Slashdot Mirror
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 ..."
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.
Ok.
*scratches ass*
*does it*
*gets paid then laid*
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Can't speak for the US, but in the UK we're ideal for economic downturns.
We don't cost holiday, pension, bonuses or sick pay, we don't have loads of employment law red tape and we can be brought in for specific projects and timeframes and tend to come with much shorter notice periods.
Plus the public sector loves us.
We'll see a freeze in rates, maybe even a reduction, but if anything economic downturns signal a bad time for those in permie jobs.
Bob the permie coder might be on half my hourly rate, but if he's only got three months work in a year he's going to cost you more than twice as much as bringing me in for 3 months.
Until someone with the correct technical understanding can actually go to their manager and (with a straight face) say, "I'll use cloud computing to solve this problem because that'll save us money and time" there's no real reason to expect anyone to get it.
Successful blue-sky projects are mostly run by strong companies in good economic times. So, not so likely right now. Someone who's playing with their own money could well take advantage of this lack of understanding or vision or whatever, but that's not really a bad thing. Unless you're stuck in cubicle land and still want to play with the latest, coolest buzzwords.
cogito ergo dubito
If you are a seasoned IT professional or somebody who is starting out, things are looking bright for you as long as you have what it takes to be an engineer. I welcome any sort of clean up or a downturn in IT economy because most of the time it means that the bottom of the IT-wannabes will be laid off. This will benefit everybody in the long run.
First of all, engineering, unlike being a pizza delivery person, requires some knowledge and a certain set of analytical skills that one is born with. You can train people to deliver pizzas and punch cards, but it is hard to train people to resolve problems or come up with elaborate solutions. While books and schools may help, you either get it or not from the very beginning. Downturn in IT will mean that people who were there just for the sake of it, will probably lose their jobs or move on. This is great for the folks who -- while being good peole -- are simply not suited for jobs in the field of information technology.
While we all cry about off-shore development labs and cheap labor around the world, we are forgetting one thing: Americans are cheap now. Due to the falling dollar it makes less sense to run costly operations overseas. With China, India and Russia on the rise, people in those countries may see little in jobs and environments that make them work for the global companies (aka capitalist pigs).I would not be too concerned about wages if I were you. In fact, bad conditions in the U.S. sent many people who are currently employed via visas overseasas. Several friends of mine have moved back to their home countries alrady because "There is nothing to do in the U.S." This happens because while U.S. economy may go down, the world's economy is still expanding and there are plenty of things that have to be done in Moscow, Mumbai and Beijing. Good fore those who go back home and establish companies there. Good for the rest of us who are here.
And finally the loss of IT jobs should not be seen as the judgement day. I found that many people with engineering and business skills are more than capable of starting their own businesses and running their own shows. If you do not belong to the first group of people -- the ones who were not doing anything productive -- and you're not on a visa -- and you cannot go back home to start something new -- use the settlement to start something new. Many large companies are losing business because of the bad decisions that were made across the corporate ladder. A bust is only a bust if you think this way. In reality, it is a great opportunity for improvement for those of us who would like to grab the bull by its horns.
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.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
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.
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).
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
For most industries other than software, IT is like utility, telecom, logistics, etc. I had no idea I was getting into janitorial business when I went into this field. Well, beats accounting - we also go to jail less frequently. :-)
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
Don't extrapolate the US's crappy economy to countries you know nothing about, thanks. If you're avoiding the IT field in Canada, you're avoiding a field where, in parts of the country, there are more jobs than people and IT companies are very desperate to hire someone, anyone, with remotely relevant experience.
Our economy is just fine, thanks.
...is that they only asked Fortune 1000 CIOs. Where do the majority of IT people work? I'll give you a hint: it ain't in F1000 organizations. I'm an independent contractor working in the small business sector. My clients have 50, maybe 100 total employees, $1-$10 million in revenue and no programmers on staff. Yet they need, or want, custom systems built. I have to turn away business and I see no end in sight.