IT Jobs To Drop In 2009

ruphus13 writes "A new Goldman Sachs IT report recently released states that IT jobs will be dramatically reduced in 2009, starting with contract and offshore developers. From the article: 'Sharp reductions likely in contract staff, professional services and hardware, and almost no investment in cloud computing.' The article goes on to say 'The CIOs indicated that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1 and No. 2 priorities. Following these two are cost-cutting, application integration, and data center consolidation. At the bottom of the list of IT priorities are grid computing, open-source software, content management and cloud computing (called on-demand/utility computing in the survey) — less than 2% of the respondents said cloud computing was a priority.' Postulating a 'pointy haired boss' problem, an analyst goes on to say, '[Grid computing, Open Source and Cloud computing] require a technical understanding to get to their importance. I don't think C-level executives and managers have that understanding.' But they do control the paychecks ..."

Comments

Duh.

[Lemmy Caution]

A lot of IT is an expense without adequate ROI. Huge IT support staffs were a consequence of poor products, badly implemented systems, a glut of unnecessary purchases, etc. While some IT functions will always need on-site support, better-designed systems and software (including middleware) should make it possible to reduce IT staffing costs.

Think of all the other functions that have disappeared over the past century: typing pools, filing clerks, huge mail rooms. The armies of help desk types will go the same way.

Re:Duh.

[Vancorps]

One of the age old problems is the assumption that IT for most companies is simply capital expenditure. ROI is hard to measure for IT for most companies.

Picture a DR situation where an office is lost to fire. If the company didn't invest in adequate protection then that company is now often out of business losing entire client databases or even contracts. Now proper DR would not only save all your data so you can keep doing business but potentially you might not even have downtime as is the case with banks. This is of course federally mandated but the company I work for is a private entity and practices the same philosophy.

Then of course comes the automation, once a task is automated it is no longer reflected in ROI even though the system is still in place years later supporting it.

Course I'm one guy managing over 40 servers across five sites so I don't foresee a reduction in IT staffing anytime soon for this company.

You're right though, tight times means you spend the extra time to finish your deployments instead of investing in new projects. This means your environment becomes more cohesive and the new stuff later will snap in easier since everything will be well documented by then.

Consider the downtime a nice roadblock allowing you to audit everything you currently have to make sure you are using everything efficiently.

Virtualization for the win, we'll utilize our hardware more effectively while increasing functionality.

bad article

[jgarra23]

I didn't see any reasons backing up these postulations. Especially the downturn in contractors. Is this yet another case of these companies reporting something just so they can report something?

Re:bad article

[Vancorps]

Yeah, our revenue stream was less than expected for 2008 so they decided to start slashing budgets. One would think a 16% reduction in revenue would result in a 16% reduction in budget but I actually had mine cut by more than 50% and IT isn't alone here.

Executives like to use the times are tough argument to carve out more money for themselves thus making times tougher. It's hard for me to believe cash flow is low when private planes and houseboats are being bought instead of the owner reinvesting back into the company like he had already done. It's his right to do so of course since it is his money. Of course I know the ole times are tough argument is simply BS.

Re:bad article

[aeoo]

Well said.

I think "times are tough" means "times are tough for you, stupid worthless little peons, but not for me -- I'm the fat cat who passes through everything to the customers and to the employees".

Of course I don't think any job is worthless. Even simple jobs need to be done and done well. The fact that our corporate kitchen often stinks after it's been mopped doesn't contribute anything to productivity, to put it mildly. Every job is important and should be respected. It's too bad execs do not understand this well these days.

Also, a decent company exec tightens his own belt when the times are tough and leads by example. Decent company execs, where the fuck are you? Do you exist anymore? I sure hope so.

PHB gets it

[larry bagina]

Grid computing, Open Source and Cloud computing] require a technical understanding to get to their importance. I don't think C-level executives and managers have that understanding.

In my country, we have a saying: "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" In this case, the milk is open source software and the cow is the developer.

Pund-IT?

[Red Flayer]

FTA:

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT Inc., said that such hot-button technologies as cloud computing deployments may slow down. "The message here is CIOs are looking primarily to tested, well-understood technologies that can result in savings or increased business efficiencies whose support can be argued from a financial point of view," he said.

I'm sorry, but it's hard to take your message seriously when your company name is Pund-IT. From the name, I think you'd have been better off with Pun-dit. Or Pwnd-IT, which is pretty much what a lot of consultants are going to be feeling like next year.

At any rate, anyone who has been around business through a down-cycle or two would know that this is common sense. New programs, new ways of doing things, are saved for when the budget Gods are feeling generous with surpluses, not when eveyone is tightening their belts. There are, of course, exceptions to this... but anyone who thought that, in general, discretionary spending would increase over the next year really needs to have their head examined.

Re:Pund-IT?

[metlin]

Well, as someone who is in consulting, we tend to use the term consultant to define someone who comes in, provides a solution, and goes out (e.g. strategy consulting, management consulting etc). Typically, the purchasers involve C-level execs (or other top execs) who want to define a strategy (short term or long term, business, finance or tech etc), oversee an M&A deal etc.

An example of a top tier consulting firm would be McKinsey.

Contractors are people who are hired to actually do the job (e.g. a coder who is brought in to code) rather than consult. A tech consultant in my experience would assist the architects with defining the technology strategy and choosing the right vendors, SOWs, SLAs etc, but would not be part of the implementation process. A PMO consultant would assist with the program management process, but not necessarily manage the program per se. A marketing segmentation consultant would analyze the right market segments and tell you what markets to pursue and how, but not actually do it for you.

If the economy is doing badly, people need consultants to optimize the organization, help them with the layoffs, assist them with restructuring etc. Also, bad economic conditions are perfect conditions for companies to swallow their competition and other smaller companies, so more M&A deals and an increased demand for more sales etc.

Just my two cents!

Re:I doubt..

[Foofoobar]

Well having to have had to manage a team in the Phillipines, miscommunications, missed deadlines, inability to follow instructions, redundant programming, lack of teamwork or cooperation, poor scheduling and more makes the low pay only part of the cost when the overall expense of the project eventually becomes 5-10 times what it needed to be had we hired local developers.

Outsourcing only pays off for VERY well managed and VERY well organized 3rd party organizations that you can trust 100% and as a rule, they don't exist because they don't exist ANYWHERE. You need to have an onsite presence much like IBM and Microsoft has in order for offshoring to really payoff. Otherwise you are not saving anything and may even be paying more... regardless of what some pitchman may tell you.

Oh no!

[TheDarkener]

Someone in the media said I.T. jobs are going to drop next year? They *MUST* be able to tell the future! =p

On a serious note, I'm glad I.T. jobs are going to decrease. Hopefully it will align with I.T. jobs demanding more expertise and more actual work getting done, instead of having a "cloud" (or "grid", if you will) of Windows-only support drones reading scripts to you over the phone while you try to get support for a purchased product.

Truck driving school here I come!

[sgant]

Seriously....I look in the paper and it's filled with ads for drivers. That and health care professionals. And as I would rather stick a pencil in my eye than work in health care, I figure my misanthropic ways would be better shifted toward driving.

I'm 46 and have to basically totally switch careers as there are just aren't any jobs in my profession anymore. It's over saturated. I hardly ever see an ad for IT or anything related in my area. As scary as it sounds, changing directions even this far into life may not be a bad idea.

Even with fuel prices sky-high, trucking will be with us for a while as lets face it....everything within your eyesight right now reading these words was all delivered or transported some way via a truck (unless you're looking out your window at a tree or something).

Re:Truck driving school here I come!

[gad_zuki!]

There are ads for these positions because:

1.They have a lot of turnover.

2. Newspaper ads attract certain industries. For you, you should be looking at dice, careerbuilder, etc.

Employers dont really expect IT people to be looking at dead tree medium for jobs.

Re:bullshit. they will drop maybe in u.s.

[unity100]

no, i.t. is not the same as other fields.

if you are a mechanical engineer, you may not be able to find any jobs. you cant lower your expectations and go doing plumbing.

but in i.t. we have the ability to downgrade our expectations. a programmer can downgrade expectations and work during a recession coding small contract jobs until economy gets back on track, for example. even by only himself/herself. or a network engineer/ server admin can find small jobs enough to make a living in web hosting industry in the meantime. actually many of them can turn into full time jobs. a civil engineer cant do that.

Re:Integration

[russotto]

If there was ever a semi-mindless task that brings home the bacon, integration is it.

Make this work with that and that work with this.

You've been lucky. After the "*does it*", the usual response from the ones who want it done is "But I wanted this, this, and that". Where "this, this, and that" are requirements which were never brought up before and which are completely beyond the capabilities of the products you were integrating.

Re:I guess it's time to jump ship

[JerkBoB]

Well, I think I should prepare to jump the IT ship pretty soon

...

Question is: Am I wrong?

Answer is: Depends.

What do you do? Are you a helpdesk monkey? A Winderz admin? Are you competent?

If you're coasting, then you're likely to be RIFed. Deadweight gets trimmed. If you're deadweight, you'd do well to jump somewhere before the cuts -- looks better in interviews ("I felt that I wasn't being challenged enough, and began to look for somewhere else to <strike>coast</strike> excel.").

If you're competent, then you'll be fine. You might have to move to where the jobs are, if they dry up around you.

Another important question is: Are you happy in IT? Or are you just there for the money? If you're just there for the money, you're likely to be deadweight, and you might as well jump to whatever the current fad is, or, possibly to something that you like doing.

I was in IT for a decade. I excelled, didn't want to become a PHB just yet, and looked elsewhere. Took a few years, but I found a way to leverage my skills and experience as a sysad into a development career. I've thought about med school, but I'm just too used to a six-figure income to think about going back to poverty for 8+ years.

Re:I doubt..

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

that offshore jobs will go first. They're cheaper than local jobs.

Only in the short term. What's happening now (based on my anecdotal evidence, which is all one really needs here on /.) is that a lot of large companies are realizing this. Difficulty in communications, poor timing (What, you need that fix now? Sorry, you'll have to wait until tomorrow morning), and some of the shoddiest work you've ever seen are all contributing factors.

On the surface ,it's a very appealing model: you write up some requirements, communciate them to your offshore team and wow! magic! they return to you a finished product.

But here's what they don't tell you in the brochures (again, based on my experience managing and working with offshore vendors): a) if you don't spell out every single technical detail - almost literally to the point of writing the software yourself -- , you can't rely on them to do it right. b) you can't rely on them to communicate to you the things that they need clarification on, unless you are ready to spend a lot of time asking for t. c) the code you get back wll be virtually unmaintainable, with no thought given to refactoring, common functionality, or future mainitenance d) most of the development seems to be done by people with low experience (just out of the schools, which don't seem to teach anything relevant to the real world) and little skill e) if they have issues, do not expect to learn about them unless you constant ask for them. DO expect them to sit idle and not take any initiative if an issue occurs.

So all of this goes to say: it looks too good to be true, because it is. The old saying is that you get what you pay for -- and it still holds true. And after many years of budget overruns and software that doesn't do what it's supposed to do, companies are finally beginning to realize that.

Re:Another empty pundit pontificating

[postbigbang]

I understand your well-reasoned reply.

I have to counter with the fact that the pump up in oil prices is artificial, and was started when the money ran out of the mortgage and hedge fund markets. This money needs to make money, and is always looking for a bull market. It found oil and other commodities.

While we'll also agree that oil consumption is overall a bad thing, and has done great damage to the environment, it is an artificial crisis, and bears no resemblance to supply and demand other than the limitations imposed on oil refinery capacity in the US. The limited capacity has the effect of amplifying the current trend, and every oil/political news sparrow fart of an RSS alert drives the price up. That's because there's a huge lump of money that needs to be making money as long as it is perceived that we'll continue to buy. No, it's not natural supply and demand. It's a squeeze job.

Look at what happened when GB the elder left office. Oil dropped in 1993 dramatically, to under $1/gal in most places. At the end of his term, it shot up, but nothing like what happened in late 2001. It dipped, then followed war. When the war in Iraq was artificially over, it dropped again as the mortgage and hedge funds were pumped (after all, there were no dot-coms to fund with exaggerated exuberance).

That money started leaving in 2006 because of all of the negative signs and that's when oil started to rise in price. Any old explosion in Nigeria or bellowing from a Venezuelan blow-hard president-for-life would cause a nice little bump up. Sneeze in the currency market? Bump. Look at the sneezes, follow the money.

You've been seduced by the pimps of the oil companies and the US press, which plays along like a lapdog with their huge benefactors, just as Washington, Inc., does.

But my sig represents not only the economy of peace, also the morality of it. I long for the day of great energy that doesn't pollute, but also a world that plans for the resources of the many that don't get to eat at night, or sleep under a roof, or get to know the luxuries of what we in the west call 'the basics'.

Re:Cheer up, the outlook is great!

[$criptah]

God knows that I would love to live in a society where lay offs and cheap labor and two week notices are the things of the past. However, our world is not based on what is right. If you want to survive, you must learn how to play the game. Go read The World is Flat and perhaps you'll get a thing or two.

I have been in very tough positions in my life and those hard situations taught me something really important: Learn how to adapt and how to survive. Nobody, except for you, is interested in your survival. Corporations and governments would love to have employees that are barely smart enough to do their jobs while keeping their mouths shut. They feed on the paycheck mentality and we, suckers, are going for it. A cycle of clean up in any industry is a good thing because every time it happens, it teaches us a valuable lesson.

I am too sorry for families that go through financial losses due to lay offs. So the first thing that you should do is to ensure that your family can survive and live on one income. This automatically translates into living within your means and having a well stocked savings account. I made a pact with my wife that we will never work in the same industry just for that freaking reason. I know it sounds cruel, but what the hell am I supposed to do? Unionize? Complain about Indians stealing my work? Kill all H1B visa employees? Encourage gov't subsidies of IT shops?

Once I realized that organic chemistry sucked, I decided not to get involved into anything related to chemistry, biology, medicine etc. I would be a great fucking disaster as a doctor or anybody who is even remotely responsible for well being of anything that lives and breathes. Also, I have monkeying around with grease and you won't find me in any garage fixing cars for living. I mean, I could do that for living, but I would suck and it would be totally unfair to other people (I am saying that because I had enough connections to land a cushy job in the field that is not of an interest to me). Unfortunately, there are still many people who got IT jobs just because. These byproducts of on-line universities and strong family connections tend to fuck things up and I honestly feel no problem if some of them lose their jobs while IT experiences downturn. Why? Because people who a knowledgeable and competent will always find jobs. This is not related only to IT. In every industry there is a good fraction of people who tend to spend most of time talking on the phone and doing things besides what the get paid for. How is losing those guys a problem? This so-called downturn mentioned by GS is a red flag to everybody (GS is good at creating panic) that perhaps it is time to review career plans, get some education and think about the future. So rock on :)

Re:Duh. I'll answer, directly my man (on degrees)

[story645]

E.G.#1-> I remember telling a bunch of network techs, or rather, first asking them:

"Do you know how to find the midpoint of an array, without knowing the total # of elements"

& not a one of them could...

We had this kid in my research lab who was a fabulous hacker and pretty solid scripter, but didn't know what a for loop was. One of the best programmers I know is self taught (which is the way a lot of people got into the field)). On the flip side, I've got classmates who are so lost on fundamentals that they don't know what an object is (seriously, one professor gives that question on exams and it kills students.)

I've seen far too many people get through their degrees through a combination of cheating, relying on partners, and cutting and pasting code to really trust it. One of the worst programmers I know has a 4.0; he writes hacks that work well enough, but that I wouldn't trust anywhere near production code (mostly 'cause I've seen it fail miserably in production code 'cause he didn't comprehend real time debugging.)

Re:I'll never understand this argument...

[rsilvergun]

It's not, really. But I'm too weak a person to make a positive difference in the world, or even try for that matter. I'm too beat down by day to day life. These luxuries aren't what make me happy, they're what keep me from coming unglued. If it's pathetic that I need such worthless junk to face the next day, well that's because I'm a looser.

Carly Fiori OTOH, isn't beat down by life. Her slightest whim is translated into reality to the limits of human civilization. She's secure, doesn't constantly worry about her job going away, her medical care being pulled. Doesn't ever wonder if there will come a time when she can't eat.

You'd think people like that would have the simple human decency to accept a few incredibly minor limitations on their desires in exchange for massive benefits to millions and millions. You'd think that, and you'd be wrong.