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IT Workers Cushioned From US Economic Downturn
DontLickJesus writes "According to the AP, technology has been the least hardest hit by the U.S.'s recent economic downturn. Quote: '"Overall technology employment is up in America and the wages associated with it are up," said John McCarthy, a vice president with Forrester Research.' The article goes on to say that companies realize the worth of their [IT] staff. This paired along with a recent article regarding the value of data centers when selling a company leads one to believe that the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector."
Perhaps because during 2001-2003 they sliced back so much IT staff that they still have not finished catching up? Also many IT people went into other fields or back to school during that time, reducing the supply, meaning there is less chance of oversupply this time around.
Table-ized A.I.
IT professionals have been hit very hard and nowhere is this more evident than in Phoenix, where I live. Salaries are down again. Can you believe that help desk technicians and professionals are getting 12.00 an hour!? I could make this amount of money working as an Armored Car Guard and not work as hard. This is very sad. Don't believe this article .... I sure don't.
Spare a thought for us who don't work in IT though, we're still feeling the pinch. My company is laying off an entire 10% of the employee base over the next few months.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
The financial crisis is a strong indictment of Sarah Palin's inexperience.
How so? It was the "Experienced" washington people that drove policy to allow lending to people who otherwise would not have got such large lines of credit. You can ask Biden about that. McCain tried to warn us all about four of five years ago that the two FM's were headed for disaster but many Democrats and Republicans headed him off at the pass.
Furthermore Palin being a libertarian, would be against forcing private entities to loan money to people they otherwise would not approve on a financial basis.
We'd all be a lot better off with Palin as president where less government intervention into financial entities would be tolerated. MCCain too I guess, but I'd prefer Palin - and a vote for McCain today is a vote for a chance to put Palin in in four years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...why I feel insulated from this thing... it can't last forever. More and more of our friends are starting to have problems with credit cards, mortgages, evictions, etc. etc. And here I am still blowing $300 a week on weed and doing fine. Yes I think I will check the AC checkbox now.
Because our economy appears to be driven by bubbles after the 1970's, different recessions seem to sock different professions. Programmers got hit in the 2001-2003 poppage. This time finance people are getting smacked by bubblenomics.
We all get our turn.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't think that you're cusioned until the government bails you out with $700,000,000,000.
Sorry, I don't appreciate being forced to work for a living with unpaid overtime, while someone else gets free money.
testing out my trending skills
Unlike 2001 after the dot com bust. IT was in a shambles with job losses everywhere, no relief in site and then followed by 9/11.
The Shrub was quick to protect airline workers AND EXTEND their unemployment benefits while my benefits were expiring, money running out, certainly no new prospects with the further collapse in the market due to 9/11.
I felt great for the airline employees getting taken care of, while I prepared to move myself OUT of the IT field as a defensive measure.
I'll probably never make the same kind of money again, but I'm much happier overall, and I'll never go back to an IT based career.
Good luck to all still trying to make a living completely unappreciated - worse than plumbers but just as necessary.
There is no innocence in the eyes of an evil man with power. Referring to Judge Roy A. Scoggins 378th District Court
s/sipon/siphon/
Gasoline is not for internal use, I don't care how much corn is used.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Companies have been cutting back staff to conserve money. But the truth is they want to accomplish the same amount, if not more, of work - and that means relying more on computers to multiply the effect of what workers remain.
Furthermore when it comes down to it, companies realize the large staffs they built up to manage overseas workers are less effective than just having a few dedicated IT people on staff, or use local consulting without so much overhead. Outsourcing overseas was always a luxury item and companies are coming to realize that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ah yes, I missed the original intent of the post...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is just the start of it. It's way too early to crow.
Our end of the boat may not be taking on water yet but the ship is sinking, the brass band is playing and politicians are fighting over the deck chairs.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
That's good news for both of them!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I call bullshit on this. Most people I know who have lost their jobs have been sucking up anything making $10k less per year as it's better than nothing. Least hit, that comforting as I know at least 5 techies who are under or unemployed while everyone I know in any other "sector" is having no issues.
Hire me...
Companies are delaying/canceling IT projects all over the place. My company had a client last week, whine about needing a server upgrade, but cant do it because we actually charge for that shit. Says, if we would be willing to do the work for free, we can make it up on follow-on work next time around. We don't work for free, so his org will pound sand, or find some starving IT workers on Craiglist to do the work for Top Ramen. Fuck em. (yeah you, asshole, I KNOW you read Slashdot. Don't call me when your cheap-ass SATA-driven MOSS server goes tits up, baby.)
Nobody is willing to spend any money, which will only cost them down the road. IT requires investment in systems, people and maintenance. Skip on one, pay double for the others later.
IT is not just employees. Consultants are taking it in the shorts too.
Between about 2002 and 2006, offshoring indeed did seem to have a kind of fad mentality behind it. While I agree companies can make effective use of offshore labor, they usually picked the wrong projects or tasks to offshore.
The tasks easiest to offshore are those that take the least amount of time or questions to explain. For example, "find out why this routine is crashing when I enter 7" is easy to describe and does not require a lot of back-and-forth discussion. "Implement this based on the boss's fuzzy memo" on the other hands is going to require a lot of questions and explanation, and is thus a poor candidate for offshoring.
Table-ized A.I.
The reason IT is being the least hit is because it has been the primary target for so long. IT has been viewed as fat, as so trimmed, for so long that there is precious little left.
The "true opinion" is that all the expendable IT jobs are now outside the company.
After outsourcing and offshoring as many jobs as possible, there are few expendable positions left in companies. Many of the positions that are being cut are jobs waiting for backfill and contract jobs.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
"...the business world, while historically not fond of IT workers, is showing its true opinion of the sector." So what is it?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
not only in u.s.
its simple supply and demand. as i.t. field got established, a lot of people entered the field. hence salaries dropped.
anyone who thought whopping wages of 90s would continue, were naive.
Read radical news here
you people shouldnt have voted the party that let financial sector do anything they want, employing an unseen 'hands off' policy.
and now you pay. dont do it next time.
Read radical news here
I disagree with you.
Helpdesk has nothing to do with it, on the base. You forgot that cost of living varies drastically across the entire country.
$12/hr might be survivable in Virginia or Texas, but in Chicago people have a hard time surviving on $18-20/hr.
When the cheapest food to survive a day runs around 1-2$ (thus about 4-6$ a day foodwise) and gas runs almost 4$, trust me that 12$/hr helpdesk job will not keep people afloat, even if it was $12/hr cash.
Don't forget that employers employ people to make a profit, not a loss; thus $12/hr is probably turning about$20-50/hr profit.
Helpdesk itself varies from company to company. I know on mine some ofo the employees are borderline retarded and helpdesk has to show them anything more complex than what a mouse is.
Why pay another company? Well, ever heard of Unisys? Lets just say you pay for what you get. Those suckers can barely speak english, and about 1 in 20 of them are competent. Their managers are good IT helpdesk. The rest don't understand you, don't listen, don't know how to do their job, and good luck understanding them.
Guess how many companies offshore to unisys? Tons.
We must not allow the Treasure Secretary to receive $700 billion to spend with no oversight whatsoever. The current plan creates a gigantic moral hazard, is inflationary, rewards reckless risk-taking by CEOs, and still results in common people being foreclosed upon. We need to re-institute the Glass-Steagall act, allow highly leveraged firms to fail, insulate common people from the effects of these failing institutions, and regulate the market to prevent this catastrophe from happening again.
Manual labor manufacturing jobs are going away. I think schools should be teaching people to use technology. Instead people should be getting trained to operate the manufacturing tasked computers and robots that American tech companies will be leaders in. We need more smart people, stat!
This is the same reason why I refuse to wear safety gear at work. "Accidents only happen to the other person."
he tasks easiest to offshore are those that take the least amount of time or questions to explain. For example, "find out why this routine is crashing when I enter 7" is easy to describe and does not require a lot of back-and-forth discussion.
Ha ... if that were true, explain Comcast to me.
Nobody can explain Comcast, not even themselves :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Just because technology companies are not hit as hard by this economic downturn, that does not mean technology workers (programmers, engineers, network admins, system admins) are equivalently immune. One problem here is the Labor department is classifying things badly. When the payroll of a technology company goes up, they interpret it as benefiting technology workers. It could be they are just hiring more sales people (I've seen it done). And a huge amount of IT is done in non-technology companies, including financial companies. And even if these companies consider their data centers to be of value, the IT workers own none of it, and few of them would be considered vital employees.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The reason we're "cushioned" from the financial nonsense is because there isn't much room to go lower. Wages are crap, yet the nation is inextricably dependent on IT services. They can't pay us any less, and they can't fire us - they've already outsourced all the jobs they could.
The title may as well be "Wage slaves cushioned from US economy downturn". The only reason an IT guy gets a raise is because his supervisor's been getting too many phone calls checking references.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
...or find some starving IT workers on Craiglist to do the work for Top Ramen.
So, can you tell me who that is? Ramen noodels actually mean something to me now.
You can expect the dollar to sink to even lower levels than they are now and inflation to pick up. Tangibles might be everyone's preferred payment in the coming year.
For example, "find out why this routine is crashing when I enter 7" is easy to describe and does not require a lot of back-and-forth discussion.
I totally disagree.
It's possible that sometimes, finding the answer to why a routine crashes might be able to be determined without much discussion.
But the solution to fix the code based on the answer DOES require a lot of back and forth, and ideally experience in the codebase. In fact 99% of the time the answer to a question like that is found easily in the logs, or spending 5 minutes with a debugger.
And that is why companies do not, and cannot, use offshoring companies in the manner you describe - because while they could indeed find the answer without much input, they cannot find the SOLUTION without much more interaction - interaction that is increasingly recognized to be expensive.
Think of offshoring like SOAP, and local consulting/employees as REST, and you'll have the five year picture laid out for you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know my IT position is safer than many out there. I'm a gov't contractor and there is no shortage of work where I am. Really the only thing that can hamper myself and others like me is if Congress drastically reduces defense, justice, or other similar types of budgets which can reduce the funding available for contracts like the ones I work on. Outsourcing isn't a problem either because of required security clearances and the inability to telecommute (due to security issues) also means there isn't going to be any offices in India to teleconference with to get the latest status on code revisions.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
CRA is being trotted out in a last ditch attempt by Republicans to salvage this fucking disaster of 8 years and blame this on Democrats.
Excuse me, but who has been in control of the house and senate for the past four years?
Beyond that bit of obvious fact that has eluded you, note that I blamed both feckless Democrats AND Republicans who could have both acted long ago (or more like, never acted to start with). There were some Democrats with similar concerns as well, but since they were in power they bear more culpability in my mind for doing nothing as the crisis grew more and more obvious. One year ago Fannie Mae was a burning tower of fire for those who cared to look. Even Obama saw it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The government will literally be buying up debt. They'll take ownership of various mortgage related securities. Ok, well this means that what they get depends on what happens with a mortgage. If the person defaults and doesn't pay anything, well then the government is going to lose money, especially if the property isn't able to be sold for much. If they pay off the mortgage, the government will make money.
You have to remember that it isn't as though all these mortgages are going to default, or that the property underlying them will suddenly become totally worthless.
So I certainly wouldn't expect the US government to come out with a net gain on this (though it'd be amusing if they did), but the net loss is going to be far less than the upfront cost.
Gas is an OUTPUT, not an input, of my personal transfer function. And I can pick all the corn I want out of my...
Cushioned because their jobs went overseas within the past seven years.
Reminds me of the Ironic Times
Tech Jobs Migrating to India, Other Low-Wage Countries
But new jobs opening up in U.S. for textile workers, child prostitutes.
[Intentionally left blank]
John McCain has been nothing but a cheerleader for the Reaganomics that has caused this debacle. He's been for privatization, deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, there's a video going around on YouTube the last few days where John McCain is giving very energetic (as much as he can be energetic) support for the privatization of Social Security.
Yeah, a bunch of banks have failed and some people are losing their homes that they couldn't afford, but:
a) The commodities sectors are doing well. If you work in farming, oil, coal, iron, copper or gold, then, those sectors are all doing very well. Even the moribund alternate fuels sector is shaping up in spots. Biodiesel maker Nova Biosource Fuels is actually running its Seneca refinery profitably and if it gets some financing, this penny stock is going to absolutely kick ass.
b) Now we find out that IT workers are doing well. In fact, it looks that like that Lehman's data center is going to be purchased by Barclay's more or less intact. Not only that, but Intel and Microsoft, both industry leaders, are not only making record revenues, but Intel is actually paying dividends.
c) If we turn to the housing situation, we find, shockingly, that more people in the USA actually own their own homes than ever before. In short, despite the banking losses and the bankruptcies, at the end of the day, a bipartisan policy designed to encourage lending to put as many people into homes as possible actually WORKED.
The tell tale sign of a real recession or economic downturn is high unemployment and falling commodities prices. Neither has taken place. Instead, what we have is moderate unemployment and high commodities prices and this suggests that demand is high, rather than low.
Now, I don't doubt that some people are hurting in this economy but those people tend to be concentrated in blue states that have been stupidly run for way too long. Michigan's government has basically made it all but impossible to do business in that state and Ohio is as nearly as incompetent and corrupt, particularly in the manufacturing centers and Democratic bastions of Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown. Red states, on the other hand, big producers of food and fuel, are doing rather well.
Bottom line is, this economy isn't falling apart, and never has been. Instead, wealth is shifting from those who make raw materials and products from those who make up financial services around them. WE have lived a lie that said that a bunch of paper is more important than the coal that it represents and it simply isn't true. Bush's economic policies have worked, free trade has worked, and if the market has decided that a program that does something with a car is not as valuable as the steel that makes it well, you are just on the wrong side of reality.
The irony is that Obama's policies are actually going to shift this economic advantage to red states any more. Bush's economic policies, at the essence, have allowed the market to refocus on the basics of materials and manufacturing as the value drivers of the economy. When Obama goes and enacts all sorts of environmental legislation, he's only going create even more scarcity. Suddenly, that old copper mine in Arizona or dying oil well the gulf are going to be even more valuable than it is today, when you can't get permits any more for a new one, and yes, those states that push back more against the Obama administration are those states that are going to have the biggest advantage, economically. They will make more, while the blue states make less, and as a consequence, they will wind up with more money. The future is passing from Chicago where the corn is traded, to the belts where the corn is made, from New York where the cars are traded, to the south where the cars are made.
This is my sig.
It's where this 'free money' is coming from - guess what, it's coming out of his ass in the form of an extra $5,000 worth of income taxes next April 15th. Mine too. Yours too.
The fact of the matter is that this big bailout is really going to be a tax on the rich to let them sell mortgages to the poor for pennies on a dollar. Ultimately, a lot of these people that are overstretched are going to be able to renegotiate their loans and the banks won't care if they do, because they can always foist a screwed loan onto the feds now.
This is my sig.
. Wages are crap,
Actually, wages are not crap. We're just frigging greedy. WE're in a field that expects to pay us the same coming out of "Chumb MCSE school" the same rate that a frigging doctor makes coming out of medical school. I guarantee you that, on average, IT workers make more money on average than just about every other position, every field, in every other country on the planet earth. If you want more money, you need to own a business, rather than be an indentured servant for someone elses.
This is my sig.
This crap has been a long time coming. It is a direct result from basically two sources. 1. Easy credit for everyone! Our imaginary money economy was bound to implode at some point due to the unbelievable irresponsibility in both consumers and the companies that were trying to get rich quick by extending risky credit to everyone that would sign on the line. The housing market is imploding because a $500,000 mortgage (multiplied out) has a much larger impact than the same people multiplying out 10-30k in credit card debts. 2. I want it and I want it now! This is both the consumer buying everything with imaginary money they can't afford as well as the God awful business practices surrounding the immediate infinite growth model. Every company is trying to build monsterous immedaite returns every quarter. So they do stupid shit stacked on stupid shit stacked on stupid shit and then collapse. The company that did the bookkeeping for Enron was started by a cutthroat accountant. "Our responsibility is to the auditors, not to our clients, because when our responsibility is to the auditors, our clients will always be taken care of correctly." He built a tremendously large and successful company by this mentality. As soon as the company started cooking books for fun and profit for more immediate gains they imploded.
My real bitch is that over the last 20 years of predominately Republican control they have encouraged this insane business model of "don't worry, fuck up all you want, commit whatever crimes you need to maximize your profit, we promise not to step in as long as you make it worth our while". Not that Democrats are off the hook for this crap mind you, but it was predominately Republican approach to not getting involved at any cost. Now, the house of cards is collapsing and the Executive branch is acting on its own buying out all these companies. (Quick history check...go look up that form of government that involves the government owning all the businesses...they are definitely earning their colors as the Red Party with the secret laws, secret prisons, warrantless spying, voting problems, and now government owned business). Also, as previously mentioned, Bush was acting on his own as of 2003 to try and remove the regulations that were in place that were supposed to help prevent this meltdown, when he started positioning the Fed for this bailout it became clear that they could go balls the the wall and if they failed they would get a bailout package from the Fed and all would be ok. He poured on the gas and started smoking until it became that burning tower you mention.
These assholes have murdered almost every conceivable form of science and demonize intellectuals. This includes their apparent piss poor understanding of economics. I want to slap these assholes every time they say lower taxes to increase revenue. While it can most certainly increase revenue if you are on the correct side of the maximization curve, it most certainly does not work if you are already below the revenue maximizing number. Oh...that and it doesn't fucking matter if you maximize revenue if you spend more than the difference between the previous spending and previous revenue point.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I think the bigger fear that people with IT careers (myself included) is the inevitable deployment of high-speed fiber networks. For MANY businesses, having nothing but "terminals" that run apps on remote servers (which would probably be running under VMs) would be a huge cost savings, and probably more reliable, too.
So get in the business of running those servers and the networks, and get out of "help desk".
For some jobs with computers (e.g. development) you often need a local, fast machine. For most other jobs (secretaries, accountants, lawyers, etc.) you don't need a fast machine. A Citrix terminal would be more reliable, cheaper, use less power/cooling.
Purchase a second system for the user's home, and now you don't have to worry about important data/files being lost or stolen, but the person could still telecommute if they wanted to.
This may sound like the "bad old days" of centralization, and to some extent it is, but I think a full machine on every desk isn't always required and there are legitimate cases for both models.
I look around at my colleagues and I see the hours I work and I have to say that I know of no freeloaders in the technology business. We're all working harder than ever before.
frankly I believe I'm taking on at least 150% the workload that I had four years ago, even adjusting for improvements in ability, that means I just have to pull more hours. And most of the people work with would likely say the same.
I have not seen an equivalent increase in pay that comes close to the increase in productivity.
I'd be interested to see some pay:productivity ratio - if one could be achieved, I bet that even with pay increases, such a ratio would be the lowest ever.
Nullius in verba
I knew we got off the gold standard but I hadn't realized we switched to coal.
You know, I haven't thought about it that way, but we really have. From my days at the utility I know that all the energies commodities prices track each other pretty closely as people tend to shop by BTU at least in that space. If I have a diverse portfolio of plants, I just pick the best commodity and that tends to drive all the prices up until they reach a sort of a market equilibrium that considers the BTU and the handling involved and the overall people that want it.
Seriously... just ask yourself, if oil goes up, why does coal go up? The answer is, is that there's some sort of "peak" behavior taking place in ALL of the commodities, not just oil.
Your best grades of coal are rarer... like, the most telling thing the German "clean coal plant" is not that its clean coal, but that its burning lignite, rather than anthracite or some other better grade of coal. In Germany, lignite seems to be about all that is left, and its pretty crappy stuff, indeed.
This is my sig.
The whole free trade argument is mostly bogus anyways. Many german cars for example are made right here in the US and shipped back out all over the world. What the Germans have done is build factories in right to work states and offer good enough benefits that no one wants to unionize. It ends up saving everyone money.
What Obama can (and wants to) do is raise corporate taxes. Doing that could make all the foreign corps who have put up headquarters here leave and push some of our national companies to other countries. You're right that protectionism won't work, mainly because the base premise for wanting it is false to begin with.
Many german cars for example are made right here in the US and shipped back out all over the world.
Most of the foreign car factories in the USA are essentially assembly. It's not like the engines and transmissions are actually built in the USA. Just look at the parts origin list of these supposedly "American made" foreign cars. They only do the final assembly here to save on freight. It's like IKEA, but for cars.
This is my sig.
because I just lost my IT Administrator job on Tuesday...due to financial constraints at the company.
I have nothing clever to put here...
The problems we're experiencing today are NOT because of "free markets" at all.
The problems are because of govt. interference and manipulation of the markets for their own motives!
The USA has spent decades in a scenario people keep labeling a "free market", yet in reality, we REALLY have a situation that's just a bastardized version of the concept. A truly free marketplace requires a government that won't pass legislation simply because congressmen or senators have been "bought out" by big corporations.
Certain businesses have gotten ahead of the competition NOT through any normal means as defined by a "free market economy", but rather, by influencing government to give them a guaranteed legal advantage!
As we move more and more to a "global economy", it's also becoming clear that our government's standard tactics to control inflation and regulate economic growth are failing to work as well as they used to. There are probably just too many variables to the equations now. I believe Alan Greenspan made some comments to that effect right after he retired. He admitted that near the end, govt. was really just taking a lot of chances, hoping raising or lowering the interest rates or printing a little more or less money would have the desired effect. They felt they were slowly losing their ability to get a desired result from a specific action.
Obviously not, since the libertarian philosiphy is "laissez faire", and the Christian (and of course, all the other ancient superstitions) philosophy is "Believe this or rot in hell."
So Close
Time for a cow analogy
Communism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism
You have two cows,
the government takes both and sells you some milk.
Which one is more accurate.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Except for the fact that you are totally butchering his ACTUAL trade policy,
yeah.
McCain? Graham?
Let's just call it what it is: a recession.
Whenever I listen to international news, they refer to the U.S. economy as in recession. The U.S. media, however, always call it an "economic downturn" or "slow economy" or some other silly thing that basically means recession.
but it was predominately Republican approach to not getting involved at any cost. Now, the house of cards is collapsing and the Executive branch is acting on its own buying out all these companies
But the current house of cards is the result of EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE to what you say. It's a result of the GOVERNMENT stepping in, getting involved tightly and almost FORCING companies to take on questionable creditors. That's not true Republican action so much as pandering by both sides and social engineering at its best (read: worst). Social engineering markets is more a Democratic trademark than a Republican one which is why near the end when teh hosue was wobbling, Democrats in control shut eyes and ears and would not hear of their being a problem until it was too late. They wanted to hold off public acknowledgement of the total failure of government financial meddling until after the election. But again I am not saying this is Democrats alone, there's plenty of Republican whistling and looking the other way as FM was feeding both sides lots of money (that includes quite a bit to Obama and Biden BTW).
It's absolutely insane to look at Fannie Mae and decide what we need is MORE government intervention in banks!!! It's only the government being involved that let FM grow to the size it needed saving anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not just Phoenix that's struggling. I have a friend in Portland, Oregon who is moving to where I live (St. Louis, MO) because she works in I.T. and can't find a job anywhere out there.
She said HP and Intel both have big layoffs either planned or in progress, and Nike is moving an entire facility out of Portland and overseas (S. Korea or something like that?). The only jobs you can find there right now are "day labor" types of things. Unemployment is something like 12% overall.
Here in St. Louis, I guess we look "good" by comparison, but we've recently had our "world headquarters" Anheuser Busch brewery bought out by the Belgians. Boeing seems to be continuously downsizing. Our Chrysler plant just closed up. Reuters' presence here has been dwindling. A.G. Edwards got bought out too. Meanwhile, I'm watching people going back to our area colleges and universities left and right, because they can't find a job and they decide they may as well just "take out a student loan, go back to school for a while, and hope it helps them get something better after they get back out".
We have a lot of help-desk type positions available here, thanks to businesses like Convergy's, who run 2 big call centers, and telcos who run others around town. But last I checked? Even $12/hr. was pretty optimistic for those positions. They're just "revolving door" jobs paying more like $8-10/hr. in many cases. Our cost of living might not be nearly as high as on the coasts - but I still can't imagine how anyone is able to live on their own at those wages here!
Here in St. Louis though, I often see this odd disconnect with reality. Typically, you'll have a married person who can't understand why a single person with a kid or kids wouldn't just "go work at place X" that has "openings right now paying $12 an hour". Obviously, they're too used to their 2 income lifestyle to realize that $12/hr. means scraping by in poverty level conditions if that's your sole source of income.
Except for the fact that you are totally butchering his ACTUAL trade policy,
Do you seriously think that any action restricting imports to the USA from any country will occur without retaliation? That's like saying that you can have a limited nuclear exchange. Obama will go in thinking he can sweet talk the EU or Canada into accepting some sort of a cap on their exports to the USA, and what's going to do is see how little those throngs in Berlin love him once they find out its their jobs on the line.
Obama condemned NAFTA in Ohio, complains about foreign companies taking American jobs, his regrets globalization... I mean, this is a classic dyed in the wool socialist who condemns global capitalism because his constituents are simply ill prepared to cope with it, and he wants to drag the rest of the country down to their level. In doing so, he'll touch off a trade war and drag down the world. Everything he says is a complete and utter contempt for individual freedom and risk taking, and this financial crisis and his response to it proves it.
And the biggest joke is that he says he's going to unite the country? Cut me a break. Let's see how many farmers fall behind him when he tries to bully the midwest into cranking out corn for slave wages, just like Democrats always do. Red states are red because of economics and the blue states can't take it because they paved over their food with walmarts, won't allow any manufacturing because they want to "save the planet", and thus, have to pay more of their money to get stuff because ultimately everyone knows that their currency is worthless. What exactly does Chicago make these days anyway? Cities used to be information hubs and manufacturing hubs... but they got rid of the manufacturing, and the information hub of people is obsolete due to the internet, and so that really doesn't leave much utility for the powerbase of the Democrats to exist anyway. It's not even that they are evil, it is that they are useless. Cities need to -make things-. No smokestacks, no money. It's pretty simple.
This is my sig.
I'm paying attention, but you're not really making sense.
Are you proposing that all political systems are "shit" unless they're designed to be foolproof?
I think by the very definition of "government", you're talking about building some sort of system of rules and regulations that's automatically subject to people agreeing to try to follow them.
Put it this way. Is chess a "crappy game" because it doesn't have provisions built into it to prevent someone from cheating by taking more than one turn while the other person isn't watching? Is the game of Blackjack "shit" because it wasn't designed to account for the possibility of somebody keeping an extra ace up their sleeve while playing?
Yes, you want a political system that's "resilient". A minority of corrupt individuals will hopefully not make the whole thing topple. And I think we HAD that in this country, until people started effectively changing the rules. When your own president treats the Constitution like "outdated papers that are largely meaningless", and the Judicial system is able to "interpret" laws to the point where their original purposes are completely twisted around - you have some big problems looming on the horizon.
Mods around here suck... Or are just plain stupid. Can somebody rational fix this (there's nothing "flaimbait" about the parent.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The ones that were subject to those government interventions did LESS damage than the ones that weren't. The ones that were under those regulations were constantly warned about that behavior. The ones that were not are the ones that did it more often.
Now to be fair...I think it needs different government involvement, not less, not more. Where the government needed to be involved early in that crisis it wasn't (thank you Republicans), and the areas where it was it shouldn't have been (thank you Democrats). I do believe there are a great number of areas where there needs to be regulation, the problem is that we will NEVER get the regulation we need so long as we have lobbyists for every special interest group under the sun greasing the palms of those congress critters. What we wind up with is broken ass loophole ridden nonsense that favors whoever paid the biggest sum when the law was written.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Fret ye not the mods. The whole thing was very arguably offtopic and trollish. And I'd friggin' do it again, too. Mwahahahaha.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"the only winning move is not to play"
Think about it...
Fret ye not the mods. The whole thing was very arguably offtopic and trollish. And I'd friggin' do it again, too. Mwahahahaha.
Oh, wait... you're right. There seems to be some stuff in the links about the Democratic party being partially complicit in the problem - almost like it would have happened even if they had been fully in charge.
Sorry, my bad. By all means, let's make sure that post stays buried.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It's absolutely insane to look at Fannie Mae and decide what we need is MORE government intervention in banks!!! It's only the government being involved that let FM grow to the size it needed saving anyway.
It's not a matter of more intervention. It's a matter of consistency. The companies should be tightly controlled to the extent that their failure is catastrophic. If you want to take away all the evil government intervention, that's a valid plan if and only if they are allowed to make fatal mistakes. Regulation and protection should go hand-in-hand.
Wages around my area for help desk range from around 45-60K annual salary.
These jobs are an absolute necessity to keep things rolling.
The average user is completely incompetent.
Skilled desktop support techs are hard to come by.
Idiots answering the phone and typing random entries into remedy are not.
Up from what? What do they consider an IT worker? How did they determine this?
Assembly line work is considered IT? Isn't about 99% of electronics manufacturing done offshore?
Were any of those workers US citizens? Or were they all offshore workers, and H-1Bs?
"[Obama will] touch off a trade war and drag down the world"
As a non-American it sounds like an improvement over touching of a ME war and draging the world into the smoking crater that used to be called the US economy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ok, I take your point - no system will be perfect. The gripe I have with both socialism and free markets is that they make untested assumptions about human nature - with both ending in dire straits because of it.
Modern government systems have taken this into consideration in the way the power is divided amongst the executive, legislature and the judiciary. If any one branch got too powerful the other two would gang up against it. Course as well all know this isn't foolproof.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I prefer Surrealism:
You have two giraffes,
the government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
Then why are mega corporations pushing to raise the cap on H1B Visa IT limits if they "love" us US Citizen IT Workers?
I've been out of work since 2002, and many other IT workers I know have moved on to non-IT work as all companies in our area are hiring are foreign IT workers via H1B Visas. I have been turned down for thousands of IT jobs because I am not a foreigner that is willing to work for minimum wage or almost minimum wage via a H1B IT Visa. I'd have a much better chance if I renounce my US citizenship and apply for citizenship in an Asian nation and then apply for an H1B Visa application and then I'd have a 100% chance of being hired as an IT worker in the USA. Of course it would be for a fraction of what I would be paid as a US citizen, but most of us have been out of work for so long, we start to get desperate. :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If you can admin SharePoint server farms, write web parts in C#, and know Forms Server inside out, I would be THRILLED to pay you in Top Ramen. In fact, I will through in tons of extra seasoning packets, since I have to keep my salt down, ya know? Say the word, baby!
As a non-American it sounds like an improvement over touching of a ME war and draging the world into the smoking crater that used to be called the US economy.
--
The US economy will always be lagging somewhat until we have a final solution to the liberal problem.
This is my sig.
Long experience in Fortune 500 IT has led me to quite cynical about reports such as that from Forrester.
I had my second decidedly unpleasant experience with a major IT/information services employer moving all possible work offshore to India.
This time the "outsourcing partner" is Cognizant. Last time it was Satyam and HCL.
Colleagues in other companies report the same thing with different companies: TATA/TCS, Wipro, etc.
This really isn't an isolated situation and the pretence that American IT jobs are safe or secure is a myth. If anything, the present economic mess will, I expect encourage business execs to look for ways to expand their offshore outsourcing and use of lower cost IT workers directly and through "body shops'
The widespread use of non-citizen IT "guest workers" on "business visa" (L-1, H-1b, H-2) begs the question what component of IT work in the U.S. is actually filled by American citizens? Increasing the component of non-citizen IT workers in the U.S. can certainly puff up the statistics and make people feel warm and fuzzy but I see a rather steady effort to replace Americans in IT roles.
How many recall the now infamous YouTube videos about Fragoman law firms "How not to hire an American" seminar?
I'm a gov't contractor and there is no shortage of work where I am.
Same for me... I've been working 60-70 hour weeks the past couple months.
I'm not getting rich though, my pay is still far below what I should be making given that I hold a bunch of certs including recently adding on CISSP which was required for one of the justice system contracts I got assigned. My boss keeps saying be happy we have the work.
Companies are busy replacing "expensive" American middle class tech workers with lower cost alternatives whenever possible. Here's a "for-instance" detailing the use of Indian IT workers from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to directly replace American IT workers in Florida at Nielsen. http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article818379.ece
Companies can get workers from other countries IF American workers cannot meet the demand.
The demand is $1/hr tech support people that double as the billing department and moonlight as coders. Americans cannot legally fill this role in America for that price.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This latest move by ex-Goldman Sachs partner to shovel out $700 billion smacks of a well engineered financial terrorist attack organised by the government.
Couple this with today's FOX news headlines: Iran's gone nuclear!
Corporates know this administration is the closest they can get to a gravy train. They very well know the next admin is going to break their backs.
So after robbing us blind by Iraq wars (halliburton, KBR), Katrina rebuilding(again same clients), FedCopters (Bernanke showering money earlier this year to investment banks), they are trying the Greatest Robbery Ever!; Stealing the entire Tax revenue as "compensation" for screwing up citizens.
So lulling the people into a false sense of security (Economy is strong as told by Bush, Cheney, Paulson), they suddenly spring a surprise yelling the economy is going to fail and demanding $700 B as payment.
Much like a mugger sweet-talking you to disarm you and suddenly pulling the gun on you.
The same fear tactics are applied here: Pass a bill or else the security/finance of america is gone tomorrow. This is typical of the Karl Rove kind of threats: Put a sudden deadline, put a fear, and threaten: Much like Hitler used to do.
If congress and the dems had any back bone and especially if Obama has any backbone (which he doesn't after FISA), he should stop this fear-mongering in its tracks and start :
1. Ads in TV showing the negative aspects of bailout: Rich CEOs getting millions and enjoying yachts with blondes after the getting the Federal bailout.
2. Speeches in small towns stating the government wants to foreclose your home and wants the money to pay to rich men in New York.
3. Ads in radio and talk shows in radio patterned on O'Reilly tactics that force the listener to vote on whether the bailout would benefit the richest or the CEO of failed companies.
4. Ads in newspapers exaggerating that this administration wants to take their medicare money and feed it to greedy corporates.
Appeal to the emotions of people, not facts.
5. Subpoena every one involved, including Paulson and Bernanke and force them testify under oath the benefits they aim to receive after they leave their jobs and the benefits of CEO and CFO of these companies.
6. Arrest anyone who refuses to obey the Subpoena...starting with Todd Palin.
Once rhe republicans come to the table instead of crowing for money, put some teeth into the bill:
1. All companies which receive federal bailout will get back all the money they paid to their entire board in past 2 years. Minimum wage will be paid to the board, but all money beyond that is snatched back.
2. All companies sign over 80% of their equity to the Federal Government.
3. Barring any Federal Official in Treasury or Federal Reserve from accepting any job at any assisted institution for next decade.
4. Enabling courts to renegotiate unilaterally terms of a mortgage with any federal-assisted bank.
Unfortunately knowing Obama, Pelosi and Democrats well, they will hand over the check without any oversight and flay their helplessness to the american public as if they are innocent.
If that happens, Obama can kiss his election success goodbye and democrats can forget even their existing seats in congress.
They will be reduced to just two seats: Senator Kennedy and Biden.
I seriously hope this happens. That the dems hand over a black check and in november the public hands them back their as$es-deep fried.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Oh, so the homeowners lent money to the banks? Silly me, I thought it was the other way round.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What Obama can (and wants to) do is raise all taxes.
Fixed.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
i hadnt noticed...too busy working weekend maintenance windows and passing the oncall pager.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Companies can get workers from other countries IF American workers cannot meet the demand.
The demand is $1/hr tech support people that double as the billing department and moonlight as coders. Americans cannot legally fill this role in America for that price.
WRONG!!! That's why members of the Indian government occassionally refer to H-1b as the "outsourcing visa". Man, have you got alot to learn! It is a **MYTH** -- a grossly inaccurate claim -- that employers can only get an H-1b if they can't find a qualified American. Where have you been dude? Google up the YouTube vids of lawyers from a "big name" law firm explaining to paying business customers how to "technically" meet the standards of the law but "How NOT to hire an American" -- disqualify the Americans on some bogus pretext. Ron Hira from the IEEE-USA & EPI has been ALL OVER this issue!! Oh, and maybe you never bothered to read anything by Norman Matloff, the UC, Davis professor who has written academic papers and given Congressional testimony on this topic? Do some googling and read the reality of the situation -- not the phony claims of DoL bureaucrats and politicians anxious to please their business lobby friends and campaign contributors.
Now that's funny.
The article was written on September 5 and claims that "HP is still hiring" which is certainly consistent with laying off 25K people. The claim "...won't expect to be big ones" with regards to IT layoffs is quite likely to be proven false in light of recent events.
Are you proposing that all political systems are "shit"
-- Winston Churchill
Who are you to disagree?
FORCING companies to take on questionable creditors
The fuck? Even assuming that the CRA you cited was FORCING banks to make expensive high-interest subprime loans, which law was FORCING companies to buy mysterious voodoo credit derivatives that pretty much everyone acknowledges they didn't understand (which is how freddie and fannie sunk themselves, "subprime" is defined as a loan not meeting their purchase requirements, yet they were more than willing to pad out their assets with these worthless instruments)?
The fact is, if it had just been banks making subprime mortgages this would have been contained as just a small crisis. The world didn't move for Indie Mac, Ameribank or any of the other banks that overextended their credit and sunk, barely a tear was shed. No, the world shook and quaked for Bear Stearns and AIG and Fannie and Freddie and even the Reserve Primary Fund. For these investors in the make-believe, the purchasers of debt and derivatives and swaps, markets soared and collapsed, government opened taxpayers' wallets, and so on.
Cry all you want about whatever laws "democrats" and "republicans" pass or don't pass, the only government people I can find at fault here are the ones who opened the vault yet again, ensuring that we'll have yet another "crisis" in a few decades time.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
What Obama can (and wants to) do is raise corporate taxes. Doing that could make all the foreign corps who have put up headquarters here leave and push some of our national companies to other countries. You're right that protectionism won't work, mainly because the base premise for wanting it is false to begin with.
You hit the nail squarely on the head. The reason companies are reincorporating outside the US is because the US taxes companies on profits earned in other countries, even when those profits have already been taxed by those countries.
For example, you mentioned Mercedes. Daimler pays corporate income taxes in Germany on profit from operations in Germany. They pay taxes in the US on profit from US operations.
An American company, on the other hand, pays US tax on profit from US operations, foreign tax on profit from foreign operations, and US tax on profit from foreign operations. We are the only developed nation in the world with this double taxation, and it's driving large transnational corporations to move their headquarters to offshore tax havens to avoid the massive tax bills that result from our laws. Moving offshore doesn't absolve them from paying taxes on profits realized in the US, it just puts them on a level playing field with their foreign-based competition.
In other words, government greed has driven the engines of commerce straight into somebody else's boat. Raise your hand if you're surprised.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Fascism
You have two cows,
the government shoots both and sells you some milk.
Fixed it for you.
Liberal problem?
Seriosuly.
and to use terms that were used for rounding up and killing jews, you are the real threat to the US.
You need only look at our Rust Belt to see the truth of that. Once a big contributor to the GNP; now a sinkhole for social welfare.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
More smart people to do all the hard work while the suits sit back, network and bring in a fortune for doing nothing?!?! Nobody is buying that anymore. Just take a look at the general perception of all us technical people - IT, electrical engineering, mechanical, hell even biotech has been plagued by outsourcing threats real or perceived for so long nobody wants to touch these careers let alone study enough to find out what they're really about. Even doctors are seen as chumps today since they're paying a fortune in medical malpractice insurance, enslaved to the US insurance industry, and have to kill themselves to get though med school in the 1st place. Everybody in America wants a free ride to get-rich-quickland, and that means the old MBA == BMW equation. Screw the worker, get the money, destroy anything that stands in your way. All of the pop culture in the US is about selling looks and vapid stupidity over intellect and substance. The intelligent are looked down upon as we celebrate our decent into irrelevance every step of the way.
There's only one saving grace against the rise of the rest of the world from the US perspective: they're eating this crap up even bigger and faster than we are. Go ahead China, go ahead India: keep killing yourselves to get the heroin that is the American style middle class dream laced with vapid pop culture. Go for the houses bigger than you need with the cars bigger than you need and all the consumer goods the media tells you life is meaningless without. The more you do, the more you'll drive your currency closer to the USD and make the "advantages" of outsourcing disappear. Then in a few years, you'll find the top 5% are killing you off to get even richer too. Then it'll be "welcome to the other end of the Global Economy, sucker"....
Terrorism
You have two cows---Anthrax source!
Libertarians believe in personal freedom, economic freedom, and fiscal responsibility. Sarah Palin doesn't. About the closest she gets is that she knew enough to inhale when she smoked dope, but she's against legalizing it. But she thinks the Alaska constitution should be amended to give the state the power to decide who can get married, and thinks that schools shouldn't teach kids about contraception methods (other than the 100% reliable one, which is "expecting teenagers to stop at second base.")
Sarah Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it - as Governor, she took the money, and while she didn't build the bridge, she did build the access road to the bridge (and by the way, even in Alaska, why does a 3-mile gravel road cost $25M? That's about the price per mile of the Eisenhower Tunnel...) She took a town with no debt and left it with over $20M in debt for under 10000 people.
McCain, on the other hand, has plenty of experience dealing with failing mortgage institutions - the Keating 5's favorite S&L cost even more to bail out than the Silverado S&L, run by President GWBush's brother Neil.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Decades? Clearly you are an optimist.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
is that such job requirements are designed to both discourage Americans as well as create the pretext that the company has sought qualified American job applicants but been unsuccessful in finding anyone who meets the necessary qualifications. Then, the company can use this bogus paper trail as the basis for filing a DoL application to hire a "business visa guest worker" under H-1b. Of course, it's remarkable how so many Indian H-1b applicants will meet the stated background requirements word for word... It's done with a wink and a nod. Seen it done.
woohoo IT rocks!
when teh hosue was wobbling
That's a great name for an album.
which is totally what she said
Downloadism. you have tucows...
Right! We all have to save the world from Nazis before we can have an opinion on political matters. That makes sense.
I've always thought politics is shit, and I didn't need Winston to tell me. All the spin, downright lies, hidden agendas and backstabbing - it's pretty tiresome and gets in the way of the real running of a country. I wouldn't have a problem with a dictatorship or patriarchy, as long as the leader wasn't a complete jerk, but what are the chances of that happening? :p We have the Queen here in the UK but she has sod all power, which makes the whole 'royalty' thing rather pointless.
which is totally what she said
What about cheap Indian labour taking our jobs away ?
H1B workers in IT don't work for minimum wage. There's no wage different between H1B, GC and citizen workes in Silicon Valley. Enough said.
That's only flamebait if you're an intollerant religious zealot, you asshole (whoever you are). Otherwise it's just the simple truth. Fuck you.
There is no cow.
Oh yeah? The feds say:
"The prevailing wage must be at, or above the federal or state or local minimum wage, whichever is higher. The federal minimum wage is $6.55/hr effective July 24, 2008."
Computer Programmers can be hired at $6.55/hr or the state wage if it is higher under the H1B Visa program. As long as it is minimum wage or higher it is 100% legal to under pay computer programmers.
I know many Thai H1B Visa workers who program C++, C#, Java, Visual BASIC for minimum wage and work a second job at a restaurant in my area. The chef or waiter job, pays them more than their programming job based on tips they get.
My wife is half Thai and I know a lot of Thai people and I've been to Thailand a few times and talked with them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say that you sure did a damn fine job.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."