Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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;
Here in NYC, there are definately more/better jobs out there. But I'm still waiting for the pay levels to recover.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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)."
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.
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.
I can complie a Linux kernal, but don't know how to write a device driver. Willing to learn. Can you post the URL to the opening? I think many companies are unwilling to train employees (cost of doing business?). Also, companies are looking to narrowly in skills. They expect the whole to be filled completely. That's why they rely on interns and college grads. Interns are paid poorly to train up, then they get hired as a grad with the skills learned as an intern. Do companies ask potential hires if they are willing to take a pay cut while learning the required skills?
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.
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.
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!
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
I probably won't sleep for days, now.
Yeah, right.
Jobs are hard to find while I'm reading Slashdot.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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
Try state government- you may have to commute to Salem, but agencies like ODOT are hiring, and can't afford the people with the pretty paperwork (I'm currently working on going permanent into a position of Remedy Developer- I've used Remedy but have never programmed for it in my life, but people with Remedy Certs get paid twice as much in private industry as the State is willing to pay, and to top it off, they're willing to provide training).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
I can see how you might think this is a complete sentence, but on the other hand.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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!
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
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
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"
I think that you are deluded. I've seen the hiring process degrade to the point where the manager gives a list of 10 allegedly required certifications to the HR manager, and all they do is use this as a check list to throw resumes away. It'll be rare that anyone will have the exact list deemed as required, so the next step is to start looking for foreign workers to fill the position.
End result, corporations demand more H1B visas, while American IT workers are flipping burgers.
Consideration for good candidates my ass! You may not have even been made aware of the good candidates that applied as they might have missed even one of those allegedly required certifications.
Until you are interviewing FOR good candidate and NOT a list of certifications will you even meet good candidates.
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.
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.
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.
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'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
Workers of the world unite! You need to revolt and kill every employer. Then you'll be in better shape.
Right?
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AETC = Air Education Training Command, one of the eight major commands of the U.S. Air Force, the others being:
STRATCOM = Strategic Command, or the old SAC
ACC = Air Combat Command
AFSPC = Space Command
AFSOC = Air Force Special Operations Command
AMC = Air Mobility Command
PACAF = U.S. Pacific Air Force
USAFE = U.S. Air Forces Europe
and of course, the 11th Wing, which is in DC.
OIF = Operation Iraqi Freedom
OEF = Operation Enduring Freedom
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
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.
It used to be that employers were interviewing candidates trying to assess their potential. The employer typically ended up teaching the new employee the specifics of what they need to know to do the work. It used to be that working someplace was a relationship between employer and employee.
But alas, those days have passed, and now it's merely
"what can you do for me right now?"
"I hired you to do a specific job, don't get any ideas beyond that"
"I'm not interested in your career growth"
"I'll dump you ass on the street when it suits me"
"Next year your job will be off shored anyway"
"When your job is off shored, I expect you to train your replacements"
In your specific case, I'd say that candidates would have to know either C++ or C#, but both would be extra (with a little patients knowledge of one will transfer to the other), and COM, as ASP.NET is built on top of COM, and if you have the fundamentals, you can easily learn the particulars of ASP.NET fairly quickly. Design skills are required, and translate good discipline into the how the code is done.
Do you phrase your requirements in this fashion? No. You are casting too narrow a net, and I think that you've already indicated that in your response.
By specifying your requirements in such narrow specifics, and / or combination of specifics, and your unwillingness to have a little patience and allow someone to 'come up to speed' on the particulars, you really are making it more difficult for yourself finding suitable candidates.
Lastly, I can't believe that you can't find worthwhile candidates given the amount of layoffs and firing in the IT sector. I recently read in the trades that unemployment in the IT sector was still running around 60%. With that amount of people floating around out there, there has to be someone that wants to work for you, and that you'd not hesitate to invest a little bit into.
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.
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.
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!)
Let me be the first one, then to say I like my job, and I am in the IT "sector." The only two people that I know that work in your sector do nothing but complain about their jobs, too. SO..looks like everyone complains from all over the place. It's not just limited to IT people. On a more serious note....why aren't garbage men complaining?!
Again, you're not paying enough. Only money isn't the only form of "pay".
Why don't you offer a permanent position? Are you a contractor? Why not? Maybe because you'd prefer more stability? Then why are you asking other people to do this?
How about telecommuting? Driver work isn't exactly something that needs to be done on-site, unless you're working on a mainframe or something. Send the device to the guy and have him work on it at home. Or are you too obsessed with being able to pop in his cubicle with no warning and see what he's doing, or make sure he's wearing clothes you approve of?
Interesting work? So your work isn't interesting? Maybe you need to offer more money if you're trying to get people to do a boring job.
This is the problem: employers want to dictate all the terms of employment, and refuse to take anything less (like someone that might need training). Then they sit around, wondering why they can't find anyone.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
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