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What is the Tech Jobs Situation in Late 2004?
CareerConfused asks: "Today I came across an ad in the NY Times, put out by Microsoft, Micron, Level 3 (among others) that claimed that the H-1B visa quota for FY2005 has already expired (it claims the quota expired the first day of FY2005, which started just about a month back). OK. On the one hand, we have
stories of techies not finding jobs; and on the other, we have stories from businesses which claim that lack of H1s is killing their business, as well as public advocacy (like that ad in NYT). So, what is it? Are we in another boom, with jobs going a-begging and companies requiring more H1s to fill them? How come I haven't noticed this in the form of a fatter paycheck (or an Aeron chair, or a fooseball table in the cubicle)?" What have you experienced in your searches for technology-based jobs? Is it still hard to sell your hard-earned skills or are things looking up?
While its one thing to claim that the lack of H1Bs is killing your business because Americans don't want to move to Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's quite another to say that you can't find a job in Silicon Valley. What's needed is an overall view of how tech jobs are doing across the country. What areas are in desperate need of technical skills and what areas are suffering from a shortage of jobs?
i couldn't find much in Houston, TX of all places, very tech orientated city, ended up joining the military for a real tech job. 2E251: Computer, Network, Cryptographic, and Switching Systems :) hell yea.
President Bush Supporter
are belong to u.s.
all your h1b are belong to u.s.
Houston market stinks. Maybe still holdover from enron, I don't know.
i have no problems finding a job in Atlanta, GA
My company has been seeing a lot of turnover (both incoming and outgoing) lately. People leave because of better jobs and people come in because this place is better than where they were. I'm not sure if that means the market is better or worse, but it's certainly a little more mobile than I remember.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
I'd say there exists a dire need for geeks with basic writing skills in and around Ann Arbor, MI.
Seriously, man, this paragraph wouldn't even earn a passing mark in a seventh-grade writing class. You write articles for a living--get it together!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Moved here, and had a great paying job as a Data Analyst in NYC within a week.
If I can do it... either you're spending all of your time just looking online (which is doomed for failure) or you just don't know how to properly search/interview for a job.
An employment councillor can help you with either problem.
I can summarize in 4 words:
Same Shit, Different Day.
Jobs are hard to find, thats why i'm reading slashdot.
Last I checked, a lot of my well educated friends in Salt Lake City, UT were still hurting. One of them even went back to driving a truck to make ends meet. My deflated two cents (USD). Thanks.
Robert Oschler - RobotsRule.com
In the Bay Area, at least, the three datapoints I have are: :) ); :)
1. Google's still screaming for people to join them (well, OK, they then axe highly-competent people during their interview process, but I'm sure it's for the best
2. When I was looking for a job in late August, I ended up in a competitive bidding situation between two companies;
3. The company for which I work now (which has a fabulous environment, IMHO), is looking to hire people, so far with no great success. Of course, we're also looking for pretty decent people
It's getting better, I think.
...fine. Especially in the Central-Eastern parts of Europe. IT starts to gain more velocity here...But thats only my observation.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I've spent about two and a half years now in a fairly stable job at a big company. I work with people I either like or don't mind, the work is sufficiantly satisfying even considering that I have to occassionally deal with big company political bullshit, the hours are reasonable and I (obviously) still have time to do some light /.'ing. All of this is a significant improvement over the
two startup jobs I had back in 2001 where the hours were insane, the
people were nutjobs and I was very, very unhappy.
OTOH, I've been more or less in limbo in terms of pay. Despite adding considerably to my skillset, I've gotten extremely modest raises that have more or less kept up with inflation if you don't count in gas prices.
Aside from that: Items like Aeron chairs and foosball tables and game systems in the break room and people keeping excessively odd hours can stay gone. I never liked those -- maybe I'm an exception, but I'm at work to *work*, I want to get my work done and leave. I'm working so I can afford to have a life outside of work, not because I really get off on plugging away on my TPS reports. The absolute worst part about all of those "perks" were that they slowed down the whole works and as a side effect created an expectation that you should live at work more than the 8-9 hours a day God intended. "Where's Bob? I need him to look over something." "Oh, he's playing in the Wednesday Tekken Tourney, he'll be out in an hour or two"...
Back to the subject at hand, though: The environment now is such that I could probably go make more money someplace else, but to be honest I am *extremely* hesitant to stick my head back out there after getting bitchslapped so badly last time.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'm pretty sure the submitter gets it, but doesn't want to admit it. Yes, there is a demand for qualified techies coming in on H1-B's. Yes, a good number of domestic techies are having hard times finding employment. However, these two items are not mutually exclusive.
See, managers wised up. They found out that you can either hire a domestic techie for 50-80k/yr or hire an imported techie for 25-35k/yr. As an added bonus, the imported techie will be thankful for the opportunity he has, and do everything he can to appease the management that hired him.
I'd _love_ to see a tariff on 'imported' labor. However, I'm not an economist.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
The Slashdot crowd needs to get over this "lack of IT jobs" boogeyman and realize that, yes, for enthusiasts with little non-callcenter experience, there is a shortage of jobs. But for professionals, with degrees and more than just an "I've got an MCSE book, I'm more than qualified!" attitude, there are quite a few.
Looking over the want-ads and monster.com's ilk, there are plenty of jobs for people with experience and know-how... But very few for wannabes and tech support layoffs.
Foreign workers tend to be well educated, dedicated, and happy to be working. American workers tend to be 'l33t h4x0rs' who think they don't make enough while being the first to head for the door at 4:30.
Here in NYC, there are definately more/better jobs out there. But I'm still waiting for the pay levels to recover.
And maybe, just maybe, M$ aren't telling the whole truth about not being able to find people...
Either that, or they they genuinely can't find coders with 10 years experience who will accept $50k/year.
Ok, I'm cynical. So, sue me.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
...if only the quality and work ethic was the same as many H1Bers...
I'm in Boise - Micron announced today that it's back up to its pre-layoff employee count having rehired 1800 people back since the layoff a couple of years ago. Non-pc memory sales are doing good I guess.
what they mean to say is that the lack of skilled people willing to work 60% below their true market value is "killing their business." There's no shortage of techies... only cheap ones.
Things have been the opposite for me for the past 3 years than for most other software engineers. I was layed off in mid 2001, but immediately found work. I have since quit that job and the one after after finding better opportunities. I'm making far more money than ever now. Not to say that this has been the case for my friends and coworkers, but opportunities still abound in my experience. If you're willing to work hard and network, there's a lot of opportunities available.
A lot of the unemployed "IT" or "technology" workers are that way because they were never qualified to work in the industry in the first place. With a B.S. in electrical engineering I continually receive job offers and I'm not even looking.
One change I've noticed is that XML and related technologies are getting bigger and bigger, and it's redefining what it means to be a web application developer. I feel like my skill set is being spread thinner than pâte.
Other than that, it's the same old situation:
1. Employers seeking ridiculously diverse skill sets. What do you want, a software developer with ten years experience, or a GIS specialist with database skills? Pick ONE!
2. Employers requiring experience or expertise in obscure software, but who are unwilling to train. (We're smart; we can learn your industry-specific database front-end for god's sake!)
3. Shops with a depressing preference for Microsoft and IBM languages and software. LAMP jobs and their ilk are comparitively scarce, and therefore highly competitive.
4. HR people who don't know what they want/need. The other day someone posted a "need" for a C# developer with more than five years experience.
So employers are feeling a crunch from the H1 issue. Fine, I'll take that underpaid position! Where is it? We've talked about this before, and I understand that employers are trying to thin the pool by posting stringent (or ideal) requirements, but I think it's getting out of hand and alienating worthy applicants in the process.
As for the relocation bit, I don't buy it. I would welcome the change to relocate almost anywhere in the world for a decent job. I would appreciate a system that makes it easier for employers willing to hire from a remote job pool to find job seekers who are serious about relocating. Monster's system is just too limited.
It's not that there aren't enough people to fill the IT jobs in the US - or that companies are even actually TRYING to fill those jobs with US Employees...
/. article it was noted that in 2003 (I beleive) there were less then 20,000 IT jobs created - yet 60,000 H1B workers were brought in? Now, lets see.... 60,000 - 20,000... 1+1 /2 *6 = ahh $#@% IT!
What it IS, is that companies want to fill CURRENT US Jobs (Hear: YOUR job) with an H1 worker who will work for less pay...
Want a better job? Quit, denounce your citizenship in the US, move to India - file for H1B visa and wait for the 2006 roundup. HA!
Seriously, though - in a previous
There's some increase in hiring going about and I've been getting some cold-calls from recruiters again (seems to go on six month cycles- contracts and all...). All in all, though, times are still a little tough here in Dallas/Ft. Worth. It's been the worst downturn I've seen in the 2 decades I've been at working in the Tech industry.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Companies claim they can't find qualified candidates, and techies claim above average unemployment. Since some companies seem to define qualified as either 5+ years experience or new graduate of an Indian tech school, they are being honest about not finding people who meet their qualifications. I would hope that every unemployed programmer, and everybody concerned about losing their job, will write to their congressman describing unemployment in the field so that subject can come up when companies do get a hearing to increase the H-1B cap.
In the Washingtion D.C. metropolitan area, things are doing well. I received my job right out of college and know others who did the same. This area never really seems to be affected like the rest of the country. Jobs are especially plentiful if you have a clearance of some sort.
Actually...everything I just said is a lie. There are no jobs in D.C. or Northern Virginia. Stay away.
I was hired to move away from Dallas, TX to Miami, FL with a $22,000 raise, an allowance for my townhome, and given my choice of a paid for new car or an allowance against my current car. Promoted from programmer to executive with some programming responsibilities.
::smiles:: Tough love.
I think people band together and bitch about jobs when they're out of work - and they're the only one's making any noise... those of us with jobs don't go around bragging about it, we just get down to business.
If you don't have a job... you HAVE A JOB: FIND A JOB AND QUIT BEING A BABY!
In Kentucky, the tech job scenario is very very bad. Except in military areas and Louisville (the biggest city in KY). I suspect that is the same about everywhere. The biggest cities may be recovering and military areas. Not rural America from where I am standing.
Compare that to the height of the tech boom when there would literally be 50 jobs listed each week in more rural areas.
The company I work for, Vocollect has quite a few positions open. If you are software/hardware engineer with a grasp on voice recognition check 'em out. Projected growth for the year was passed early summer IIRC.
... maybe not in uber-chic places with million dollar salaries, but there are jobs for tech folks out there.
I don't know why people keep saying there are no tech jobs, there are plenty
I've been working in IT since 92, and the best I can find in Boston right now is a 3 month project "internship" copying files between testing and production servers.
As for CareerConfused: it's all about perception. If you believe the job market is tight, then don't expect a new chair (I bought my own); if you believe GWB defended our country well against terrorists, then let's elect him; and so on... Reality is overrated.
Yes, there is always a severe shortage of people who will work for substandard wages, locked into contract work with no prospect for advancement. Like H1B visa workers.
Here in Chicago, I've been getting on average a couple of unsolicited recruiting calls per week for the last few months. So maybe the IT job market here is starting to get better.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
My girlfriend is an account manager for Robert Half Technologies (who talks to hiring managers for large IT departments all the time), and she is fiding a huge need for .NET developers here in Jacksonville, FL. I'm a J2EE kind of guy, and that need is less, but still high.
She'd tell you that the market is about to boom with need for techies again.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
I posted an ad for a help desk position for my small company on craigslist.
I received sixty resumes in four days. And probably 20% were well-to-over-qualified.
Now I'll only comment quickly that the job is mediocre on a good day and Cincinnati blows. The mid-west it seems is teaming with tech jobs though. That doesn't mean I'll stay here but apparently there are co-op jobs a plenty out here that go un filled while I spent last summer mowing lawns for lack of a co-op position.
From my experience techs jobs are mostly only available in certain areas which are cheaper to operate a business in. People my age don't want to move to the mid west though (I'm moving back [someone give me a job in the Boston area]) and older people have already put down roots somewhere else.
AFAIK most people are not really looking for jobs because they think there aren't any out there. This would lead companies to think there is a short supply of people. If you'd like to jump ship, get looking for something else - don't listen to what people think the situation is. After you're gone, your previous employer will be looking for your replacement. To some extent, the job market is what people perceive it to be.
I've worked for a healthcare organization for the last eight years and salaries and hiring do seem to be going up. There's a huge demand for electronic systems in healthcare, so that's at least one IT market that's doing well.
The tricky part is hiring well qualified individuals, which seem harder to pick up these days. I'd recommend the field for anyone looking for a job. Healthcare organizations are pretty stable during economic downturns (people still get sick) and you get to feel like you're making a real difference in people's lives.
Certainly there are those who are looking for jobs, I don't deny that, but why does everyone think that being a techie in the U.S. is so terrible? Sure, talk bad about those dirty rotten scoundrels in India taking your $50K/year job.. those terrible job pirates can now put food on their table. How dare they?! I don't claim to be the expert on this, but I truly believe that there are jobs out there. Do you have to look hard and accept salaries that don't allow you to keep that 3 story castle you bought in the 90's? Maybe. Suck it up America, we have it pretty darn good.
the job market for .Net developers specifically has been pretty steady for the past year.
Judging by the talent of the people i've interviewed, skilled .Net developers are still a fairly rare commodity here.
Back in the 90's eveyone was hearing on the news and from campuses that the best (read as: highest paying) jobs were in the computer sector. They flooded the market. Now over the past 3-5 years the new students have been hearing "don't go into that people are losing their jobs to overseas" so they choose a different field. Thus eventually creating a need for more workers. So in turn when the salaries increase again and the overall need for workers increase once again there will be a surplus of workers and not enough jobs. Hopefully the students in the colleges now are in their fields because they want to do it and not because it will make them 100K a year after graduation. This way you get the person who loves what they do.
A bunch of Tech Stuff
If you have a clearance, especially TS, you won't be unemployed for long at all. TS you won't be unemployed any longer than you want to be. But you can do well without a clearance if you have the skills. Say, flash+asp+php+Cold fusion, with some Apache and Perl. Or lots of experience with C/C++ and Python on two or more platforms.
Best Slashdot Co
But I've got an Aeron chair. Meh - it's a decent chair, but nothing to lose sleep over. As for the jobs situation, I got no idea.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The problem is that people are either not aggresive enough or are too picky about what they're looking for. I know someone who got a good offer from a financial firm for a position that had less than optimal hours (it was a sliding night shift, rotating between evening, night and morning shifts). At a job like that, a bright person will get paid untill they find the job they like better. That job could be a move within the company or someplace else, but the bill still get paid.
I find this interesting, as I submitted two such stories at the start of this year:
2004-03-03 18:48:15 US House members to offer anti-offshore jobs bill (Index,United States) (rejected)
And another regarding the proposed H1 changes under way.
At this point in time the subject seems worthy. Why is that? Talk amongst yourselves...
Just to avert the usual avalanche of people saying "What do we need to do to keep these foreigners out of our country?"
The following actions can be considered and will be guaranteed to stop the flow of immigrants and or jobseekers;
Kill the economy. I mean really kill it - we are talking 40% or higher inflation here.
Start a civil war.
etc. etc. You get the picture. If it gets to the point where others don't want to live here then you won't want to live here either. Pick your poison.
Now, let's look at some figures for perspective. H1-B visas last for six years. They are also granted to people in fields other than IT. so, if we assume that 75 000 H1's were granted every year and that about 60% of those were for IT related fields then you would be fighting a total of 270 000 foreigners for a job at any one time. In a country of 300 million that is a statistically insignificant number. Offshoring - which doesn't involve any visas - is orders of magnitude more disastrous to your job security than any other person living in the US and therefore having to deal with the same living standards as you. So, can we please keep the H1 and offshoring issues separate this time?
Oh well, it was nice to have karma for a while.
I think the claimed shortage of H1Bs is total BS. Its just another ploy of big business to get a service cheaper, even if they bankrupt the middle class in the process. There is no shortage of American labor. Programmers (like myself) are taking lower rates, AND still ending up in the lonely midwest. I'm currently on an assignment in Iowa, after spending 6 months in a little cow town in Kansas. There is no shortage of programmers willing to fill these assignments either. I hae calls from friends in the industry all the time asking me if I've heard of any contracting work out here in the midwest. I tried for 2 years to find work as a developer in Houston TX... people I know there are still out of work or have changed careers entirely. One fellow I know, an Oracle admin with many years experience, is doing refrigeration and AC repair because of the competition for IT related jobs in Houston.
I have resigned myself to a life on the road, there just doesn't seem to be much call for full-time developers (as employees) anymore. Will things change? I sure hope so! I miss my home and girlfriend!
cypherz in Sioux City
This sig kills fascists.
Alot of the problem is trying to find "skilled" Techies. Some of these shitheads where I work are consider themselves fully qualified software engineers just because they know how to use Windows.
Back in the 1970's, there was a big push towards automated coding. The idea was machines would be given a set of parameters and write their own applications, thus killing the demand for skilled technical workers throughout the United States. Fear and hysteria reigned, and I know a lot of people who left technology careers as a result.
Fast forward to 1997, when I was graduating college. For years I had worked as an intern / volunteer / gopher in various computer labs and become familiar with the major issues in computer science. For one thing, information technology jobs had not gone away, they had just changed to the point where they no longer looked like they did when I was a kid. On the other hand, some of the scientific coders were having to learn how to code HTML and produce graphics, which was really a strange thing to ask them to do based on their last 20 years of experience.
IT doesn't go away, it intensifies, and so to do IT professionals. My company, www.trellon.com, is almost unable to find qualified people to work on our projects. This is not because their is such high demand for workers we cannot compete, this is because it is tough to find professionals with the right mix of technology and other disciplines in their background. For every 20 people I meet, 16 of them get disqualified based on a lack of subject matter expertise outside of coding. (3 of the rest turn out to be exaggerating on their resume, and the 1 truly qualified applicant seems to always have some issue that keeps us from wanting to make him an offer).
I guess what I see is that there is still demand in IT, sometimes it just doesn't look like the work you used to do. GIS is big right now, I still get calls from recruiters offering insane salaries. OSS programmers are big right now, lots of people are looking for data warehousing solutions that do not depend on Oracle and SQL Server. Flash is big right now, and I regularly receive RFPs for companies willing to build RIAs.
Threads like this irk me a little bit because it always looks like people are waiting too long to ask the right questions. There should be some place where people can just ask what technology is in big demand and hook up with the resources to learn so they can provide a more valuable service. But fretting about the state of the IT industry is like worrying about automated coding back in the 70s - it's here right now, but all we know about IT is that innovation is forever.
M
There are lots of listings on jobs.perl.org, and in the LA area companies like Citysearch and Overture are having trouble filling positions for experienced Perl people. It certainly isn't 1999 again, but it is better than last year, and last year my job search took 2 weeks.
Of course LA has a better market than most of the West Coast. But even so, friends whose employment was tenuous or non-existent up and down the West Coast seem to generally be happily employed today.
Of course this is the perspective of someone who is very good at Perl. If you're one of the army of people who got into Perl for CGI, and have vague plans to learn about this OO stuff someday, then your perspective is probably a bit different...
Perhaps your company would have an easier time getting applicants if you would TELL US WHO YOU ARE.
Or perhaps your group is in the business of putting the "suck" in success.
Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, nurses, firefighters, soldiers are also important to our economy. Wouldn't lowering their wages by expanding the supply of labor help the American economy?
Shouldn't we expand indentured guest worker programs to these professions before picking on high-tech people again?
Is this a side effect of the fact that less Americans are pursuing higher education? A significant number of people in the software profession (particularly software development) tend to be fresh graduates, and younger than other fields (lesser experience). Is this group of youngsters showing a statistically significant drop off in enrollment for Bachelor's/Graduate study?
I don't know...and don't have any firm figures to back up the claims in paragraph above....but it certainly seems so from anecdotal evidence (Universities facing economic crunch, due to lack of researchers/students).
If the number of Americans pursuing higher study is indeed dropping off, that could be one of the factors leading to the present situation as described in the summary.
Again, I'm just brainstorming here from personal experience...there are bigger factors at work here than just 65K people "taking the jaabs away".
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I'm a development manager for a fairly tech-oriented firm, and we're getting hit by both of these to some degree - we do have some limited outsourcing to take immediate load off core staff and allow ourselves to scale-back guiltlessly upon the completion of projects, but with a lack of qualified local candidates to hire we're having to rely on them a little more heavily than may be appropriate.
I'm still hiring for 4 Sr. Software engineers in the Salt Lake City, Utah, US area if anyone's interested (will have more openings next year). Primary skill include Linux, C/C++ (stdlib & STL), and SQL/Oracle. XML/XSLT, HTML, Javascript, web technologies in general are a plus. Please drop me a line at pltomlinson at gmail dot com if you're interested and don't suck.
Any spoon would be too big.
It seems to me that an easier solution for many businesses in this situation is to enable people to work from their chosen location via VPN (some other related technology) which would invalidate the necessity of relocating.
The employment rate for our local college's computer grads was 80% for the previous two years. This year it is 100%. The market is looking up but there are still quite a few Nortel refugees floating around to soak up jobs.
The problem isn't that there aren't jobs. The problem is that there aren't enough smart people to fill the jobs. Companies have finally stopped hiring stupid people for jobs that require smart people. It can take months to fill a position with a talented engineer. My view on this is a little harsh, but the basic idea holds true.
There's a fine balance between being located someplace where you can find talent and paying an arm and a leg to locate your business there.
/. a little bit ago. I don't want to lose my job in, say, New York to someone who has a cost of living 1/3 that, because they don't need the same income to live comfortably as I would; our internal economic structure isn't prepared for a shift that dramatic quite yet (heck... look how outsourcing to other countries has taken a big bite out of many industries in the US).
I'm not sure which drives which (ie, talent pools where the jobs are, or companies move to major metropolitan centers because that's where talent naturally springs), but I can say that I hope it doesn't change that rapidly.
Just like that article about outsourcing to rural America that was on
Just imagine... lowest-common-denominator-pay based on cost of living... and you live in Chicago , New York, Los Angeles, etc., and I'm not just talking "tech" industry. The chaos of shifting property values alone would crush millions of people.
No, instead the burden on businesses needs to be kept geographically centered: you move to where the people you want to work for you live and contribute back to that community.
Only after we have a global standard of living can we successfully hire "best people for the job, no matter where they live."
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
The cliche holds that it's who you know. Networking is king in today's job market. There are so many bootcamp certified techies out there that someone has to personally vouch for you.
.net, Sun, MS, linux, etc) and they want someone with that experience. However, despite what they say, they still have tons of random stuff sitting around that needs support. Usually it will go something like "I see you're Certified in XYZ...oh but by the way...have you ever worked on an AS/400?"
Your skillset better be broad. From what I've seen, many companies are in kind of a second phase of standards. They made a choice a couple years ago (j2ee,
Bottom line(s), meet everyone you can, go to trade group meetings, tinker with as much crap as you can get ahold of, talk intelligently on websites/blogs/mailing lists...and you should be fine.
I have had much luck since I was downsized with a last day of employment of 31 January, 2003. I though my Unix administration skills would be in demand. I did have a hiatus, when my reserve unit was mobilized mid-February 2003 for one year. Not able to find employment, as I was getting ready to demobilize, I extended for another 6 months. I finally returned at the end of July, using vacation time to return early. Thank goodness for unemployment checks, otherwise I would have burned through my severance pay on the high cost of living in California. I believe the tech sector is still hurting. Just look at the states that the Democrats one ... tech heavy parts of the country. I voted for the economy, as I felt the war on terror can't be won if we can't pay our bills (digression here). Now Greenspan is stating the deficiet threatons our economy. WTF is going on?
Aeron chair? Fooseball table in the cubicle?
I can understand the thing about a higher paycheck and I'm sure the chair and foosball thing were tongue-in-cheek but I think a sizable part of the IT industry actually expects these kinds of perks.
The tech boom gave a lot of us unreasonable expectations about what to expect from a job. I remember being flown out to San Fran from Chicago just for an interview. They treated us to all kind of posh digs after explaining their shake-oil product to us interviewees. I knew even then that this was way too good to last.
For everyone waiting for 1999 to return to the workplace in terms of dressing like slobs, having every perk comped and getting paid obscene amounts, it's time to wake up. That was just part of the business cycle that happened to benefit us. We're an industry like any other and times that good are too good to go on forever. Heaven help you if you're actually holding out for something like that again, at least in this industry.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Just "knowing computers" isn't enough these days.
Find something specific, some niche that isn't going to go away, become an expert on it. If that niche does go away, become an expert on something else.
There's money out there to be made for FORTRAN-to-Java/C#/etc porting gurus, being able to maintain old mainframes etc..
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Businesses like H1Bs because they're easier to exploit. Just because there's lots of people begging for jobs doesn't mean that these businesses are lying when they say lack of H1Bs is killing their business. It could mean, it isn't that lack of workers is killing their business, it's just that having to pay their workers real salaries with real benefits is killing their business.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You know, if you set up your company in Fort Wayne, Indiana, not too many developers are going to want to move there. (yes, I have been there. Several times. I wouldn't move there...) Ergo, offer some incentives (i.e. more money, more vacation, better benefits, etc). Don't cry to your congressman and try to import lower wage talent from overseas. And that is the only reason they want the H1Bs - they are WAY cheaper, and will do anything you ask them to.
Lets face it, for some people, rural America (those oh-so-wonderful red states) isn't all that attractive, when compared to the energy and excitement of city living.
Then again, I live in a small college town in the middle of nowhere, so what the hell do I know. Of course, as soon as I finish my dissertation, I am outta here...
There are a few other high items (gas is expensive), but beyond that things can be had here for the same price or lower than elsewhere in the country. And Bay Area salaries *are* higher than elsewhere, not to mention that this place is where all the tech companies are. If you're cool with renting, living here isn't out of reach by any means.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Speaking from indirect experience (two coworkers were laid off Sept 30), things aren't all that great in the Indianapolis Area. It's been 6 or 7 weeks, and they still haven't even gotten any (quality) interviews yet.
Im starting to feel sorry for the future tech market. Most of the people with "tech" degrees have no clue what they are doing. I have actually seen someone with a degree in "Information Technology" who didnt know what a router was. I think it is going to be hard on these companies to hire experienced people.
KARMA POLICE ARREST THIS MAN HE TALKS IN MATHS- radiohead
more H1-X visa for more qualified and less greedy politician from hell.
Most important of all is HX-X visa for the USA president. Make sure we have someone more capable than monkey.
The companies have problems because the products are not selling very well. That means that they need to cut costs by finding cheaper ways to run their business processes.
Unfortunately the IT function in the companies is losing its relevance or importance. IT is not longer required for competitive advantage and that means that there are less reasons to hire highly skilled people.
The solution: outsourcing. Hire cheaper people from overseas or send your development centers to other countries. IT is not longer a valuable resource to create competitive advantage and the companies can live with the average service.
Well, if other places are like where I work, people are looking for jobs because they are tired of VPs who got fat bonuses this year telling them "you don't get a raise this year, and you are lucky you even have a job." They are willing to treat their employees like crap because the market will bear it. You can only take that for so long before you start looking. Because I work for a very large company, if the market picks up it would be a year or two before I would see any benefits from it (like a raise). Therefore, my best option is to get out as soon as possible. It may take longer to accomplish this because of the market, but that is what I am working towards.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
> "So, what is it? Are we in another boom"
You're not in a boom, or in a bust. You're in a plutocracy. So Americans lose jobs and companies hire foreigners for less money to help pay for those multi-million-dollar executive bonuses. You realize your annual salary is probably a fraction of what your CEO's office furniture is worth, don't you? In the grand scheme of things, your worth (my worth) is slightly below that of a desk and chair. Welcome to the new economy.
I've found that in certain areas the tech market has really increased. I think it this has a lot to do with telemarketing companies opening shop in areas where minimun wage is low and unemployment is high.
There also seem to be quite a few US based companies looking north of the border. With the weakening American dollar that might change...
So in a way, we're exactly like India... except it's colder... and our beer is better.
All your jobs are belong to us, eh!
As noted in a footnote to the article), U.S. employers *must* pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.
In my experience the BCIS (formerly INS) has pretty stringent about these requirements and as a result companies end up paying H1 workers the *same* amount as they would pay a domestic worker. Please do the research or atleast RTFA.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
There's enough supply, however business want cheaper labor.. it's that whole supply/demand thing.
And I still haven't found full time work. Doing a temp job for now to make ends meet. I haven't had much luck in even getting a callback on the resumes I've sent out, much less an face-to-face interview.
I'm not sure if it's my resume, my job search technique, or the fact that there are so many other experienced techies that no one really wants to hire a new grad.
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
I think the situation has improved but there are issues:
1. I see many defense job openings. Goto Northrop's web site for example. Problem is security clearance.
2. The cost of living is so high in California you are basically paying a bank for the mortgage inerest. Furthermore, companies will have more difficulty creating jobs in these areas. How can you relocate an engineer into a million dollar home in California? So, move the jobs somewhere else. Or better yet, how is a h1 employee going to pay for the cost of living? OK, you rent. But most of your rent is probably going to a bank for the owners mortgage anyways.
3. There still is pressure from H1 visas types. But there is a twist now. The dollar has depreciated 40% against the Euro. But countries like China fix their currency at 1 to 8. So, I'd still see pressure from China. Though, their currency rate is totally artificial and unfair.
as a 2E2, you know that i would have to mod you as a "troll" if i could, simply cause i'm a 2E2, and your a 3C0. I'm stationed at goodfellow, and this place sucks, diminishing my skills.. i hate the AETC. the only fun i've had was went i was sent out for OIF/OEF, ahh, i miss the desert. the lap of luxury never came with so much dust.
President Bush Supporter
Every time I hear one of these stories about companies having a hard time filling tech jobs, I can't help thinking that part of the problem is the way companies screen applicants. I can remember a time not too long ago, when the problem was that the human resources people who were in charge of hiring often did not understand enough technical jargon to find applicants who might be able to do the job, but whose qualifications did not exactly match the description given to them. Now the same thing is still happening, only your resume or application is never read by an actual person - just screened for keywords and phrases by a computer program that understands the skills needed even less than the human resources people did. A friend of mine recently tried to hire a programmer, and their automatic applicant screening program decided she needed someone who was qualified to maintain underground storage tanks or something equally absurd and inappropriate. No wonder people have a hard time hiring qualified people, and techies can't find jobs.
I got laid off back in 2001 from Sun Microsystems. I spent the last 3 years bouncing around doing the occasional contract work, fixing people's computers for cash, and doing whatever other work I could find (including working in a coffee shop and painting houses). I took the last year off and went back to school, and left the bay area because the job market was so bad.
I returned in July, and immediately noticed the job market was picking up. There were a lot more positive responses to the resumes I sent out, as well as a lot more places to *send* a resume in general. I started reconnecting with my personal network (people, not machines) and fairly quickly landed a new job at Ebay. I got this via my personal network, although I was getting several positive bites on my resume from all different sources as well.
The job market in the bay area is *definitely* starting to pick up. It behooves you, however, to not rely totally on just online job searches. Get your butt out of your chair, put the cheetohs down and beat the bushes the good old fashioned way.
-- Foz
Pretty consistent. There may be an oversupply of techies in the economy at large, but the H-1B supply is not constant, regardless of demand.
US immigration law "caps" H-1B immigration at a set number. During the boom, it was once 65,000 - high demand and low supply meant that employers couldn't hire enough people, and they bri^H^H^Hpetitioned Congress for a law that would raise the cap. That law said that in 2000, it was to be 115,000, and in 2001-2-3, it was to be 195,000.
As you can see, any time a politician attempts to choose a number for supply and demand and slam it into the market with the fist of legislation, he'll fuck it up, which is precisely what happened. The H-1B cap kept going up, long after the economic bubble that actually made these new employees useful had burst.
So what's the situation now? Well, just like in the last paragraph -- when politicians attempt to legislate the economy, they invariably fuck it up. The law that was passed to increase the cap came with an expiry date. So what happens - after the cap goes up to 195,000 during the recession? Why, it's Fiscal Year 2004 (starting on October 1, 2003)... and now that the economy's picking up, and demand is growing we... well, there's increased demand so let's... let the law expire and cut the H-1B quota from 195,000 back to 65,000! Cut the supply by 2/3! Yay!
And we wonder why our economy's fucked up?
Because even the most cynical of us would never believe our government would be this stupid, a link.
If you think that's fucking retarded, remember that this is the INS (now BCIS) we're talking about. These are the same folks that, approved the 9/11 hijackers their flight school visas SIX MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK.
So in the grand scheme of things, the H-1B cap manipulations that seem to be legislatively timed for maximum negative economic effect, are pretty small potatoes.
the dc metro area is definitely picking up. northern virginia alone is seeing something like 11,500 new jobs soon (ibm just bought a big new building down the street that they're looking to file and all the big contractors are desperate to get enough people to staff the zillions of dollars in homeland security contracts that they have) so, all in all, dc metro area is looking pretty decent, or a lot more so than it used to. i've been getting a lot of positive response to my resume (but i'm hardly a typical case i'm 3 credits away from a master's in a.i.)
;-)) is basically a gold mine. there's a huge number of opportunities out here for people who already have or can get clearance (this means us citizens only). it's to the point that they have specialized job fairs which require clearance to get in. check out the washington post online (great job section) plus whatever other places you're interested in.
to summarize:
if you already have a clearance: dc metro area (including our lesser suburb, baltimore
The issue is that it is complicated to measure "labor shortage".
Businesses want less-expensive labor and will pay a lot of money to lobby for it. Until better ways come along to define "shortage", it will always be a game of public impressioins. They can claim "shortage" and it is hard to prove or disprove in a way simple enough for non-computer experts (those that don't understand the field) to understand.
I don't dispute that some companies need specialized talent that they cannot get from citizens, but I know first hand that some companies abuse the H-1B system to get cheap or docile labor.
One H-1B I worked with only got paid once every 6-months (but still the promised rate). This was probably illegal, but he did not know what to do about it, and complaining would likely risk getting him sent packing to home.
The H-1B system is a mess. It is too easy to lie, fudge paperwork, play with job titles, list extra skills not really needed but on the H-1B's resume, etc. to get H-1B's in the door, and government inspectors are too few and too ill-informed to know or care.
Table-ized A.I.
This question (and its replies) seem centered on the tech job environment in USA. But I'm an American who's curious about IT opportunities abroad, particularly Europe. What is the situation there for tech workers (software developers)?
Look to the name of author and judge for yourself on whether this report (which probably isn't a lie) is heavily biased: "Urvaksh Karkaria".
I manage a small Linux team at a large semiconductor company. About 6 months ago I got authorization to hire 3 contractors for mid to long term work on Linux (everything from drivers to tools). We have only been able to hire 1 person. We have interviewed several people, made a few offers but end up losing potential candidates to competition.
I have interviewed a few people who claim they know how to write Linux device drivers but cannot explain how to compile the kernel.
In my experience, experienced Linux people are hard to find these days.
[Speaking for myself and not my employer ofcourse.]
Aside from that: Items like Aeron chairs and foosball tables and game systems in the break room and people keeping excessively odd hours can stay gone. I never liked those...
I was going to post more or less the same thing but you beat me to the punch. I wanted to smack the submitter when I read him whinning about not seeing foosball tables making a return. All that shit was complete waste. Those days are gone, my friends. Here at slashdot we like to laugh at how stupid management is. But they are smart enough not to get burned twice on buying a lot of pointless shit like that.
I think it's time for programmers to stop waxing nostalgic about crap and start worrying more about how to make programming in the US (as opposed to outsourcing it) a valuable commodity. Time to start worrying about saving up enough money that you might actually get a chance to retire when Social Security collapses. Time to start paying more attention to whether a prospective employer has a solid medical plan rather than counting the number of foosball tables or arcade games they have in the break room. In short, it's time to grow up.
GMD
watch this
That article is nothing more than a part of the big business scheme to off-shore all jobs, tech. By claiming that there aren't any qualified techs in this country, they can justify off-shoring the jobs. The truth of the matter seems to irrelevant in the face of bean-counters and greed.
[sarcasm] Here. I have some spare tin foil for your hat. [/sarcasm]
Ok he is a qeek with poor english skills, that discribes about half of us, including myself... Making a silly message about it doesn't realy help. Well it may help your ego knowing that you can spell better then some one who got headlined on /.. Hey look there was a message, it's behind the words, same place that forest is befind the trees. Keep looking you will find it.
If people can't get work, and companies can't find employees, it's probably a skills mismatch.
So what skills do companies need they can't find?
What skills do people have who can't get jobs?
I bet you they don't match.
Sounds like some slashdot surveys to me.
And I'm still waiting for the "racism" card to be played by pro-unfair immigration advocates.
Foreign workers tend to be well educated, dedicated, and happy to be working
Uh. Most foreign workers are illegal immigrants with little education
Nice generalization, though. Americans seem pretty well educated check here.
American workers tend to be 'l33t h4x0rs' who think they don't make enough while being the first to head for the door at 4:30
American are the best programmers and Americans are some of the hardest working people on the planet.
Nice try.
I have been looking for work since March 2004, and what I see are primarily Senior-level positions, with nothing on the entry level. Employers saimply have to weigh the 'alphabet soup' on incoming resumes and hire the guy with the most certs. For a guy who's been too busy doing the work to take time out to get the pretty paperwork, it's damned annoying.
Ahh, I see you've decided to go psycho. Godspeed.
I've been a software developer for 17 years. Majored in now-all-but-dead languages (Visual Foxpro, Foxpro before that, Foxbase, dBase III+, QuickBasic, GW-BASIC). Am self-taught (i.e., no college degree) and considered well-educated and more-than-a-little intelligent by my friends and peers. Despite my actual competence, intelligence and enthusiasm to re-tool into newer and more mainstream environments (Java, for example), I can't get interviewed despite the abundance of jobs in and around the Metro Washington, D.C. area. I'm a little bitter that so much educational bias seems to screen me out before even talking to me. Want to go back to school at night but am looking at 5+ years of evening attendence before emerging with that sheepskin. This, to me, is of questionable reward: should I major in IT or something else? Who knows. And I'm sorry for tangenting off the main topic but I feel like sharing so... there it is! :-)
Richard (aka Merwyck, aka QuaDZeRo) I blog at http://richardharlos.com
Yet another post from the SF Bay Area.
As I look at it, we are now in the 3rd stage after the Dot Com boom
Stage 1 : Dotcom boom. Jobs were plentiful. High pay, long hours, foosball, yadda yadda.
Stage 2 : Dotcom bust. Mass layoffs. For lease signs everywhere. Took a while to get a job, and when you got it, most people hated their job.
Stage 3 : Some recovery. Lucky and skilled people who hate their jobs can now find a job at another company if they try hard enough. From my perspective, top-level and skilled people are leaving everywhere. My current workplace lost the entire IS staff and 2/3 of developers. My previous workplace lost half of the technical managers, including one guy who had been there for 25 years (3rd employee of the company, lead architect, people thought he would never leave).
Stage 4 is when the less-lucky and less-skilled people can start moving around in the job market again.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
In my job, I get to do all kinds of different things, so it never gets boring. And I don't have to deal with stuff I don't like (managing windows computers). I get to write code, manage certain hardware/software, consult on networking, set policies, create solutions with open source products, etc. FWIW, I am a network security analyst.
I'm an embedded FW engineer, MS in CS, 10+ yrs experience. My previous employer (my profile says extendsys.com but that's two jobs back) shut down our office here in Boise, ID, USA.
:-)
The tech job market here is on an upswing. Micron is hiring again but HP has a hiring freeze (I think). There are a LOT of very small high tech companies around here looking for people. The trouble is finding them.
I started asking friends and previous coworkers about opportunities. I had four offers within a few weeks. I landed at an excellent company (Agilent) doing hardcore embedded development and I'm having more fun than I've had in a couple years.
Who I knew got me in the door. Every interview was either with former coworkers or I'd been recommended by a former coworker. I can't say enough about how important it is to maintain a good network of peers and a good reputation.
But don't move to Boise. I'm a greedy ba**ard and don't want any competition.
Keep in mind that when companies whine about "not being able to find enough tech people", they are only telling you 1/2 the story.
What they are really saying is that "We can't find enough tech people willing to work at the wage we want to pay them (usually low) with the benefits that we want to give them (usually poor) in the location that we want to employ them (usually low rent for the company, but high rent for the employee - unless he likes commuting an hour one way)."
I had lunch with a friend the other day that happens to own a contract recruiting business. She says the market is picking up and she's getting a lot of calls. She said the rates are inching up too. Looks like mostly .NET and J2EE work. She said .NET is picking up fast.
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
Here in the Research Triangle Park, Raleigh Durham Cary area it doesn't look grim but that's probably because we're pretty used to grim at this point. Since 1999-2000 employment fell to a 30 year low in the tech, chip, life sciences, electronics, pharma industries. Since then it's been flat and the supply of people to fill the occasional need is still being met by 'consultants' and the underemployed.
We see no upswings on the horizon and employment will continue to hold constant with periodic slight declines as specific business functions are sent to steamy jungles and third world nations where they eat dogs or are eaten by tigers.
The areas that are hot now are in the audit & compliance fields.
You will notice that it says competitive pay, but what does that really mean?
At least in the Bay area, I've seen that pay rates have significantly lowered and you can see jobs that want 11 years of experience wanting to pay $45K a year. Junior jobs, they call it an internship and offer no pay. Now if lots of companies are doing this (and I'm not saying all, because some people do realize this will bite them at some point), then the competitive pay is $45K. You can't survive in the Bay area on nothing, so companies aren't going to be able to fill the junior positions. You can barely survive on $45K. That will give you enough money to pay the crazy rent, your groceries, and the commute costs, but nothing else. You get the same problems in other places.
So the guy can't get anyone to move out there. Is he paying relocation costs? Is the pay enough to more than survive (you know like buy a house, put away money to retire on, have a vacation every year)?
Someone mentioned above about there being a group of jobs that don't have enough people here willing to work them, the helpdesk variety. First, there are plenty of people just out of school looking for even a stepping stone into the field. They are willing to go for 20K a year _in the Bay area_ just to be able to use those skills they learned They can not find the jobs.
Also, the guy in this article, he needs a skilled person so it's not that he's even looking for an unskilled tech person.
I think one thing people look over when they say, "the sky is falling, stop the flow of non-us citizens into the us" that most of the people that made this country the way it is were non-us citizens that had a drive to do something most americans do not.
I am a self employed web developer / php coder in florida. Most of my business comes from networking through Chamber of Commerce and other groups. Although I do some sub contract work for developers in other parts of the country. I have noticed a decrease in the amount of people willing to spend the money for a website. So I took a part time position teaching Tae Kwon Do in addition to my business.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
We have a government obsessed with moral values yet we allow this sort of behavior just so people can get jobs that born/raised Americans need.
I suspect you're misreading him. It's entirely likely he married for love or such reasons. His "If I can do it" is likely reminding the complainers that there are jobs available if they search. If he can find them...
Meh, or I could be the one misreading him, but I doubt jumping to conclusions will help anyone.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Are you willing to pay for someone with these skills? Probably not if you are looking for importing from India. Try the unemployment office lists where people who with many years experience demonstrating these skills have been listed for years.
Unix related jobs are definitely in demand.
After quitting a crappy job at a well known,
but asinine and weak livered, hosting company,
the number of interview requests in the last
month has been astounding.
Linux is a meal ticket if you know it, and know
it well, and for one I'm glad that something so
real, and responsive can actually make a
difference for people.
I live in Milwaukee, WI and just recently accepted a very fat contract with a large, multinational company. Prior to accepting this contract I was receiving at least two calls a day, simply from posting my resume on a few boards.
From my perspective things are really looking up.
From my viewpoint jobs are few and salaries are dropping. Where I'm at now is trying to centralize SysAdmin work to Ohio to save on salaries, and layoff SA's in the data centers around the country. The positions they are replacing SA's with is a combo desktop/server support tech. In other words just eyes and hands to do reboots if necessary. Even server builds are being centralized and a traveling install teams to do the racking and cabling. My company isn't the only one I hear trying to work this way. The last place I worked did a similar move, they left SA's in the data centers and let go all SA in remote sites. Desktop support were the eyes and hands in remote sites.
So if your job doesn't end up going overseas, they may just centrallize it to a city with a low cost of living and just have generic techs in all other sites.
As for me, since I am not an American, I am in a totally different situation. I finished a PhD and I know several companies who really would like to hire me. There is even one which promised to help me spin off a startup. I can't do any of those because the H1 quota hit its max on day one. Right now I am stuck in a low paying campus job because that is the only place I can work legally. Right now, I am a bit too specialized to find work in my own country. But that is about to change. A big American company offered to setup a lab for me in their development center back home.
If I go home, it also means I will be hiring people for highly skilled jobs back there. These are jobs which America loses permanently. If I take the other offer and do my spinoff company in my country, again that is work sponsored by an American company that will cause job losses here in America. Why ? Because people get paranoid on hearing the word H1 and won't let me work here in America. Really, when it is impossible for me to work in the USA despite all the opportunities that would open up to create more jobs in America, don't you think it is time something is really wrong with the situation ?
Well, after leaving San Francisco in 2000 to start my own software development firm, I returned in August of 2003 after said development firm went belly up.
I was "shocked" and "awed" at the carnage in the bay area from a job perspective. Friends that still had jobs hadn't had a raise in 3 years. Most people either didn't have jobs or had moved to other areas to find work.
I was repeatedly shocked at how hard it was to find a job and how long it took each company to evaluate potential candidates. It would often take several interviews that spanned months before hearing a "We'll keep you in our database" from a prospective job.
My ego broken, I considered ending it all... and going to work as a caffeine pusher for Starbucks. An hour later I was talking to a Sys Admin friend who mentioned that he had just been turned down for a job a Starbucks due to "lack if Barista experience". This man has a Computer Science degree from Berkeley and he couldn't get a job serving coffee. That's how bad it was my friends.
Shortly after my lowest point something changed. I could feel myself getting closer. I revamped my resume AGAIN and tripled my application output. Then, suddenly, almost a full year later, it happened. I got 3 job offers in one day. After a year of nothing, 3 in one day. I did what any starving animal would do. I took all 3 positions. but that's a whole other story...
Anyway, things have definitely changed. I'm now working for a consulting firm for close to my Y2K salary. The firm I work for is hiring about 5-10 techies a week and that number seems to be increasing.
Aeron chairs and jacking around at work is part of what put the hose out in the first place. I'm happy to have a job, happy for a 2.5 hour round trip commute, and happy yo do whatever it takes to stay in the circles of the gainfully employed.
All in all, I'd say it's a whole lot better than it was and is still improving.
I think that the job market has improved in the last year, relative to 2002-2003. That said, my consulting rates for the same job are now 20% lower than they were in 1995.
Take these issues, then throw in the fact people and groups have their own agendas, and it's hard to say. We don't have any standards agreed upon, so it's difficult to even discuss it.
By my standards (I have high standards for what I call an IT job and a professional, employment is full time or long-term contract, and one can find an equivalent job in less than 3 months) the market seems soft.
It's very dependent on experience and skills, with the higher skilled and more experienced people (who have diverse skills or very deep specialized skills) doing much better.
But then again, those are my standards . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Take it from someone who was scrambling for work for two years straight. It's not as good as it was 6 years ago when I first got work in the field (so many job offers....so little time), but I get offers now. At least once a month. And that's good.
click me
It's quite easy to get the situation where, say, the H-1 quota for IT is filled but there are still IT workers out of work. IT is incredibly diverse. There may be a lack of web/HTML coder jobs and a surfeit of people to fill those jobs - but there may be a lack of people in $SKILL, for example, working with propreitory products such as Navision, or maybe traditional skills like C.
There may also be a lack of properly-qualified candidates in particular sections of the industry.
On a related note, I used to be an H-1 person (I've since returned home). I was paid more than my co-workers because my company, IBM, paid a handsome international service allowance, and I also got more vacation than US workers - so I would say IBM at least do not abuse the H-1 system (my manager told me I was actually twice as expensive as a regular employee, but I had in-depth knowledge of a particular IBM system which only 30 people had deep experience of in the entire planet).
The other funny thing I noted about the resentment of H-1 types on Slashdot is that if I met one of these people, they didn't seem to have that resentment. But then again, I'm white and don't speak with a heavy Indian accent. I think quite a bit of the H-1 hatred is just thinly veiled racism.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
My group is not the group in charge of hiring; I do my own share of recruiting (mostly because both this is a great place and we need great people), but I'm not trawling for resumes. I also didn't post as a way to recruit people, so mentioning my company's name was not relevant.
And I certainly am not looking for 1,236,731 resumes to come in from Slashdot readers because "look! A job!"
An old firearms instructor of mine had a saying -- "You can never miss fast enough" -- to emphasize that if you do something badly, it doesn't matter how quickly you did it, you still did it badly. I feel the same way about hiring -- it'll take us longer, probably, to hire who we need because of the ways we're trawling for that person (mostly staying away from Craigslist, monster, etc and relying on personal references), but I think we're more likely to hire someone good that way.
You really want to know where I work? You really think you might be interested? Find a book review I've written for Slashdot -- you should be able to find my email address on it -- and email me. And, err, don't be a jerk. Because frankly, the job market's swimming in "I'm too l33t for people skills" people, and working with people who think that being technically right means they have leave to be assholes is not my idea of fun.
It doesn't make a difference if people are having a hard time finding jobs. It is still in the interest of employers to scream and kick and scratch for more H1B visas so that they can increase the labor pool, increase demand for jobs and thus decrease the salary they need to pay to their employees.
By that measure H1Bs will always be short.
As a web developer, I got canned in July and have been trying to locate work since then. While looking for a regular corporate gig, I started working on doing the freelance thing. Business is good and I'm making three times what my old corporate job paid. I also have the benefit of being my own boss, and I don't have to put up with any of the brown-nosed back-stabbing office trolls or gossips.
In short, I've kissed goodbye to the regular 9-5 bullshit and now work the hours I choose. I also get a good chuckle now and then when I see the crap sites my old job cranks out. And for an added benefit, I get to steal a possible new client from the old job site now and then.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Why not just raise the wages? If you raise wages, more people will re-train themselves for the jobs.
College kids will study for these jobs. People will be willing to quit their current jobs to retrain and take these new jobs.
The labor shortage can be fixed by better wages, not open borders.
I just finished up my Master's degree work at Kent State. I began looking for jobs in May, and after not getting any real leads for about two months, I started getting calls constantly at the beginning of August. Most of them were contract-to-hire positions. I was eventually offered positions by two different companies in Cleveland, one in Wooster, and I think if I had waited another few weeks I probably would have gotten another offer or two. I started working mid-August. Three months from beginning my job search, with no corporate experience, to getting a position, is pretty good, I would guess.
I'm certainly more skilled (or at least experienced) than most KSU grads with just a B.S., seeing as I've done a lot of work on my own, and I've had four years of experience doing coding while in school.
So that's my anecdotal evidence that the job market here in northeast Ohio is fairly good, at least for a just-out-of-school grad with a Master's. For others, however - not so good. I've got a lot of friends who just finished up their Bachelor's (mostly in English, history, stuff like that), and they haven't found jobs yet - of course, I'm not sure what they're looking for. Most of them are working fast food or Wal-mart. Not too surprising, though, since Cleveland is now the poorest city in the US.
Actually, we might be heading for depression. Just look at the facts:
1. Fannie Mae ( fnm ) could not file their sec docs this quarter. They had a 9 billion loss. They are responsible for 20% of all mortgages in the US. Yes, thats about 800 billion. I think the loss this quarter was worth the amount of cash on hand. Enron is going to look like a joke when this one blows. Freddie Mac has similiar problems.
2. The government increased its debt ceiling today by 800 Billion.
3. With all the borrowing interest rates are going to go up. All the people who are over extended and purchased homes are going to get corn holed. Especially people with interest only mortgages.
4. The dollar is depreciating. ( too many dollar being printed !) This helps manufacturing. But is going to kill the stock and bond market. Remember the Asians primarily prop our economy up by buying bonds. If they are'nt making good money on their investements they'll pull the plug.
4. China's currency is artificial low. Its 8 to 1 so they can rip people off on the exports. Why are they going to change it?
5. Commodities are going up because of all the new demand in China, India etc. So, there might be inflation.
I think what people are experiencing now is a bump up in employement related to government stimulus. But the fact is the 8 ball is headed our way.
It seems to me that the solution is pretty easy: Instead of just giving a whole block of visas away once a month, auction off 1/12th of them every month. And, make the visas tradeable.
This would solve several problems with the current system:
(1) The current "First to the trough" assignment method would disappear. Instead, it would be replaced by a "highest value user" method. Companies that truly need some foreign worker b/c there is no American who can do the job will be able to fill those positions. But, companies that are just trying to low-ball their development costs probably won't.
(2) THe disparity between domestic labor and imported foreign labor would shrink, due to the increased cost of the foreign labor.
(3) Helps pay off the budget deficit.
At least in the Bay Area it seems like a lot of places are hiring now. Everyone I know that's actually good at their job is employed and most of their companies are hiring. It's hard to get a job but except for a couple years in the late '90s it's always been hard. The industry is competitive and you need some way to stand out. I spent a long time trying to package myself as a jack of all trades as far as design goes and got very little interest. If you think the programming market is flooded with unqualified people you have no idea, in 2002 I spoke with a recruiter who was getting 1200+ resumes for every design position she posted. It was only when I focused my resume and portfolio on exactly what I wanted to do that I got the job I wanted.
The times of being able to post "OH HAY GUYS I CODE AND STUFF" on craigslist and having recruiters trying to beat your door down so you could make 90k to write text parsing code were a fluke.
Funny you should mention Fort Wayne, I was being heavily recruited to work there... Other places in the Midwest seem to be doing well too: Chicago, Green Bay, Madison... I found that while it was a bear to find even a temp job in Feburary, by August/September I was getting several offers a day.
The market is still weak in the Twin Cities and other tech centers you'd think would be booming. It seems the regions that were late in getting on the high tech bandwagon of the 90's (and never bought foosball tables) are driving the train out of the crash.
It seems employers are still trying to digest their losses from the dotcom fallout and are cautious to move forward. They are realizing the offshore outsourcing isn't the silver bullet once assumed. As things like security concerns and the cost effective technologies of the internet that have really come about since the bust start to become big every company is going to be falling overthemselve to stock up on techies.
Historically, the companies that are slow to rebuild their staffs after a recession get left behind. And nobody wants that.
I work at a company that IS in fact in dire need of H1B workers. We are a Symbian company, a fairly well known one at that. However, finding an American with Symbian experience AND the fairly heavy C++ skills we demand is rare at best. We've been in touch with several engineers overseas (primarily in Europe), bu t we're finding that it's extremely difficult to get them into the country.
This isn't a case where we want to outsource jobs, and I can promise you that what we're paying our foreign workers is FAR above our regional average. We simply have a problem finding the relevant experience we need, it's that simple.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
You probably can't find a job because you can't write a paragraph in proper English. Mad Perl skills and Linux kung-foo won't get you shit if you can't document what your work for the next monkey.
I've been helping on hiring at two different companies during the past 20 months or so. I do the tech screens.
The sad fact is that there just isn't that many good candidates out there. In the first company especially - they were located in a not-so-desirable geographical area - we could not find good candidates, who were permanent residents or US citizens, at all. We had a bunch of really great H1-B candidates, but due to all kinds of hassles related to hiring H1-Bs we couldn't hire but one of them (there were half a dozen positions open). This REALLY hurt the company.
I see the same situation in my current job, though I suspect since we're located in a little bit of a better geographical area, we're seeing a few more qualified candidates who are permanent residents or US citizens. However, once again, the best candidates were H1-B visa holders, and we couldn't hire them either. This delayed hiring a new developer by about 6 months.
I'm not sure what the problem is, but there just doesn't appear to be enough GOOD candidates out there.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
The H1B visas are granted for 6 years. But if you aren't an idiot you will end up with permanent residence.
So immigrant workers aren't only the ones that currently hold H1B visas, but also those that got permanent residence through H1B's.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Really? I haven't noticed. Where can I sign up? One geek with writing skills in Ann Arbor, at your service.
--- My dog ate my sig.
Subject says it all!
I think the problem isn't so much that there is a lack of employees, as there is a lack of employees with experience. I've been looking for an IT job the past couple of months, as I quit my crappy help desk job, hopefully for something a touch more technically challanging. My problem, however, is that everywhere I apply to is looking for 5+ years of experence, and even entry level jobs are looking for 1-2 years of coding experience. If businesses would just be willing to give adequate time to people who are new to the IT workforce they wouldn't be seeing any kind of shortages.
The writing is fine. Everyone understood it. The American language is flexible and the rules of 6th grade grammar are not always the gold standard for judging good writing. I'm sorry, I'd give a 7th grader a "B" : complete sentences, advances his question, simple language. It's fine.
Mod the Grammer Storm Trooper down.
Case in point, as part of the process, my job was posted in the largest paper in the city for a couple months. More than once. If you want the job of an H1-B worker, read the papers. If you qualify, take our jobs and if you don't, stfu.
Everything else is just politico-posturing so that we don't blame the government's for job losses.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
I probably won't sleep for days, now.
Yeah, right.
If it's before the election, then no one can find a job and everyone's starving to death in the streets. You can only get a job if you move to India, and then only as a male prostitute for the Indian tech workers.
If it's after the election, then things are OK. You can find a good job and even get a raise.
I guess it's a good thing the elction is over.
Article Here
"Kill the economy. I mean really kill it - we are talking 40% or higher inflation here."
Why do it in such a complicated way?
No country is under any obligation to allow people to come. In Europe we only allow immigrants if they have skills needed AND THEY PLAN TO STAY. Since its pointless training them up and exporting them again. You could just simply stop allowing them!
"270 000 foreigners for a job at any one time. In a country of 300 million that is a statistically insignificant number."
Only true if you were 300 million IT SPECIALISTS.
Yes I agree, their marketing is a little dubious. Most of the jobs they show you that look interesting are the ones that require you to be an Officer and hence have a college degree. I have the utmost respect for people that would make this kind of a sacrifice for their country, but I do believe some people are just plain naive. They find a women, knock her up 5 times, then join the military and get the free health care and the crummy pay and just end up staying there until they die or are lucky enough to move out. Then there are the ones who are just doing it to get the money for college or whatever, expecting that they won't get sent anywhere. It's a little annoying when you hear them complain about being shipped off as if it said in their contract (for the military) that they would never have to do anything that involved real fighting.
I've been looking to hire a few tech related Account Executives. I've interviewed a few people and can't find the right mix of competence and enthusiasm. Granted the positions are commission only.
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
Can't find a job? Go to grad school. Get paid around $20k (30 with an NSF fellowship, although your chances of getting one are around 1 in 11), work your ass off, get fed up with your far superior peers and then get a job as an assistant professor who has to slave for 10 years before they get tenured! Woohoo! After all, for every Dilbert there's someone that's Piled High and Deep.
What you can do, seriously, is just attend grad school and look for a job while you're there. You have financial security if you're enrolled in a PhD program that pays you (like most sciences), and your resume looks better with the "Master's expected June 2006" at the top. You can always quit (even if your department will hate you) when you find a job.
Yeah, right.
...jobs find YOU!
*cough* Sorry.
That requirement for exact, to 6 places, match on skills is a real pain. I'm expert, real expert, in multi-threading. That makes me a good general fit for OS developement, server developement, streaming video, etc... Take the last, streaming video. I don't have mpeg experience. Do you really need to have someone who can write an mpeg codec from scratch? Do you really think the streaming network protocols are that uniquely hard given previous experience in implementing other protocols? It seems that employers would much rather have a mediocre candidate with all of the skills than an outstanding candidate with some of the skills.
Northrop Grumman, SAIC, Booz Allen, and the other Big Arms Merchants. They're hiring like maniacs. If your TS is recently expired, and easily renewable, it should be no problem.
Best Slashdot Co
i work for the State of Texas in IT (sysadmin) and from 1998 to 2004 we have seen:
1) no raises (as in NONE)
2) annual increase in health benefit premiums
3) firings (!) and forced retirements (yes, i know this one is hard to believe, and they weren't all your classic "State Loafers" - we lost some good talent in that mess)
4) decreasing morale and petty managerial behavior (attendance is suddenly important for salaried employees, with "spies" everywhere as well as a sudden rush to "micromanagement")
5) all career moves de-facto frozen, and whatever job openings are left have been politically predetermined (but they'll fit you right into the interview process just to make things "look" normal)
hell, i could live with it if they at least threw a COLA adjustment at us every year (even the controversial 2% would suffice for a morale boost).
the scariest part has been watching the programmer jobs melt away to hourly positions given only to contractors or graduate students...when they used to pay $50k and up!
meanwhile, faculty and management still get their raises and perks...
oh yes, i've interviewed for about 2 jobs every year now for 6 years, some "in" and some "out" (even retained 2 headhunting firms) and all i see out there are companies wanting a $200k/yr employee for about $50k/yr (you know the drill, expensive and esoteric certification, overtime, working at home, looking like a zombie, no benefits, mandatory traveling, etc.)
my miserable ass is staying put for now.
Employers don't know how to find people. Obviously your employer did. Oh wait, you had to go hunt them down. I see. So your employer didn't want to lift a finger to fill the job. I guess they lucked out when you came along.
Seriously, some jobs are being filled. The reality is that if you take both the online jobs and the newspaper jobs and combine them, it won't represent more than about 15% of the total number of jobs. But see, this is part of the problem. Employers who refuse to properly advertise their openings really should have no right to whine about the lack of people. Sure, some people will just walk in the door. But in places like New York City, there are way too many doors to go walk in where no one is wanted, so there needs to be some means to know which doors to go in, and not waste one's time.
Maybe what employers are wanting is a place to list their job openings for free?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I only get 35k as a network administrator, and I was born/raised/schooled in the USA. I'm already looking anyway, I love the work envoronment at the company I'm at, but seriously the pay SUCKS.... I have noticed that same thing a few other users have pointed out, that most posting on internet job boards are bogus. What works best is still personal networking and local newpapers...
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
Tech jobs here are few and far between. The two ISPs here, ACS and GCI are the two biggest players outside of the state for tech jobs. Turnover is slow because there's not much to move into. Leaving Alaska for a job is tougher than elsewhere (except possibly Hawaii) due to distances. Moving in and out of Alaska is expensive with respect to time and money. For many folks, getting a tech job is a waiting game.
Corporations and locals governments aren't really interested in Alaska from a tech standpoint. Alaska, by and large, has a higher cost of living (about 30% average state-side average). That excuse only seems to go so far, especially when there's still 600,000 people living in Alaska. With the median income being about 50ka year, Alaska has high computer ownership than most other states(sorry no figures, just winging that one from memory), one would believe that there'd be ample market to exploit. With corporations and local government possessing slow turn-over and little growth in Alaska otherwise, getting a tech job is kind of hard.
Personal note: I have a tech job and I'm very happy with it. It was highly contested and I was hired in part due to my knowledge of Linux but that's a discussion for another topic.
I am glad to see I am not the only at a company like this. I joined the operations department of my company Q4 2003 and in Q1 2004 I started being on call. I requested a pay-raise and they said they didn't think that was necesary as I will be well compensated with a large bonus for time spent on call since it is hard to log how much actual work one does.
Well, whoopty f*ckin doo, guess what? NO BONUSES THIS YEAR. So now I am not only underpaid for my job but I will also not be recieving the only compensation I could hope for.
I know my company is still suffering as a result of the current state of the economy because people who want our service can't budget it, but this just sucks. Shouldn't the people wearing blue shirts, making 3 figures and making the bad decisions take a pay cut before laying people off and taking money from the employees?
CFA? Come From Away, boy. You come from away and probably don't know the ropes (the ones around your neck) quite yet.
I've got my CFA too, but its getting old, and so is working in NYC.
Maybe I'll invest in something 'other than IT,' make my own job and get the hell outta Dodg; real soon now.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Put your hyperlink where your mouth is, and point to the jobs. That can be either on your company website careers section (don't expect people to find it via google for quite a while), or the listings at your preferred online job site if you do that kind of thing. Otherwise we'll assume you're just blowing smoke like most of the corporate executives are doing.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
H-1B's are, by law, supposed to be paid in line with US workers -- one of the hurdles in getting a H-1B is getting the state's department of labor to sign off that the wage level is kosher.
A signature on paper means diddly squat. There are numerous ways to manipulate the paper-work. Examples:
1. Add every skill a given H-1B candidate has on his/her resume into the "needed skills" form. That way the "needs" profile will never match a citizen above the probability of winning the millionare lottery. Inspectors are too dumb or overworked to check and followup on actual skills requirements.
2. Claim a highly experienced H-1B is really only a newbie and thus a company gets experience at newbie rates. Inspectors cannot really check somebody's background in India. It is an easy lie to get away with.
3. Work the H-1B overtime without extra pay. Complaining risks getting the H-1B sent home, so they keep quiet. (US money is worth more to them due to exchange rates when they eventually go back home, and thus they live with it.)
4. Government form inspectors are dumbasses for the most part, compounded with the fact that IT titles are often vague, inconsistent, and overlapping.
5. A big company can contract the H-1B from a small fly-by-night company that keeps a huge portion of pay, delays paychecks, etc. The big company is then not exposed to the risk of dubious activity. Such companies are often staffed by Indians such that if they are caught or risk being caught, they fold up and go back to India where they can do other business. It is a kind of hit-and-run.
Most of the stories you here about dramatically underpaid foreign H1-B's turn out to be urban legends.
I have heard them directly from the mouths of H-1B's myself, as described in a nearby thread. It may not be direct wage rate manipulation, but there are a lot of subtle things that companies take advantage of.
Table-ized A.I.
All but one friend of mine is employed full-time and that friend has several opportunities now. We are all in tech fields--Oracle, security, admins, training, perl, java..... It was slower last year but picking up now......
On the one hand, we have stories of techies not finding jobs; and on the other, we have stories from businesses which claim that lack of H1s is killing their business, as well as public advocacy (like that ad in NYT). So, what is it?
.COM boom. The problem with a lot of tech workers is not there skills or experience. It is their aditudes and personalities, that were reinforced during the .COM arees. That is why it is often for a new grad to get a job vs. someone with 5-6 years of experience. Buisnesses are more consertive then they were 5-10 years ago. They want techs who are willing to put on a tie and look presentible at work. They want tech who can work with management and customers. Once management makes a decision they want people who will following it out. Not secretly do different things behind their backs because they don't know the difference. 100+k a year jobs in IT that were common durring the .COMs is no longer the case the Supply vs. Demmand has become more ballance, so someone who was making 100k a year should be happy with 50k now because 100k year jobs are near impossible to find because they are not needed. There is no longer the need to upgrade/migrate all there systems to something that is Y2k complient and all the existing companies scrambling to get their web site up. This stablizing is due to a double wammy fluke in the tech echnomical systems with Y2k and Need for corporate web sites the demmand for techs shot up. Now the need for the tech echonomy is back to pre-boom stages were it is more break fix and the ocasional migration and repair and change. And there a lot of unemployed tech workers out there who are still looking for a 90s glory day job, where they get 100k a year plus all the benefits under the sun. We are pushed back in the range of Mid-Level jobs. And companies want employess to know that they are Mid-Level. Forgeners who really just want a job are prefered because they do a good job without making waves.
I feel it is an issue that most companies don't want to make the same mistakes that they did during the
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Same for me here in Chicago. I have a number of years of security experience, and there definitely seem some jobs in that field here.
I have a nice gig in Jacksonville that I'm very happy with. We haven't been hiring many people for development or IT, but this is because we don't need a lot of people. In general, the local area doesn't reflect the level of demand 5 years ago during the tech bubble, but there are jobs out there. If you are willing to settle for working for a contracting company and are even minimally competent, you can score a job in pretty short order. Finding something permanent that is also attractive takes a little more time, but nothing really crazy. I have a friend who got let go at his company a few weeks back and he had another good deal lined up in no time. He is very good, however. Personally, I've had a couple of job offers over the last couple of months without even looking. My opininion is that, in the area I live, there are good jobs out there for those how have real skills and know how to find the opportunities. I can't really speak to the situation in other places. I also find that the people who have the most success finding good jobs here are those with broad skillsets.
Because we know that's a BIG difference.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
In my opinion we are booming again like we where in the 70's and 80's where individuals who knew what they where doing where doing just fine. Whether working for others or making their own way. If you are asking whether an individuals Flash, JavaScript, HTML skills will land them that $90,000 a year DBA job like in 1998, the answer is no we are not in that kind of boom.
Anyway, with the weak dollar outsourcing is not as attractive as it once was. And there ate too many problems with outsourcing anyway; things look good here in Orlando Florida but I can't really say for the rest of the US.
I've been in Los Angeles on a TN-1, and while the salaries here used to be better than Canada (came from Silicon Valley North - Kanata/Ottawa area), the salaries have dropped even for people doing systems analysis work, so they seem to match what I'd otherwise be making in Ottawa for the same kind of work.
Except now I'm making US dollars ... and having fun figuring out the cost of living here vs back home, etc. for the next year or so.
my geeklog
Have posted this before as comment #10539334
Most Indian H1B Visa holders get jobs through "consultants".
Consultants are almost always other Indians who have got contacts for projects from companies and have been in the US long enough to deal with the paperwork.
These guys will recruit Indian MS grad students and give them garunteed jobs. In return they will take anything from 25-50% of the salary.
Sounds innocent enough except for the gouging??
Well get this: they will garuntee anyone a job by making fake resumes ! If you have zero expereince they will put in 6 yrs and delete your MS degree! And believe it or not, you can be from any field... I've seen Mech, Chem, Civil guys who know jack shit get decent jobs. If you know crap about C# (or whatever) they will "train" you for a month or two. In some places, you'll also be trained about your ficticious earlier job and learn to dodge questions.
What if you screw up in the job? Well the company can fire you, but sometimes the contract makes that difficult and in any case the consultant always gets money.
How do I know all this ? I've see this happen RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES in the past one year that I've been in the US. I dont know how much of the job market belongs to consultants, but in my East coast Univ, 99% of the 50 odd Indian students will get a job like this.(Again, regardless wether they have knowledge of computers or are from other fields). Same thing in my neighbouring Univs.. reputed ones like UPenn.
The 'tough job market' is purely artificial. Its been created by companies to hire H1B's instead and pay them less.
Not much going on. Maybe one job every other day.
Luckily there is a rise in the number of contracts wanting big-beast, coloured-text screens and the associated batch, DB2 lifting. Programming in IBMRPG is like building a Georgian House, the code certainly seems to stick one in the eye of Chronos.
OO is great (for GUI work, especially), but not so great that it will lead to massive demolition of existing stone structures.
We saw this happen to the high-street in 1960s Left-wing, trendy progressiveness - a catastrophe that we have had to live with for a long time afterwards.
I would like to see IBMRPG fork or hybridise, with one branch keeping Java for those who are religiously fundamental and the other dropping it like a hot stone in favour of gaining Python-esqe abilities for the few others that take an interest in evolution.
But I am economically inactive (nearly 8 million of us in the UK under Blair and the trend is up).
So nobody should care what I want!
Funny, last that I recall from reading in some of the trades, unemployment in the IT sector was still around 60%.
I know that nothing for me has gotten any better, and I'm thankful for the under-challenging job that I have now.
So now the big corporations want to import more IT people? Hey! How about hiring unemployed Americans first!
Of course one could, and probably should, consider their actions as yet another example of the extreme lack of morals and foresightedness in the current crop of corporate leadership. Consider renting PBS' "The Corporation".
What the tech companies are saying is that there is a shortage of programmers with 10 years experience in Java, 10 years experience in e-Commerce, and 10 years experience is Oracle willing to work for $25K a year.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Not to gloat, but I have just accepted a new sysadmin job that essentially takes me from one good opportunity to a better one. I didn't do anything more than make my resume searchable for a week.
I have several friends in the area that have had similar experiences.
I haven't had to look since getting this job in 2001. Thank God. So I've got no real feel for what things are like now.
I love the field and hate it at the same time. Maybe I should just go and get an FFL, and say "screw this computer lunacy."
Look it up on google. It's a "non-immigrant" worker program.
Why not give a limited number of citizenship track visa instead of indentured servitude track programs?
I graduated this past May 2004 from Rochester Institute of Technology (a fairly recognizeable school). I have worked at my current company off and on again for co-ops since 2001. When I finally graduated they offered me $11,000 LESS than what they told me during the interview which even the promised salary was lower than other companies. Their excuse was of the competitive job market and what others were making within the company. Basically I took that as we can pay you the bare minimum salary requirement because you need a job. In my instance I think the job market is very bad (for a IT degree programmer/admin), but I do not know what it was like a few years ago.
Here's one for a Slashdot poll. What is the general consistancy of the Slashdot demographic?
Do most have B.S. or better degrees?
What fields are they held in?
What average income bracket are they in?
Were are most located?
How many are single, married, or widowed?
Have children, and how many?
What is the average debt load being carried?
What's the average amount of time they've been out of work?
All the above go into making an accurate judgement as to how much salt should be applied to answers given.
I think most folks in the /. world consider IT to be the 'tech' industry. Not surprising due to the backgrounds of the people who read/post here. As for 'tech' jobs, there are quite a few in my region of the technology world:
LLNL has 20 open S&E positions.
INEEL in the middle of transitioning contractors, but will undoubtedly need S&Es to complete missions for DOE and the Navy.
LBL has 95 open S&E positions.
BNL has 7 open S&E positions.
SNL has 20 open S&E positions.
LANL has 107 open S&E positions.
ORNL has 28 open S&E positions.
PNNL has 36 open S&E positions.
ANL has 32 open S&E positions.
There complete list of laboratories is here. All of them have job postings in the S&E categories. These just happen to be the largest insitutions.
I haven't even started searching Monster.com
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The market is definitely firming as compared to the Iraq War period when the market was non-existent. But companies (like mine) are addicted to programmers in India. So hiring will be slow. One of our "senior programmers" has said "we have hired that special 1 in 100 person in the past. Now we want to hire that 1 in 1000 and surround him by willing learners." Person for person they are nowhere near as productive as Americans, yet, but they are still paid proportionately even less. I have to think that even in India the number of adequately trained programmers in not inexhaustable. Management likes them because they can be treated like a commodity, which they can understand.
I think the H1B program should be suspendended for tech in the US when unemployment levels rise to a structural level, say 5%. That did not happen in this tech cycle and there is still a massive excess of labor.
an ill wind that blows no good
I've been interviewing candidates for our team lately, and let me tell you right now, GOOD candidates are RARE. I mean, there's a metric ton of people on the job market who shouldn't have entered it in the first place. The folks who, when asked to remove duplicates from a string, start putting together a giant if/else or switch statement, and who for the life of them can't count bits in a binary number. One out of ten people _barely_ knows what he/she is doing. If H1-B's are better, I'd rather hire an H1-B. The law prohibits to pay less to an H1-B than to an equally qualified US candidate, though. So folks screaming that H1-Bs are routinely underpaid don't know what the heck they're talking about. If you know instances of such abuse, blow the whistle to the Dept. of Labor.
Yep HR minions are clueless. I was stuck with them and you see this kind of dumb crap (>X years of experience) when they A) have somebody in mind already (my cousin Jody) or B) don't want to really hier anybody (that [expletive deleted] PM can suck wind if he thinks we're gonna find anybody.)
I was 'offered' a position in 1995 for somebody with 10 years experience in HTML. In 1995. Its was only two fucking years old.
They usually aren't clueless, they're "Catbert"s
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
We're friggin idiots for not organizing and forming a union.
would you like a slurpie with that tech support
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
What would help is if Slashdot were to hire a few classically-trained editors. They don't need to be a geeks, just people who can do a good job of proofreading, fact-checking, and editing articles. Let the 'geek' editors be what they really are--reporters--who submit their stories to the 'journalist' editors for revision and final approval. Y'know, run this news organization as if it were actually a news organization.
Do you enjoy the fact that the media face of the geek world is run by people who routinely post front-page, three-sentence summaries with glaring errors? Do you like perpetuating the stereotype of geeks as lazy, sloppy and disinterested?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Even with IBM claiming to hire thousands of new people, they are not hiring engineers. I am a hardware and OS guy myself. I have been looking for good systems administrator positions in mainly the Minnesota area. Though I found a job now it certainly isn't an luxurious as the position sounded 3-4 years ago. Also the positions simply are not there. With what positions are available brings a huge ammount of competition. I see the job market becoming stronger now though, because VP's now know the state of the federal goverment and can plan accourdingly. Also christmas will spark retailers and give a very good meteric for how the retail market is going which of course hires many programmers/admins. /end rant
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Hi Fellow Slashdotters,
My opinion is that both sides became unreasonable at the same time.
Employers expected Americans to work for Indian wages and Indian hours. Employees expected Employers to give them every 3rd day off and free massages.
Any kind of compact/covenant between employer and employee has been irrevokably shattered.
So, both sides are going to say the other is the devil, regardless of the truth. It makes good press. And, as we just learned from the elections, isn't what's in the press more important than the 'reality' of the situation?
In NYC there are probably more H1B's here than Silicon Valley. As another poster said, they're all doing MVS/Legacy systems or some kind of esoterica work that people who want a career in IT wouldn't touch.
Talented IT folks can pull down big money. But Wall Street is shrinking as an industry (thanks, Eliot Spitzer) and there will be fewer jobs to go around, unless you've invented an OS that doubles as an ECN (Or something that significant.)
Sure there are lots of job postings, 20/hr, maybe 35/hr for a Sr (5+yrs) experience. say what? =:o
But for those of use with nearly 20years IT and expect to get decent pay >65/hr, forget it.
There are folks here that have been out of work for more than a year, and I mean good developers not these VB wannabees, johnny-come-lately.
It's all Pooh these big companies whining that they can't get cheap, I mean, good IT workers.
And if they don't, how are they going to make their budget and get their 500K bonus.
I've got an idea, how about you, mr. CxO, pass on the bonus this year and get 3 IT workers. (Wow that would still be a great salary).
My wages have dropped in the past 3 years to the point that I'll have earned in total what I paid in taxes 2 years ago.
Yea, "doh-be-yah" sure has turned this economy around.....right into the crapper.
Well, as a coder with 9 years experience and 7 certifications I found myself off-shored last July. I couldn't find anything in my field in Ohio and re-locating wasn't much of an option. I did find a job... but at 1/3 of what I was making before working for a local startup. With all that I am the lucky one. The four others that we hit at about the same time are still unemployed.
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
Go to work for these guys. They don't outsource their tech.
I grew up in Fort Wayne Indiana! I would love to move there if I could find a good paying (>$85,000) job there. Not a whole lot of tech jobs in good old Fort Wayne.
Could get a job mowing Johnny Appleseed's grave. Maybe referee the raft race at the Three Rivers Festival. (Oh wait, raft race [best part of the festival] was canceled a few years ago because the fucking insurance companies rates have gone through the edge of reality...)
I had a tech (embedded systems) civil service job out of college (UC San Diego) in 1982. This was during a bad recession, and the IBM PC was too new to have many programming jobs associated with it.
This can get you the currently quite-valuable security clearance, which you can take with you to a defense contractor.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
I'd actually be really interested in what it's like for business owners, the self-employed, or contractors. Nothing tires me more than hearing complaints piled on to a company about how everything they do is wrong, and yet the person doesn't think of possibly competing with them by starting their own company. Now, I know there's lots of exceptions, but anyone that laughs at this idea doesn't realize that's how businesses start. You either develop something brand new no one has ever done before* or you find someone that does something poorly and/or expensively and go against them and do it better and/or at a lower price. I'm not recommending to develop a flying car or become your own VoIP provider, but there's probably a thousand things you're good at that people will gladly pay you money for.
Sorry about the rant/tirade.
So how is business looking for business owners? Better? Worse? And I'm sure readers want to know, are you hiring?
(Just interested in the responses, myself).
* Humor: And then get sued into oblivion by a patent-holder wholly unrelated to your idea (some chicken-feed manufacturer, for example).
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
You know the catch-22 when getting a job:
"Sorry kid, you don't have the experience to do this job."
"But how do I get experience if you don't hire me?"
For the past 4 years almost every sector has lost jobs, including tech. The job market seems less stingy than before, but for four years, many people haven't even been getting experience, so how can you hire experienced people?
The tech sector seems pretty stupid to me with regards to handling "experience". In manufacturing, you were hired at a plant because you were eager, hard working, and listened to the boss. You got experience while actually working, and people were in it for the long haul. The tech sector expects you to have 10 years experience in 3 year old technologies. I've also seen few decent training programs designed to hire promising college grads and mold them into the type of worker a company wants. Many of those programs died with the bubble, but they need to come back!!
I've seen several posts on this thread talk about "I can't find good qualified workers" but how many of those posters belong to a company who actually tries to bring in new hirees at the entry level and make their own qualified workers? Or do they just expect to fall off the tree that way?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Background:
No degree (though I am about to begin the completion of my Bachelor's that I abandoned 12 years ago). 13 years in ITSEC/INFOSEC/IA. Currently Senior Partner in an IT business in the very non-tech midwest. I was commenting just a couple of weeks ago that the market has been going crazy (in my field at least). In the past month I've had 3 very good job offers and 1 cool one but the pay stank (Fed job). I would say an average week nets about 5 calls/e-mails from headhunters and of that, two are what I would consider "interesting". I am also a Reservist (Navy) and work in Crypto/IA/ITSEC. Because of this I carry TS/SCI clearance. I also have a CISSP certification (among others). These final two facts are the largest contributors to my strength in the job market I believe. I have never not been able to get a job due to lack of a degree. I want to finish my degree now only becuase there are several schools offering Master's in InfoSec (a degree that I beleieve is worth having....for me). Anyway, that's my take. If you're in the right sub-speciality area of IT, the market is red-hot!
ER
I am hoping some experienced people here could answer a couple job searching questions for me.
I'm new to the tech job market, finishing a masters in computer science this summer. I'm just now starting to look for a great job. I would be greatly appriciative of any answers to these questions.
Questions:
1. How should I design my resume, do I include a table listing every application and langauge I know? Is it worth mentioning past jobs not related to programming? Anyone know of really good resume examples for fields in computer science?
2. Should I create some kind of portfolio website to show my work?
3. Would joining an open source project help me develop real world experience to help me in getting a job?
4. I still have an option to specialize my masters degree into any branch of CS. Is there anything that's really valuable these days (ie databases, web development, AI, etc) ?
Thanks so much for any advice. (And I know it's hard to give general advice, but right now I'm intersting in working in any challenging computer science field from GIS to games, and I haven't been able to narrow down my job search yet.)
Thanks again.
--
That sector is booming, and in Houston.
I live in Plainville, KS a lovely town of 2000 people. I am pretty sure I am like 50% of the tech population that isn't in High School here. I do rather enjoy my job though. I am the Network Admin for a company that employee's around 70 people here in town, 5 in Chicago and around 20 in LA. So the outlook for tech jobs in Plainville in late 2004 looks bad...since I took the only position around :)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I see only two grammar mistakes:
* a missing apostrophe in the first "its"
* a period after Indiana that should be a comma
What else am I missing?
After the dot-com crash, I struggled as a consultant for a year or two (barely getting by) until noticing a surge in my ability to find work. About 6 months later, I had a company that I had applied at 2 years earlier offering me a job. I wound up inheriting the Unix Sys Admin position because the previous guy left because he had found a better job somewhere else.
Also, I found my consulting business was still going because my clients still needed me. I started to outsource work and found it hard to find talented, experienced individuals, especially in Unix system administration. At least in my city (Los Angeles), there seemed to be a new lack of supply of talent in my core areas.
As time went on and I decided to put myself back on the job market, I found it relatively easy to get job interviews for positions that fit my skill sets and that were willing to pay me what I need. I also run into positions where they are looking to pay less. I suspect there are still people out there with similiar skill sets, willing to work for less.
All in all, I've seen a rise of available positions in Unix/Linux System Administration as well as Perl programming. The rise in the latter is shocking to me. I always felt that Perl was a scripting language that people would not be willing to pay top dollar for talent in. However, there are more and more companies as well as OS software projects that rely on Perl.
To sum it all up, here are my thoughts on what has happened. a) I think there has been an increasing demand in the areas of OSS, like Linux distros and OSS-based application programming. b) The business models based on the Internet that have survived through this have proven provitable and have the confidence necessary to look at expansion. c) Those that got into IT just to ride the tech boom that weren't as qualified/passionate about their work have picked up other professions. d) IT will continue to grow as the automation of businesses continue.
The work is out there. If you can't find a job, perhaps you are charging too much or should look at increasing your qualifications.
I think that your are correct that American Management very much wants to be able to treat programmers as a commodity.
However, a lot of work goes into that, and the people who do that work collect their share. There is a whole industry devoted to bundling batches of mortgages together to make consistent, easily tradeable packages with standard characteristics. Similarly, keeping a programming team together, and insulating the customer from the little shocks of loosing the expert in a particular area, etc, is a valuable service.
And if India does that service and America doesn't, America will pay the toll. In general, if a company can manage it's own programmers in house, that team will be better matched to their needs and save them money.
This management of programming business is being outsourced along with the programming itself. Which seems odd to me; outsourcing is one thing, but if you outsoruce too much management, you are essentially getting out of your industry and becoming a re-seller.
Here's how things have changed over the past couple of years, at least for one Silicon Valley company that I used to work for...
Two years ago, the company laid off a few programmers, then six months later, gave everyone a 7% paycut so that they didn't have to lay off more programmers. People took the paycuts in stride.
A year ago, many of the people who took paycuts, left the company. The company hired people to replace them. Lots of qualified candidates applied for the open positions, but the company actually had to pay the new people more than the people who had left the company. It took about two weeks to fill the positions.
This past year, the company saw a huge upswing in business and needed to hire more people. The were two hiring phases, one in the spring and one in the fall. In the spring, there were lots of candidates again, but few qualified ones. The ones that were hired demanded a salary that was ~10% greater than people hired for the same position a year before. It took about six weeks to fill the positions. In the fall hiring, there were far fewer candidates and very few qualified ones. Salaries were still about 10% higher than the previous year. Not all positions have been filled after eight weeks.
but... in all seriousness... for some reason I've been getting call-backs on my resume for the first time in 3 years..... and I'm living in San Diego, CA... which most recently dropped out of the top 10 best performing metro areas due to poor economic growth.... we used to be #1 then #5.... now #16....
so... I don't really know.... but, I guess it's picking up here on some level...
feeling lonely? grab a balled up pillow for company
I note it's against American tradition to regard workers coming from across the ocean as human beings, but please - can the summary be a little bit more... humanistic, I dunno. It sounds like H1Bs are in the same league as R2Ds and C3Ps. They don't come to US just for kicks, usually, you know.
I spent two years trying to relocate myself to a new job. I offered to interview at my own expense. I offered to MOVE at my own expense. No company would even talk to me. If I wasn't "Local candidates only, please", I didn't get so much as an honest read of my resume. I looked in the northeast corridor and Florida and the midwest and Texas and Colorado. I got considered for a shift job making $34K in San Antonio, which would have afforded a nice spot by the dumpster in the parking garage, but I had to move there on my own dime.
I'm not questioning this company's experience, but I'm pointing out what must have been a fascinating turn of events. Apparently, in less than twelve months time, the market has gone from unwilling to relocate anyone to needing so many relocations that they can't find people to fill them. Something about this stacks up as a recruiting industry failure of Biblical-plague proportions. All I know is that when I expressed an interest, my current boss flew me into town, wined and dined me, and had only the concern that *I* wouldn't be content to stay after being moved into town at their expense!
-j
Hey, don't get me wrong: I enjoy what I do and I'm really damn good at it. I just don't want to live at work. I figure that things like having a life and occassionally seeing my wife are goals that at least have parity in terms of importance with having a successful career. Suggesting that this implies a lack of dedication or work ethic on my part is insulting and, to be blunt, pretty fucking stupid.
Besides, in my experience the people who live at work don't get much more work done, anyhow -- they're socializing at the water cooler or taking a long lunch or getting dinner or bitching about how much time they spend at work, etc. I figure it's because a person just can't work more than a certain number of hours a day on a regular basis before they start filling in their other social needs regardless of if they're in the office or away from it.
Anyhow, I get my work done and then I go home because work is only one part of life (and definately not the most important part). I like to call this "having my priorities straight".
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Except for some minor exceptions, the overall job outlook (tech jobs included) in upstate NY isn't good. Locally (Rochester) the unemployment rate has officially gone below 5%, but that has to be taken in light of significantly fewer jobs and an overall declining population. The number of people who've simply given up is not known, of course.
My company, one of the major local employers, is slowly abandoning engineering and manufacturing for a strategy of purchased products and service offerings. The number of engineering openings in the company these days is roughly about 1/10 of the total. The rest are sales and marketing, particularly for acquired products.
an employer must make H1B employee information available to the public. It would be relatively easy to investigate H1B non-compliance (worker is temporary in a speciality occupation). Employers who are not complying with the law could be challanged. It's not a job for an individual as you'd never get a job this way. It could be handled by an association. The association could investigate employers with no negative impact on members/supporters. Hell, there may even be organizations such as this already working!
The H1B is for temporary workers. It was never designed as a subsitute for paying competitive salaries. If allowed to evolve in this way, the only result is a decrease in the number of USA citizend pursuing careers inthese fields and an ever increasing need for H1B workers.
Goverment wants more tax, corporations want cheaper labor. Government wants non-refundable social security tax, corporations want disposable labor that can work long hours on the same cheap pay. Let me explain what I think is going on here, I have been a H1 visa holder for 5 years now, so there is some credibility to this. And to put it mildy H1-B visas are a legal documents for indentured servitude, a modern day legalized slavery. Slavery by Govt and Corporations. As far as tax is concerned Govt makes more money on H1-B visa holders than on GC or US Citizens. Let me explain how, 2 persons earning 45K each pay more tax (approx >= 15%) than a single person earning 90K (which is what you usually get by the time you get your Green Card(GC) or if citizen with 3-4 years of experience). Plus for citizen of China and India, they cannot claim their social security tax after their 6 year H1-B period ends and they are asked to leave USA (if GC has not been acquired by then). From the corporate perspective it is easier to control and pay cheap alien workers than it is to deal with GC and citizens. Plus most alien workers due the fear, of H1 cancellation at the whim of the employer, are always genuflecting, bending over and working long hours. Corporates want more control over their work force and they get it through H1, because for H1 holders changing permanent jobs is tougher compared to GC and citizens. A case in point is George Bush's latest move to legalize illegal mexican by granting them a three year (H1-B) work permit, now this H1 quota is separate from the current 65000. The aim is to put the employer in the driver seat and tax these mexicans. And I can vouch that for the majority of the cases US citizens are smart and efficient software developer then H1-B counter parts. These kinds (citizens) might be less in number but I sincerely doubt that. H1-B guys are mostly hard workers but not neccessarily smart and efficient, most of them including me tend to gain software knowledge through job pressures. So why are H1-B guys here in the first place. Well Duh!!! its the Benjamins, the value of US dollor. It won't be an exaggeration if I said that more than 80% of the current H1-B lot will go back their home countries if they get paid 60% of what they are paid here.
I blame this less on H1Bs, than on resume bloat. Resume bloat seems to be as prevalent with H1B workers as with domestic workers. Just because the magic numbers (experience) are on a resume, does not mean you will get the quality of work. With the uncertainty that stems from this practice, go the salaries being offered. Lower quality and greater uncertainty demand a lower price; whether or not the quality is real or perceived!
The problem is exacerbated by hiring managers, who are intellectually lazy and do not verifying the content of resumes. A class in about a technical subject is no substitute for practical application in terms of experience. Taking a class 5 years ago, not mean you have 5 years of experience. But I do not see any of that being challenged.
In addition, companies are trying to gain a competitive edge over their competition by trying to pay bottom dollar for technical staff. This reinforces the bottom feeder mentality. However, the sacrifices made by turn over and not attracting the most qualified people has the opposite affect.
Outsourcing and H1B workers are not a long term threat to jobs in this country. But bottom feeding, misrepresentation, and quality are. There is no shortage of workers in this country just a shortage of people who are willing to work for bottom feeders.
We have to give out more of these things, eck. Seriously though it is not that easy to find a tech job. I am going to graduate this year from a top school in computer engineering(in top 5 in USA) with a decent but not great gpa of 3 and have no job offers, I know other people in CS here who have no job offers. Interviews, applications, phone conversations no job offers, even from were we did our internships(UBS). I know many computer engineering students who did not get internships and have no offers.
The job market is not that strong, especially in the tech sector. You can go into an interview tell them you are fluent in C,C++, Obj-C, you know Unix and shell scripts, systems administration, you can write VHDL, Verilog, you have designed a superscalar out of order alpha processors in your classes, you know MIPS assembly, are familar with MATLAB and design of suffisticated filters and even things like wavlets and you have years of experience as a systems admin for a small company. They don't want you.
I cannot catch a break so don't tell me how easy it is to get a job, everyone wants someone with experience, or they want a code monkey I am neither. As of right now I have a hundred plus thousand dollars invested in education, plus 4 years of my life with no return on my investment.
So now we are going to let people in from other countries to take jobs because some sh*tbag companies are too lazy to take intelligent people just out of school and train them in what ever skills they lack and need. This is bull sh*t. The only company I know of that really gave everyone who was an intern offers was MS. I would NEVER work for them and they work their employees very hard even considering the 80k a year starting salary.
So to reiterate, job market bad, economy is very ill as much as bush denies it. That friggen idiot runs the country like one of his failed oil companies that failed, lets see we will spend, spend, spend and then make no revenue. How long can that last? Inflation is present, higher than economists estimate, the dollar is weakening, intrest rates are way too low and bouying the economy, there is stagflation, the economy being good is a lie, and most people know that.
Maybe you can take some lessons from advertising? But instead of soap, it's you you're trying to sell.
I jumped back into the semiconductor industry this summer after eighteen months away. (This included an ill-fated year in the public sector.) It seems that the need for more engineers is there, but management is really hesitant to hire right now. I got in just before every req in the department was cancelled, and we haven't been able to get more approved since. We've also had some employees resign, so I know there are companies hiring. We're expecting to bring some more people on board soon.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I got laid off two years ago from Avaya. I'm a mid carreer engineer with a string of cert's and lots of experience in commercial *nix, linux, and M$. I am divorced and my son lives with his mom here in Denver, so I don't really want to leave the Denver area. I have sent out roughly eight resumes per week to unique job openings every week for the past two years. I have landed a few short term contracts, but nothing long term or perm yet. I have watched the response level to my resume blitz steadily increase over the past two years from one response every few months to almost weekly responses in the past few months. Freelancing isn't getting me much as the competition for it is fierce, we are constantly undercutting each other here in the Denver market and it makes it harder for all of us geeks to get something good. Management is not helping as they have been pushing understaffed IT departments too hard for too long and with everyone continueing to put up with it out of fear of losing thier jobs. Entry level people were kept and now that they are looking to expand (finally) to cope with new problems, they don't really know what to look for. Proactive, forward looking engineers of the old school (me) are having a tough time convincing employers that proactive solutions, while cost intensive in the short term, more than make up the difference in the long term. Hence we are out of jobs while employers, who don't seem to know any better, are looking for people with lots of experience who will work for very little, have tons of responsibility and damn little authority. I keep looking and try to stay optimistic, but two years of rejections do take thier toll. Hopefully, things will change for the better in the near future.
That is very interesting. Most of the reports I have heard from H1B people have been less complimentary toward the process.
Is there any particularly good way to tell which experience is the more common one?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
When the government intervenes by flooding the labor market with H-1Bs (usually Chinese and Indians) and illegal aliens (usually Mexicans), the government deliberately destroys normal market forces. The result is that wages are suppressed and that working conditions deteriorate.
I am in a contract position and a lot of the contractors are getting hired on and the contractors replaced by more contractors so as I see it things are up up up.
Some buddies are trying to put together a startup. Word from Sand Hill is you won't get capital unless you have an "offshoring strategy", i.e. the bulk of the labor is offshore - preferably India. And that over 95% of the venture capital is going to operations where the bulk of the tech work is outside the US. Your core team can be here. But you need a clear reason why each member is a guy (or gal) in the US rather than a platoon offshore.
Judging by the traffic here in silicon valley, and the number of empty office buildings, the next tech boom is not yet happening. Day job dumped three of its four buildings during the bust and so far only one of 'em has been filled - by a spinout from a VERY venerable company moving to cheaper space.
Judging by the experiences of some of my collegues, there is SOME hiring going on - better than this time last year. But it's not much.
Personal experience: I'm still needed at the "day job" for a while yet. So far only one headhunter has come sniffing by all year. A few years back it was daily.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We don't require any certifications. What we want is excellent design and coding skills (C# and C++), solid experience with ASP.NET and COM and experience shipping at least one product. The latter is not required, but rather preferred.
I'm telling you, we're struggling to fill the open positions. You gotta understand that nationality of the worker doesn't make a difference for the employer. What does make difference is whether or not the guy/gal can do the job and do it well. If you want to force them to hire US workers, they'll just move their entire development teams overseas where the law climate is more friendly.
Now this will be a major win for US workers, wouldn't it?
There's another facet to the issue - offshore outsourcing. But there companies hire whoever they can for the lowest price. I think this bubble will eventually burst, because I've seen several projects done for our company in India (by employees, no less) that sucked major hairy balls and had to be redone. My experience with outsourcing is that quite often folks in India will do just enough to barely get by. If this means cut&paste all over the place - that's fine by their standards. You pretend you pay them well, they pretend they do a good job.
A rumor going around the usenet is that one of the appropriation bills has a last-minute clause that eliminates the H1B quota. There are still requirements to get these visas. I did a quick look at thomas.loc.gov which has the bill texts, but didnt see it.
"I think it's time for programmers to stop waxing nostalgic about crap and start worrying more about how to make programming in the US (as opposed to outsourcing it) a valuable commodity. Time to start worrying about saving up enough money that you might actually get a chance to retire when Social Security collapses. Time to start paying more attention to whether a prospective employer has a solid medical plan rather than counting the number of foosball tables or arcade games they have in the break room. In short, it's time to grow up."
Well we've eliminated all forms of IP (Patent, copyright, even trademark "you can't trademark 'windows'") in Slashdotland. So no we haven't "grown up", and proably never will.
Well my current project is losing its funding in a month so I have been out looking at the market. If you have an active security clearance you are pretty well covered in this area. My resume has been out on a few websites for about a week and I have received at least a dozen calls... From what I hear non-cleared people are having a much much harder time of it.
dirtycontractor
I guess what I see is that there is still demand in IT .... OSS programmers are big right now,
Oh really? I have been trying to find a PHP position for as low as $20 per hour without benefits in the eastish Los Angeles area for a long time. I have more than a decade of coding experience. (I have to take scattered out-of-town gigs away from my kids to get by.)
Maybe I have bad teeth or an ugly tie or something else I have yet to figure out, and that is why $20 an hour is too much for companies. If there is a "labor shortage" like the H-1B lobbyists claim, then why is an ugly tie enough to keep me out? Labor-shortage should equal "not super choosey". Well, they ARE super choosey. "Shortage" and "choosey" are not compatible.
Maybe there is a "labor shortage" of coders who will work for $19 an hour. That is the real "shortage" that prompts companies to claim shortages to get more visas in.
Table-ized A.I.
"Only" two grammatical errors in roughly seventy words is a pretty rough job for a news article. Note, too, that the "It's" after Indiana wouldn't be capitalized had Cliff simply mistyped a period instead of comma.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
My friends in the Chicago area say they get tons of applications for each job posting they have, but very few candidates (if any) are qualified for the job. I hear similar stories from the New York area: lots of people who know how to write a simple program in Java but none that you could possibly hire as a team manager.
Count me in as well.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
The best thing to do is be willing to move to the areas with high demand for tech jobs. The unemployment rate, while not a precise indicator of demand in a particular industry, gives you a general indication of where it is easier to find a job.
Move to the "light blue states" on the unemployment map.
bp
I'm a software developer with about six years of experience, mainly with enterprise java applications. About six months ago we moved to Atlanta from Washington, DC. I used to work in Atlanta, so through old contacts, I was able to find a job pretty quickly (even managed a pay increase).
That first job was terrible. It was just a really bad fit (them for me, and vice versa). I gave it about six weeks, then went looking again. In less than two weeks, I had another job (somehow with another pay increase), and this one is great.
In the last two weeks, one of the recruiters I made contact with has called about four different new openings. Maybe I'm lucky, but it seems to me the job market is looking pretty good.
Hardly. In fact the only unions I know of that work hard to keep the slackers in their positions are government unions, and you know how little regard most people have for the cops who shoot unarmed kids in the face after wrestling them to the ground, then get to keep their jobs because the union fought for them, or for the government slacker who loses paperwork on a regular basis and can't be fired.
Most professional unions have members who are proud of their work and who wouldn't stand for someone besmirching their field with their incompetence.
But this geek is not an editor or journalist. Don't you think that is a little harsh not to mention insulting?
If he were in such a profession then yes I would agree.
Grammer is my poorest weakness as well. I only spotted the punctuation problem around Indiana but that does not make him a poor writter for his field. It was acceptable.
If he wrote fragments, negative voice, and had problems with subject-verb agreements then I would agree with you.
http://saveie6.com/
I think the reality is that the easier we make it for people from India to come here and get high paying jobs, the harder it will be for companies in the USA to outsource there with low paying jobs. In that sense alone H1B's will probably help the job market allot. Not to mention that large pools of telented people brought together tend to make opportunities and business where there was none before.
Finally, I have never seen any statistical evidence that immigrant laborers take jobs or drive down pay, but I've seen plenty of evidence coorelating immigration with massive economic gains and activity. I think we're crazy not to let in as much H1B's as possible.
But you're not the editor of Slashdot. If any magazine had as editing as poor as Slashdot does, it'd be laughed out of existence. Really, there are community college classes for stuff like this. And books. And seminars. And actual Editors. Any one of these things would be a great asses for the Slashdot staff.
Mod point free since 2001
Fast forward to the present. After the dot com bust, there are fewer tech comapnies to hire, but still legions of people who only entered the tech marketplace during the boom time. I can't help wondering if employers got less choosy during the 90's, creating an artificial view of the tech job marketplace. No longer in a boom time, employers may now be looking for the quality they used to expect before the dot com boom created a shortage.
Granted, the dot com boom brought a lot of great people to the field, but also brought a lot of people with little talent, but lots of good intentions. But could this be a structural correction in the tech job mearketplace, rather than just a slack period?
I just don't see how we could have such a major structural job shift during the 90's boom time without it being followed by another structural shift after it ended.
I've been looking for a geeky writing job in Ann Arbor for six weeks. Trust me, there aren't any right now.
In the meantime, I'll stick with being a geek in Ann Arbor with a low-paying writing job through a Canadian company. It's better than nothing.
It would be nice if the gov made the visa applications public and in electronic form. I would love to see where and what these alleged shortages are and if they are for real or just skills and buzzword bingo.
If anybody could put these applications on a website and post the site in a slashdot story, you deserve a million mod points and be crowned King Geek for a week.
Table-ized A.I.
>> Because frankly, the job market's swimming in "I'm too l33t for people skills" people, and working with people who think that being technically right means they have leave to be assholes is not my idea of fun. Amen to that brother! I am also in the Bay Area and I read dozens of resumes each and every day because we are hiring as well and if you are another slacker, wanna get rich quick type, or "elite" ass your resume goes into the trash can. I'm glad that this industry is becoming "normal" again.
And we all no that Slashdot needs some great asses.
You just can't find good people.
Seriously. I manage network security and Internet development/integration for a medium sized health care system (7000 empoyees.) I have had to fill 3 positions in the last two years and I am working on another right now.
Based on the stacks of resumes that have come across my desk in that time I can assure you that while there are apparently many jobless or otherwise seeking people in IT, most of them simply are not good cadidates. Sloppy resumes, generic cover letters and poor communication of the cadidate's suitability for the job knock about 70% of them off the list WHACK! just like that. If you're lousey at writing a resume, you'll be useless to me for anything not strictly technical (such as documenting your work coherently or writing a proposal.)
What's left are people who can communicate or know someone who can. Of these remaining cadidates, erratic employment patterns and insane salary requirements knock the list down to about 10% worth considering. So what I am left with is 10-20 good candidates on paper. Phone interviews w/ our HR dept quickly whiddle that down a bit. If you can't convince my HR rep that you're a good employee then your verbal skills just took a hit in my book.
In the end the pool is much more shallow than one might think.
The actual regulation says that the H1B worker must be paid at least 95% of the prevailing wage. The company can provide any prevailing wage information....even their own data.
If you think H-1B visa workers being underpaid is an urban legend, peruse the LCA database at your leisure. Look at some of the huge Indian bodyshops (they are the worst offenders at misusing US visa regulations), and decide for yourself if they are underpaying their workers ($38K for a programmer?)
The reason the cap was hit by the first day is these bodyshop hoarde the visas, which flaunts the spirit of the visa regulations. The idea behind the H1B visas were to give employers access to specialized workers, not to allow foreign companies the ability to import their own workers while putting our domestic technical workers out to pasture.
Oh yeah, some Congressmen are trying to attach legislation to the Omnibus spending bill that would effectively double the H1B visa cap. Read more about that at Techsunite
I read that over and over again to make sure I didn't spell anything wrong and what do you know, I missed one. Damn!
We need *anger*. We need more people to finally get fed up with seeing our people (U.S. citizens) lose their jobs and foreigners (that word bothers you doesn't it?) being carted in by the truckload to take them.
We need to say enough is enough. I do not want to talk to Abdul al-Mohaamad a.k.a. "Steve" on the phone when I have computer problems. I do not want to see American youth with CS degrees working the checkout counter at Home Depot. I don't want the next great electronics innovator to end up squandering his talents through a medicore life as a 3rd shift punch-press operator.
I do not want to see millions of dollars of US wealth being funneled back to countries where I would be killed and drug through the streets for being an American.
What is it going to take to get people angry enough to do something about this crap?
Slash the number of work visas. Limit visas to elite high tech jobs, where very very specific skill sets are required. Close the borders. Impose stiff penalties to those who continously break our immigration laws. Send these 3rd and 4th generation illegals packing. (Give Roomba some long robotic arms and legs and program it to pick the oranges for us.)
I've commented elsewhere down this tree, but just to say I share your pain. Spent 18 mo. in Cinti and hated just about all of it. Downtown is frightening, Vine just scares me, Clifton was nice though.
:)
To make the best of a shit place, I would recommend:
Ambar Indian Curry house in Clifton. Simply the best Indian I've ever had, and that includes from my home country of Britain. Chicken Tikka Massala to die for.
The Comet Pub, somewhere in the west of Cinti. Excellent Bluegrass, and they have Newcastle Brown Ale on tap, along with quite a few other beers.
Go to the Railway Museum and check it out. Very nicely restored. Park downtown and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (actually the prototype for the Brooklyn one) and then around the North Kentucky town, across that bridge and back up into Cinti.
River boat cruise is definitely worth it, but this was at the end of my prison sentence(bb2dw) work there, so watching popcorn pop was relatively exciting by then, too....
Oktoberfest over in the town across the river (can't remember its name) on the Mainstrasse, and also the Oktoberfest in downtown Cinti, but this is a lot poorer.
That's all I could find that was notable in Cinti in 18 months. Oh! The downtown library is fairly rocking, though
Good luck, I hope you make it out of there without losing your brain. Not all the midwest is that awful.
Dr Fish
I am a Senior at Purdue University - West Lafayette, IN and in May I'll be graduating with a BS in CS. This is my first semester looking for jobs and I can't believe how many interviews and offers I am getting, with how bad the economy is supposed to be. Also, everyone I talk to at the job fairs says the situation is much much better than in previous years. Companies are actually looking to hire instead of just collecting resumes. From my persepective the job market is pretty damn good. I know come May that I'll have job lined up, the only questions are where and for how much. ... nic nac patty wack give a dog a bone
Cliff is a journalist, plain and simple. He does not get a free pass on basic journalistic skills simply because he happens to be a geek.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
After growing up and going to school in the midwest I couldn't wait to get out after graduating. None of my immediate family lives there anymore and we are all much happier. To the company trying to recruit talented workers in Ft. Wayne of all places, good luck, you're gonna need it.
I looked at jobs just about everywhere but only got one offer and took it. Luckily it was a good one. I'm now in the Portland, OR area and life is good. The job market seems to be fine here, and I keep meeting people who have moved back here after living somewhere else. Just guessing here, but I don't think many people move _back_ to Ft. Wayne.
I think this proves that companies go for H1-B workers primarily for low-wages is a myth. There are many unemployed Us-programmers who would gladly work a programming job for what is typically termed "H1-B wages'. I mean it is better than sitting at home unemployed or flipping burgers in macdonald.
The crux of the matter is that there is a shortage of the "right" skill-set. And, this skill-set keeps on changing as years go which makes it harder for non-adaptive workers (H1-B or non-H1-B) to survive.
I have been participating in our group's efforts to hire 3 new engineers. We worked diligently for many months to find people with the right set of background (not the job skills I remind you) who did not require H1-B. Sure, we have tons of resume but no real candidate we would like to make an offer. After many phone and in-person interviews, we finally found one right candidate just to find that this person required H1-B!! We are trying to figure out what we can do about this candidate but still can't figure out how to fill the other two positions.
The bottom line is that if you want to survive in the current and future climate - keep on acquiring new skills. That is , some may say unfortunately, the only way.
Workers of the world unite! You need to revolt and kill every employer. Then you'll be in better shape.
Right?
[ home ]
Targetting recruiter search placement/visits is similar to targetting search engine placement/visits. Your use of "keywords" can help with placement. Are the keywords mentioned just once with a position or are they also summarized in a 'skills' area?
Once a viewer gets to your site/resume, will they immediately exit or browse for a bit? Check your page layout. Does it present the material your visitor is looking for in an easily accessed way or do they have to hunt for it? If they plan to present you to someone else, like their client, does the resume layout say 'I really need help with presentation' or does it say 'I am ready now'? The better your layout is, the less work they will have to do to polish it and the more likely they are to choose your resume to present instead of that of someone else, which may need more work. If you are in doubt and are talking to a recruiter other than the client, ask for constructive criticism. Different recruiters have differing and sometimes conflicting opinions. Take these as suggestions, not requirements.
If you have your resume on a personal site, are download files available? Is the text also visible in the browser or do they have to download a file and then launch another app to see it? Make access to the information as easy as possible for your user by having it viewable in the browser. If they like what they see, they may also need a separate file to pass on to someone else. So, provide files in formats they might be able to use.
Finally, don't forget to include open-source project work on your resume. This helps to show enthusiam, that you enjoy this type or work and are not just doing it to pay bills.
+5 insightful ???
Dude, you were and are wrong.
Statisicly significant
wtf?
The Census and the H1-B logs are (nearly) complete enumerations. We're not doing random samples.
wtf are u smoking?
My suspicion is that companies want more visas because they want to be able to hire more overqualified help for less money.
In my area (South Bay, California) companies are regularly asking for a Bachelor's degree for first tier tech support and don't consider anyone less qualified than that for *anything*. If they need a degree to answer a phone and be unhelpful it's news to me.
In any case, I would expect that the companies pushing for more H1-Bs are setting their qualificatinos arbitrarily high in order to demonstrate the "need" for more visa-slaves who can be paid less, given fewer benefits and can't quit for fear of being deported.
It's not like there aren't thousands of out of work techies in the Silicon Valley, it's just that they expect a standard of living and benefits better than the average McDonald's grillworker.
It's really frustrating to see that American companies are actively seeking to export jobs and money.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
I think that you massively misinterpreted his original post. He basically said 'I didn't require an H1B (as in, I'm playing on as level a field as any American), and I still easily found a job.' The fact that he married an American is a sidebar that you mistakenly integrated into his statement.
Thanks for helping to destroy stereotypes - here I was thinking all low UIDs were smart ;-).
A year ago I was living in Harrisburg, PA's tiny capital, and the only work there was State work. Only the big national companies like Deloitte and Ajilon had the ability to keep people in work, and all of the laid off programmers (including me) were fighting hard for jobs.
So I picked up and moved to Philadelphia, and the market's completely different. The last two companies I've worked for cannot find enough qualified people to fill the positions they have open. The first company spent 3 months looking for candidates without much luck, and we're a month into our search here.
Philadelphia's no great shakes, in my opinion, but the pay is great (even with the higher taxes) and the companies are on the whole good to their employees.
I'm glad I made the move. I think things are picking up, but this time around, management is more cautious about who they hire and how many people they hire. That's a good thing. And the poster who wants to see the "big" perks like fancy chairs and swedish go-go dancers at every desk needs to get a clue. The work you're doing should have its own intrinsic value to you, which is why you do it. You shouldn't be getting the job just because you like the perks.
Well, I applied for a sysadmin position at a large company a couple weeks ago, and had an initial phone interview about a week after that. I've been keeping up with the company, and apparently they've got almost thousands of applicants for the position.
Not saying they're all qualified, but that's tremendous response. ANother thing to consider is that gateway's original headquarters was out here (South Dakota), and they closed down all SD operations this past year - there are likely still a lot of people from GW that are looking for jobs. It's also not the best place to be looking for a job, either, being the midwest and all.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I've had considerably less trouble finding contracts this last year than in the two years prior. It hasn't all been exactly what I was looking for, in fact none of it has, but at least it wasn't the bullshit phone support I couldn't keep contracting firms from offering me in previous years, either (seriously, damn. How many times do you have to say "look at my resume, I've been overqualified for that for the last 5 years"). As of a month or so ago myself and two other guys that were both with me on my last contract ended up on new contracts at a company that seems to actually want to hire us eventually, treats its employees decent, etc.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wal
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wal
I suggest you read the rest of the interviews, and just maybe you'll actually learn something on Slashdot.
It all depends on where you are at -- both geographicly and philosophically. I live in an area that is dominated by DOD/DOE facilities. Since I am unwilling to be exposed to classified government materials, there are only a handfull of positions that open up any given year which require my skills.
As for spelling/grammer... I really wish this beast-of-an-interface had a real spelling checker!
I am an information systems analyst, worked on programming and systems analysis/design for quite a while.
I've been unemployed for almost 3 years, sent out like 1,500. Finally found a job last august. I still search to 'monitor' the market, and it's uber hard to get a job. Most of the ads are companies collecting resumes just in case the situation changes, or maybe to spam my inbox/mailbox.
The company I am working at is a 3-employee startup. It may be getting better, but I don't see that happening here. Oh and yeah, the pay is not what it used to be.
check out payfinder (free reg) - neat tool for users in the UK to check out average pay in job/sector/region & company
Been there, done that, and going to do it (I mean, have it done to me) again this year.
In keeping with my Newspeak-inspired login name, I suppose we could say, "oldcorps unbellyfeel doubleplusgood prolework." A good translation to modern English is:
Old-school, large, top-heavy, MBA-filled, "dinosaur" corporations do not fully appreciate the exceptional effort which the "little people" put forward on a daily basis.
That turned out better than I thought. I like it. I just might put in my resignation letter when I find my new gig.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Good God! This is a geek site. We discuss issues important to geeks. Go away to some grammar site and post your pearls of wisdom there. Everyone understood the point of the post, and that is what matters.
/.ers can request spelling and grammar critiques in thier sig, otherwise, keep your nit-picking bullshit to yourself.
How about this:
"But then again, I'm white and don't speak with a heavy Indian accent. I think quite a bit of the H-1 hatred is just thinly veiled racism."
So's the "get out of my profession you 'not doing it for the love'" posts.
Hatred isn't just along color boundaries.
The tech companies are just whining because they can no longer pay Mr. Gupta $10/hr. to write their code because he had to go back home. Instead, they have to pay Mr. Smith $35+/hr. to write code for the same system. Poor, poor Mr. Gupta...NOT!!!!!!!
Washtech has a web form to send your feelings on this issue to your congresscritters and the relevant decision makers.
Here's the link. Registration required so you can send to the appropriate folks.
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
Achievers will never want to be in a union because unions bring down the salary/incentives to hardworks in order to bring "equality" to the slackers.
And in today's economy, the Achievers cost too much and get laid off in favor of that nice kid from IIT Hydrabad who costs 50% as much. That's why Mitch started ORTech to begin with.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Also in Seattle (or at least in neighboring Redmond)... ... a large software company has LOTS of positions open, and is absolutely hiring.
You must be qualified, and you must swear allegiance to Bill and Steve. (kidding...about the allegiance part...)
Here you go, email him away. If you want to know what kind of people his company is looking for, you can check out what Im guessing is CrankyFool's resume. The resume also has a more spamable email address ;).
-- john
Now that a lot of those paper cert holders are out of the market (fired, certs stripped, etc, etc...), the market will improve.
The salaries of the 90's will not return, but those that have experience and knowledge to back up those certs, will make a nice wage. I was able to keep my head above water by contracting my skills out to clients in markets that are just getting into the 21st century, and was even hired on by one later. Full time pay, 20 hour weeks onsite (rest can be remote work, be home in the underoo's), full benefits. Best part is, I retain all IP.
So yes the market is getting better, but no, we won't see the boom as we did in the past. Be ready to do as many are pointing out.
1 - Network with people
2 - Study up, learn new skills or supplement the skills you have
3 - Find a nitch market you can capitalize on.
4 - Never assume you can stop learning, new skills are always needed, somewhere...
None of these are new ideas, the same process has been there for decades in the 'old school' field.
And for those that are considering the military, NEVER join unless you are ready to KILL or DIE for your country, joining just to have a job is not a good idea
Technology is growing and so are the jobs required to support that growth. In my case, on site services (repairs, training, installation, etc.) have allowed my company to double in size in six months and the prospects are looking good.
Point being that while jobs may be cut in some parts of the industry (or outsourced) they are compensated for in other parts.
-Tim Louden
Face facts and reality, the "Tech" industry is now equivilent to the TV and VCR repair industry. Why should I pay a SQL DB expert 40k a year. MY 17 year old niece does a great job managing a few MS and Oracle dbs for me. They teach that shit in Highschool now. If I can get an MCSE in highschool I would expect that a MCSE is now worth highschool pay. Face reality. The bar has been raised and most of us are below the bar now. Did you honestly think that you would get $55 and hour with 5 years experience when highschool students are starting to come out with CCNAs and MCSEs?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Which brings up the catch-22: can't have a job without any experience, and can't get any experience without a job.
Yes you can.
Think FOSS. Typically, an open-source project will not ask to see your resume before you can get involved. Take a look at SourceForge. There are many, many projects to pick from. Find something you are interested in. Join the mailing list. Become active. This helps to document the work you do, which you can then put on your resume.
A personal web site can also be used to document skills. For example, my web site runs PHP on Linux and there is a page on generating random values in PHP. (Caution: DSL bandwidth limited.) I have zero project/position experience with PHP, yet a recruiter called me about a PHP position. Even though it is not listed related to a specific project or position, it is a skill I have documented and can show evidence of having worked with.
There is nothing to prevent you from documenting this type of work on your resume. And, there is the upside of showing that you actually enjoy the work and are not doing it just to pay the bills. Enthusiasm counts. Of course, it is up to you to show that you are enthusiastic about what the company considers 'work' and not just about playing games, browsing the web, etc.
If I handed you a sort algorithm that worked in 2^n time, would you be cool with that? Would you say, "Hey, it sorts, and that's what matters!"?
Whatever happened to the geeky ideal of self-improvement? Whatever happened to striving for perfection in what you do? When did it become "geeky" to put up with a job done half-assedly?
As a geek, it chafes me to see Slashdot run like a hobbyist's spare-time project years after it vaulted to the forefront of the geek news world. Real Geeks wouldn't abide by such a slipshod operation. Real Geeks would lick it up, shake it, wrinkle their nose, and set about fixing the damned problems--instead of embracing said problems as some bizzarely endearing and inescapable quirk of 'being a geek'.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I find the linux skills paying off and opening doors, the windose skills I learned probably will not pay the rent in another 3-5 years. Not that I will miss not using them. Mind you I will not miss the windose only tech's either. I hope others are finding the same if opportunities, not that money is great but it's better than not working!
The immature mind measures.
I have already stated my opinion on H1B visa's and such before, but I find no lack of job's for someone with good IT skills. We are in constant demand.
What I do find, however, are a bunch of "IT people" who know all the buzzwords about Active Directory and DHCP, but cannot make a freakin MS-DOS,Win98,etc boot disk. Or who cannot troubleshoot a simple network connection problem at a workstation without getting the "Deer caught in ther headlights" look on thier faces.
Wake up folks, the only people who cannot find jobs are either so specialized in a field that no one needs them at the moment, or are just incompetent paper-'s who thought that just because they got MSCE certified or whatever that that meant a lifetime IT job making l337 cash.
Welcome to reality.
ardustry
http://geekz.us
ardustry
The main problem that I see, at least in the web development field, is that employers in big companies think only in commercial stuff - like Microsoft, Sun Java, and lots of super-extra-extreme-high-tech that NOBODY knows. On the other hand, many qualified programmers use Linux (not windows), Apache (not IIS), C++ (not Visual Basic), Python or PHP (not ASP.NET unless they're doing Mono).
In my country there's a huge demand of J2EE developers, while the large amounts of PHP programmers are left in the dust. And no, companies are NOT willing to spend a freaking dime in training new programmers in Weblogic, peoplesoft or similar stuff that requires thousands of dollars to get trained in. (Heck if they won't spend, who's gonna spend in training? The very unemployed who DON'T have money to train?)
Another example I've seen is a high corporate who constantly has problems with his WinME (yes, M-E) machine. He won't upgrade to XP because of the "high learning curve" (WTF?).
So is it the programmers' fault that companies won't find (fingers-quote) "qualified" employees? I'd rather say it's your typical Peter principle.
So, unless CEO's ACTUALLY listen to us, they're not gonna find eficient employees for the things they want.
My 2-cents.
Someone with a modicum of detective skills. Congratulations -- If you submitted your own resume, I promise I'd make sure it got looked at :)
... how shall I put this in a way that won't get me sued? FI is not very similar to my current workplace, and it ... probably requires a unique sort of IT person to work and be happy there.
:)
I should note, however, that I no longer work for Fisher Investments (the resume is old), and
I don't think I can say any more about FI without violating my NDA, getting their lawyer (who's a nice guy, but would have my balls for breakfast) involved, or having them dispatch assassins after me
7334? Is that how you spell "l337"?
It's not a case of this country lacking talented people in need of jobs.
It's a case of shitty bumfuck towns needing people and not being willing to pay enough to attract those people.
translation:
"The Bay Area isn't all that expensive once you accept that it's so expensive that you have no hope of ever being able to afford it."
I grew up in the Bay Area, and basically can't move back there.
They don't want to offer a suitable pay, security, etc.
nuf sed. Go ahead, mod my day! I'm pissed.
We are currently seeking a Software Engineer. Individual must be proficient with computer programming and knowledgeable about computer technology. Qualified candidate must be committed to producing quality work and work well with others. This is an extremely challenging position and requires commitment and perseverance. If you are a competent programmer and are looking for a rewarding challenge, we look forward to hearing from you. Please submit your resume and cover letter, including a sample of your programming ability, in any language.
According to their web site, they're only looking for one person, which contradicts what they're telling the press.
What Brittania actually sells is a bookkeeping application for small office-supply stores.
I live outside Boston, and from where I sit the situation is not good at all. It seems that local tech companies are still laying off people, and there's a glut of talent (or at least resumes) out there. I've been developing software since 1980 (multiple languages, multiple OS's, multiple environments), I'm pretty good at it, I've got two headhunters working with/for me and I *STILL* am basically retired. Most of my friends who still have tech jobs hate them, but are afraid to leave because they fear they won't be able to find something else. And most of my friends who HAD tech jobs are either working in another field or have left the area. Supposedly the job market has picked up in this area, but from what I've seen I'm not convinced.
Anyways, these are just my thoughts on things. I personally think Fort Wayne is a great town, and I would like to return there after I graduate. The problem for me is finding a job ... but it appears that I had a opportunity all along in Britannia.
--Ryan
Procrastination sucks.
Me, oh I'm the master of google. Honestly if I were in the field and the market, I'd probably send you my resume... then again. You aren't looking for phd's in chemical engineering around May are you? I'm more of a math person though.
FWIW, I actually remember reading the review King Rat and liking it.
-- john
I have been looking for work in Chicago and Milwaukee for upwards of two years now. Nearly all of my interviews have been from 40 to 70 minutes driving time from my home. Most of the companies have been seeking to fill just one opening, and have received hundreds of resumes. For at least two of these jobs, I was passed over not because of my qualifications, but because I lived too far away.
The problem I see here is that companies are drafting their requirements to be overly specific, just to reduce the applicant pool. And when that strategy still produces a giant stack of resumes, the requirements are stretched further, often by someone who has no idea what the TLAs mean. So now jobs require 10 years of experience in .NET and C#, and the company is completely unwilling to train. And suddenly there are no qualified candidates. Well, duh.
It has gone to the point where the decision as to whether a candidate is qualified is split between a (badly-written) keyword search and an HR underling that is basically clueless.
For most geek-types, knowing how to program in any high-level language is equivalent to being able to program in any of them--it is just a matter of learning new punctuation. But the ability to learn any new technology by reading manuals does not match any keywords. One of the founding fathers of computer science could send in his resume, but if he fails to put "Interslice Bangwhatsit 2.0" on it, no one even knows he is looking for the job.
In summary, claims of worker shortages are bull. If these companies cannot find qualified candidates, it is only because their methods cannot determine who is actually qualified.
"This quote is a product of the Frobozz Magic Quote Company."
You just stated the main problem with unemployment.
Companies do NOT care about making this a better country, or helping in the process of training employees.
They just see a huge dollar sign when they read a resume. For the just-graduated guys searching for a job... well, good luck, suckers!
(Employers ARE lucky unemployed people aren't turned into some kind of sudden murderers. But if companies aren't doing their job (which is MAKING jobs for the SOCIETY), are they really needed after all?
I interviewed with five different companies within the past year and received five offers with pay increases anywhere between 5 and 10% over what I make now. I want to move to the NYC metropolitan area or Houston, but unfortunately I can't find anything good in either city (the offer I got in the NYC area was with a company that doesn't seem too good).
The additional benefit of defense work is that your job is *extremely* unlikely to be exported to overseas.
Just be glad they let you out of texas. I know individuals that seperated after two terms having spent Basic, Tech School and 2 PCA's at Lackland.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
...if you're cleared. There are litteraly thousands of available jobs in MD/DC/VA that require clearances. The problem is, there just aren't that many cleared people around to take them.
Eh? Amnesty International killed nearly ten thousand people in Nepal?
How did that happen?
~Idarubicin
I don't think the situation is totally a matter of money. CEO's didn't like the fact that during the boom, some techy nerds could actually afford homes in their neighborhoods, or drive the same BMW's that they were driving.
Ouch! That's not very good at all!
I'd be curious to see a sampling of resumes of the people that they've rejected, along with their reasons for doing so.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Things haven't changed much here. I'm still bouncing around crappy jobs to make ends meet while hoping to find a "real" job...
You can pick your nodes, and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friend's nodes
That Fort Wayne article sounds suspicious in two respects. First, they include most of the typical slogans and wording used by the pro-cheap-labor-lobbying groups such as the ITAA, Especially the part about our alleged bad schools not training enough techies. Waaaay too suspicious. It is all right out of an ITAA brochure almost verbatim.
Second, they don't quote any real counter opinions. A newspaper is supposed to carry both sides of the story. I suspect kickbacks from ITAA or sister orgs.
Table-ized A.I.
The reason the raises and Aeron chairs aren't showing up for most Slashdot readers is that being a sysadmin is not a hard-earned skill. It's harder than being a convenience store clerk, but not on a par with being, say, a welder or a chef. Only in an IT bubble economy can sysadmins command big perqs, and no sober person expects another IT bubble in this country soon.
Although I suppose reading Slashdot all day might be a perq for some sysadmins. Enjoy!
Yeah, let's get professional editors. Then, Slashdot can be like the MAINSTREAM MEDIA! That would be awesome! *cough*
Well, I have worked as a recruiter for technical positions for the last 5 years or so. In doing so, I have watched the boom and the bust, and the one commonality is that the landscape continues to change. We do regional recruiting as well as national hiring for a few publicly traded firms. All of them are having more and more trouble finding talent then they did last year, or even a few months ago. I think it is because a lot of companies, both big and small, have done some hiring over the last year or so. All alone, each of these firms does not amount to much, but multiplied across the nation time and time again, and you wind up with the available talent pool drying up pretty quickly.
Much like a buyers or sellers market in real estate. This thinner pool of available or candidates is driving a better job market for the job seeker, better wages and more opportunities. All someone needs to do to be in this situation is put their resume on job boards like, Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder and such. They also need to open the paper every Sunday and apply to openings. An added plus is that with a lack of candidates, compensation, which was on the decline for a couple years, is finally going the other direction; and employees who hired on to do high level work at minimum wage are moving on to better jobs and better pay. Overall, I think the hiring outlook in technical fields is really heating up and the prospects are good. From what I have seen even people who had there jobs outsourced overseas are able to find work if they are willing to relocate.
Given that
(1) many companies require the use of their own company-specific resume format (through websites that use a specific application form) and
(2) are doing do the vast majority of filtering based on the above document plus the short cover letter that a candidate presents,
most people applying for a given position are cut before being granted even a telephone interview.
At what stage of the hiring process is a candidate actually given an opportunity to demonstrate their "communications skills", ability to work with a team, or personality?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The economy here seems consideraby better than what I was seeing in the Twin Cities. There's a lot of new construction, especially office buildings, and I can't remember the last time I saw much of that in the southern or western Minneapolis suburbs.
I suspect some areas of the country were hit a lot harder than others.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The USPTO has just received an application by Microsoft patenting identity comparisons (A == B therefore A is at the same address as B) which would make writing compilers illegal and using any compiler other than Microsoft's illegal as well.
Efectively shutting the doors on GNU C and C++, Java, Smalltalk and everything that includes a == operator or its equivalent.
This would effectively render the world Microsoft dependent.
Youch!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I am a student in college and have worked for a local university for the last 4 years and will be stopping when I graduate this December. People are always going to school and universities tend to not be effected by economic downturns. If anything, I'd say they benefit from downturns because a flux of people appear to go back to college. Adding, that universities tend to always be growing, they tend to also need tech people. This makes for a very stable work environment.
Well all of you trying to make a career out of this mess- well I really feel for you- On the university side of this employment situation it is much worse. I ran a computer lab, ran the department website, did face to face tech work with a stable of about 60 professors and 200 Grad students, and planned out as well as implemented quite a few of their localized networks for their research equipment (electron microscopes, CAD/CAM equipment, etc). Had a work bench and I churned out as many boxes as I could and refurbished as many as needed- they had me making CATV and had me running it through areas that were toxically hazardous or not suitable for their non-maintenance types. All this for $7.50 an hour. I didn't care because I beat out about 20 Indian applicants all claiming they were Oracle DBAs from the same offshore company.
One of the applicants called me up in a huff claiming he would physically fight anyone who would work for such a low wage. I had the same problem with the the Gateway store too- I couldn't get as many legitimate repair clients because they started coming out with repair centers for each brand of computer. I still did better work, worked for less, and never complained. Gateway store is out of business, I've gotten my share of INCOMPETENT H1 types fired due to not being up to speed. I say bring it on- I am 100% American and you wouldn't be able to tell I was visually different from any of these guys because I am bi-racial as well (so it isn't a racism issue I'm sorry if a computer works it works no matter what color you are). They still try and drive down the price technicians- well every place I've worked they ended up giving me a raise because of the level of quality that I brought to each organization. To summarize all of this- I don't care what your culture is; unless you grew up on a Commodore, a VAX, a TRS-80, or could even comprehend the meaning of a transistor at the age of 8 then you are all just H1 corpses beneath my boots. Hah!- you think going into the Military is war try staying employed THAT IS WAR. At least for me I am glad to say that I beat "The Gateway Store" and I sure as hell beat "The Outsourcing Ordeal" so now what is next? If you are really into IT you are already preparing for what is next and if there is a trend going on right now it is eliminating the weakest link.
Yet.
Older folks like me (yep, I'm gonna turn *42*) aren't really what the military is looking for. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
need system administrator
3 degrees required
html a plus
c#, visual basic and fluent german a plus
x-ray vision and esp not required, but again, a plus
salary based on experience.
short version - i'm working but always looking for something better.
They don't hire the domestic staff, who knows what they should be paid. They hire foreign staff for less money.
Bringing the offshore home. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Seriously. I used to live on the peninsula. I would like to live there again. But without a job paying *at least* $120k, I wouldn't even be able to rent a place for my family of 3, much less own a house.
Ther proper analogy would be, just because McDonalds' has a hard time filling it's positions it doesn't mean we're over employed. Americans want to work, but we can't afford to live with most of the jobs. What's the percentage of working poor in this country? What's the percentage of people who have jobs but continually go to food banks?
I live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and we have a large Telecom & web presence for companies. The web hosting company down the street from me continually hires. Their requirements for senior Unix admins are usually 10 years for $50K. I have 6 years and I can't take that kind of a pay cut. I know several highly experienced people who took a voluntary seperation and it took them 6 to 10 months just to find a job. And it was a substantial cut in pay for both. And they both had some serious expertise in their fields.
I know when my job is outsoured... our second data center will be in Canada... and when I'm RIF'd I will have to take a serious cut in pay. These are my prime earning years and it's pretty sad when you start making plans for a second career 8 years into your first.
To paraphrase a politican, "It's not that Americans don't want to work; the companies just don't want to pay for it".
Mostly I'm wondering WTF is up with all the IT people whining about their job market. They were lucky to have that market and, if they spent it all rather than saving it, that's their own damned fault. My industry (pharmaceutical R&D) hasn't seen double digit raises, ever, that I'm aware of. Unless you're an executive. They've been taking double-digit raises every year while the research scientists get (at best) a 2% raise. My industry has never hired (the equivalent of) people who program a few lines of some script kiddie language (html + all of it's illegitimate children) for $80k, give them 35 hour workweeks, and 4 weeks of vacation. The scientific sector has been well aware of the influence of H1B and foreign graduate students since before you could fit a computer in a single building.
I have no sympathy for the IT field. Finally you guys can start hanging on by your fingernails like the rest of us do.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
I recently left Seattle in part due to the huge rate of competition for even the lowliest IT jobs. I was pleasantly surprised, upon arriving in Nashville, TN, that three different employers were avidly hiring, and that I was able to secure a position with a company my first week in town. I was up against 425 other techies for the last Seattle position I applied and interviewed for.
JoloK
when it comes to IT jobs, especially UNIX
IT jobs. Prerequisite: CURRENT TS clearance,
with Lifestyle/Polygraph (prefer "transferable").
Since DHS has decided (regretably) to hang their
hat on the (less secure) Microsoft "suite" of
OS and Apps, an MSCE with a TS clearance would
have better luck in the Metro DC area -- homeland
security and the military-industrial complex is
the only IT job growth in this region.
If you don't already have a TS clearance - forget
it, 'cause it takes too long and costs the new
employer way too much to risk on a new hire.
Basic "Catch-22": if you have it (especially
transferable), your ticket is golden. Otherwise,
you are sucking wind.
If I knew 15 years ago what I know today, I would
have gone into electrical or plumbing journeyman-
ship instead of IT (especially UNIX, which NOBODY
wants without the TS clearance.) As a bonus,
those jobs cannot be outsourced overseas, either.
(At least until such time as broadband robotic
certification goes into these fields (?).)
First off, I'll graduate this May with a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
Second off, last week I formally accepted a job from IBM's Microelectronics group as a design engineer.
My experiences with finding a position were that it was pretty easy, actually. I interviewed with several groups at IBM, Microsoft, and National Instruments, and receieved offers from each company (including multiple offers from IBM). I also received offers for site interviews and effectively offers for offers from other companies in the defense industry, embedded systems contract work, and a variety of software fields.
All in all, I haven't had a bit of trouble finding a job. In fact, I was faced with choosing from great jobs from the world leaders in several different fields.
Yes, I'm bragging, but this is the one and only time I'll do it.
So I agree with you -- It's getting better, if you're one of those "decent people" the parent poster mentioned. My experiences were that across the US things are getting better... I had offers in Arizona, Washington, and Texas, and offers for offers in Florida, New York, and Minnesota.
The moral of this post might be:
* Get involved on campus -- become an officer for a student organization
* Get an internship -- it helps you figure out what you do and don't want to do, and gets you experience working with various types of teams and in various fields.
* Go to a career fair -- meet recruiters, even if you're a freshman. I've known recruiters from many companies for 4+ years since I met them in the Fall of 2000 when I entered OU out of high school
* Find the career services office for your college or your university -- Have them vett your resume, and attend mock interviews, info sessions, whatever you can
If anyone cares, my resume's on my website.
~ Mike
Michael C. Hollinger
There are no jobs! (Yeah, unless you want to work 40 hours a week! PFT!)
The pacific northwest has been hit pretty bad. Seattle is pretty dry at this point. Boeing is shipping jobs overseas and Microsoft is doubling hiring in India and has signed contracts with other outsourcing firms. The Eastside has been hit and homes in my new neighborhood are being sold for less than what I bought a year ago.
Perl and other tools to work smarter, not harder.
if this was true you would be using Python!
Ugliest. Website. EVER!
you left out "be willing to work for THIRD WORLD WAGES and live in THIRD WORLD conditions" part of your adivce!
What would help is if Slashdot were to hire a few classically-trained editors. They don't need to be a geeks, just people who can do a good job of proofreading, fact-checking, and editing articles. Let the 'geek' editors be what they really are--reporters--who submit their stories to the 'journalist' editors for revision and final approval. Y'know, run this news organization as if it were actually a news organization.
There are thousands of them that _pay_ Slashdot to do this. They are called the subscribers. These are the ones that get the early looksee at the articles and an email address for any "serious errors". To my knowledge, all mails to daddypants are ignored and the story gets posted.
Summary: the "editors" just don't care.
I quit my programming job five months ago and left the industry. My former employer hired two people to replace me, so I guess I created a new tech job. Maybe I should have been drawing two salaries...
"Someone who hates this has just as much right to it as those that like it. Those with passion will rise."
There seems to be a common assumption in all these "do it for the love" posts. They assume that if you don't have the "passion" you "hate" what ever it is you're doing.
How about a more neutral feeling instead of all the extremism?
brief summary.
n crease/8wgddxza7778nj/
1 - The House Appropriations committee has agreed to insert H-1B into
the omnibus spending bill. That means that both branches of Congress
now agree to increase H-1B.
2 - The H-1B provision limits the numbers of H-1Bs to 20,000 instead of
making graduates degreed foreigners totally exempt from limits. While
this will a bummer for the 20,000 high-tech Americans that will lose
jobs to these H-1Bs, the damage could have been considerably worse if
Chambliss and Kennedy would have succeeded in making it unlimited.
3 - Nothing is set in stone yet. Your call and faxes may still have
some effect on the outcome of this bill.
4 - Nothing is known about the status of H-2B.
4 - Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate have
almost certainly decided to strip from the 9/11 Response Bill nearly
all provisions that would have fought illegal immigration.
SUMMARY: Both white-collar and blue-collar workers are going to suffer
continuing job loss from both legal and illegal immigrants. How much
job loss may be determined by last ditch efforts by activists to sway
Congress - and whether incumbent politicians are concerned about
whether their vote in favor of H-1B will hurt them in future elections.
http://http//www.unionvoice.org/campaign/stoph1bi
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
We all know that the software industry lobbyists are paying off our treacherous politicians, and we know that they are paying the media to run articles about these bogus shortages of programmers.
But is the software industry paying writers to come here and post on threads like this on Slashdot?
Which posters are the industry shills on this thread?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Maybe it's my area or maybe I'm just looking at the positions the wrong way but I've seen some positions requiring a lot more experience in the field than I would think necessary. For example I've seen positions for Tier 3 tech support (not administrative mind you) looking for experience of 5+ years. Now I can definitely understand that for an administrative position but it seems a bit high for a support position.
It seems that companies are less willing to have employees gain experience on the job. They want somebody that already knows their stuff so they don't have to teach them anything. The problem is the folks with that kind of experience level usually want a higher salary than is being offered so the position goes unfilled for a long period of time.
Personally I have an associate's degree and I was a Support Tech for a community college for a year. I've done freebie work in maintaining servers on the net but that doesn't seem to be taken seriously as experience and I can understand why. I just keep learning stuff on my own (Linux, networking related stuff, etc.) and adding to my knowledge base and keep looking for a position that fits my qualifications. For right now I just keep on applying for positions and hope that something turns up.
The temp to permanent market is strong and networking will get you somewhere. Other than that, that's it in Chicago. I'm working hard in a position that sucks for sub-standard pay. My degree is Materials Science/Engineering from Michigan State. I spend a lot of time programming and maintaining an Access database and I hate it with a passion.
I was 2A636 in the USAF =) My commander wanted me to cross-train to 2E251 once he discovered I was a closeted computer geek, but they were requiring more enlistment time and I wanted to finish school (which I did).
;)
I have a consulting job that I am not terribly happy with, but the good news is that I'm getting plenty of hits on Monster if I feel like jumping ship. I live in Boston. I have a pretty big range of computer skills.
Oh, and I have this minor problem with the word "orientated". It's "oriented"
What a lamer.
An AC post like this without any substantiation at all.
Even as a troll it is lame.
Oh well, my tech job situation is quite nice here in Dallas with a contract as a firmware design engineer for 6 months to permanent at $45/hr. and my only complaint is that I've got to try to comprehend Jenglish every day.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I would like to add something I forgot to mention.
As a consultant here, I am sort of expected to work long hours. It's the whole "salaried slavery" thing that seems to be happening everywhere.
When I was in the military, after your 8 hour shift was up, someone came in to replace you if you were in the middle of something. I had no idea what a blessing an 8 hour workday was until I left!! And for not too much less pay, either.
SO my point is, I seemed to have a lot more time for hiking, beach, skiing, partying, exercising, etc. etc... (I also lived in California which perhaps helped all of that, but still). Take that into account! I have had health problems already due to too much stress and lack of exercise.
It sounds to me that maybe companies are not complaining about a lack of available labor, they are complaining about the lack of CHEAP labor to compete with low wages overseas. Thus the desire for the "imports" and the difficulty of highly experienced native techies in finding work.
Currently hooked on AMP
I have been working in IT for the last 10 years with experience as a net admin and unix sysadmin. I have experience with HTML, XML, SGML, PERL and C. I have wired networks and built servers from the ground up. I can fix just about anything.
And, I can't find an IT job in Tampa that isn't tech support at $10.00/hr.
It seems everyone wants 5- 10 years experience in their exact set up, and advanced degrees. I was told at a job interview that I was competing for a $30K/yr job against people with MSCS degrees.
I am working at a factory to make ends meet while trying to either hire on in an appropriate position or get my own company going.
We even have a glut of computer service startups. I have seen places cut their hourly rate in half to try to keep customers.
I don't know what I am going to do, but I may end up leaving the IT field completely. It is getting to be not worth the effort anymore.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
All everyone says anymore is, "i can't find a job", "the market is flooded", blah blah blah. The entire US market isn't what it used to be, there's no more, find a company, and work for them for 40 years, then retire. Hell, in the computer field, your lucky if you find a company to work for for more than 4 years, which we all know and employers all know. But even knowing this, everyone keeps applying for jobs like they'll be committed to that company for the rest of their lives. Who wants that? The employer doesn't want that, that means they'll have to pay a bunch of benifits. The employee doesn't really want that either, they know that the company will continue to look out for its own intrest instead of treating him like a part of the family. Yet everyone still sells themselves for this job which hasn't been around for over 20 years.
In the current market, if you're not ready to make money for yourself, you'll never be able to leverage any company into giving you work (why would anyone want to employee you, if you don't even want to employee yourself?). Now, if you treat yourself as you're own company, go out make business contacts, and actually sell your services, not yourself to other companies, then you'll have the advantage of never being out of work.
Now I know this can be hard to do when you're already out of work, and you may be screwed now and never get another job in the industry but, if you do happen to land some work, don't blow it by making the right contacts and preparing to put business into your own hands once you end up getting fired or laid off (and don't think you wont).
I read a great book on this about a year ago call Free Agent Nation. There's nothing in there that I'm sure everyone hasn't noticed already, but it really puts today's market into perspective... something i think everyone in the computer industry needs (at least the first few chapters, after that it kinda trails off onto some unintersting subjects).
At the University of Houston, H1-Bs are used to hire the person specified by a faculty or staff member who knows exactly whom they wish to hire. Magically that person always get the job. In most cases the person hired is, not surprisingly, a friend or former colleague of the referring faculty or staff member.
- Accountant, 27K (Monster says entry level is 38K)
- Database Manager, 37K (Monster says entry level is 45K)
- Sys Admin, 42K (Monster says 60K)
I could go on and on. The fact is that there ARE bodyshops that pay their techies too little (even if they charge the company they contract with top dollar). These bodyshops are usually headquartered in other countries, where the labor laws are lax. They take advantage of US immigration laws, and ALL techies, domestic and foreign, are screwed over.If you are making a good wage on an H1B, great, but there alot of your countrymen who are not faring as well as you are.
And there are Americans who are being displaced by the misuse of this visa category.
These are facts.
Not just tech jobs, but jobs in general. For tech jobs I don't seem to meet whatever highly specialized requirements companies are looking for (which changes with each company). For non-tech, I am overqualified, too old, or too much of a risk to leave for a tech job.
It's not for a lack of trying. And I know others in the same situation.
Since they are not citizens, they should be taxed at a higher rate for the privilege of working here. The employers would have to pay them higher wages to compensate for the higher tax bracket, thus leveling the playing field for US citizens competing for the same job. This would increase the tax base in the US, still allow employers to hire the highest quality candidates, and force the employers to pay for this "top talent" appropriately.
--"I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it." Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still(1955)
I just got an offer for a co-op at a company I imagine most slashdotters would jump at, or at least those who are 22. For those who aren't in the know, it's when you take a semester off, with the encouragement of your school, and work in industry. They can pay you more than you've ever made in any long term job, but less than they'd pay a true full-time hire, and it's a fairly safe bet you're not going to need a lot of the benefits their average permanent employee needs. You're not there for very long, but since you've just been in school, you pick up the training faster. Ultimately, they get more minions for their expert non-managers, and a good, low-pressure preview of how you'd be as an employee when you get out, and many people do end up working for the companies they co-op with.
Of course, most of you aren't in school. Sucks to be you. Have you thought about a professional master's program? I'm hearing that the mid-career students are doing well with prospects, and in many cases getting promotions and raises at the companies they're currently with, just to keep them around.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
It all depends on what job you're trying to fill or get. Some areas of tech are flooded with competent people, such as java programming and web development, so you don't have much luck looking for those jobs. DBAs, on the other hand, are very hard to come by at any skill level and anyone who can get Oracle certifications is guaranteed a high-paying job in just about any civilzed nation on earth.
Experience is also a big issue in many areas. Companies are still loathe to hire inexperienced or even mid-level sysadmins, but if you have real senior enterprise sysadmin experience you'll do well in just about any area with a few big shops. Just about any sort of senior programmer is also in demand, but if you have fewer than five years of real experience most employers don't give a damn.
So it really just depends on what you can do and how long you've been doing it.
If you're entry-level, Q/A is your best angle to get into a programming job right now.
I think you're right. We need some demographics of slashdot posters/readers.
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence throughout this thread, and some severe cases in this post.
Most of the people complaining seem to be in possesion of some sort of grunt level Sysadmin/CS qualification. I haven't seen too many EE/Physics/Math types complaining, they have more diverse skill sets. Most can program and troubleshoot/maintain their own network.
What the market needs is some sort of cross-linking (or evolution if you prefer) of skill sets, people with creativity and multidisciplined education.
I guess this comes from my salt shaker view that most of the complaint postings of lost jobs come from people who had a nice paying "watch the conveyor belt/unix box" job, but lost it and then did not learn anything beyond the latest cisco cert. Face the fact that the sysadmin job became more commonplace and now it's not really that hard to be a sysadmin - business majors now can do this with an MIS degree, and they know economics, marketing, and how to play the corporate ladder, in addition to your skills. The complainers just had first-mover advantage, most of which is now gone. The real world is sink or swim.
Anyway, keep learning, learn how to swim, and don't limit yourself to just computer certs, but read a chemistry book, psychology, business law, math or finance or something. It's a big world, broaden your view, find a new interest that will lead to a job that you love. There's more to life than computer maintenance, realize that.
I apologize if I incited some flames, but I have to get back to work.
Analyze with a lick of salt.
'know, if he were a code monkey, it wouldn't bother me in the least--but he is a journalist, first and foremost.
/. editors, in response to a question, flatly rejected characterising themselves as journalists, and so laughed at the idea that they should learn standard journalistic craft skills. I'm sure some geek, somewhere, has it on DV. :) It's not that he despised journalism, he just didn't think slashdot was a news organization.
Y'know, I remember at Linuxworld in NYC in, oh, 2000 or 2001, when one of the
Let the 'geek' editors be what they really are--reporters
But they're not reporters, except on rare occasion. Reporting means going out and doing original research and interviews, not processing reports generated by other people.
Slashdot is not a news organization, it's a news digest, in the same way that the Utne Reader, however good it may be, is not Newsweek.
What slashdot needs is a good copyeditor, and a better search engine that can let the editors spot dupes easier.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
Too many huzzlers in the field, the market could bear them while it was exploding .. .. noone is hiring huzzlers anymore.. ..
Now ? Techies are still in demand, but they gotta have the skills
at one point we had 150 applications for one job offereing, j2ee, ejb's, rup etc. Not *that* high standards, but every single one fell short and a few way too overqualified.
Solution was to get an consultant on a 'perm' basis
>But without a job paying *at least* $120k, I
>wouldn't even be able to rent a place for my
>family of 3, much less own a house.
a family of 3 can't rent on SF Penisula unless they get 120K???? Give me a break
I'm afraid your lifestyle needs a SERIOUS adjustment. FYI, I pay under 2K/month for a 3BR apartment right there in Silicon Valley and that's an expensive neigborhood (Cupertino, one of the best school districts) in a very good apartment complex)... This amounts to what? 23K a year?
A family of 3 should be able to have their ends meet at around 70K/year easily....
After reading many of the top comments, it's clear that many companies are abusing the visa system.
Why can rich executives still get away with abusive and illegal activities?
"Oh, and garcia? Attitudes like yours are why so many American women are looking outside of America for men. And thanks for that."
So are a lot of men.
I encourage others to post examples of H1-B abuse.
Army:
BCT: 9 weeks (13 now I hear) learn about muscles that you never knew existed.
AIT: Go to Georgia, learn really basic crap about computers by rote memorization, not a whole lot you can actually apply
1st Duty station: Get placed in a job where I'm the only one who is qualified to do what I do. THE computer person for the company. I am the helpdesk for about 120 personnel, a good dozen of which have horrible English since they hire techs from the local populace, spread out over 5 sites. I'm also responsible for keeping these systems patched, free of spy/adware, keep the users trained, ordering new equipment, requesting IP addresses, circuits, whatever else my guys need to do their jobs from the appropriate people in other companies. And put in trouble calls for the warranty guys to come out and fix hardware issues when an actual part breaks.
On top of that are the usual details: CQ, duty driver, post police, laundry room cleanup, leaf-picking-up of barracks lawn... sucking up to VIPs that come visit... And some occasionally cool details, like running the computer that controls what is seen during briefings during a field exercise. Video walls are neato.
The only thing I use a buffer for anymore is getting the ground in grime out of the floor. It doesn't have to get waxed. I make damn sure only the smokers pick up cigarette butts - I aint touching anything anyone stuck in their mouth.
Mind you, all of the 1st duty station stuff has just been my 1st year. Yay me.
Part of the problem is that the recruiters don't know enough to be able to recognize transferrable experience.
They just look for the keywords. Any experience you have that isn't one of their keywords is ignored. You might have a lot of experience in something that is related to or very similar to what they're looking for, but if it's not the right word, they won't consider it.
For example, I suspect that many recruiters will consider C++ and Java to be interchangable as forms of object-oriented programming language experience. But if you have Objective-C or Smalltalk experience, they can't evaluate its significance, so they ignore it.
If you apply for a Java job, and you have 10 years' real-world experience with Smalltalk and 2 years of Java, the recruiter will ignore your Smalltalk experience and rank you with someone 2 years out of college.
(Actually, they'll rank you even lower, because you're older and will expect more money.)
I suspect this is a big factor in keeping people from finding work they're suited for.
Plenty of tech jobs available right now in the greater D/FW metroplex area. I'm with a city govt and we just got thru interviewing for a windows desktop support entry level position. The quality of candidates was fairly poor, they were all very green and quite unexperienced. Granted, we were not offering the greatest of salaries... city govts our size generally always have lower pay scale than private industry, but benefits are very good. Still, mid 30's is not totally shabby starting salary for a entry-level windows support grunt. Maybe also because we require drug tests and criminal background checks that scares away the more talented and experienced candidates. We got quite a few applicatnts who were fresh out of college with bachelors degrees and with shiny new MCSE certs, but who could not even tell us stuff like what's the difference between PC-133 vintage SDRAM and PC-3200 DDR ram, nor the order of precedence for evaluating what trumps what between share-level permissions and NTFS filesystem ACLs, and what the purpose was of the default gateway address in tcp/ip networking configs. These candidates expected to get 50K/yr right out of school with no job experience, and little practical skills other than knowing how to load a game onto the Dell their parents bought them.
I was laid off from Compaq, along with my entire team, when the word of the HP / Compaq merger came out and I had to do a bunch of short-term jobs while being mostly unemployed for nearly a year. I took a 6 month contract in San Antonio that I had to relocate for, at my own expense, and they just offered me to go full time making nearly $55K/year less than what I was making at my contract rate so I had to decline. I heard through full time employees that they stated in an all hands meeting that they were going to try and pick up contractors at rock bottom prices due to the state of the IT market. They have extended my contract, open ended, but I expect to get a call any day.
Lucky for me I used the money from the 7 months I have been on this contract to become debt free so it opens up my options such as going back to school and pursuing a masters. Heck I might stay in school for as long as it takes for the market to improve.
I have a ton of great experience but there are a lot of people looking for jobs so job searching is very competitive. I suggest if you have a job try hanging on to it. If you want to go the military route then go Air Force that way you won't see combat. I might look at this as an option but am too old for enlistment.
Please feel free to take a look at my resume at http://www.nickpowers.info (html, MS Word, and text versions available there) and pass it along to anyone you think might be interested. I am willing to relocate anywhere for the right position.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Since managers lie when they tell staff, "Dont worry, no ones going to get the can" yet they have memos from the top that say otherwise.... (we know how sneaky those managers are)
:)
So LIE!!!
Adjust the resume to say, "You left coz of impeding doom in the company, and 3 weeks later it got killed"
Second, make up some stuff if you have good friends that have high positions and make fake contract jobs in your resume. Do X website for small shop, or anything.
Failing that, screw the main industry and work for criminal underworlds securing their networks, find some mafias that will hire for cash, tax free
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Dot Bombies are 120% done for over here. I have to say that I'm actually quite happy with that, since I don't have to compete with complete Schmocks anymore. Now when I say I'm good at IT stuff, people actually believe me because I ought to be if I'm still in business. Employment in the field is slowly picking up, but the economy is probably in for a serious downhill ride next year here in germany, so the detension in the IT Jobs market may be just a drop in the bucket.
One thing that has me alerted is that Linux/OSS will reach critical mass here any time soon and OSS people are rare and looked for at the moment. Which is just what I predicted and why I started my little business.
For me things look fair. Flying under the radar, always close to going broke, but no need to hassle with assholes who think they know better than I just because they had the millions to burn a few years ago. A new market for socially capable Linux/OSS experts up ahead and a nice little group of early adopters who are willing to listen to what I have to say and gladly pay for my services. I wouldn't say that I can complain.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yeah, you can laugh all you want. But being a union worker, I get paid more money than I did working on a computer, and the benefits are all there. Yeah, it smells kind of bad and shit, but who cares. It's easy money. Then, I go home and work out my complex investing problems using Mathematica and I make more money by investing in all kinds of instruments. It works pretty well.
... if you would not say such bullshit.
I want to get my work done and leave, and take great pride on my work ant the success of my company.
So what would you do?
Knowing the Pointy Hairedness going on out there I am pretty sure most managers would act as you just described when dealing with an employee that has got his priorities right and that knows what is fair (I mean, an employee-employer reletionship is a commercial transaction, why is that employers always expect complete commitment but will make redundant their "valuable" people at the first sign of less than forecasted quarterly earnings?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... but people are not paid like if they were burger flippers....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Microsoft, Micron and whoever else sponsored that ad need to put down the bong and back away slowly.
I've been mostly out of work for almost 3 years now (I have "work", but I'm what most people would call "underemployed") since I got laid off from my last job (which filed chapter 7 shortly after it laid me and all my co-workers off, then failed to give us our severance pay or other promised bonuses for staying on during the non-liquidation bankruptcy (chapter 13 isn't it?)).
I was, at the time, living in the Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond area of Washington state and I still don't see any kind of response to job applications. Back in 2000 when I was looking for a new job it was vastly different-- I'd put my resume on some job sites (e.g. - Monster.com, etc) and I'd get 2-3 calls a day. I don't get any cold calls now in response to my resume, and what few responses I do get to job apps don't usually even lead to an interview (because they hired someone before me, usually).
More H1-B visas? Maybe when there's no Americans to fill the jobs. And no, a shortage of C# programmers (when you have a flood of C/C++ programmers that could be retrained fairly easily) does not count to me. That they want someone who knows 8 specific technologies (and lists them as "required") tells me they're trying to flood the statistics to make it look like there's a shortage of workers here in the U.S.
Oddly enough, I imagine the politicians will cave and up the number of H1-B's. Though I suppose the alternative is worse-- if they don't up the number of H1-B's then the companies will just outsource the jobs entirely.. lose-lose all around.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
That being said, I have had a look at some of the applicants, and I have to tell you, maybe it's the 9 years of previous retail experience talking, but some of the guys who apply for jobs... need polishing.
The first is attitude. I am not talking about, "I demand the following..." type of people, I am talking about grumpy, bitter people who look at our industry standard salaries and make comments about how they used to make TWICE that for HALF the work... They don't exactly come out and say that, but it comes out in other comments, like, "My previous job was for Verizon until they decided to outsource all our groups to India... leaving me out in the cold!" Yeah, sorry about that, but your negative attitude doesn't look so hot in front of the other execs, okay? And don't be afraid to admit you don't know something, because honesty is rare and appreciated.
Then we have those who... need someone with style to look them over before they go out for an interview. I haven't had a guy with a hygiene problem or anything, but when you get people who wear olive green dress shirts obviously 2 sizes too small, a non-matching tie, and jeans... again, the execs. You could be the most skilled UNIX Guru since Eric Raymond, but when some HR screener who doesn't even know what a UNIX is or does, they are going to pass. Trim that beard, get a flattering haircut, and don't slouch. Go to a nice men's store, and ask someone there to dress you for an interview in this decade.
Again, I know, it's unfair to be judged by appearance and personality, but it's no longer a techie's market. Good looks and attitude can really make or break an interview.
If I have to choose between two people who have the same skillset, I will always choose the guy or gal with a better personality and polish. Sometimes even if they don't know as much, because I'd rather teach someone a few things rather than deal with someone I don't feel comfortable with in an enclosed pod.
When I was looking for a job in IT stuff a little while back I was VERY nervous because everyone said "IT in America is dying! Everyone is being laid off! RUN FOR THE HILLS!"
Guess what? They called me. Before I was even hired. And I was hired almost immediately. Now I'm at the same company and we're interviewing. Everyone is CLUELESS. Granted, we're in the midwest, but come on! We have been looking for 10 months and I'm the only person we've found that's not a complete boob. I've personally interviewed people with masters degrees in CS that CANNOT explain the difference between stack and heap. I've interviewed people who have been in the "IT business" for years and have "experience" who don't know what the fuck the difference between and INNER and OUTER join is. FFS!
If you work hard... if you're smart... you WILL find a good position. In my, admittedly limited, experience there is an over abundance of worthless programmers/IT people out there and THAT's where most of this "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES/JOBS!!!" panic mentality is coming from.
As a retired programmer (IBM), I can attest that companies do not hire H-1B personnel because they cannot find qualified personnel to fill the positions. I watched folks training their replacements (H-1B and the like), then when the replacements were trained, the original personnel were released from their jobs (canned). If H-1B folks are supposed to make the prevailing wage, why would a company hire one, two, or three of them to replace an existing employee? The plain truth is that the H-1B employees (or their contract agencies) are being paid a far lower rate (violating the H-1B rules, I might add) than the folks they are replacing. I haven't seen any companies prosecuted for these infractions... Hmmmmmmmm. to replace
I was a systems admin for about 5 years and was laid off twice.
So rather than trying to find another job and having to deal with the corporate bureaucracies again, and risk being laid off again, I went and got a real estate brokers license.
I'm wondering if anyone has been laid off from the IT industry and switched careers also. I love real estate,I make my own hours, I don't have a boss breathing down my neck and my income is directly related to how hard I work.
I haven't worked less than 45 hours a week in over 2 years!! Hell, recently I've been billing 40+ hours a week - that doesn't include the time I spend "helping" my boss understand what the client actually wants or even what it is I'm trying to explain to him.
Well, I've been out of a job for a year now, and resorted to working for a lawn service. I have skills, I keep current, I've tried basically everything except a headhunter, and yet... zip. I see and answer ads for jobs in the paper and online, sometimes I get a response, mostly not. And I see the same jobs advertised over and over, for months, and yet oddly I fit most of their requirements (most notably the 5 years of Win2K experience, I kid you not) but never even recieved a call.
So I see no boom. Anyone in the Phily area need a network/systems engineer?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that C++ is headed the way of Cobol. I've been told by recruiters that it is just beginning to be difficult to find people to fill all of the jobs, that the employer/employee balance is tipping the other way.
I'm absolutely certain that, if I had a stronger background in Java or C# (like any appreciable experience), that I'd have my pick of jobs right now. I get inquiries on a nearly weekly basis regarding open Java positions. As it stands, 13 years of C/C++ software engineering building everything from VoIP applications to multi-tiered high performance statistical servers just doesn't cut the cake in terms of finding work these days.
I think that employer's days of demanding someone with experience in C# that goes back to its release date are numbered, but the same is also true about the job prospects of a C++ programmer in Colorado.
I remember that during the tech boom, anyone who could talk the talk could get a job for long enough to rake in some money, add it to his resume, and get out of it before his employer figured out how pathetic that person's skill level was. As a person who is morally incapable of adding something to my resume unless I'm confidently competent, I don't relish the return of those days either.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
The recovery is where it should be, in rural America. The era of grouping like ants in inhumanely scaled cities that strip away personal identity is over. But, at the same time, the tech industry seems to be loaded with people who haven't found a life yet and don't understand the benefit of a rural existence. Also, tech people educated with work ethics and high productivity attitudes compatible with rural America are few and far between. I know of companies in this area that are looking for numbers of staff equal to 1/3 or more of their current total. Yet finding real engineers ready to do work and take responsibility for knowing how instead of moan about not having processes is almost impossible.
where a "diploma challenged" geek like me can get a kick ass job with a massive hosting company: UNIX II Support Engineer. the shit we pull off day to day is nothing short of miraculous
fwiw ICANN sUx0rZ.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
First off, it's 8:15 pm and OU still sucks. (couldn't resist)
Second off, welcome to IBM.
Things are indeed getting better. I doubt you would have written the same post 6 months ago. IBM (also my new company) is hiring a shitload of people these days. They've opened the floodgates, and the rest of the industry is begining to follow its lead.
I'm in the Boston area and there's a definate increase in local jobs in the past 3-6 months. Not a huge difference but the deathly silence has ended. I've even got recruiters calling and emailing me and had offers of $500 referral bonus and stuff like that.
This is from the perspective of random stuff coming across my desk. I'm not personally in the market for a job and haven't been since 1999.
I'm going anonymous because I know people who would know my nick, who shouldn't know I'm moving yet. :)
I'm originally from the middle of BFE Indiana. I too wanted to "get the hell out of there." However, after living on the east coast for 10 years, I'm done. Cost of living is through the roof, even in a crappy economy. For the price of a nice 4 bedroom house in a quiet community in Indiana, I couldn't buy a condo here.
That, and I'm tried of it. I want a change. I've been doing fairly well with independent consulting, and doing it all virtually, so I plan on keeping that up. Meanwhile, my wife is going to start working too, so that I can pursue the things that I want to do.
It CAN work. I'm interested in making sure it DOES work. And all the recent talk about tech parks and reinvesting and retraining in tech in Indiana might just pay off. Face it, if the cost of living is lower than the rest of the country, then it might give America a place to "in source the outsourcing."
Employers pay a fee to the US Govt. to apply for H1-B. Those funds are earmarked for the Labor Department to promote advanced education programs for already-working US college grads.
Most of the training is provided by state universities, but you're allowed to propose how you want the training done, e.g., fly in an expert for a couple of weeks to tutor your team.
This falls under the WIA program that's managed by county govt. (or regional multi-county offices) in most states. Matching funds from your company can usually be provided just by continuing to pay salary during the training period.
I sat in on a one-year review of this program in DC last fall. Near as I could tell, there's plenty of dough to spread around. Btw, in case you're wondering if I'm a spook, don't worry. Just a data cruncher who does fund accounting.
What the Dept. of Labor wants out of this is to be able to keep the political pressure off to raise the H1B quota by delivering the tech skills to US workers.
I'd take them up on this myself, 'cept I didn't graduate...
Now I am working my ass of stuffing christmas trees in bailers fo $7 an hour and I am happy to even have THAT. I have to file for economic hardship to get my student loans defered again.
Might come as a shock to you, but not all H1B workers are here for IT jobs. There are other techologies out there as well!
I have got to agree with you about the scarcity of jobs here in Seattle. There is a definite recession in technical ( and engineer) positions out here, experienced or not.
As for me, I was drawn to the beautiful area, thinking jobs would be plentiful. Left Virginia Tech July, '04, with my Computer Engreering, BS, looking for a HW job. Only to find scores of head hunters and experienced SW postings.
I have even been to the job fairs. The P-I wouldn't even let recent graduates into the aerospace + engineering room. Besides, most of those I spoke with directed me to a website, so much for social-networking.
So where the he11 are you suppose to get this covetted experience.....?
I could not agree more. The school I work for totally takes advantage of the job market and blames the poor economy for witholding raises while "higher ups" get title changes with pay raises. If I new how popular IT was going to be be 7 years ago, I would have chosen a career in real estate. Techies are now willing to work for a free lunch forcing wages lower and lower for everyone else.
Around here the majority of the work is for the goverment (low pay) or for the telecommunications companies. ATT, Verizon, Lucent, etc.. they are all in the toilet and not hiring. Most of the
work is either in North NJ or New York.. both of which are a really lousey commute. Whats left? consulting but they arent paying what they used to and everything is going up and up in price every year.
I agree. Part of the problem with companies is they feel they are entitled to hire a low level job and assign them high level work. Job titles mean NOTHING. "Perform all other duties as assigned" My boss at my last job liked to force us (Dba's etc..everyone) to move boxes around just to show you he could and you'd better not complain if you wanted your job. That is also why they hire from outside the country. Domination. The foreigners that come in do what they are told and yes sir everyone. Companies don't want any free thinkers.
Large companies crying about the lack of H1's for worker are really missing the concept of free markets.
Further, read this treatise outline to understand fully the nature and different ramifications in tech..
Dammit, ask about Green Cards and as long as the U. S. is selective enough, we will have a better economy and your job is just fine and your salary is more stable on firmer ground instead of being undercut with servant style employment.
Can you think of anything better!
Dan
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
Most of the people I know, no longer work for US companies. There is big demand for IT pro's in Germany, but you have to pass a language/culture test to get the work visa.
SE Asia is another excellent place to find work. Some are desperate enough to fly you over if they think you're good enough. Wages are about 70% of US expected rates, but the fact that in Thailand the prices are so low, it more then makes up for it.
Most work can be done virtually, and people can work and live on the opposite side of the world, if you are willing to work late at night and wee hours (time zone changes).
Not sure about tax laws, but if you keep your money in the country where your job is, you might get some tax break, especially if you work in countries with no taxes.
I pay under 2K/month for a 3BR apartment right there in Silicon Valley
Which is about 80% overpriced. Funny how rent is always 400% more than house payment.
A family of 3 should be able to have their ends meet at around 70K/year easily....
Yeah. Whatever.
70K is 45K after taxes. Now do the math. Oops. Homeless in five months. Thanks for playing.
* Get an internship -- it helps you figure out what you do and don't want to do, and gets you experience working with various types of teams and in various fields.
Work for free since you are worthless anyway. You don't deserve a living wage until your mid-30s at which time you will be fired for being too old. Thanks for stopping by.
I will not attempt to dispute your first two and a half assertions as you make fair points: "The fact is that there ARE bodyshops that pay their techies too little (even if they charge the company they contract with top dollar). "
"These bodyshops are usually headquartered in other countries, where the labor laws are lax. "
"They take advantage of US immigration laws,"
-Right here is the voice of fear-
and ALL techies, domestic and foreign, are screwed over.
You attached a "kitchen sink" fallacy right there by throwing in ALL (your caps). You feel your salary threatened by H1B, that much is clear. It is good to see that you are fighting to keep your piece of the American pie. You know that there are a lot of hungry eyes looking on that would be happy with just a crust.
I've been applying all over Seattle and Portland (and Austin, and Phoenix, and Tucson, and...). I got an interview in Seattle. I went. I did OK, but was so nervous I botched some stuff. Nevertheless, the interviewer said I was what they were looking for. He had a couple of other interviews to do, so he said he'd contact me a couple of days later.
He didn't.
I e-mailed him. A couple of days later (yeah, it was over a weekend), he said, "Oh! Sorry! It'll be another couple of days." Did I hear from him within that time?
No. I didn't.
So, I wrote him and told him how unprofessional he was. I told him I'd still take the gig, but that his actions gave me a sense of caution. He never wrote me back.
Make a form letter to send: "Got your resume. We'll call you by XX/XX/XXXX if we'd like to interview. Thanks!" It's simple! And it's professional. Just remember: you're looking for an employee - they're looking for their next meal. Treat them as human beings.
So, I took a train to Portland for an interview and landed a little contract job. Sweet. But I still would have liked that other gig, for various reasons.
Oh well. Their loss is my gain. I'd rather be in Portland anyway.
D.A.
http://craigslist.org/
http://dice.com/
Work for free since you are worthless anyway. You don't deserve a living wage until your mid-30s at which time you will be fired for being too old. Thanks for stopping by.
Hey -- I dunno about his, but MY most recent internship paid north of US$25 per hour + overtime!
Hi,
Why can't we have US workers working with the same salaries that are rumoured to be given to H1B workers ?
The US workers can be a little more careful in:
1. drink less beer
2. divorce less often
3. buy cars less often
The employers would get to reduce their expenses
and still retain valuable and experienced employees.
Or the US employers have some other issues with the employees, that I am not able to see.
thanks
J.
We don't need to worry about Microsoft and their counterparts. Their lobbyists do that for them; rather successfully too. Even as I speak, Congress is voting on this.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
I am sorry for taking the job of anyone who reads this post. Let me tell you one thing about the life of an H1. The company not only profits from the lower pay that they can offer you but also you cannot move to another job because your visa is tied to the company. I am not complaining about it. I signed up for it knowing all the disadvantages of the program. I do have an issue with the way the USA handles immigration though. In several cases, it is not good for us foreigners and for you Americans. The whole system needs an overhaul. I know a scientist in Harvard who is directing the research of a possible cure for cancer and everytime I meet him his is talking about the lawyers and danmed visas. He is on a J2 so it is going to be really tough for him to stay even though his presence here may be beneficial to the country. In the meantime, he is not investing here all his potential. The same for us H1. We have to be ready to leave the country at the drop of a dime if we loose our jobs so why invest here? In the meantime, the government is distributing 50,000 green cards every year via the diversity lottery and the minimum requirement is High School education. I don't know.... I feel that a lot of good people are heading to Canada or Australia because they have better immigration programs.
In the tech sales area, it's a famine, for certain. A recent series of ads put out by several of the major Chicago tech recruiting firms showed only about a dozen ads in the last 3 months and the requirements were in the range of a MINIMUM of an MBA, 6 to 10 years experience, verifiable sales figures (not just W-2's either) and, in one instance an MSCE on top of all the rest of this. And these were from recruiters! You know, the folks who put out come-on ads and try to recruit you to work for them recruiting people for "real" jobs!" In other words, no jobs, aren't going to BE any jobs, start looking to make a career change if you are an unemployed tech sales rep (unless you want to work at an Apple store for $9/hour part time with no set minimum hours).
I agree hehe, sometimes while reading the comments I begin to wonder if the only difference between /. and collegehumor.com is the lack of babe postings here.
$45K/yr take-home, $23K/yr rent. You do the math. Not homeless at all. $22K/yr to live on. Sucky, but not homeless.
>Which is about 80% overpriced.
Based on what?
There's a difference between "I wish it cost this much" and overpriced. If it were overpriced, there would be some kind of indicator (like other rents in the area for similar places) to justify that claim.
Summary:
1) Hiring strangers is a pain in the ass for employers.
2) Being unemployed makes you look unemployable.
Having a job means you meet people who might become your hiring network, and you don't look like damaged goods to a prospective employer.
I wrote a longer version of this here.
I have been recruiting for almost a year now. We spend an obscene amount of money and time one this. I review ~200 resumes a month, conduct ~10-20 phone interviews a month and do 2 or 3 in person interviews a month. We barely manage to hire one person a month. Nearly everyone we offer takes the job, but there just aren't many good people around. At least half of the people we have hired are on H1 visas. We simply hire the best people we can and if we could not hire people on H1Bs then we would have to significantly lower our standards.
/.
HELP WANTED! Reno, NV. Talented Software Engineers. www.pc-doctor.com. Mention
I am the Director of Engineering for a small (50 employees, 25 developers) software company in Reno, NV. Reno is not the Silicon Valley, but it is nice affordable place to live. We pay very well, have amazing benefits and do a lot of very cool software development.
More anecdotes. The numbers of resumes we get per month has been falling stedally over the past year even though we continue to post and report on Monster, Dice and in papers. A friend of mine in the Sacramento area got 2 job offers and 5 interview (which he had to cancel because he got a job so fast) in 2 weeks. This was in September. If you cannot get a job in software development look inward.
The company pays competitive wages for the Midwest region, he said.
Doesn't the very fact that he can't fill the position mean he is *not* offering a competitive wage?
The Method Companies who wish to import H-1B workers are required to file a Labor Condition Application (LCA) with the Department of Labor showing that they are, in fact, paying the H-1B workers according to the law. Keep in mind is that the law only allows the Department of Labor to ensure that the LCA form is filled out correctly. The Department of Labor does not validate the prevailing wage. Attached below is an LCA filed by HCL for some of the H-1B replacements at BofA/Exult. The salary for the H-1B workers is $39,184, about half of what the people they replaced made. So how can HCL claim they are paying the prevailing wage? The first step used here in the wage depression process is to call the H-1B workers generic "systems analysts". So instead of using the higher-than-average wage for the specialized skills of Oracle and PeopleSoft, the employer uses the wage for systems analysts as a whole. The LCA says that the employer used OES (The Bureau of Labor Statistics "Occupational Employment Survey") to get the prevailing wage. OES put the mean salary for "systems analysts" in Charlotte, NC at $60,150, a figure significantly greater than what the H-1B workers were paid. The Department of Labor provides an additional service to assist employers to depress wages in their on-line LCA system. There, employers can get a prevailing wage for Level 1 ("Beginning level employees") workers and Level 2 ("Fully competent employees") workers, which in this example are $41,246 and $69,618 respectively. So now the employer claims the H-1B workers are "Beginning level employees" and uses the lower wage as the prevailing wage. The law only requires H-1B workers to be paid within 95% of the prevailing wage. The employer takes 95% of $41,246 and comes up with a wage of $39,184. Thus, the company is paying the H-1B workers about half of what the workers they replaced made. Even if the law is not being violated, note that HCL is paying these supposedly "highly-skilled" and "best and brightest" employees the lowest wage it can possibly get away with, right down to the last dollar.
You can support a family of 3 ( after rent ) on $22k a year!?! Wow, I'm impressed!! Do you send your kid to school? Do you dress him when you do?!?
Actually, I used my "so I can save to buy a house" income level in my original post, you could _get by_ on $80-90k on the peninsula, but... shouldn't a professional also be able to save and ( eventually, maybe out-of-area ) buy real estate? Or is that just a sad, old dream now??
So, here is a question. Would you recommend to a college freshman to major in computer science? Is there a future for this person here at home? Would your expect that 4 years from now this person would be able support themselves in the tech field?
After about 4 months of unemployment, my findings were this:
:)
My Definition: "Real Job" - One with a decent W-2 salary that will make my house payment and pay my bills. Also, should include good benefits including insurance and 401-k matching.
Dallas: Some real jobs, but hardly any in the city, most real jobs were in the outlying areas. By some I meant 2-5 new postings from real companies (not headhunters) on sites like monster, dice, and hotjobs (combined) a week.
Houston: Hardly ANY real jobs. I did find a few short-term contracts, $20-30/hour 1099 contracts with no benefits and some slave labor jobs at about half my previous salary. Of course the slave labor was not much more than a "reboot the server" job, but probably until they find out that you can do more than that.
San Antonio: Hardly any jobs at all, although all that I found were actually real jobs, not chump junk. Most were with government contractors or civil service jobs with the USAF. I actually ended up here with a great real job. Only problem is that I still own a house in Houston that I can't sell. That sucks. I did not consider Austin because it sucks for other reasons. That's a personal opinion though, and should not be used in any scientific study.
I was experienced AND available up until recently- I could have used the work and it'd probably have kept me from filing for Chapter 13 through all of this.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas