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Tech Workers in Higher Demand
mjdroner writes "CNN has a story on an employment consulting firm report showing job cuts in the tech sector are down 40 percent." From the article: "Despite the inevitable job-cutting that typically follows mergers, the job market picture for the nation's tech workers is definitely improving. Many job seekers in high-demand fields such as storage systems administration and information security are probably finding themselves in the driver's seat when it comes to negotiating employment terms"
So this "good news" is that people are getting laid off at a slightly lower rate?
"job cuts in the tech sector are down 40 percent." Great statistic! Now what on earth does it mean for the actual amount of jobs? And job seekers?
This sort of statistic sound like it might be due to the increase in growth not slowing down as fast...
In other words; hard, useless, figures.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
lets just hope its still that way when I get out of college in 5 or so years
:) )
(That's right, I'm in highschool - hold you flames please
A relentless stream of "IT is great" news... yet a lot of folks I know are struggling (I'm doing okay but worry if I lost my current position).
So I just don't believe this news and I think there is some kind of agenda behind it. Perhaps the big IT companies want to head things off because they finally see a big crunch is coming and they are going to need skilled IT people again.
I would love to see things turn good again in this field but I'm not seeing it at the ground level yet (10+ years experience-- in the South).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How does 'decrease in job cuts' equal 'higher demand for IT workers'? That's like saying I've gone from spending £10,000 more than I earn a month to spending only £5,000 more a month so obviously my savings are getting better.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Job cuts are down by 40% but that still means jobs were cut which still means that there is less employment.
Our fantastic contributors are not the only people that are this stupid. The same trick is used to manipulate national debt news. There is a diffierence between debt and deficit. When the deficit decreases then the government crows about having control of debt. Not so. Deficit is the amount that the debt grows by. Therefore even if the deficit reduces, the debt is still increasing.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's called "building the police state". No thanks. I will not participate in ending the Jefersonian dream. I will not make my own prison. I will not build machines to imprison my nation.
Seeing a reduction in the number of people fired in no way translates to "tech workers" being in "hot demand".
I guess my follow-up question is this:
What's the current trend in hiring?
That's great if cuts have slowed, but I'd like to know if that means the net number of jobs is increasing
Contrary to the OP's headline (and to the original article's headline, surprisingly), the article's text show that there is no "Higher Demand" for workers - indeed there is lower demand. And the projection is that the demand for IT workers will decline even further. There is no projection as to when the decline will level out (cease).
lol. you've never even seen a college CS curriculum, have you? i'm doubting if you even went to a US college if you expect people to come out of them with usable job skills in IT, much less those particular skillsets. here's all the business sense i have (and which you seem to forget) compressed into five words:
"fast, good, cheap: pick 2".
if you want employees that are "good" and "cheap" from a technical perspective, you're going to have to train them on soft skills, which doesn't happen overnight. sorry. logic's a bitch...
Of course, I pay for it, too.
I'm an oldschool technie who realized he'd better figure out this business stuff, fast. We do custom embedded linux work, board-level up, MCUs, etc etc. We're booked. Solid. Yet I get stuff done with low overhead.
What did I do?
I walk the walk. I know good people are easily 100x more productive than average. I know some good people from all my days in the trenches (hi guys). When I want things done, I package it up, and send it off with a big cheque. I don't care where, when, or how.. we work online. I live in the middle of nowhere, handy an airport. That's all that's required to do business.
If one of the guys I work with is doing 10x the work - I'll actually give him 10x the pay!
It doesn't work for all business, but it is working, and I am growing clients and profit.
Something to think about if you "can't get people to relocate" - my advice - make teleconf and virtual offices work for you. Hire the best people available no matter where they are. Reap the rewards.
..don't panic
Every so often, when the tech sector's job market starts to look good for you, the potential laborer, tech businesses start releasing statistics. These statistics say "OMGZ! There's a labor shortage! We need more programmers and IT people! We simply can't get enough of them!".
This isn't exactly the truth. Demand for tech people has increased, but not that drastically. However, by screaming "labor shortage" everytime the demand for tech jobs grows, businesses convince a whole lot of people to go into the field. Then, in 4 or 5 years, there's a huge supply of tech laborers. This drives down the cost of labor (read: YOUR SALARY) for tech businesses. People realize the jobs aren't really there, drop out of the market, and then the businesses start screaming "labor shortage" again.
So the moral of the story is: Study what you like. Don't just pick the latest hot job.
Individual circumstances vary, but going straight to grad school often isn't cheaper in the long run. You're giving up 2 years of earnings (plus raises) and you have to pay for school yourself.
If you're only going as far as a Master's, consider working and having your employer pay for grad school. It's not easy, and it will take longer to finish your degree. But the real-life work experience will give you a new perspective towards your studies that full-time students will miss out on.
Don't procrastinate starting grad school after starting work though. Most people who "take a semester off" never get started. And voice of experience here, try especially hard to finish your degree before having kids.
The parent was dead on about quitting work and paying for grad school with retirement savings. This almost never pays off in the long run.
...the emphasis on "skill sets" and not on whether you can think and learn.
"Does your skill set include J2EE? No, just Java?"
Click. Phone goes dead, you never hear from that recruiter again.
"Does your skill set include XYZ?"
I'm so sick of this nonsense. The problem, as I see it, is several-fold:
- Recruiters who want the immediate "sell" to get their finder's fee: they only want that person with experience in the exact buzzword they see in front of them
- Employers who don't want to give an intelligent, experienced, agile person the couple of months to learn the new technology flavor-of-the-month
- Employers who think coders are people who simply bang on the keyboard and, if they could train a cat to do the same, they would do so. They don't understand that it takes either education or experience (and likely both) to create code that is efficient, thread-safe, maintainable, etc. Cats can't do this--intelligent, experienced, educated software developers can.
- Employers who have an immediate crisis (hmm...how did they let that happen to begin with?) and want someone they can immediately drop into the meat grinder. When you hear "off to a running start" from one of these, beware.
- Recruiters and employers who don't understant that computer science concepts span languages and technologies and that someone who has grasped them in one implementation of computer science (read: technology) can apply them in another if only given a chance to learn the details (language, API, etc.)
Non-developers are too focused on buzzwords and not on software. What makes software good software goes way beyond particular languages or API's. There are far more workers who can satisfy employers' needs; for some reason they simply won't use them.
"I know this isn't the hub of technology, but when you graduate #2 from Penn State with a 4.0, have 8 years of experience, glowing references, and still have an impossible time finding employment something is wrong."
So we have 3 factors here:
1) School
2) Experience
3) Location
4) Person
That's not quite right, but follow along.
1) School - no problem. Major university. Well respected. Check! Just be careful you don't talk about that GPA any more. With 8 years of experience, your GPA is officially irrelevant. Pretend like you got a 2.0 GPA when you go into an interview.
2) Experience - 8 years is a sweet spot. You're not senior yet, you're mid-level, so you're cheap. BUT. What is that experience in? So on a scale of 1-5, you're likely a "3" in this department.
3) Location - if Pittsburgh doesn't have jobs, then move. D.C. has tons of jobs and its 1/2 a day's car ride away.
4) Person - this is intertwined with your experience, but if you choose to work doing Eiffel development on Linux for a weather forcasting consultantcy, it means (a) you have no experience in things that matter (b) you make poor choices in your career. Also, you may come across as a bit of an idiot in an interview. Finally, the fact that you won't move tells me you're not serious about a job.
I went to Penn State and I got a degree in C.S. (this was in the late 70's so perhaps things have changed), so use that logic training. Where is the problem likely to be. Almost certainly the answer is staring you in the mirror. No offense. You're the problem. And I mean that in a constructive way in that I hope you get a better job than me and make a million dollars. But as long as you sit in Pittsburgh with no job, whining about the lack of tech jobs, then I predict you will never get a job and you will stay in your parent's basement.
Same to you, and you're welcome.
I've recently been hired by one of these firms and I hate the notion that we are helping "build a police state" or whatever military is evil catch phrase you can come up with. I am a liberal democrat opposed to Bush, wire taping, the war in iraq, etc. The fact of the matter is defense is a requirement for any nation, especially one the size of the US and with our influence in world politics. I am glad to be doing a job that protects our country, and I am pleased that someone like myself, who supports peace and diplomacy, is doing this job (and most of my co-workers share similar political views to mine).
That's the problem is that the situation is vasly different for different people - which is part of these various trends, I figure.
For me no kids, no home, my wife in a job she'd outgrown, in a city with a meandring economy in the midwest. After I got laid off we basically decided to leave, and specifically targeted areas, companies, and industries appropriate to my skills and our needs. I had more interviews out of the state than in - and in my state I could at least interview for contracts. The employer I went with was one I hadn't even expected to be interested, and proved to be great.
So for us, it came down to staying was a bigger risk than leaving. Staying probably meant career setbacks or stagnation, and eventually being unable to leave if we wanted to, being locked into a limiting geography and set of opportunities. We also had the ability to be mobile.
But not everyone is us, and that's one thing that I find a bit chilling - I'm seeing a Mobility Gap affecting people's economic status. Both of our jobs can be done mobily, as telecommuting, etc. Both of us can move if needed, travel if needed. Not everyone else can.
Among our friends, we see similar signs - some are staying in one area bound by a home, kids, economics, or both. Others are taking their careers mobile, looking at other states and countries.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
You don't see this as part of your problem? News Flash, every company wants the perfect employee to drop out of the sky into their laps and not have to spend a penny on training. So, your choices are:
1. Compete with every company in existence for these type of people.
2. Sit back and complain.
3. Adapt, gain the ability to find diamonds in the rough, prosper.
You are using the most advanced communication tool in the history of mankind. On a forum dedicated to computer geeks. Posting about how hard it is to find workers. With just a few keystrokes you should have qualified workers raining down on you. Do you mention what IT skills you need? Do you say what state you're located? At this point, you seem to be the choke point in the system.
I'm not seeing how you can claim you're paying your people well. You pay minimum wage, plus a bonus of up to 80%. That's 9.25 an hour? They must work some serious overtime to get that high 5 figures.
What colleges teach real consulting skills, business sense and responsibility? There aren't any. That's the stuff you learn when out in the business world. College is the degree that gives proof that you can be taught. After that, the businesses have to go through the applicants, hire the one with the qualities it wants, and then teach them the business.
Is that such a horrible thing? Why do you refuse to teach people how to work in your company? Do you even have a mere internship program? If people don't know certain basic concepts, do you tell them to learn them and then come back, or do you have them blacklisted forever?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
employees.
why am i not surprised *you* have a tough time finding talent? you transfer business risks onto your employees and you shelter your income by taking dividends instead of wages.
business owners are supposed ot have higher risk and reward.
you offload your risk onto minimum wage employees and *still* want 100% control of the reward. that's incredibly selfish. i'd have to wonder what other processes you have in mind to shift risk toward me and reward towards you that you don't have to legally tell me about.
most people don't feel like working for people who would do that to others. the folks that show up at your shop obviously don't know better... hence the lack of business skills.
who's going to move to your area on minimum wage and *huge* business risk without the upside of business ownership and reward?
nobody with any sense, that's who. perhaps if someone knew you and was able to trust you. but a stranger? fah-getta-boutit.
i'm sure blaming everyone else but yourself is soothing to the soul - but the problem likely won't go away anytime soon due to the reasons outlined above.
There's your problem, despite your claims to the contrary. Workers are risk-averse about their paycheck and they are guaranteed only minimum wage if they work for you!
You've got a weird salary structure - be thankful you get any applicants. Your companies growth is stunted by your stubborn refusal to "be normal". But apparently you're in denial.
It is my belief that the current aggravated state of the IT employment market is the culmination of an out-of-control train-of-consequences beginning with the employer, ending with the employee and with HR and headhunters squarely at the epicenter of it all. I've pitched more résumés into the black hole of job boards and recruiter sites (and physical walk-ins) with little or no response. Recruiters troll the job boards with non-existent jobs in order to line the filing cabinet with a base of "skilled" employees whom they will never put to work. Of course, these recruiters are kept in business by Human Resources departments who, if they were doing the jobs they were hired to do, wouldn't be relying on recruiters.
Interviewing, when the rare occasion to actually interact with flesh and blood does occur, sees little more success. How does a qualified candidate translate their experience into quantifiable skills that will help the company achieve its goals when those skills don't directly mesh with the impossibly specific matrix designed by unthinking HR drones with little to no grasp of the demands of the position for which they are screening in the first place?
The employers have done themselves no small favor in restructuring the entire state of an industry either. This idea of cross-breeding suits and propeller-heads doesn't work. A business degree is not a computer science degree and a computer science degree is not a business degree. With the exception of a few programs out there designed as "Information Technology" degrees you aren't going to find a CS graduate with an understanding of concepts of TOC and ROI any more than you are going to find an MBA with more than an elementary grasp of how to check his email and download spy-ware. The employer must undertake the responsibility of training their training CS people in business concepts (some do this) and training management in CS concepts (which is rarely done adding to the geek/administration gap in corporate culture) otherwise we fall back to the ethically questionable practice of raiding talent from the enemy camp; thus shuffling the same hand of cards back and forth rather than dealing a fresh hand.
Companies are buying into the technology venders spin and getting big eyes at the technological possibilities of the latest greatest products to come off the shelf (often in little better than an alpha state) without considering the cost of implementation and the resources required to implement said technology. Part of the cost of implementation is ensuring that the employee base is ready to implement it. Of course, the standard response is to layoff those without the implicit knowledge of the new product and hit the meat market. But the product is new and there is no talent base for it yet and in the long run it would have been cheaper to un-ass the budget to train the old IT staff as they likely have a record of adapting to technology in a fast and efficient manner (else they wouldn't be good employees). Fast forward five years: the new product is on the way out a new one has taken its place and the process begins anew along with the complaint, "There are no qualified people".
Personally, I wouldn't touch a job that offered minimum wage, with or without bonuses. I've worked with companies that have some form of "incentive" program and I've been screwed every time. Individual incentives lead to throat cutting (regardless of the industry) and so-called team incentives merely offer employers a method of penalizing the entire team for the poor performance of one or two individuals. I've seen promises of bonuses that never materialized with the employer justifying themselves with ever piss-poor lie they could produce. While I could be wrong, this also seems to suggest that sales numbers are involved. IT professionals have enough demand with temporal performance standards as it stands. Adding financial numbers to the stress levels might serve to drive them away.
Hopefully this will not be inter
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man...
.03 cents per hour labor
You have bought the capitalist line hard.
What you are ignoring is that:
1) The people you are competing against are willing to use slave labor.
2) The people you are competing against are willing to use
3) The people you are competing against are still where we were 50 years ago and are more than eager to completely destroy their lower classes with pollutionl, toxins, and mutagens.
In other words- WE ARE NOT COMPETING ON A EVEN PLAY FIELD.
i leave it to your boundless imagination as to how and why racing to the bottom against slave labor, rampant pollution, child labor, and sub-poverty wages is not a good idea.
---
Seriously man- WAKE UP.
India is an example of how this can go -reasonably- well. They have democracy- they have a middle class. Here we have hard competitors- but their wages are going up because they are valuable. As a reasonable libertarian capitalist type, I'm not particularly against Indian competition (except that they engage in blatant age discrimanation and some other things we would consider illegal but it's minor compared to other countries).
I am against businesses using this cheap labor and then keeping the prices high (often by having laws passed to prohibit reimportation of products that are identical yet 50 to 80% cheaper- re - 2.45 dvd movies in china, $4 medicine in india that we pay $80 for, etc)
In many other countries, this is not the case. In many other countries including china as a large example, we are competing with -slave labor-. Where we are not competing with slave labor, we are competing with heavily exploited people surrounded by armed guards where those who cause problems mysteriously disappear at night.
Again- china is artificially holding its currency low (estimates in the WSJ are that it would double if allowed to float freely) - how fair is that?
---
Are you in favor of a race to the bottom where we have a world with 'nobles' and 'serfs' again? Is that what you want? Because that is where we are headed. In the US it takes the form of offshoring jobs- and a select class making multi-million dollar salary's while claiming hardship and foisting thousands of people off on the rest of us to support. Corporations are built to move their costs to us and to maximize their profits.
Have you so completely bought their propaganda that you can't see how you are paying high taxes so large corporations can use cheap labor and avoid paying benefits to them? How does it feel to cover Walmart's health care bill while a few top executives get to keep the profits?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I've run my IT consulting business now for almost 20 years
I find this surprising given your comments. Sarcasm aside, let me critique your post as an independent consulting professional.
the amount of GOOD talent is dropping
I think you forgot something at the end of this sentence. What you left off was "at the price I'm willing to pay". This is the nonsense that is fueling the outsourcing hype. The talent is out there, just not working for minimum wage.
and I have no desire to train them in exchange for a high 5 figure salary
The companies that "won't be there in 10 years will" are willing to pay a high 5 figure salary AND train. Training is considered a benefit that most serious professionals look for. I'll even go as far to suppose that if you're paying minimum wage, you're not paying health care either. And who cares if the company won't be around in ten years anyway. No one expects to work for the same employer their whole life anymore.
most of my employees work at minimum wage with a large project bonus (up to 80%)
Another reason why you can't find any serious candidates. No serious professional would even entertain this type of arrangement. It's your business and it's your risk. You're asking your potential employee to take a minimum wage job with a bonus that is probably linked to factors he/she can't control. If you hire me, I do an awesome job, but the customer stiffs you, I can be pretty sure that I won't be cashing that extra check. And BTW, even with an 80% bonus, you're still paying less than $10 an hour (based on federal minimum wage of $5.15). You can make more cleaning toilets. No wonder you're relegated to hiring tools.
I have enough people looking to work for us that it isn't the pay structure that isn't helping me find good help.
I deal with a lot of recruiters. Only about 5% are even worth speaking to. Given your pay structure, you must be dealing with the 95% that waste my time.
what colleges have you recent graduates gone to that have taught you real consulting skills, business sense and responsibility?
These things aren't taught in college.
All your base are belong to us!
Not only to live in the midwest but to work there. A lot of the places here are run by (or have hiring departments filled with) people that want all of their employees to be white, straight, clean-cut christians.
Granted, I don't stand out in any of those manners *that* much (I'm Taoist but that doesn't really stand out. The facts that I am not a small guy and the long, neatly kept hair are a little hard to hide and my eyes make me look part Asian - I'm 1/4 Native American), but even I run into that mentality.
If it weren't for the insane cost of living, I'd have absolutely no problem with working in California. I've occasionally pondered Oregon and Washington, but haven't had any bites there.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I know I'm too late to the game, but:
So, your paying people $5.15 * 1.8 = $9.27/hr TOPS? I don't know about the rest of the crowd here, but that seems awfully low for an IT worker. Or are you being loose with the term 'minimum wage'?