Slashdot Mirror
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?
I suppose "slightly less doom" in the world is reason to celebrate too.
"Ahh.. but he's only stabbing me in *ONE* eye with an icepick now!"
meh
Shouldn't the headline read "Tech Workers in Lower lack of Demand"?
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
"Some businesses may in fact regret some of the job cuts they made in recent years, which, in retrospect, may have been too deep. Recent surveys suggest that employers are having an increasingly difficult time finding information technology workers."
t ake-me-back phone call from my ex-manager?
So can I be expecting a late night, drunken I'm-so-sorry-I-broke-up-with-you-will-you-please-
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
FTFA, "Some businesses may in fact regret some of the job cuts they made in recent years, which, in retrospect, may have been too deep. Recent surveys suggest that employers are having an increasingly difficult time finding information technology (IT) workers."
I was laid off in the fall of 2004 because it was determined that the company could outsource our System Admins and Database Admins to a domestic contractor and co-locate to save a couple bucks in the long run. (You can convince any executive to do anything, BTW, if you have a good PowerPoint ROI chart, laser pointer, and $800 suit).
Long story short, the fine print in the contract stated that only 2 major systems would be outsourced (which amounted to about 40% of the total workload), and after everyone was laid off, the contractor says, "Now... You know that we're not going to handle email, NAS, web services, and other misc systems, correct?"
Needless to say, they're now locked into a 5 year multi-million dollar contract, AND have hired back new system admins to replace the layoffs. I'm not bitter... But it still makes me smile anyway... =)
I wonder if they count people getting cut for reading slashdot instead of doing their job?
Oh... you mean slashdot isn't my job?
::looks around::
So just what am I supposed to do in front of this computer all day then?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I realize thinking is not a pre-requisit to posting. However, realize that job cuts are a fact of life. Period. Even in the best of markets, some company is cutting jobs.
And even in the worst markets, some company somewhere is hiring.
Basically, this means that the hole in the bottom of the bucket is smaller. And, if you follow other news, you will realize that hiring has picked up.
So, yes, a decrease in job cuts is good news. Your market may vary.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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...
Customers care about results. If they guy of the boat can't speak english, can't interpret requirements, and doesn't know the clients business it won't matter that he works for $2 per hour.
Really? Why don't come and peddle that crap to my current employer? They obviously didn't hear about your theory before embarking on their current slapdash offshoring initiative.
We are talking here about sending our entire IT dept to a company which doesn't even have PC's for their employees. My numbskull employer agreed to buy them all laptops (at approx 1.7 times average market price).
Currently we are doing knowledge transfer via conference calls. The lines and the accents are so difficult for both sides to understand that we may as well be talking in different languages for the amount of knowledge that is being transferred.
Each time I mention the problems that are going to come our way as a result of this ridiculous approach I am told that I cannot see the "big picture" from my lowly "techie perspective" and these guys are really cheap. I wonder why.
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.