the government; highways, police, courts, regulations which protect business as well as prevent unfair practices, etc. Without the ability to do this, capitalism itself will collapse. Corporations are, first and foremost, legal entities sanctioned by government authority. Their very existence is made possibly by the efficacy of government. And we haven't even touched on the military yet. A bankrupt federal government will mark the end of America as a Superpower. All of this is why large numbers of old school conservatives are furious with Bush.
I still haven't touched on the liberal arguments against what Bush is doing. Those who have little money left over after necessities pay a much larger proportion of their income in taxes, through sales tax. There is no tax on securities and stocks, and the financial slight of hand that uses tax shelters is available only to those with a large surplus of capital. When Henry Ford paid his workers an unheard of amount of money for common labourers, he created a large working middle class, with disposable income which allowed them to buy the products of their own labour. This rendered obsolete what was probably the only legitimate claim of Karl Marx: that when workers could no longer buy the products of their own labour, the markets would collapse. The result of Ford's policy eventually spread to most of the American working class, creating the most powerful economic dynamo the world has ever seen. The decline of the middle and working classes make the pie smaller for everyone. The rich may get richer for while, but they will be fewer in number. It is only a matter of time before they feel the pinch. The wolf that grows fat on the poor will soon go after bigger prey.
Both the long term and the short term consequences of Bush's policies are disastrous. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. It may be disastrous for the Democrats if they win, because they will inherit such a mess that it will be hard to wow the crowd. America cannot afford four more years of Bush. And even the conservatives are beginning to realize this.
Actually, it seems quite possible that open source might help the job market. Back during "The Bubble," it was amazing how much money companies were willing to spend for marginal results. Now budgets are lower and expectations are higher. Open source can help programmers do more with less, which they may need to do to survive.
We saw this with railroads in the 1800s, Radio and Automibiles in the 1920's and now computers at the end of the 20th century.
We are also hit with this outsourcing phenomina at the same time. It sucks and there is nothing we can do about it.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Right - you want the state of California to issue an IT license that requires you to be an expert in Windows.
That would be real good for OSS, wouldn't it?
Get a clue - professional licensing of any industry is controlled by people already in that industry and is used to keep everyone else out of that industry.
Besides, if you REALLY tried to license IT professionals based on competence, the entire industry would collapse - just like most industries. Incompetence is the norm, because you only find competence in the top ten percent of anything - and the bell curve says most people fall below that.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Have you considered teaching?
If so, I think We are looking for pt computer science instructors. It beats driving a truck.
ctown at inverhills dot edu
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I can't have much sympathy. American companies have regularly outsourced to many countries such as Canada and Ireland, yet Americans only complain about Indians.
Mainly because the cost of living in India/China is much lower than Canada or Ireland, so there is no way that workers can compete on salary. And that it is possible for Americans to get permits to work temporarily in Canada and Ireland.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
And exactly how are you going to test "IT professionals" in a field that diverse? No single person on the planet understands all of "IT", and it's constantly expanding. I assume your proposed licensing exam will include everything *you* know about and nothing you don't know about. I'm a member of the IEEE, and I've looked at the material for their proposed software engineering "license", and it's just not comprehensive, IMHO.
Myself and my hard core old school group of friends call these .
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ppl suits, because they are typically "dressing for success"
and their technical expertise is at best a joke
We have 20+ yrs hands on experience with computers, and remember
mag tape and punch cards . These ppl think there has always been a mouse
When you have someone making decisions about technical material
and they themselves only have a shallow surface level understanding
of it , you are going to get a giant mess
Technical ppl are usually not allowed into management because they
"talk over the heads" of the suits . Ego in check, and fear of
being made to look like idiots , the techie types are kept out
of the boardroom for their tendency to be blunt and call it like
they see it
Techies make this fear real by being blunt, and calling dumb
ideas dumb with no sugar coating, and no window dressing
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, we call it a duck
The boardroom wants slick willys that can sweet talk take sweet
deals, and and resell the same subroutines in different forms
and different apps as separate packages
They want plastic personalities and want a professional image
not some bulky linux admin pagan that dresses like he got
his clothes from goodwill
Even though more often than not that is the person at the "soul"
of the operations, keeping the blood of bits pumping
Yet the garbage man of the company gets paid like a garbage man,
because it is a thankless job at "most" companies
If it is a Engineer owned or built company it is usually better,
but even companies like Cisco grow to a point where they
lose their tech management soul, and become victims to the
marketing mantra of maniacs
The sales rep, marketing rep, management type goes out and sells
that image and a bag full of promises they "forgot" to mention
to the technical ppl til a week before deadline
The suits are not about good engineering, they are about lubing up
the customer for a first rate reaming
It comes down to the usual common denominator, "money", period
They want to make the customer think they are getting a great deal,
and then find the best way to get as much money as they can,
and lock themselves into that company so getting rid of their
solution is as painful as possible without making it obvious
The marketing types and management types in alot of places are
about image, and giving the feel good, and ego massaging, and
orchestrating a grand play to make things look like they
should to the other suits in the other companies . Think of it like poker
The company that can balance this, have good engineering, and
good slick willy management wins
I hate it, and I decided to work for myself, and be a oncall
technician that does onsite and drop off
Corporate drones, watch Office Space, it makes TOO much sense.
Tech corporate insanity can suck the life out a person
May your god whomever he be, save you from this fate
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Why would it matter if the harder work involves working for someone else, or working for yourself?
It matters because if you work for yourself, you're creating at least one job, probably more. And if there are more jobs than people to take them, salaries go up for everyone.
As the neoliberal policies continue to decimate the job base and increase the unemployed
I find it interesting that few IT people complained when each one of our jobs were effectively replacing dozens of secretaries, accountants, and whole departments of low level paper pushers. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we expect the world to cry over our misfortune.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I've been telling people this for at least the last 3 years or so! The I.T. industry is basically "melting down" into a skillset employers just expect you to have, coupled with another skillset they claim to be hiring you for.
I watched it happen at a previous job, where the engineering staff were told to start picking up books on Visual Basic and Java programming, and actually started spending half of each week working along-side our software development team. Those who didn't show interest in "playing along" ended up looking elsewhere for work.
Not long afterwards, the "I.T. support" staff was cut - with much of the rationale being, "We've got things to the point now where most users just have thin clients on their desks, and all the control is done at the server side anyway. The engineering staff is the one group of real computer "power users" left who need support on their workstations, and they're learning to do it for themselves now."
To be honest, this trend disturbs me, because I've always considered myself a "hard core I.T./computer" guy. I really don't like math, nor do I really have any desire to try to get into another field at this point in time (in my 30's already). If I was talking to someone just going through college, I'd probably advise them to only get into computers secondarily, with a different primary career choice. But for folks like me, I don't see a real bright future.... No matter, I'm pretty stubborn, and if I become like one of those old TV repairmen still looking for old sets with tubes that need swapping out - so be it. That'll be me.
I read a number of rants. A number of "gloom and doom postings." I am also aware that the next place for computer programmers to be outsourced to will be where programmers, help desks and so on are cheaper than they are in India. That would be China, folks.
At first NAFTA was a rip-snorting success for Mexico. Problem is, the owners of these new plants didn't see the future coming, they just wanted to cash in on the now. So, while a number of rich plant owners in Mexico got richer (at least momentarily) American companies receiving a tax and labor cost benefit from moving to Mexico were learning that they could move out of the US without significantly harming their business and promptly moved to where wages are even lower than they are in Mexico.
After all, NAFTA rules say that workers have rights to organize, even in Mexico. Why not move somewhere where workers have no rights whatsoever.
In the United States, shortly after the Civil War, prisoners in penitentiaries were traded back and forth between companies doing business in the Deep South more or less as slave labor chain gangs. You can see exactly the same treatment -- and worse -- today in China. I will not knowingly purchase goods marked "Made in China" because I find the practice of near slavery and outright slavery repugnant.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.