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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."
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
...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.
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.
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.
"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.
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!
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
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.
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.
It's not nationwide. There are definitely areas where the job market is considerably better and there seems to be pockets where certain types of jobs are more plentiful. I recently moved from the PNW to Chicago for this very reason.
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.
...computers just haven't caught on.
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.
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.
"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?
The market in SoCal seems to be picking up, too. I ended six months of unemployment in January with a comfortable job, but starting about four months after that, I began receiving a number of calls for job interviews on varying topics -- NOC engineer, server specialist, entry-level Cisco, desktop support... pretty much the whole spectrum. I figured that the industry as a whole, which I'd heard from friends across the country was way off, was beginning to recover, since California is usually last to react to economic changes (our economic cycle lags a bit behind most of the nation, so while we're usually slow to end profitable cycles, we're also usually slow to get back into them).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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.
Wish I still had my mod points to mod this up to "insightfull".
I recently had to invite tenders to outsource a particular discrete piece of work. We spread the net wide and got quotes from several reputable firms in Russia, the US, UK and India (were UK based). The Russians were the cheapest, followed by in order the US, India and then the UK. Quotes were in the region of 5000 - 200000 Pounds Sterling.
The Russian teams quote was half that of the US co's quote BUT THE US QUOTE WAS CHEAPER THAN THAT OF THREE INDIAN BASED FIRMS!!
With the current exchange rates it isnt going to be long before its cheaper to outsource to the US rather than the usual suspects...congratulation on becoming a developing country!!!
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?
In Richmond VA, a couple of hours south on I-95 frm DC, it seems like most hiring is being done by contractors. Because Richmond salaries are generally lower than ones to the north or in the Research Triangle, it doesn't seem like off-shoring has taken off. I suspect that the higher cost of livings (and commensurate salaries) of markets like DC, New York and Silicon valley make them more lucrative targets for outsourcing. However, many of the opportunities in town are either for contractors or in IT management.
Even with the proliferation of contractor based jobs, there are many openings for experienced IT professionals. However, the emphasis in on experience; entry level jobs have pretty much disappeared. I hear about college kids getting IT degrees and the only two words that I have for them are "Good Luck".
Even the Democratic Leadership Council agrees:
What happened?
If we want our country back, first we stop looking at our countrymen as the enemy. We stop telling them they're wrong. If you want to end the hatre, stop hatin' and start lovin'.
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.
"
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 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?
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.
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)
Ditto, me too..yeah what he said. I got 4 emails and 2 calls today for IT Architect roles or Web Development Project Manager. That doesn't mention the Progranmmer emails I get (and delete) as I have not written code in years. I don't see or hear about as many unemployed IT workers as I did 2-3 years ago. Granted some of these jobs are not in what I consider desirable locations (like Minnesota, Maine, Kansas or Miami), but others may love these locations. And sometimes the $$$ are a bit low but if someone needs a job they are out there. Or maybe my view is biased as the more experienced are in more demand and I have 20+ yrs in the business ?
Don't buy bread; buy flour, eggs, and yeast and learn to bake your own bread. Don't buy pre-packaged deli meat; buy a big enconomy-size roast, cook it yourself, and slice it up. Don't buy potato chips, buy a big bag of potatos and a gallon of vegatable oil. You get the idea...
Tomatos too expensive? Plant a garden! Even an apartment dweller can raise a significant crop of fresh vegatables in big flowerpots. Go to the library and check out a book on box gardening.
Most importantly, learn how to shop! For example, every supermarket I've ever been in marks down it's meats on the sell-by date. They'll sell it for a few cents on the dollar rather than thowing it out. If you know your store's routine, you can be there waiting when they mark it down. Then, take it straight home and throw it in the freezer. The other thing is to take advantage of coupons and loss leaders! Loss leaders are great if you have the discipline to go in and ONLY buy what's on sale. You may have to go to 3 or 4 stores to get everything you need, but you save a ton of money. 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.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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.
Yeah, as someone who graduated a year too late to get a decent programming job, I can say that 'entry-level' is a thing of the past. I did get a job, but it is dead-end. Companies are still living in 2002 and think they can get PhD's with 20 years experience for $40k. I see many mid-level job positions with hyped-up requirements that go unfilled for 6 months or more. Only now are workers starting to burn out from being overloaded by this employment gap. The pendulum is about to swing back in a big way.
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.
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.
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
how much do you "routinely" spend on gas to drive around those 3-4 stores?
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!
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."
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.
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
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?
I agree with the concept you are trying to convey. Save money whenever possible.
:-) (Yes it is possible for geeks to get girlfriends)
However, when you take someone who has earned X dollars for ten+ years, let them go and instantly make it impossible for them to get a job except by moving around, and that job only pay 1/10th of what X did, then something is seriously wrong. Now if this happened over say 10+ years that would be bad enough (like the manufacturing jobs) but this happened over two years. That is horrible.
Yes people should learn to save. I remember saving up all week to take my girlfiend out and get breadsticks on the weekend. If I skipped a few meals during the week I could actually afford extra cheese for both of us.
However, when someone with a family looses their job they don't instantly sell their house, all their cars (at a loss mind you) and start farming for food. Normally they will try for a long time to work in their profession in their area, then they will start to lower their standards over time to work just about anywhere, and then at last be forced to make very tough decisions. I have seen many of my friends have to make these tough decisions after being out of work a long time. Thankfully most have found a new job, but some more are about to loose their jobs now. I will say that the difference between now and a few years ago is that people know that the there are no jobs now. They didn't know that a few years ago.
I can tell you that NOBODY wants to hire an I.T. person for another profession. Their fear is that the economy will turn upward again and the person will quit. I have seen a few of my friends try and get jobs a Walmart and others. This has NEVER worked. So they are stuck.
So yes I agree that people should save whenever possible. But for those 35-55 year olds out there that have been "downsized", it is not reasonable to expect them to become farmers overnight. Again as I mentioned above, today is different than two years ago. Today, if you have an I.T. job, you better be saving like mad.
The sad part of all this is that if Kerry would have been smart, he would have played this issue up and made this his core issue. In my opinion he didn't and that is why he lost. Well that and the fact that his past haunted him.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
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.
So yes I agree that people should save whenever possible. But for those 35-55 year olds out there that have been "downsized", it is not reasonable to expect them to become farmers overnight.
It's all good for the upper income types and the propertied Americans and the megacorporations. As long as they have the advantage of power, wealth, and other advantages, these ups and downs and even economic depressions don't really affect them too drastically. In fact, profits are higher than ever. The era of slavery and indentured servitude was great for profit--for the slaveowners.
The sad part of all this is that if Kerry would have been smart, he would have played this issue up and made this his core issue. In my opinion he didn't and that is why he lost. Well that and the fact that his past haunted him.
I am a leftist, but I am glad that Kerry lost, even though I was devastated by Bush's victory. Kerry does not want to make too big a fuss about this, and neither do any of the other democrats. I am not sure why. Maybe they are afraid they would awaken a sleeping tiger. They really do not want to rock the boat. After all, why would they want to alter the status quo? They are on top of the world!
Now that kerry has lost, I hope the Democrats fall further out of power in 2006. That might cause them to move back to the left, economically left, that is.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
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!