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Techies Migrate in Search of Work
prostoalex writes "Tracing the story of one family where the father is employed in the IT field, the Washington Post discusses the current unemployment in the information technology field. For a good reason - for the first time in 30 years the IT unemployment rate exceeded the national average unemployment rate, implying that you have a better chance of getting a job if your field is something other than IT. The journalist does offer a disclaimer, saying that the term 'IT worker' is applied equally to a top-notch scientist in a research lab, to a dot-com startup billionaire, and to a local HTML guru. Relevant employment statistics also shows that layoffs in the IT field were up 60% in the third quarter of 2004."
I wonder how a cross-country move to find job will actually get you a job, if the IT job shortage is nation wide. I hope a person doesn't need to move to another state to find job because another person decided to move to the first person's state and found a job that could have been given to the first person.
The article mentions this Mr Packman and his family are staying in a $58-a-night motel, so basically you work just enough to breath until the next morning?
Later in the article, there's a discussion of "Sacrificing salary for stability". So if local workers have decided to lower their salary expectation to match or better those of overseas workers, will company do in-sourcing instead?
Apparently the lower income isn't going to cover the expensive food and accommodation, so maybe these low income workers will stop buying from over-priced products? Will this in turn force supermarkets et al to drop prices?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
My mistake. At first, I thought it said Trekkies, and had something to do with the collapsing Star Trek franchise.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There are TONS of IT jobs in Washington, DC. If you are willing and capable of getting a security clearance, you can get a job. Getting your first clearance job will be a bit of a challenge, but once you get it, you are set.
Here in Silicon Valley, the SJ Mercury News recently put out a report on the "improving economy", as measured by the declining unemployment rate.
In other news, the unemployment rate in this area is declining because IT workers have given up trying to find work, and are leaving Santa Clara County in droves.
Thereby reinforcing the finding that 90% of statistics are worthless.
I thought for sure this would be an article about IT workers moving to Canada where they're actually hiring people
India closes it's borders. Mexico soon to follow.
...with a nice sharp scalpel.
Seriously though, is it really news that it's harder and harder to find, and keep, jobs in IT? Unless you speak Romanian or Hindi, that is.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
...I'm planning to migrate to Canada. I hear access to the internets is faster there.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
We, the people of the United States of America, paid over a $Trillion to create this industry. It was generating about $3 Trillion a year in wages--real economic activity.
Now it's been handed to China and India.
It's not being used to enrich our native land, it's being used to enrich our moneyed elites.
China and India couldn't have damaged America's economy more if they had fought a war against us and won.
Just remember that George W. Bush reduced the outsourcing tax from 25% to 5% when you vote on November 2.
I've been out of work since the end of February and there just isn't anything out there. I can't even get a Helplessdesk job!
All I hear is how terrible all of IT is for lack of support. Aparantly corporate America taps money from IT and then just bitches about it.
If it wasn't for Spy/Malware - I wouldn't have any beer money.
Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
Having read the article in the Post, the guy the story is about is an ex-mechanic who got into IT during the boom. He live in the Midwest (not exactly a hotbed of IT jobs). A perfect analogy would be someone looking for water in the desert. He isn't moving to one of the coasts, so he's kind of stuck. Living in the DC area, there are loads of jobs, but you have to get here. He'd be better off signing up with one of the big contracting firms (EDS, SAIC, etc.) if he's looking.
He and his family are well known to the staff, and as a result they tend to leave extra power-pills under the bed to get them through the night.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...of an unladen techie?
...in search of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy photo ops. Things must be getting desperate.
I hate the Information Technology label. If anybody asks me if I'm an IT worker I say "no". Even data entry jobs are IT. I wouldn't even call myself a programmer, though I write code. People who do hiring know the difference between the types of people that get lumped into the IT category, so why can't the trade rags, marketing departments, and mainstream media figure it out?
And for the record, even though IT jobs are down, software engineering jobs are up. Especially in the Operating systems and Device Driver areas. If they didn't lump unskilled workers and skilled workers together in the same category they'd be able to tell the difference.
Really, there's no demand for people who know how to use a computer. Everyone knows how to use a computer.
I'm tired of reading "poor me! I used to make 100,000 a year because I knew Lotus 1-2-3, and now the only work I can get is data entry for minimum wage" stories.
We all know how it works. The IT industry is rife with deskilling. What is today a marketable skill (I don't know, configuring LANs by hand, for instance) is tomorrow a useless one (autosensing switches and DHCP, etc). New technologies are constantly being created to replace IT workers.
So if you want to stay with the computers, you have to constantly acquire new skills to stay a step ahead. People who think they can just sit back and live the fat life and let their A+ certification take care of them are dead wrong and deserve what they get.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The late 90's were an aberration that drew many unqualified people into IT. Think paper MCSEs and IT managers that could barely send email. What we are seeing is a deabsorption of these people (e.g. many of them out of work). Watch the allied health (medium skilled) fields do the same thing in a few years.
Really, if there are no jobs where you are, move to where there is work.
Why is this complicated?
if (jobs(whereYouAreNow) == 0)
{ move();
}
"I always have other feelers out," he said. "There's no such thing as a permanent position anymore."
And to think everybody voted for four more years of this garbage. Not that Clinton and his lookalike Kerry would have been that much better- but at least Democrats are smart enough to hide the pain behind an artifical bubble propped up by government surplus, as opposed to running deficits as far as the eye can see and robbing the future from the under-18 crowd.
Congradulations to all of those who voted for more of the same- all 59 million of you- who apparently like making sure that people can't get ahead.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Unless we see something new, IT jobs are going the way of plumbers. Every town will have a few and if a company needs IT support they'll call one out. The rest of the time their computers will just work.
That is the problem people look at people using computers they go IT. It was the same durring the late 90s tech boom they sell products on the internet then they are a tech company (I am sorry Pets.com was not a Tech company it was a Pet suply store that happends to be online) To put Pets.com as the same type of company as say Sun Micrososystems is just plane stupid. Now That the echonmy dropped they are still saying that all of them are IT staff. So to say that IT is down then the real question where is it down? Is it in the application Programmers, The Web Developers, IT Technical Support, System Administrators, Network Consultants, ..., ..., ... There are tons of jobs that fall under IT which require different disiplins and skills. Most Colleges have seemed to realize these differences thus make a difference between Computer Science, Computer Engineering, MIS, Information Technology Systems, ..., ..., ... But the general public doesn't seem t want to make the seporation in their mind. Sure we use computers for more then wordprocessing and spreadsheet, But after that the simularites get far more seporated. Saying IT jobs are being loss at the nation average is like saying, Office jobs are being loss above the national average. While only a couple of office jobs have been dropped.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Well, the first statement applies to Clinton perfectly, as does the second one to Kerry. But I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'd think that they looked alike.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Four More Years! Four More Years! Four More Years!
Of course, on the plus side, if you're a technomad, living like this, out of hotels, you DON'T VOTE- thus one more way for Karl Rove to build success.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
had NO business being in IT in the first place!
They knew what the interweb was and could spell HTML yet, somehow, commanded over 50k a year.
I was glad to see the "people rake" come through and get rid of some of the dead weight.
Of course, you have to deal with a complete lack of anything resembling broadband, which is probably why they have the shortage in the first place; no techie wants to move somewhere 256kbps is considered broadband and worth paying $50/month for.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Is this normal after the dotcom boom?
I mean, 50 years ago over 60% of the US population worked in agriculture. (daily show)
It could be a natural effect.
no
for the first time in 30 years the IT unemployment rate exceeded the national average unemployment rate
And pro-work-visa lobbyists, such as ITAA, still claim there is a "shortage" of IT people.
Table-ized A.I.
Man, was that story depressing. Guy has a family and kids. If you don't feel compassion for that guy's story, you're not human.
Personally, I think the country is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket, which is one of the reasons I choose not to procreate. If life got intolerable enough, I can always say "Screw you guys" and check out. I have lived a good life and have absolutly no fear of any after life.
But with a family, well, you just can't check out while your children still depend on you.
I know, I know, that's the way it's always been. But for me, particularly in this society, it still gives me strength to know that if life gives me the old "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" trip I can always say "Fuck that shit" and make the Big Trip.
So, for those of you who don't have kids, please, don't do it. Contrary to popular opinion, procreation is one of the most selfish things one can do.
Think of the future. Globalization. That means a leveling of resource use and wages, and let me tell you something: yours are going to go down more than Habibi's in the Middle East is going to go up. The powers-that-be have mastered the art of groupthink and know how to sway popular opinion that the power will only get more oppressive.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
These are _important_ issues.
Is this a monthly gig where /. posts IT is dying?
I work with people in career transition. A lot of them go to technical schools because they hear ads claiming that they'll double their salary. Most of them graduate making $9.00 and hour doing tech support phone work and $10 -$20K of debt. I work in the IT field but have a business degree so I have some level of security but it bothers me that these students receive little or no business training. You'd think that with all of the automation now taking place and the commoditization of computer hardware the schools would be responsible enough to explain that computers aren't a panacea.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Attention all: Just in case it STILL hasn't sunk in, and apparently it hasn't, everyone who works for a living needs to have a decent level of savings. This is especially important when there's a dependent family in the picture! The article says the family in question was RENTING a house not long ago. Here's a news flash kids: renting a house costs just as much as buying a house except that renting builds no equity value!!! There are federal government programs to help first time buyers so that you don't even need a downpayment! Instead of living in an apartment, which in the same area will cost less than renting an entire house, and saving up this family is now crammed in a motel room! A multi-room apartment would be complete luxury. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck thanks to luxuries like renting a house, a lease on a new car, etc, think about what the people in the story are doing and imagine yourself there. Americans save pitifully little, if at all, and this is what can happen when you don't.
It has also been alledged by some that, 50 years ago, about half of the working population made below-average wages.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I prefer "harvesting the cubical farm".
and while I don't know much about the economy overall I can say this much: it seems like the older It guys who survived the .com implosion are kinda burning out and looking towards different types of IT employment. Many are willing to give up high-paying (and/or high-pressure) jobs miles away in the city in order to be near home and, in many cases, a new child or wife. I know it's not unique to our field but I do believe that most IT people tend to think a bit differently about this and come to the decision that money isn't the be-all. I recently put a listing in the local paper for a desktop support guy, $10-$20/hour. I got an amazing number of responses from people who were *already employed* making way more money than I was offering and were clearly over qualified. Number one reason was to be closer to home. Number two was traffic.
At first I chalked it up to people who were lying about already being employed but after talking to them on the phone I'm not so sure. I'm near Washington and our IT scene isn't as bleak as other places so this may be a local trend.
Actually, about 32.47% of statistics are made up right on the spot.
If the US adopted the EU's strict data privacy laws, then we wouldn't be hemorrhaging as many jobs to India, China & Eastern Europe. Since many IT jobs involve working with applications and databases that contain sensitive financial, medical and demographic data. I really think the Democrats dropped the ball on both the data privacy and off shoring issues, but that's what you get when the party elites are all out-of-touch-millionaires.
Mr Packman had this to say:
"wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka weooweooweoooweoo woop bleep! bleep!"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...computers just haven't caught on.
And that ding-danged yellow headed twerp of theirs called "Jr". He wasn't potty-trained yet, and when he ate up that trail of white dots he left a trail of brown dots behind.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The trouble with that rake is that it didn't just hit the intraweb people- as if HTML was a skill- it also hit the people with 42 different programming languages on their resume who could do anything eventually given enough time.
The only job you can trust left is with State Government, Department of Transportation- because if we stop taking care of the roads we're all in trouble.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Ummm, homeless people can vote, even if they're living in the street.
Too bad if American IT workers are having a difficult time with payments on their 2002 Chevy Malibu cars, other humans in India/China are getting to own cars for the first time in generations, and are very happy even though they are super economy subcompacts.
"I'm not an IT worker, I'm a *hacker*."
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I've referred to myself as a Migrant Information Worker for some time now. In my case, it means working two half-time jobs - fortunately within the same company, and only three miles apart.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
This happened to a good friend of mine. Back in the Summer of 2002 when the Dot Com boom was just about busted, a friend of mine lost his job and ended up taking contracting gigs. He lived here in Colorado Springs and ended up doing gigs in Ft. Collins (2 hr drive) and in the Denver Tech Center (1 hr drive). Having a mortgage, wife and child, it was a lot for him. In November 2002, he ended up taking a job in Salinas area of California, not too far from the bay Area and its high cost of living. The house got sold, no equity left from it. He always talks about wanting to come back to Colorado but like most palces, the high tech job market is in the shitter. He had a clearance but it was already the past the 2 year mark of where it was easy to reinstate or resubmit paperwork.
Today, he is living near Santa Cruz in a small 1000 square foot house costing $2500 per month. He has two kids and pulling in $40k per year. He cannot even buy a house since even the junky houses are a half-million -> high mortgage payment.
With his situation, more than likely, if I lose my job here, I would have to move and leave Colorado even with the upside of have very little debt - car payment only and house is paid off. Washington DC is doing good but cost of living is awful.
Speaking about the Information Technology sector is like talking about job losses in the Transportation sector. It isn't specific enough to mean anything to anyone (and yet still gets published).
Oh well, I have a good job now, and I got it because all of the idiots out there made me look so much better. Hell, the guy that I interviewed with left because he didn't know what he was doing, and now I do his job and mine. Maybe if there were more qualified people, I would have a new coworker... because we are looking, we just cannot find anyone who is competent.
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
The official policy of the Bush administration is to give foreigners willing/able to displace American workers a shot at citizenship/permanent residency. Just look at the platform-the Republicans want to expand use of H-1b/L-1 visas to match "any willing worker" with "any willing employer".
This is all really a massive program of corporate welfare. Corporations pay _nothing_ for these immigration rights that have considerable economic value.
The hypocrites in the left don't care because they expect immigrants to vote democratic in time. The hypocrites on the right are being bought with promises of federal funds for faith based charities and educational vouchers.
For all you people "in the know" here on Slashdot, is it as bad as the article states for someone going into networking? (Looking to get various CompTIA certs, MCSE, CCNP (possibly CCSP), and a 3 year college education to prove I actually spent the time to learn the info?
What kind of resistance should I be expecting?
"That's why I'm such a big fan of Community College!"
Woo-Hoo, that guy should just go to community college, then he'll be able to find another great job. Isn't it so great when everything is so black and white?
How much are corporations being paid to do this?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The kind of person who recognizes that when there is a government budget surplus, there is more money available for investment in private industry, just as when the government runs huge multi-trillion deficits between trade and government spending, there is less money for investment in private industry. The first scenario leads to companies making the decision to hire more people, the second leads to companies making the decision to lay off as many people as possible.
Understand now why tax cuts done irresponsibily lose jobs?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The guy's making good money, it's his expenses that are killing him. Having to move frquently and accepting a motel as a home is a judgement call and it's blowing 1800 a month.
He should have his 9 year old set up a bank account so he can avoid the check-cashing fee.
If his wife can work they ought to just move back to Warren and he can commute to Akron, Kent, Canton or the Cleveland area. A three bedroom rental at $1000 and suddenly he's saving $700 / month.
The whole economy is too darwinian, future generations can't defend themselves if they haven't been born yet, and today's financial institutions just do whatever Washington will let them get away with. Shareholders VS society at-large. Temporal mindsets suck.
This guy should be happy he's got a wife and kids. Try PLC or truck driving or become an RN. There 'Service Economy' is inescapable - so he should be happy with what he's got. Sorry to be bitter, but I got my own problems, and $30 an hour aint one of 'em.
'There is only so much room in the economy for business owners - leaving the rest of us destined to being someone else's Em-Ploy-Ee.'
~ Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber Manifesto
Stuff that matters.
I have stopped looking for IT work. No, I was not one of the people who jumped in during the boom either. I am very good at what I "did" on the Network and Systems level, there is simply nothing out there to try for where I live. It is over, and I don't even miss it. Now, I do projects that are personally interesting / rewarding, and avoid the endless cycle of IT madness.
One final thought, we did this to ourselves. How many of us were making much more in salary than the traditional business people who had been working for 10 years at the company? Corporate America hates us, for the greed, the failure of products we recommended, for endless ugrage cycles, for jumping ship for an exta buck, etc. They don't want us back in the capacity we were formerly employeed. Get used to it.
Also, the job sucks anyway. Sit in front of a screen all day, go blind, get fat, be overstressed, see if you don't die young.
Something dawned on me yesterday. IT is one of the few, if not the only, industry ever created to put its own workers, and the workers of as many other industries as possible, out of a job. That is the purpose of information technology. Kind of sad and kind of neat. IT makes very few truly new products. We create products that do old things a different way (ie. streaming a video over a network, cable or otherwise, so you don't have to go to Blockbuster). So be it.
When I started uni, the IT market was hot and no one was having trouble getting work. In fact, I probably would have been better off getting a job right off the bat instead of dropping the price of a small island in the south pacific on going to school. I spent an entire year out of school looking for IT work...mostly focused in one city, but toward the end of my search I just wanted a job. I must have sent out hundreds of resumes and had a few interviews but nothing solid. The company I'm now working for called me out of no where...I believe they got my resume from Monster, although I hadn't updated that resume in years as I have a serious loathing of monster.com.
I don't think we can blame the dot com bubble bursting on the serious lack of IT jobs in the country...outsourcing may be to blame, but that's typically helpdesk sort of work. Also, the guy that posted about DC having an array of IT jobs...believe it. Northern Virginia has a surplus of IT jobs most of the time...I grew up there and hopped around to a number of great positions even before school. I would've gone back if I didn't hate the area so much.
Good luck with the job search to all you unemployed out there.
Without a home address, you aren't a resident of anywhere- and thus cannot register to vote, at least, not in any state I'm aware of. If you're not registered, you don't get to vote. Period. If you are homeless and were allowed to vote without being registered, then that is EXACTLY the type of voter fraud that Republicans were tearing up ballots to prevent.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Amen, brotha! A DBA is not a computer programmer. An HTML jockey is not a computer programmer. As a bona-fide Software Engineer (note the capitalization), I can't tell you how much I resent being lumped in with the rest of you losers.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine how much of this post, if any, is sarcasm, and how much is my earnest feelings.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Just remember kiddies, since he wasn't elected the first time, he can run again in 2008!
Some civil service jobs require a clearance; your agency will get you one. To get you working early, they may grant an interim clearance.
Government contractors who create or handle classified information have to pay for a clearance for each employee that needs one, except for those who have had an equivalent or higher-level clearance in the previous 2 years.
The last I heard, from a job recruiter (YMMV), a SECRET clearance costs $80K and there's a 250K person waiting list. No wonder contractors will stop just short of kidnapping to get cleared employees...
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Likewise, if Al Gore runs and wins in 2008, he can only serve one term and then resign (because he was already elected in 2000).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Lots of IT work in London at the moment. If anything there is a shortage. I certainly get a stream of responses for my cv (resume). Also there is a lot of money to be made in Dubai currently, especially in IT - like with Dubai Internet City". Zero tax, massive ecomonic growth, people from all over the world there, safe friendly environment for all westerners, and the best of everything - they are currently building the world's tallest building in Dubai too.
Gave them permanent MFM. Made them our 'trade equal'. All this bitching about 'Bush did this' or is 'gonna do that' makes me sick.
That rat bastard Clinton sold ALL our manufacturing jobs to the Chinese so he could get re-elected for four more years of intern ass-grabbing. Once he sold us all out, everything else started to follow. How the fuck do you think this country can afford 'high salaried jobs' when the base of our commerce all moved to China ?
I'm not sure if they're getting work, but it seems that a lot of them are former programmers, PC techs, startup employees, graphic designers, teachers, construction workers, sanitation workers, pimps, etc. I keep wondering why so many people are leaving other careers to go to "web design."
Looking for a job?
The process itself is painless:
1.) Get a job with a defence contractor.
2.) Fill out a detailed personal history. For some levels of clearance, people you know will probably be interviewed.
3.) You can usually get a provisional clearance within a week, unless there is shadiness in your past.
4.) Final clearance can take two to twelve months to come through.
OTOH, the military assigns a (usually) low clearance to all it's personnel and this makes it relatively easy to be promoted to higher levels of security once you're out in industry.
Random fact: one in seven Americans has some sort of government security clearance.
...by Rage Against the Machine "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" Man walks along the railroad track He's Goin' some place, there's no turnin' back The Highway Patrol chopper comin' up over the ridge Man sleeps by a campfire under the bridge The shelter line stretchin' around the corner Welcome to the New World Order Families sleepin' in their cars out in the Southwest No job, no home, no peace, no rest, NO REST! And The highway is alive tonight Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes I'm sitting down here in the campfire light Searchin' for the Ghost of Tom Joad He pulls his prayer book out of a sleepin' bag The preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag He's waitin' for the time when the last shall be first and the first shall be last In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass With a one way ticket to the promised land With a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand Lookin' for a pillow of solid rock Bathin' in the cities' aqueducts And The highway is alive tonight Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the Ghost of old Tom Joad Now Tom Said; "Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy Wherever a hungry new born baby cries Whereever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air Look for me ma' I'll be there Wherever somebodies stuglin' for a place to stand For a decent job or a helpin' hand Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free Look in their eyes ma, You'll see me! [repeat 8 times] And the highway is alive tonight nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the Ghost of Tom Joad.
Guess again.
All too often, the complaints about "we can't find workers" really translates into "we can't find workers willing to work at those wages" or "we can't find workers with good credit."
It takes 18-36 months for a clearance. If you have great credit, you can get an "interim clearance" which is a temporary one until the real clearance is done. If you have spotty to rotten credit, you can expect to get turned down. Security officers know that, so your credit score is more important in an interview than whether you have a brain.
I don't know what state you live in, but of the two I have lived in each registration form had an area for a person to draw a map of their approximate place of residents if they didn't have an address.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Maybe instead of chasing IT jobs, Packman should run from ghosts of IT past and go around eating white pills instead!
*rimshot*
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Is that jelloboy from Fark? Your horrible english skills give you away.
A skilled trade is a good career choice. They are in very high demand these days. Check out this article in the Toronto Star.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
This guy is part of the problem and lacks both insight and interesting perspective. Horrible grammer and lack of an eigth grade equivalent education should not be rewarded here. Especailly in a thread lamenting the loss of jobs in our country.
Sheesh!
If you want to assign blame like that, then the Republican Nixon is truly to blame for "opening up" China to trade.
__________
Huh?
I guess the employment situation is at least as bad as the funding situation at my university.
As an international grad student, I am seeing a lot of my friends losing financial aid when they are yet to complete their PhD degrees. This is a tricky thing - people come here without any financial support because they have a fellowship. And suddenly, it so happens that the university cuts funds or increases the fees (heck, we are required to pay close to 8 grand every quarter here), and the advisor no longer has enough funds to pay them. The easiest way out for him is to 'fire' one of his students. However, there are always some options left - teaching assistantship, gradership and so on.
I wonder what people like the ones in the article do in such a situation. I also am surprised why the US with so many 'brilliant' people is yet to find a solution to such a crisis. ! Where is all the money going - i know it sounds a little silly - but the total money in the world should remain nearly constant - or increase ! Why is there no solution to this yet ?
of reading this thread while consulting for a client who appears to literally be running their own H1-B breeding facilities. I am, I kid you not, one of 10 non-Indians amongst a sea of HUNDREDS of indian programmers for a major financial institution's back office... in New Jersey!
I mean really, how the hell do these dips$@#$ pull this off? Not enough qualified programmers for the job? I still remember sitting next to a mainframe guy at a client's site in Valley Forge as he was getting laid off. They set up a "training center" downstairs STACKED with indian programmers and shuttle bussed them to and from work. His biggest concern was how he was going to pay for his daughter's school.
I've read the arguments and considered teh situation, and the opinion of the majority of economists is dead wrong. When your at the top of the pile and the rungs under you are filled with poor, hungry, willing to kill for a buck foreigners your quality of life and income WILL decline.
Mark my words folks, your seeing the return to 1900 all around you. Until organized labor is willing to draw blood and go into these semi-demcratic (or just plain dictatorial) countries and create a homogeneous labor body worldwide we are going to see a widening split between rich and poor. It will, I kid you not, be NO DIFFERENT than it was during the worst parts of teh industrial revolution.
And the funny part is the Republicans will probably still somehow convince the begger red states who suck money from the rich blue states to accept more tax write offs, refunds, and general give-aways to big corporations.
I am the Darl of my reality... help me.
-rt
Speaking as a gainfully employed web developer it must be the rocket scientists and billionaires who are getting laid off (I'd lay myself off too if I had billions of dollars).
in bed.
to see who is the most ridiculously overqualfied unemployed person except I'd probably be one of the top contenders.
I'm tired of reading "poor me! I used to make 100,000 a year because I knew Lotus 1-2-3, and now the only work I can get is data entry for minimum wage" stories.
I used to make $38,000/yr in IT, got laid off in the third round of annual layoffs. During that period I was taking night classes to get my associates degree. Now I'm looking at about $25,000 to start.
It's not just the incompetent highly paid people that are feeling it.
...Parents are still sending their kids to college to get degress in Website Production and Media Design with no idea that they are setting them up for failure.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
I work with a lot of clients and I still see the downside to the tech boom-- too many people with too little skill or understanding of technology. During the boom anyone could get a job, but now, you have to show that you really do understand and know how to utilize technology-- no more house painter one day, IT manager the next.
I still can't believe some of the people I run across-- A recent client had a program manager who had owned a siding company. He took an MCSE exam, and today, he's in charge of their AD implementation (hey, I know it MS, but still, a little bit of directory background goes a long way). He could barely function in his role and his company wondered why they were having such difficutly. Not that he was a bad guy, but he had no real world experience in the planning, deployment and execution of a network directory plan.
Welcome to the aftershock.
# nohup
The article talks about the "temporary IT job" this guy has in York, PA. Guess what, I've got one of those jobs too (also in York). I have no idea why that guy would move TO York to get an IT job, it's all crappy temp work. Chances are the guy is working for Harley Davidson, they're one of the only employers of IT people in York and they hire a lot of temporary people.
Seriously, if this guy moved here for a job, I'm real scared, because I'm getting ready to move AWAY to get one.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
I'm sure that this has been said many times, but I feel that the biggest problem facing the IT industry as a whole is that the job market if flooded with incompetent people. I say this based on two reasons. First, because computer training companies are setting up offices like fried chicken restaurants in the cities. Every other corner/advertisment on the tv or radio has something about "like computers, and are unhappy with your janitorial job??? then come to us and we'll train you to be a systems administrator starting at $$$$" Sound familiar? Cause i hear it about once every 5 minutes on the radio. To provide validatie to my point, I recently worked with a fellow who was in his early 40's, and out of the blue switchd his career as a truck driver over to network administration. He poured a boat load of money into one of these computer training places, and gets himself a helpdesk job at my company. Now i was tasked with the job of training him at our company. Long story short, after 6 months, he still didn't know jack shit about computers, but was originally hired (after telling my manager not to) because he has a list of cert's a mile long and because he said "computers intrigued him". I feel that this is quite commonly the case elsewhere, the IT job market is flooded with these boozo's that somehow get these jobs and can't tell their $#@ from a hole in the ground, which in turn gives IT workers a horred name. Now my second reason, is due to the graduates coming out of schools with a degree in IT. I currently will be one of the graduates, and i must say that out of graduating class, I would only feel comfortable working next to about 3 fellow graduates, the rest are wastes of space that somehow managed to graduate because of their essay, test taking, and reguratation skills. These kids are a joke, they majored in IT because the liked computers but don't really have a clue about them. I am floored everyday by the questions I am asked by my fellow classmates, the questions are ones that shouldn't even be asked by someone at their leave, yet they have absolutely no clue. I feel that this is common around our country. I could go on for hours about this, but I won't. Hopefully this ramble made some sense cause it was written quite hastly.
The only places in eastern Canada to come for IT work are Toronto, Ottawa, or the Waterloo area, all in Ontario. But forget it, nobody is really hiring.
Meh.
I remember working for a software company in the 90's... everyone around me had English or History degrees from these no-name colleges.
They could talk-the-talk, but that was about it.
Now... they are all gone. And we are suppose to feel sorry for them???
Got a link? I didn't see this on the federal voter's registration...if they can't send you snail mail, how do they verify your residence?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
To put Pets.com as the same type of company as say Sun Micrososystems is just plane stupid.
Maybe not. Insiders at HP say that bean-counters are taking over, turning HP from an R&D company into a Dell-like integrator and retailer. Basic R&D is not profitable for them anymore, leaving it to Asian suppliers to innovate on their own. It is all about packaging and marketing. Whether it is packaging and marketing dog food or servers, it is the same kind of process. America is moving away from industries that do any real work. We are being gutted.
Table-ized A.I.
Just trying to help. Reply to this if you are interested.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow
Or guns to bear
I was always there
Right on the job.
They used to tell me
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad
I made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad
Now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower,
Now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
I warned you. On 2000-04-14, I wrote "Today begins the Second Great Depression". Was I wrong?
Actually, in my experience the people getting axed were the skilled ones, it was the office politicians who remained in charge. That's OK though, as all the productive work went overseas, so no one really cares.
IT is way to too wide of a field. ..., ..., ... There are tons of jobs that fall under IT which require different disiplins diciplines and skills. Most Colleges have seemed to realize these differences thus make a difference between Computer Science, Computer Engineering, MIS, Information Technology Systems, ..., ..., ... But the general public doesn't seem t want to make the seporation separation in their mind. Sure we use computers for more then wordprocessing and spreadsheet, But after that the simularites similarities get far more seporated separated. Saying IT jobs are being loss lost at the nation average is like saying, Office jobs are being loss lost above the national average. While only a couple of office jobs have been dropped.
That is the problem people look at people using computers they go IT. It was the same durring during the late 90s tech boom they sell products on the internet then they are a tech company (I am sorry Pets.com was not a Tech company it was a Pet suply store that happends happens to be online) To put Pets.com as the same type of company as say Sun Micrososystems or..Microsystems? is just plane (plain?)stupid. Now That the echonmy economy dropped they are still saying that all of them are IT staff. So to say that IT is down then the real question where is it down? Is it in the application Programmers, The Web Developers, IT Technical Support, System Administrators, Network Consultants,
A sysadmin writes tools to automate more and more of what he does. Soon, there's nothing left for him to do.
Other IT jobs are constantly being eliminated by the advancement of technology. This trend should have been obvious from the beginning to anyone working in this industry. This industry is about automation!
The saving point is that, although more and more things are becoming automated, more and more problems to automate are being found every day. These problems require new skills to tackle. Thus, the IT worker who wishes to be perpetually employed must focus on continually adding to his skillset. Unfortunately, as many are starting to figure out, this requires something called "intelligence."
The fact is, in the 90's boom, many of the supposed "critical" IT positions were, in fact, automatable, or performable by monkeys. It was simply a matter of time before the software to automate those jobs was written. Businesses have realized this fact, and the market for less skilled IT workers has reduced dramatically. This is as it should be.
A large number of "IT Professionals" in the boom were horrifically unqualified, and they are now surprised that they can't find work. Well, I'm not surprised.
If I was that guy I wouldn't even think about U.S. anymore. Move to a country which values the work you do and you'll be better off, even if the numeric amount if less.
There's an ITT Tech on every corner, DeVry spewing ads all over the place, and tons of other companies/schools still trying to convince you that you should get a degree in technology just because you can program your VCR. The problem is that nearly anyone can get a college degree. Getting a job, showing some sort of drive, knowledge, and dedication is another problem. I graduated on October 28, 2003 from DeVry. Everyone told me things would be fine, etc. I realized when I saw class mates graduating with me who had 3.0 averages and did not even know how to program anything, much less how to even create a web page... things would be sad. These same people would be arriving in troves to try and get a job, throwing bull in the interview. You know what? It took me two months, but I got a job as a software consultant. Also, in those two months, I had 30+ interviews. When I'd ask my classmates how many interviews they had, they would tell me none. None. Why? I spent 40+ hours a week looking for work, took it very serious. I showcased my talents, learned new things, and worked hard. These people sit at home looking for work on Monster.com and expecting someone to just throw money at them. Two of my classmates I keep in touch with both work $8.00 an hour jobs, doing nothing related to their degree. I am quite pleased with this because both of these people had no idea how to do anything, just used others for help, never learned anything technical besides how to memorize answers before a test. Unemployment rate high in IT? Good. They deserve it. If you are good at what you do and you get fired, you should be able to get a job. If you can't, you are not trying hard enough. I view this all with the quality and quantity of the IT workforce - low quality and high quantity. It's just trimming the fat. Oh yes, within six months of being a consultant I got a senior analyst/admin position with a major insurance firm. So there's a second job even.
Are they African or European?
Employees with low credit are usually more willing to sell company secrets for cash. It's a simple fact, demonstrated over and over again. Not because they're inherently evil employees or some other kneejerk reaction, but because the situations that got them a low credit score are precisely the ones that create a desperate need for lots of cash.
Now combine that situation with a government clearance, and you've moved from selling company confedential data to their competitors, into selling military secrets to foreign nations. I rather like the fact that they look hard at credit ratings. In debt? Here's a small packet of red-stamped SECRET/NOFRN papers that will pay off your credit cards if passed on to the right people....
They're not denying you work because "you're not willing to work at these wages," they're denying you work because "a very high percentage of people with similar credit ratings sell out their country if given a job here."
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I don't believe in sasquatch or Roswell aliens either.
Once you set it up right and users can't install all the various pieces of software that screw up the systrems, you've worked yourself out of a job.
Blah Blah Linux Blah Blah
Vote Quimby!
he is obviously NOT good with money management or anything else and woefully under-skilled socially and/or technically to have to have people get him pitty positions that it does not sound like he is qualified for. if they are they poor why is he buying them candie bars??? his and his wifes priorites are screwed up for sure
what is the emoticon for a tiny violin?
While I empathize for the fellow's plight, I do technical interviews all the time for my company (consulting arm of a large, nationwide telco), and we're having a heck of a time finding qualified high-end people (we pay high-end too) who have both LAN and WAN experience: we need people we can drop into a contract on day 2. I think that the job issue is very localized...
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Libertarians think that the Fed has been nothing but a big con game from the begining- and we'd be better off without the whole mess.
Me- I'm a bit less sure- but one thing I do know, is that we haven't had a free market since the Fed was created.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
actually, this is a very common misconception, that home ownership is financially better than renting.
Leaving aside the lifestyle choice of a renter (not having to pay rates or fix anything, being able to move at short notice, having investments in more liquid assets), and looking simply at the finances of it, we see a case in much of the western world where renting is now better financial sense than buying.
u.s., u.k., canada and australia are all at the peak of record real estate market highs...so currently, real estate is an extremely overvalued asset, and, by all knowledgable assessment, is set to decline over the coming years. In those same countries, the uptake in home ownership has caused rents to decline, or at least hold steady. So we have a situation where the property owner must make up the shortfall between market driven rents and interest on the investment loan.
I specifically made the choice to rent in this market and funnel my savings into other vehicles, and heres why.
The apartment I rent, would be conservatively valued at 600,000 in the current market (similar one just went for that in the same block). I pay $300 per week rent. Current interest rates are approx 7% and expected to rise (but I won't take that into account in these calculations), and the value of the investment is expected to fall by as much as 10% over the coming year.
Lets do some maths:
Approximate interest on purchase of $600,000 for one year -- $42,000 (now at this point, I still don't own any equity, I've just paid the bank). Lets be generous and say that my investment only looses 5% over the next year, that's another $30,000. So, if I have to liquidate at the end of the year, I'm down $72K. Now lets factor into that rates/taxes/body corporate/maintenance/insurance...probably another 10K. Let's multiply that over 3 years which is a conservative projection of the expected real estate market contraction. It's cost me$246,000 to live in a place I still have no equity holding in.
Renting, over the same 3 year period, it costs $46,800 to live in exactly the same house, with exactly the same dollar equity holding, with more rights (tenancy agreements etc) and never having to do any maintenance on my precious weekends. So the I am almost $200,000 better off.
Now each case varies and this generalizes a lot of conditions, but it shows that the old advice that home ownership is better than renting may have held true 20 years ago, but certainly doesn't in a lot of places today.
I have always wondered why the hell programming jobs seem to be concentrated so damn heavily on the west coast. It is probably more of a population density thing, but really, there is no reason why alot of IT work could not happen in places like Saskatchewan, Manatoba, and the corresponding US states just south of them.
END COMMUNICATION
In my state, all you need do is bring a neighbor (and thus in your precinct) who's a registered voter along with you to "vouch" for you.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
I've had to move 3 times in the last year for work. Maybe one day I'll find a job where I can stay a few years at least, either that or invest in uhaul.
-- "Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
A little over a year ago I moved out into the Pacific islands for contract work. There is heaps of work going in developing countries, and you often get paid a better contract rate than back home (donor organisation rates - and I get paid in USD$). They are also really needing anyone with IT knowledge in developing countries. The bandwidth is bad, but the cheap beer and eye candy certainly makes up for it.
Did I miss something? No, I didnt... that man needs to rethink his life and career. He said he worked dead end jobs all his life, and he somehow had the experience to make buckets of cash in IT? I think he needs to go back to Steelworking so his wife and kids can have a normal life. Simple solution, get a steady job that supports your family, you will have to leave the IT market to find it. He must be one of those 180 resumes my supervisor threw into the circular file before they hired me. He wants too much money. He got into computers for money, not the love of tech. He thinks he deserves 50k+ a year. This isnt Bush's fault. This is Packman's fault... and maybe Pacman's.
"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?" - Gaff
Telecom is upping the 256k/10gig cap ADSL plans to 2mb/10gig this month. And if you're in the CBD or close enough to any of the main cities there are generally alternatives to Telecom-Telstra's plans are faster and cheaper, and the various wireless providors are expanding.
All that being said, at least here in Wellington, it seems like the job boards have been slowing down lately. And while NZIS is getting easier to work through, it's still a pretty damned difficult process unless you already have a job lined up, or have a warchest of about $80k US to keep you going while you find it. And getting a job lined up from overseas, while not impossible, is a pretty seriously difficult process. I had a bitch of a time finding one while actually living here (because I needed the employer to sponsor my work permit application).
ehintz
Milton Friedman
And start to do what is practically useful to support your lifestyle. If you are a code crunching monkey or a sysadmin you are either out of work or will soon be out of work or severely overworked. That is an inescable fact just as if this was 1903 and you were the world's best wagon wheel maker. Don't forget that the word
Saboteur
comes from the weaving EXPERT craftsmen who threw their shoes (Sabot) into the Jaquard powerlooms to break them because automation put them out of work. These were the best in their field.
And just like them it really doesn't matter how impressive your skills are if they are impractical or inefficient or not in any meaningful economic demand.
What the un/underemployed need to do is figure out what new set of tasks they can do or learn to do that will allow them to live more or less the way they are accustomed. Imagine if instead of an IT jock you were a farmer or a UAW line worker. Would you wander around looking for the tiny handful of farming jobs or auto assembly line jobs that were still around?
Today in IT there are a few categories that are hiring. This includes security, privacy, IT audit, business controls and corporate compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA. These are the jobs that still need sharp people in an advisory role frequently in an interpersonal setting. And any job that requires a physical presence will never be outsourced.
Well, that's true.
the highways are much less crowded even during commute hours now. that's nice.
In my opinion, the real point is whether the money should be in the hands of the government, in the case of a surplus, or in the case of a deficit, in the hands of the individuals.
I would prefer to allow the individual to control where his/her money is invested.
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
So what's to stop, say, a single poltical party from busing 30 "undocumented workers" to match up with 30 other people in the precinct to vote, then busing the same 30 "undocumented workers" to the next precinct to match up with 30 others to vote and so on? And they tell me Oregon is bad for having mail in ballots!
Still, I'll concede that this is one way to allow for voting by the homeless.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What makes you think the money is EVER in the hands of individuals at all? Look on your money- is it your signature or the Treasurer's? Who guarantees the value of that money- you or the government?
It's messy thinking to think that the individual EVER has any control over their lives at all under corporate/governmental systems. The only "choice" you have is the choice they allow you to have. And they have not been us since corporations were allowed to bribe politicians with campaign contributions.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Is it easier to get a clearance if you've had one in the past? My last few jobs haven't required me to have a clearnace but I did work at a defense lab for a few years.
Quebec is certainly hiring.a /espagnol/ buenos_aires/seance_esp.asp
Yesterday I received a "Quebec land of opportunities" email.
Based on my bumeran.com.ar account (Argentine equivalent of jobshark) where i am listed as an IT worker, they determined that I was suitable for emigration to Canada!, so they invite you to some info meetings in different places to show you what you need to actually emigrate.
Here's the link (It's in Spanish)
http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.c
I don't think there is a problem with the workplace. I think there is a problem with the employees.
I've been trying to hire a web master for over six months now. Every one that we get can't do basic HTML programming. We end up letting them go after two weeks because they are incompetent.
My small business is dying because we can't find good employees to do the work.
The above is not worth reading.
So much for fighting a revolutionary war to get away from the aristocratic system. We seem to be determined to bring it back nowadays.
...how do you support yourself in a city with a very high cost of living, especially when you're broke, with no credit?
Problem with him and all the other "free market" economists is that they fail to recognize that it's impossible to allow corporations to be licensed by, and provide campaign financing for, government and have a free market at the same time. Thus we have not had a free market for 140-160 years, or thereabouts.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As I closed my freelance IT company yesterday, I'll be moving onto my new job in 2 weeks, far, far, far away.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Tie those thoughts back to "moving to where the jobs are".... you're moving to the jobs, which are in all reasonableness away from the higher tax areas of the cities, out to rural communities like SE Pennsylvania where you can still get a 3 bedroom house for $130k. Where a startup company can afford its rent, unlike certain parts of California and New York City. The age of brick establishments in high tax areas are over.
Besides, the other thing your financial planner should be telling you is that we are in an unprecedented time of low interest rates, and you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it. The radio is filled with "interest only payment" offers, which means even if you do nothing towards paying down your house & if you move and sell it, odds are you're still making money off of increase value of the house. Still something you can't do in renting.
And now I'm done venting.
...if that's all they can do.
HTML isn't even be worth putting on the resume.
vk.
Companies do not make hiring decisions based on the amount of debt the government is currently carrying. For that matter, the government does not make spending decisions based on the amount of debt they are carrying. It could be argued that government debt creates jobs in the financial services industry since all of the T-bill holders would be making interest on government bonds.
In any case, the government was deep in debt during the prosperous mid to late 90s. It didn't seem to affect prosperity. The "budget surplus" was a big hoax; smoke and mirrors Enron style accounting which was so popular at the time. When everything was actually accounted for, there was no real surplus. Besides, if you were $100,000 in the hole and all of a sudden you are handed $10,000 do you now have a surplus? Hell no, now you're $90,000 in debt.
It would be very irresponsible indeed for the government to borrow more than it could afford to pay back. Countries have had riots in the streets when this happened. But taking money away from government and giving them less to spend has not been known to cost people their jobs, unless they work for the government.
Here's a news flash kids: renting a house costs just as much as buying a house except that renting builds no equity value!!!
Perhaps in the Southeast or the Midwest, but not in California, for example. Rents top out at what a typical worker can pay, but prices continue to soar. In Orange County, for example, it costs $350-400k to buy a condo that one could rent for $1200/mo. A house that rents for $1500-2k/mo might sell for $700k.
Plenty of people in California pay well over 50% of their monthly income in rent.
"Affordability," that is, the percentage of residents who could afford to buy today, is less than 10% in many areas of California.
My wife and I bought our first home 6 months ago and did the math: with 3.5 years left on our student loans, either we can keep the house and play catch-up on planning for retirement or we can have kids and give it up. Her biological clock is ticking since we're both about 32. It's kids or our only shot at financial security (take a look at how much it costs to raise children). We don't have relatives to hand us piles of cash, or free childcare, or a place to live durring the early years. We've had to work hard for everything we have and trying to have a kid puts it all at serious risk.
This wasn't an easy decision. My wife and I have gone back and fourth on the topic of kids since neither of us have been longing for years for children. She was an oldest child and so helped raise her brother and sister while Mom worked along w/ babysitting, and I've just never been enthralled enough to want one but the thought of not experiencing it has been tought to deal with. It's still an emotional thing at times, but we're figuring out a way to deal with it.
We're phrasing it as "taking the easy way out": we're skipping the parent stage and going right to a psudo-grandparent stage. We're getting involved with the kids lives, taking them for occasional weekends, having fun (giving the parents a break in the process) and handing right the hell back. So far, it's working out great. No diapers unlesss we want to deal with them, we get to be the favorite aunt and uncle, and we've got over half a dozen (with more popping up every once in a while) to spend time with.
We're happy to play our role and stick with our levels of risk (zero to low), our friends and family are _MORE_ than happy whenever we offer to take the kids off their hands, and we're free to do whatever we want to with our lives. They say it takes a village to raise a child. That doesn't mean, however, that the village should be over-run with children.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
There are a ton of reasons why this is all happening. There's obviously the .COM implosion. Then there's the outsourcing. Then there's the poorer economy overall.
.COM idea and cashed out, but instead I picked those years to live on the beach in Mexico. Again, not really complaining. I really enjoyed the time in Mexico.
I went over a year without a steady job. Granted, I quit my last job. I just didn't expect finding a new one to be so damn difficult.
I was lucky that two old co-workers of mine invited me to contract full time with the company they work for and I'm back to making old wages (without benefits, of course). Hell, I'm happy to be employed again.
I'm getting pretty close to done with programming for a living, though. I've been doing it for about 18 years (and another 8 or so as a hobby before then), and it's just a long time to be doing the same thing. Bringing in this kind of income is nice, but I lived on a lot less for several years and got by just fine, and I guess I just realize that I'll be happier with a lot less stress in my life.
But this contracting job is about as good as it gets in this field, as far as I'm concerned (your desires may be different). I work from home and make good money. I'm living in a friendly, small town without much stress or traffic. What more could I need?
Really, I don't suspect the industry will ever come close to what it was for a few years there. Kinda wish I had come up with a golden
With enough preparation, I suppose nothing stops the scenario you describe. The "undocumented" person still is required to submit former address/precint, valid ID (picture ID such as state-issued driver's license). With cross-checks, hopefully this would be discovered but you make a valid point.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
Where's my FUCKING CHEESE god-dammit!
(I hate that damn book).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Please tell me that this is not a post worthy of a 5...
Isn't this indicative of a standard being set for this field. Initially, there were very few classically educated people in the IT field, or more accurately the ratio of people with CS degrees was trivial in comparison to those of other more prominent fields, like doctors, lawyers, and teachers. Then came the boom of the 90s, everyone, their brother, their aunt and their potbelly pig jumped on the bandwagon. Changing their career line from God Knows What to IT. People took certifications to get qualified but had nothing to give back to the community. These people still consider themselves IT professionals. The question is are they? Were they? Several fields over the past 50 years have gone through troughs and valleys in their demand, Plant Managers and Engineers come to mind off the top of my head. Initially there was a high demand for these individuals. They could demand their salaries and they got them. Then the market was saturated and only those who really know what the hell they were doing were able to stand the storm. Employers were able to find people who were willing to do it for less (sound familiar to outsourcing). Here we are in the same type of environment in the IT field. When I tried to get into the IT field 15 years ago it was "You need the education kid" So I went to school. Then I heard "You need the experience Kid." So I go the experience. Now I'm like "I need $XX thousand dollars per year." You'll notice never did I sit around and blame others or sit and feel sorry for myself. I did what I needed to do to succeed. Now that I have the education and the experience and the knowledge I am not feeling this crunch for computer jobs. I am in high demand and my employer knows that. Even in this economy. How many of you guys out there actually have a CS degree or even better a Masters in Computer Science. What are you doing to differentiate yourself from the pack? Can you consider yourself a subject matter expert and how that relates to the IT field. Not a subject matter expert in PERL or JAVA or MS Office but the Health Industry, GIS or Engineering and how those fields relate back to IT. Last point. Fuck you who think only the good IT jobs are on the Coasts. Your ignorance only shows that you don't get it. Industry follows a hub. Like business congregate together in different sections across the nation. I'd tell you where I am at but I don't want all of you narrow minded dumb asses coming here and giving IT a bad reputation.
This doesn't seem quite right to me though. If you're being offered a good wage, why would you take a bribe? And if you've got good credit and are doing financially well, it probably stands to reason that you would expect a good wage or not go for the job
In cases of embezzling, etc in corporate environments, how often is it the indebted indivual vs the greedy one? Look at big companies like Enron... once you've hit a certain bar - you have lots of money but for some reason can't get enough.
So yeah, perhaps the guy who's going to have his legs broken by "Vinny" for gambling debts might take a bribe, but your regular haven't-worked-in-awhile credit-card-debt type would probably rather keep his regular wage and perhaps take out a loan or credit extension in hopes of paying off the debts (rather than lose the job and have no monentary future).
Of course, at a certain point, it doesn't really matter if you're in debt or not if you're getting a $250,000 (or similar high amount) bribe offer. At that point it's purely about morals...
It contradicts my belief that I got where I am through skill and hard work. If you are not successful, it must be because you lack skill or do not work hard. If people who have skill and work hard can still fail, then perhaps I was just lucky, or priveleged in ways that others were not. Perhaps my belief that the system rewards eveyone who works hard is incorrect. That conflicts with my sense of fairness and justice, creating uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, so shut up already! I have decided that everyone who does not succeed deserves to fail, the system works, and everything is fair and just. Quit whining, you failures! Lalalalala, I can't hear you...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Where I work, and in many situations I've seen, once quite often becomes "the computer guy." Unless you're actually in a company that does strictly software (and even then things may change if you show relevant skills), you may not be doing just one job.
Here at work I often enough code scripts, sometimes apps. Lots of web stuff on various occasions. My primary function though I would say is "System Administrator," because nobody else can really handle that part of my job. But, as a good sysadmin, the systems are usually running well enough that I'm also able to code up webapps to handle odd functions. I'm also required often enough to do hardware work (swapping parts/machines/etc, running new CAT5 through the ceiling, blah blah blah).
So what *would* you call my job? Likely I would list the individual positions that my job encompasses if doing a resume, but in the end "IT Support" is slightly better than my "techie" designation on paper here.
Companies do not make hiring decisions based on the amount of debt the government is currently carrying.
You misunderstand- I said that companies make hiring decisions based on the ammount of money they can get, through investments and bonds. When the government borrows huge amounts of money- there is less available for those investments and bonds, and thus less available for companies, and thus they make decisions not to hire.
For that matter, the government does not make spending decisions based on the amount of debt they are carrying. It could be argued that government debt creates jobs in the financial services industry since all of the T-bill holders would be making interest on government bonds.
Financial sector jobs aren't actually jobs- they're just con artists pretending to work by creating fake money known as interest. No actual production takes place, thus no actual work takes place.
In any case, the government was deep in debt during the prosperous mid to late 90s. It didn't seem to affect prosperity. The "budget surplus" was a big hoax; smoke and mirrors Enron style accounting which was so popular at the time. When everything was actually accounted for, there was no real surplus.
True enough- but perception was enough. It isn't the current debt load that counts, it's the current DEFICIT. Carrying a debt load but borrowing no more money from the banks is as good as not having a debt to begin with in this case- the government not borrowing money means more investment money available for other uses.
Besides, if you were $100,000 in the hole and all of a sudden you are handed $10,000 do you now have a surplus? Hell no, now you're $90,000 in debt.
And yet- it means $10,000 less that I will borrow, and thus $10,000 more available to lend to somebody else who is doing REAL work.
It would be very irresponsible indeed for the government to borrow more than it could afford to pay back.
The United States has been this form of irresponsible for several years now.
Countries have had riots in the streets when this happened.
But not here.
But taking money away from government and giving them less to spend has not been known to cost people their jobs, unless they work for the government.
Where have you been the past 40 years? Hiding your head in the sand?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
That is why I don't think all software should be GPL. Because if that were the case then we'd all end up being called "IT Workers" except for a precious few that would be called "tech support".
:))
I rather be called:
"Software Developer"
"Software Engineer"
"Software Development Engineer" (more titles better
core value is the place to be!!
You win the Marie Antoinette award for the week! If you have to live in a hotel, you don't have an oven to "bake your own bread" or "cook a roast". You don't have space to grow your own tomatoes either. You might not even have access to a range top or microwave. It's even worse if you have to live in your car!
That is not antiquated at all. "Pro-rep" is just different. Without it, the fringe kooks and nutjobs (KKK, etc) get weeded out at the ballot box. With "pro-rep", the KKK/etc and other kooks end up in the legislature, where the legislators end up nullifying them. Some of the most passionate supporters of proportional representation are racists (like Lani Guinir) who believe that people should be elected on skin color rather than ability.
"IRV" means little too. Deluded losers like Ralph Nader (who is typically supported by less than 1% of the voters) like it because they think it will change the rules and make things less democratic, that is all.
As for campaign financing, the worst thing about it right now is that taxpayer dollars are wasted on political campaigns. We need to zero out "pubilc funding". It is pretty outrageous that people are forced to pay taxes so they can support the political campaigns of the likes of Pat Buchanan. This should be left to individuals, not government.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Since when did grammar(!) and spelling have anything to do with insightfulness? A 4 year old with no ability or read or write whatsoever can potentially be insightful beyond an ivy league PhD.
While I won't argue that his grammar and spelling aren't quite bad, the mentality that presentation mistakes destory the value of something is what allows superior marketing to defeat a superior product at virtually all times. If people spent the time to see substance through bad presentation everything would be fundamentally better, not just look better.
The 3am infomecial toughting the benefits of getting your IT Certification because over 1 million "IT Professionals" will be needed in the US by the year 2006.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
GrammAr. Especailly... Sheesh.
Having read the responses to this article I now understand how America managed to elect Dubya. This guy (assuming he exists and isn't just some journalistic invention) has had his life wrecked in ways most people can't begin to imagine and the best you lot can do is berate him for not growing his own tomatoes. How about showing some sympathy for once or is that just not the American Way?
Did you bother to RTFA?
He has skills, he has experience but like many IT workers sold out by the Bush regime for a bunch of dotheads he is SCROOD by a dying economy and a regime that could care less since he is not a sovereign country with oil to steal. It's creating a system of keeping the poor poor and the rich rich.
The system is horribly flawed.
Gee, this is news? Yeah, I know all about the IT job losses this 3rd Q of 04...especially as I was laid off from my old job. I wound up getting a similar job--in West Virginia. Nevermind I was working in Michigan.
But then it doesn't help that the IT field has attracted so many idiots. At a previous job I was interviewing for a Jr. UNIX Admin, and we had a guy in for a second interview and my boss loved him. I was there for a tech interview--found out this guy knew nothing--yet demanded a large salary--just cause he somehow managed to get a Master's in CS. I even quized him on some basic things, and all I usually got in response was a blank stare. *sigh*
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
Part of it's about how much time you've got and how much you're willing to risk.
:-)
I'm a tech, but I'm also a dabbler in other fields. I can do basic repairs on my car (brake jobs, body work, sensor diagnosis, etc) or my house.
My old man's in highway design, but he's also skilled enough that he built the majority of an large addition to his house.
It's not hard to fix a broken pipe, the problem is mostly in knowing what *not* to do (like stick a lead pipe fitting in to fix your leaking sink, or using lead solder, etc). Certainly I don't recommend trying anything risky on your own (like fixing a gas-line), but the watch-and-learn approach can apply to anything. Next time you have something that needs repairing, schedule it for when you can see what's going on. Might cost more, but in the end the knowledge is worth the cost... just don't get in the way while somebody is trying to fix your plumbing or you might receive an accidental pipewrench to the skull
With enough preparation, I suppose nothing stops the scenario you describe. The "undocumented" person still is required to submit former address/precint, valid ID (picture ID such as state-issued driver's license). With cross-checks, hopefully this would be discovered but you make a valid point.
Ok, so it wouldn't really work for the homeless then, would it? Former address- what if you've been on the streets since you were 12 and don't remember it? Valid ID? How do you get valid ID without a home?
However, with forged papers, "undocumented workers" (also known as illegal aliens) could easily take advantage of the system.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
in programming and systems administration the point is automation. If you are doing your job correctly, you are automating and basically working yourself out of a job. And things, even in the MS world, are getting more automated and stable. THe point is to have systems and software that run themselves and so that you do not need programmers or administrators.
Practically speaking there is a limit, some human intervention is always needed. But I don't think we are anywhere close to the end this natural down scaling.
Something to think about when making career choices.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think the same way, though not in the sense that I'm avoiding commitments because I might decide to eat lead one day. While you're young, starting a family can be locationally limiting. At the moment I have no marital committments, if a great job comes up halfway across the globe I can take it. If I bank enough days off and cash I can take a holiday
Too many people have this vision of the future with a beautiful wife and perfect kids, a leave-it-to-beaver life that greets you when you get home from work. I'm not saying you shouldn't settle down when the time's right, but there's a lot of world to see beforehand.
Thats why its so hard to find work! :)
:(
Thats why its so hard to find work..
We paid off all our credit cards and are about to payoff the last car loan we ever plan on having. I wouldn't have a car loan now if they paid me interest. We save cash every month and pay extra on our mortgage. We do it by not living extravegantly, shopping at discount stores, and not going out all the time. It's not easy, but just something like packing your lunch can save a bunch of money every month. Many of my co-workers eat out every day, that's between seven and ten dollars a day.
On top of that I have a non-tech back up career I work part-time. Living off of it full time wouldn't be fun but we wouldn't lose the house.
Lot of young people are killing themselves with credit cards. And now days being late on one can raise interest and fees on all the others. It's insane. Credit card companies are modern day robber barons. Cut them up, pay them off and close those accounts! That way you're not tempted.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Almost all jobs are out to solve a problem. IT just tends not to be based around a renewable problem.
IT creates and destroys work. Somebody to connect the cable that hits your house to connect you to that network. Somebody has to dig the holes that the poles go into that the cables run along. Somebody has to build the communications sattelites, etc etc
Yes, many of these jobs require technical knowledge and may nuke the less-technical jobs. Some of them are fairly simple though, and/or redundant.
I'd prefer to think about how IT has enhanced other industries. Doctors wouldn't have advanced medical equipment, scientists wouldn't have advanced analysis equipment, even geologists and many other seemingly unrelated fields would be much different if not from IT.
Yes, in the *late 90s*.
The boom has been over for quite awhile, and there have been plenty of stories right here on slashdot (as well as many other information sources) showing job trends for "IT" and "Software Engineers" have generally been pretty dismal over intervals as recent as Jan-June 2004.
It's my *assumption* that the vast majority of people who were drawn into the tech boom and weren't particularly qualified have been out of the industry since, at most, late 2002. Crazy internet petfood selling startups went under long ago. This constant appeal to "these are the idiots from the boom" is a really weak argument to me at this point
At what point in examining employment numbers are we supposed to finally accept that there are no more "boom-era idiots" still losing jobs? To me, that point already happened some time ago. However virtually any story hitting on job trends pops up numerous comments about the need to wipe out the idiots and whatnot. To these diehards still convinced that the industry is loaded with clueless folks that have somehow managed to keep themselves in the industry after the boom... whens the cutoff? When can you actually accept there's no crazy artificial bloat of boom time morons out there turning any statistic about tech sector employment into a worthless figure? 2005? 2015?
But how does one get a clearance? All the defense contractors insist on only hiring cleared people, and the government only grants clearances to people already selected for contracts.
It's a ridiculous situation down here with tons of empty seats in contracts, tons of people willing to fill them, and red tape keeping them apart.
How to break through???
I mean, of all fields, IT is the one field where putting yourself out of work is the goal ... and yet the industry seems too inept to do so, which is why jobs get shipped overseas.
:-)
Arguably if we were better at eliminating our jobs upper management would be less likley to hire other people to try and accomplish the same task.
Actually though I think a lot of companies are trying to go lean on IT after gorging themselves earlier... but are starting to find that doesn't feel so good either. Like it or not IT has become a crucial part of businesses todaty and efficient use of IT is the most critical issue facing corperations today. Most companies still seem to be wallowing about without a firm grasp on what IT can really do for them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, I feel for the guy in the article, but why did he wait until after he lost the house to find work in another location? Also, if a hotel costs $58 dollars a night, why doesn't he find an apartment?
Moving to where the work is has always been a reality in the job market. I have family members in six states as a result of this, and I've worked in three states since I graduated from college. (And that was only six years ago.)
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
He is trying to keep his kids happy, something obviously you never experienced with your lack of understanding. You are trying to justify your complete arrogance by a father spending less than 2 dollars for a candy bar and a pack of gum???
Did Mommy not love you enough?
Daddy pay more attention to his beer than your dumb ugly ass self?
Gramma call you out for the sack of dung you are?
If they had screwed up priorities they would be making ignorant statements on slashdot instead of getting pussy...btw the wife is ready for round 3 you permavirgin. As for bagging on his ability to get a job, it sounds like he has skills and experience and if the market has been destroyed by the Bush regime he would be at least as stupid as you to REFUSE a job if a friend can hook you up and you have a family to take care of.
Enjoy your ignorance!
(Don't think too hard trying to understand things, you will hurt yourself)
Find the emoticon for an ignorant sack of shit...you should wear your brown color proudly shit for brains.
"Clipping coupons may be a pain in the ass, but it's worth it -- my wife will routinely spend $100 at the grocery store and get $60 of it back in coupons and promotions."
I don't mind clipping if I could figure out how people manage to take their shopping cart train, filled to the brim, to the front. Pull out a wad of coupons, and end up spending pittance. Keeping in mind all the restrictions both on the coupon, and the store.
Plus something to keep in mind. You'll need the U-Haul to get your purchases home.
I just have one comment on his spending. It mentioned that he leased a 2002 Malibu for $320 a month. OK. If you have so much money problem, why do you want to lease a car? For 5k or 6k, you can get a car, nothing fancy, but it works. He can have a lot more if he did not have that lease.
Information Technology... Replacing and putting the nations workforce out of work since 1946
Your Grandparent: [I am] a non-U.S. citizen working in D.C.... [I am] am also without hope of being trusted with any security clearance...
You (to Parent): [You are] an idiot. This guy is (since he has a security clearance) most likely a US citizen
Where are the moderators when you need them?
"If you think things are that bad, then leave. No one is stopping you, go elsewhere and make the life that you want."
Oh Oh Oh Oh, you mean the Island of Former Americans that is free to move to with free housing and free food?
Dipshit asshat.
= 9J =
You say that certain skills are no longer valuable, but I think you're confusing 'skills' with 'knowledge'. My experience is that a talented C++ programmer who has never seen Java will, with 3-4 weeks, be a far better and more productive Java programmer than a mediocre person who has been doing it for years.
Critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to learn new skills independently never go out of fashion.
All pretty much my argument.
"To these diehards still convinced that the industry is loaded with clueless folks that have somehow managed to keep themselves in the industry after the boom... whens the cutoff?"
If these diehards have actually achieved longevity, then all the "I believe in Darwin" shouldn't be complaining. The strongest won. Of course the complainers haven't achieved longevity so what does Darwin say about that?
Personally all the complainers are like Al Bundy. Living on former successes, bemoaning how miserable their fortune has become. Working dead-end jobs (McJobs). Some even saddled with all the baggage that Bundy has (kids, wife, house).
That was the sound of a joke going by right over your head.
English may not be his first language, but the point he makes is worth considering. "IT" seems to be a catch-all phrase that has anything to computers - from the very technical, to the very non-technical. To say that "IT jobs are declining" is like saying that "fewer people are dying". Both cases may be accurate, but the vagueness severely limits their usefulness to make any reasonable determination about what's really going on.
Don't belong in IT, those stupid pieces of paper only prove they can memorize things to a certain point.
People like me still train them completely and those pieces of paper are worthless.
Now the question is truly, did you bother to RTFA?
The man had no training in the field, no degree... and was a bouncer and steelworker before he was making 50k a year in the Dotbomb economy.
Dotbomb drops and his ass gets blown up just like all the other pretenders and IT fakers.
Blame bush all you want... It wont fix Pacmans problem or yours. Why? because the real Professionals in this field still have jobs, even in the bay area real pro's still make cash.
I am an IT Director in Las Vegas, 180 unique resumes where recieved by my employer for my current job... I got it by showing I had skill and expertise in this field and that I would work for a fair and competitive price.
welcome to capitalism, dont like? move to Cuba.
"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?" - Gaff
"Those in "web design" I meet are mostly dorks, and so be it! They won't endanger my wallet. Let them do the shit nobody wants to do anyway. They'll burn out and be replaced with more dorks. Good for us who get to do the interesting stuff."
Funny? Isn't that the attitude most Americans show towards immigrants? "Let'em clean my toilet. I have more interesting things to do." What are you guys going to do when you're the "immigrants"? Karma.
If they're counting the unemployment in IT now, compared to during the bubble of a few years ago, then the figures are way over-inflated. There are huge masses of people that were hired for IT jobs during the bubble that should've never worked in IT, and wouldn't have if not for the huge need then.
I've gone over tons of resumes and even interviewed plenty of people that worked as admins and such during the bubble that are just laughable. Someone should've told them long ago that they're in the wrong job market and that they need to look at getting training in something else.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
Twenty-five years in programming. Laid off May 2001. I'm a heavy-weight. I've written the most beautiful "C", C++, assembly, Java, Cobol, and many other languages. Fifteen years as an Oracle DBA, and twenty as a Unix sys admin. I was one of the original people on the "killer" node in Dallas, TX way back in the DARPANet (Internet) days.
So I was out of work for thirteen months. In my life never had I gone more than a couple of months without a job. Even in the bad late 1970's. I lost it all. Everything I owned. All my retirement. Everything. I ended up sleeping in the back of an old 1982 Jeep Wagoneer in downtown Seattle by Feburary of 2002.
I've been working steadily since June 2002 at 50% less money. I'm the lucky one. I have two friends with over twenty-five years of experience each that have been out of work for almost three years now. Don't tell me a darn thing about how this is an isolated case.
Bottom line: corporations don't give a flying f***. ALL H1-B visa holders should get out. They will live ten or more people to a home, and work for nothing. We keep letting corporations rule the world, and the little people get smashed.
Bush just got voted back into office. You think it's bad now in the IT world! Just wait.
Did I mention when I got laid off I had risen to the level of a Director in the CTO's office of a Fortune 50 company? Everybody just cut and ran. If you continue to let large corporations do as they please then we get what we deserve. I can't believe that Bush won because of "moral issues", while he lets large corporations treat people like crap. Mind you the democrats do to, but not as much. And there is a chance that the Democratic party could change, unlike the Republican party. I know I was also a Republican in Texas.
Oh crap, im stuck in this temporal vortex of idiocy/liberalism and I cant seem to escape it!
"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?" - Gaff
Nice try tho.
And $60 worth of savings on a $100 bill at the grocery store, who the fuck is gonna buy that tripe that ISN'T living with mommy and daddy.
Whadda crock.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1 832256
Their disposition is what they deserve. I have pursued programming/computer-related endeavors as a passion practically since I entered the workforce. Though I could have made a killing during the internet boom, I didn't. Why? Because it wasn't too long before I realized what was going on. Working with a bunch of people with "skillz" on a project that had no real business model, even if it would have made me a lot of money, did not appeal to me.
I anticipate being in the market soon, either looking for employment, or bringing my company back to life. It will be interesting to see what things are like now.
"You misunderstand- I said that companies make hiring decisions based on the ammount of money they can get, through investments and bonds. When the government borrows huge amounts of money- there is less available for those investments and bonds, and thus less available for companies, and thus they make decisions not to hire."
This is nonsense in more ways than one. First, don't look at government deficits--look at interest rates. When interest rates are high, that means that there is a lot of competition for borrowed money. There is then the potential for government borrowing to crowd out private sector investment.
But look at current interest rates. They're near 40-year lows. Government borrowing isn't crowding out private investment.
Second, companies don't make hiring decisions based on the amount of money they can get. They hire when they can employ that labor profitably. (Interest rates are low, so creditworthy companies shouldn't have trouble borrowing money in any event.)
Private employment and investments aren't being expanded because the potential returns on that employment/investments don't look attractive to private investors. There are lots of reasons for that, but attributing it to government deficits is daffy.
Part of this was the "cost" to our relationship. All of our friends and family members have family members near to offer free child care and/or have the luxury of houses offered to them. They can have one of them stop working w/o having to give up on home ownership in a steep housing market. And yes, they also have more time.
We looked at how we might do it, and as with college and our 1st home, it came down to doing it by ourselves, on our own, with no support structure. We realized this would put serious stress on our relationship. One person at risk for all of the bread-winning. One person managing all of the household. Our sense of equality and co-operation would be worn down. Our time with each other would be even more limted. We've weighed where we are aginst the timeframe to have our own kids and there's never been a "good" time, and the window of opportunity is closing in terms of likelyhood and safety (we don't want to be the psychotic fertility feinds). We think we could be good parents. We also think we could be good pastry chefs. Neither seems like a compelling reason to bring a new life into this world.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I really felt bad for the guy, it sucks that he has all these problems
.NET before you consider applying.
But then I read he's got a 4 month stable contract at $30/hour and pays $320/month on a 2 year old car.
Well boo hoo. I work in the NY area. I'm lucky if I can get a contract to go 4 WEEKS at $100/day cash (works out to 12.50/hr assuming 8 hrs) from a boss I loathe who only calls me when he's desperate and tries to make me work as much unpaid overtime as possible doing things like loading and driving a truck so he can milk what he's paying me as much as possible. I know he's raking it in because these are state agency contracts, various state departments doing rollouts and migrations. I've overheard phonecalls that make me pretty sure he's billing out a ton of us at more than double what he pays us, plus he gets paid more than us from the employer for himself anyway.
Sometimes I can find other work on the side. I might have 20 hours or so coming up at $12/hour doing random IT stuff. Last time I worked with these guys I moved their servers to their new data center, which wasn't bad. Before that it was making ethernet cables by hand for the same. The work's not bad but it's once in a few weeks at low pay.
Yeah this guy has a family and rent and I don't, but he could ditch the leased car and drive a 10 year old junker like I do.
He doesn't wanna put his family with friends/relatives but in that situation it'd probably be better to do so and see them on the weekends than watch them starve to death.
I just love how articles are like "New York is the #1 spot for IT jobs!" Do they ever actually check places like craigslist? Yeah it's the #1 spot for jobs if you're a database developer that knows HTML, Javascript, ASP.NET, PHP, Java, flash, and can admin exchange, oracle, and notes in your spare time for $30k/year. Make sure you have a BS or MS in comp sci and 5 years experience with
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Must be nice.
Then again, maybe if you were PAYING TAXES instead of evading them with your under the table jobs you would need to work anyway.
P.S.
When Al-Jazeera shows the wrecked bloody mess that used to be your child's face before being drafted and deployed to Iran...Imma laff thinking of you.
"Over a third of firms have vacancies for IT professionals that they have been unable to fill"
Yeah, and I bet for each position you are unable to fill, you get some kind of subsidized corporate kickback and some other incentive to go outside your country to fill the "vacancies".
How can you have a third of corporations unable to find IT people when there are so many IT people out of work? Do you think all of these unemployed IT people just dried up and blew away after their last paycheck? friggin liars.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
So because he does not have a silly piece of paper saying all he can do is memorize books and can't apply shit in the real world you discount him?
Bitch please, he has EXPERIENCE and enough so to contract out on his own on top of yanno that little statement about KENT UNIVERSITY. I did RTFA, you may have glimpsed or got lost on those big words but I expect that from a stuffed shirt. Either way, as an IT Director you speak management and don't know shit never knew shit and probably bullshitted your way into the door. As for what you classify as "Real Professionals" it sounds like other rich white men like you who don't give a shit about the poor till they rise up and burn your fucking mansion down with you in it. (Long live Manson)
Do a little more reading on this thread to see how reckless irresponsible tax cuts aimed at too well to due swine like yourself affects the real Americans who outnumber you by quite a large and extreme number.
Rich vermin...
If you don't like it, read a website about Cuba instead.
"Really, there's no demand for people who know how to use a computer. Everyone knows how to use a computer."
Even Indians.
"I'm tired of reading "poor me! I used to make 100,000 a year because I knew Lotus 1-2-3, and now the only work I can get is data entry for minimum wage" stories."
Please give actual links, instead of made up ancedotes.
"We all know how it works. The IT industry is rife with deskilling. What is today a marketable skill (I don't know, configuring LANs by hand, for instance) is tomorrow a useless one (autosensing switches and DHCP, etc). New technologies are constantly being created to replace IT workers."
The code writing robot has yet to be made.
"So if you want to stay with the computers, you have to constantly acquire new skills to stay a step ahead. People who think they can just sit back and live the fat life and let their A+ certification take care of them are dead wrong and deserve what they get."
Those guys left in 2002. Were have you been?
Anyway I left for architecture. I get to "use a computer". Satisfy my artistic side, as well as solve difficult problems. Get write ups and pictures, in trade magazines. Build something that will not be obsolete in 2 years, and get praise from people who use them. And what I build will last, and be remembered longer than what most of IT has ever built.
True dat:
"So he put himself through Kent State University and then computer training."
This is nonsense in more ways than one. First, don't look at government deficits--look at interest rates. When interest rates are high, that means that there is a lot of competition for borrowed money. There is then the potential for government borrowing to crowd out private sector investment.
You act as if you bought the lie that the money supply is infinite- it isn't. Even when interest rates are low, sufficiently high government borrowing will crowd out private sector investment.
But look at current interest rates. They're near 40-year lows. Government borrowing isn't crowding out private investment.
That's what they want you to think- but just try to get a loan at prime. You won't be able to- in fact, you'll end up several points below- because:
a. You're not the government, and the government wins out.
b. The government has been winning out a lot lately.
Second, companies don't make hiring decisions based on the amount of money they can get. They hire when they can employ that labor profitably. (Interest rates are low, so creditworthy companies shouldn't have trouble borrowing money in any event.)
Ah, I see you've also bought the lie of "creditworthy". The only credit worthy group right now is the government; private industry has spent the last 4 years proving that they have no clue about how to produce anything.
Private employment and investments aren't being expanded because the potential returns on that employment/investments don't look attractive to private investors. There are lots of reasons for that, but attributing it to government deficits is daffy.
However, if the government wasn't borrowing AT ALL- private investment would be the only thing available, and thus all of the investment money would go to private industry.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Actually the article states he went to a University and then got some computer training.
:)
I hope you read your 180 resumes a little better than you read that article and jumped at the chance to toot your out of tune horn.
Just an observation.
are below average
They knew what the interweb was and could spell HTML yet, somehow, commanded over 50k a year.
:-)
Are you saying that for 50k a year they should not know these things?
Sorry, know what you meant but just couldn't resist.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Of course, with MBAs and stupid HR people, they were never in fashion, which is the problem...
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
if the Packman guy in this article is so unhappy, how come he hasn't
...
...
..
1. Posted his resume on Monster.com
2. Updated his resume in the last 3 months on Dice
3. Updated his resume on HotJobs in 11 months
just wondering
anonymous it recruiter
grammer? eigth?
If you're going to take potshots at someone elses posts on the alleged basis of poor grammar and lack of education then you should at least take the trouble to edit & spellcheck your own post.
Thus spake the SysGoddess
IT just represents the fastest-moving technology.
All new technology puts workers out of a job, by either saving time (ie fewer workers needed), or replacing a substitute (slide-rules anyone?).
But it's true that there are new inventions that solve a problem that had never been solved before, eg: neural implants for the profoundly deaf (cochlear.com).
But even here, the previous ways of addressing the problem will be replaced (services related to sign-language?)
NB: neural implants use a lot of IT!
If we see IT as just another technology, then there are two categories of "IT worker":
(1) workers reliant on an old technology, who are replaced by a new technology;
(2) creators of that new technology.
I think you have an interesting point about "putting its own workers out of a job", but I'd see that as (2) putting (1) out of a job. Usually, there are not so many (2) in an industry, and they don't work so fast as in IT...
When you've worked in IT for over 10 years, it is extremely difficult to get out. Employers only want to hire you to do what you did on your last job.
I tried to process real estate loans. I have a degree in business, I've taken every real estate course there is. There was a sever shortage of people to process those loans, it only takes a HS diploma. You should seen the reaction when they saw that I working in software development for the last 10 years.
>>
I see a shortage in qualified IT workers. I would say a large percentage of the unemployed IT workforce are inexperienced and lack some major backing (like a college degree, certification, job experience/internship)
I live in denver, co. I don't see that at all. I see very educated and experienced IT workers scrapping for nickles and dimes all over the place.
I live in a part of Canada that has a 25% - yeah, 25% - unemployment rate. I have never had a problem getting work, even here. The key is to recognize your market is global and plan accordingly.
Optimism is contagious and the world needs more of it. If you are tired of being beat down by the man, create your own company doing -whatever-. There are HUGE markets out there for any number of products, IT related or no. If companies want things that help them become more productive - go looking for things you can make or develop to do that. Remember all that hype about the internet? Providing instant access to the globe? It's us here that did that and made that possible. Who wrote the rules that we can't take advantage of that and profit from it?
Take all those programming skills and apply them to a real-world problem. Programming itself is worthless. It's programming applied to a problem that becomes valuable - and at the end of the day, that's what people forgot.
Job security of the past is finished. The sooner people understand that the better. The only security you get is by becoming master of your own fate - and that means running your own show. You have every advantage in front of you - easy communication, cheap computers and equipment - find a niche and prosper.
I don't know what's wrong with people these days. Find a problem and fix it. Profit.
..don't panic
No, the money supply isn't infinite. But what evidence do you have that private sector investment is being crowded out?
In fact, there was a most interesting Reuters story on corporate bonds that was posted today. According to Heidi Hu, who heads fixed income at Transamerica Investment Management, "'There continues to be healthy demand for corporate bonds'." It appears to me that there are sufficient funds available for both government and private borrowing.
That's what they want you to think- but just try to get a loan at prime. You won't be able to- in fact, you'll end up several points below- because:
a. You're not the government, and the government wins out.
b. The government has been winning out a lot lately.
Really? From the Reuters story, "[T]he average investment grade spread is yielding just 0.87 percentage point more than Treasuries, its lowest spread since August 1998, according to Merrill Lynch & Co."
Ah, I see you've also bought the lie of "creditworthy". The only credit worthy group right now is the government; private industry has spent the last 4 years proving that they have no clue about how to produce anything.
Again, really? If you look at the Reuters story, you'll see that in the last two days investors have bought $10 billion of bonds from the likes of BellSouth, Kraft and Ford. Are you suggesting that the investors have been fooled into thinking these companies are creditworthy, but they really aren't?
However, if the government wasn't borrowing AT ALL- private investment would be the only thing available, and thus all of the investment money would go to private industry.
Even when the government is running a nominal surplus, it still borrows, so your hypothetical is never going to happen. But even if the U.S. government weren't borrowing a thing, that doesn't mean that investment money would necessarily go to private industry.
If investors see more attractive investment options, e.g., foreign government bonds, the money won't go to industry. Alternatively, if industry forsees deflation and falling prices, it won't borrow money, even if offered at low rates. See, for example, Japan in which interest rates were effectively 0% and companies didn't borrow.
"The "budget surplus" was a big hoax; smoke and mirrors Enron style accounting which was so popular at the time. When everything was actually accounted for, there was no real surplus."
i st.pdf
You talk like they stopped the BS accounting when Bush took office. They didn't. Now, not only is there the deficit that was hidden in the 90s, there is also the deficit that they were unable to hide. In 2000, the deficit was $23 billion with $240 billion hidden by the trust fund surpluses (making it look like a $220 billion surplus). In 2004, this comes to roughly $700 billion total, $220 billion of which is hidden. Numbers from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/h
That's all irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The question is if a high deficit is causing a shortage of investment capital that keeps companies from hiring. An interesting hypothesis, but the general consensus is that recessions are characterized by an investment *surplus* (people are reluctant to spend money because they may lose their income) combined with a demand shortage. This is why a deficit is a recommended response to a recession--to shift investment funds to consumption.
It is worth noting that the reverse situation exists normally (when not in a recession). Running deficits then creates a consumption surplus and uses resources that would otherwise be available for private investment (someone buying government bonds is interested in investment; if not government bonds, they would invest elsewhere).
I have 2 girls, but to be honest, it's a pain in the ass at least 50% of the time. If you are seen by one or more of the kids around you as cool/good/whatever, you may in fact be inspiring them in a way that the harassed parents never can. So if you find you "click" with some kid or kids, I think you can say you've filled whatever void you & your spouse may feel.
It's a test of how trustworthy, law abiding and serious you are. Logic goes that people who don't take their debts/contracts seriously will be more likely to do similar with sensitive data from their employer. They want to see whether you're capable of keeping your end of the bargain with the banks/lending institutions. It actually makes sense. Foreign operatives? LOL. Oh, another thing they will check is your criminal background (or hopefully lack there of).
I have been in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada now for 8 months. I have had five interviews and been offered four jobs. Three of which I have accepted. (I keep getting better and better jobs.)
I'm on my third job in 6 months and am doing great. There are tons of great jobs here.
Here are the registration PDFs AZ, CA.
The area to draw a map is in the lower right corner on the Arizona form and the lower right corner of the forth page on the California form.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Let them eat flour. --Marie Antoinette
That's not right either, she said brioche.
I have 3.5 dependants (one on the way!), have a mortgage and a new car payment (wife's van, I drive a 14 year old Honda with 241,000+ miles), and some nice debt to pay off.
I have a job in the midwest that pays about $22 an hour, based on a 40 hour work week (and I'm salary, so you can figure out what kind of hours I really work).
No, I don't have much money left (if any) after the bills are paid, but I really can't complain about my lifestyle, because I do have a steady job for a software development company (I handle hardware/infrastructure). I just wish I didn't live so close to the bad part of town.
$30 an hour would kick ass for me. The guy's a whiner, pining for the days of $80K/year helpdesk positions.
I can also say this: I'm getting calls from recruiters and private companies regarding my online resumes... Things might start looking up for those of us in the midwest. I've already been to an informal interview with a recruiting company, and it really does sound like they're weeding out the people who have no business working on/with/around computers. I consider that a good thing.
I am an unemployed IT worker in the Metro DC
area, and you are so full of it (BS)! The
Washington Post (largest local paper) has
been posting the SAME job ads for various
government contractors for more than 1-1/2
years. They want IT workers with CURRENT &
TRANSFERABLE security clearances (TS w/Poly-
Lifestyle is best). Such clearances now take
from 12 to 18 months to get, and can cost the
employer $15K - $25K for the background check
and vetting. These contractors DO NOT WANT
an overpaid janitor for up to 18 months until
they can get that security clearance, so they
don't hire -- no security clearance, no job.
It is a real cluster-fsck of a Catch-22.
If you have the clearance, you have the job
(plus a nice fat pay raise). But if you don't
already have the clearance, they aren't really
interested. The only people that benefit from
the current demand for security clearances are
those who are leaving government service (like
military or civilian DoD switching to civilian
contracting.)
While the "official" unemployment rate in the
Metro DC area is about 03%, they don't count
people who have fallen off the unemployment
rolls, nor do they count people who are now
working 3 or 4 part-time jobs in place of the
decent IT job they used to have. I know all
this -- why? -- because I have lived it!
If you lost a position and you are not in a good shape financially, the first thing to do is to drastically cut the expenses and to maximize the opportunities.
:-). I saved about $1000 that way, by the way, which is not bad.
If you have an apartment in the area where there are jobs, keep it, but look into sharing it with someone else. It would be far more difficult to get an apartment once your credit rating slips due to protracted search period. I would consider this to be the first and fatal mistake that I did when I gave up my Santa Clara place. Since then, everything has been going downhill up until about a year and a half ago.
Look at your newfound abundance of free time as a chance to improve your career anyway. For instance, if you aren't certified in anything, get your CCNA. That alone will greatly improve your skillset and make you more marketable. It will be cheap as well if you use something like safari.informit.com to prepare.
You may be an awesome techie, but you may find yourself missing the "soft" skills. There is probably no faster way to acquire those skills than to become involved in sales. Look into opportunities in your area of expertise in sales. You'll find them where the core IT jobs have disappeared. Nothing makes you more desirable to hire than your newly acquired and well-practiced communication skills. Others look at it as dead end jobs. I look at it as a chance to get paid to learn how to influence people, including the recruiters and interviewers. Take your time to improve your resume as much as possible. You have lots of time, so make it reflect you as much as possible. Learn some new skills such as a programming language or database management.
Speaking of resumes, I despise the concept of a brief resume. I have a 10-page one (now shrunk to 6 as my responsibilities have shifted into management). My technical skills section alone is a full printed page. Whoever tells you that long resumes do not get read is likely not a senior techie. Experiment with them. After all, it does not cost anything.
There are several industries that need sales people on commission and value technology skills. That's one way to get by while looking for real work. One exception would be working in automotive sales - that's one cut-throat environment that kills your sense of integrity. I survived there for a couple of months, and actually almost got offered an IT position when I decided to leave the sales force. The board changed its mind later. I worked in cable TV sales for the last year. It is nothing glamorous, but I have traveled everywhere, and made some money to get back home once the situation improved. I learned quite a few applicable skills and framed that time frame nicely to put in my resume as a positive experience point. What I really got surprised at is how many recruiters did appreciate it very much as something positive.
Now, let's look specifically at how to conserve resources while looking for work. Everyone will say things about coupons. I use store cards. I have a big collection of them from everywhere. I saved and still do on average 30-40% per trip. Stop using fast food joints. You can always go back to splurging on fun stuff once you are back in business. There are other ways. Rent tends to be the biggest cost of living, so is the vehicle payment. My vehicle is paid for, but rent is unavoidable, or so most people think. I actually worked for a month in Lake Tahoe area and lived in the woods. No, you wouldn't be able to tell
Anyway, let's assume you are intent on moving to a different area. First things first, find the predominant source of employment listings for the area, post your resume, apply to a few dozen positions and call many recruiters, and see if you get any response. Put an address that's local to your target area on your resume. See if you can get past the phone screening process. There is no point in disclosing your location until there is some definite interest. And when you do disclose it, make it sound t
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
More power :-)
(30 hours a week in Germany)
that you cannot get a job once you're past 50. It gets pretty damn difficult after about 40!
...theres a clearly a significant business opportunity for an ex-ITer who knows his/her onions and has some people skills. Just a thought.
Hahaha. Buried with their wild UFO stories and magical Bible codes. Sorry, look for fraud reports from real journalists. Not from the Art Bell's, Rense's, etc who are the "Weekly World News" of radio. I have no doubt there is fraud, but you won't find accurate reports alongside 100% fictional accounts of space aliens and magical "Bible codes".
Check out Rense for the latest on vote fraud accusations? No. Check out Rense for the latest bigfoot sighting? You betcha!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
But why should I take a massive paycut just to get a clearance? Not gonna happen.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Interesting dichotomy- but still I can find a hole for this. There are two main ways to get a budget surplus- one is from natural increase of tax income and the other is from issuing national bonds, if they use this surplus for investing in private industry, they will inevitably face difficulties- because this surplus is not only made up in natural increase of tax income but from national bonds- since national bonds are debt. In this case they are using money barrowing from people for investing private industry. For private company it might be good, but for people who lend money it's far worse. So if government have got budget surplus mainly from national bonds, they have to keep money from investing private secters. Instead they'd better drop it in welfare, as money for people's own sake. The more government spend for it, the better. If government keep on using its budget surplus for investing private industry, it make matters worse. Poor get poorer. Rich get richer. If government have huge deficit in trade balance, it's good for both government and people. Government and people can buy and get more than they can. So let's summarise...Natural increase of tax income is for private investment, issuing of national bonds is for public welfare, extra government spending - depends - whether for industry or people, trade deficit make people happier -leave this as it is. Trade unbalance with Asia and Europe can be totally ignorable. It is a magic of figure America created. Dollars are only in America, not in other parts of the world. In this case a magic of exchange rates can change everything. American government know that... And finally tax cuts for people are not necessarily incurs unemployment. Because it brings stabilised society, good incentives for both people and company.( Companies can expect more purchases,etc.) Government's spending for investment in private industry does not affect company's decisions on its employment planning.
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
Insightful comment...however I've got something I disagree with. Recessions are characterised by a lack of investment, after fully invested. ...Deficit is not a recommended response to a recession. It's not going to shift investment funds to consumption. Instead, profit is an answer to a recession, which will only shift investment funds to consumption. I think I'm stating something very natural thing. If it's wrong, something converting natural course of thing might happen... That's what you said "reverse situation exists normally..." I cannot get.
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
Thank you- I'll definately use these for my postcards that I create as part of the TechnoSolidarity Campaign- the idea being to appeal to the approximately 100 million potential voters that are so fed up with both major parties that they don't vote.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Interesting that you'd automatically equate homeless since age 12 with irresponsible; most irresponsible kids would choose to stay with a responsibile parent if they had a choice.
However, as it turns out, in some states the point is moot- they allow the homeless to register with only a hand-drawn map of where their cardboard box is...amazing and a point I will use in my campaign if I ever get the website off the ground.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No, the money supply isn't infinite. But what evidence do you have that private sector investment is being crowded out?
How about the severe lack of R&D budget in private industry (and the large numbers of MBS's and PhD's out of work because of it?).
However, given your Reuters story, I do doubt some of what my eyes are telling me- and there must be other reasons for it. I'll grant you this one.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yes, the real deficit is actually worse than the $4e11 records
Why does $4e11 looks like a hexadecimal number to me?
He probably does believe in them, but that they only belong to the rulers.
"When a group comes and takes your personal wealth and possesions using the threat of imprisonment or death, most of the rest of us in the english speaking world that stealing"
I marked you on the friend list for your honest description of the fact that taxation = theft. What else do you call it when someone comes to take away what is yours under threat of violence?
"Although you claim to reject the "might makes right" philosophy"
Might only makes right if it is to satisfy their greed, apparently.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The guy should learn how to use Priceline and he'd probably never pay over $35.
I work for the Fed. We are not going anywhere but if we do... There will be a lot bigger issues to worry about.
Yeah, if the Fed went away we'd be worrying about issues like... should we get non-stop blowjobs while sipping margaritas? Or get massages from Asian girls after eating sushi off their naked bodies?
Luckily, thanks to the Fed we don't have to worry about those things... instead we can all spend all day every day working for shit wages while our overlords bask in total luxury and laugh at our stupidity.
Thanks, Fed!