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IT Job Market Is Tanking, But Not For Everyone
CWmike writes "Shortly after the COO of Automated HealthCare Solutions learned that Microsoft planned to cut 5,000 workers over the next 18 months, he and another employee of the medical services provider flew out to Redmond. AHCS now has more than 100 resumes, some of them from Microsoft employees, for about a dozen open positions. That's how the tech job market is these days: there's no doubt the market is tanking, but not for everyone. While numerous IT vendors are laying off workers, and corporate IT jobs are being lost as well, plenty of companies are still hiring. Microsoft's careers site lists more than 700 open jobs in the US, both technical and administrative positions. And IBM has about 3,200 jobs and internships listed worldwide, more than 550 of them in the US — even as it cuts thousands of workers in a move that it is describing not as a layoff, but an effort to 'match skills and resources with our client needs."
If you're good, you can always find a new job. Smart companies always have exception programs to let in talented individuals. Layoffs tend to be a way to get rid of a lot of the sub-average to average performers. If anything, finding good quality people is even more important after layoffs are announced- the good ones have the ability to get hired easily, so they'll hedge their bets by looking as soon as layoffs are announced. Its not uncommon to see an exodus of them before the layoffs actually occur. Plus you can typically hire one of them to do the work of 3 or 4 of the people you just fired.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The behavior of "cutting the fat" is persistent in any business worth it's salt. It just so happens that this behavior is synchronized, and expanded, in weaker economies.
A person desiring to keep their employment intact, or finding new opportunities, needs to understand three elements of their "business related worth".
Every company on the planet needs people who have different mixes of the above qualities. The big problem is that these three aspects run in a Rock/Paper/Scissors manner. The bigger problem is that the relationships change from company to company. Sometimes experience trumps talent. Other times talent is better than experience.
If you approach these elements of your work history without ego, focus your job search on opportunities that match your mix, and clearly communicate them to prospective employers - you will actually find a better job that makes you happy.
It can be done, don't go into it with a negative attitude.
Not that smart. If I see too many people around me fired, I'll look for a new job before you get around to firing me.
If I'm good, and you want to keep me - I'll find another job.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Being good includes the ability to handle office politics successfully. Jobs that don't require office politics are incredibly rare.
If you can't find anybody in your old company that likes you, you probably need to work on your social skills. It's one of the things employers need to make sure the job gets done.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
In this sentence:
"While numerous IT vendors are laying off workers, and corporate IT jobs are being lost as well, plenty of companies are still hiring."
should read:
"While numerous *LARGE* IT vendors are laying off workers, and corporate IT jobs are being lost as well, plenty of *SMALLER* companies are still hiring."
If anything I've seen the job market for small IT suddenly go UP. I'm willing to bet these smaller companies are willing to hire these former big-wig employees and those big-wigs are willing to take the lower pay in exchange for financial security in this horrendous economy.
The big guys are tanking and having to cut because they squandered and litigated themselves into this mess, while the smaller companies don't have this bullshit to worry about and can thus keep turning a profit because they're not wasting money on laws and lawsuits and patent trolling - they just provide actual services, pay their employees, pay their taxes, and go home.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The theory is to fire the lowest 10% in relation to performance every quarter. Ugly, yet effective.
Ugly yes, but only effective in the very short term. 10% per quarter equals 40% turnover per year. No highly-qualified candidate you interview is going to want to hear this number and the best ones are certain to find it out either from you or other sources.
Further, you'll be spending huge amounts of time trying to find new personnel to replace the ones you let go or cross/retrain the existing ones to do the work that the laid off ones did. Productivity will grind to a halt and your company will be in really deep shit compared to your competitors who didn't dig themselves in the hole you dug yourself.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
The "fire 10%" strategy has the interesting side effect of ruthlessly exposing the quality of your performance metrics. If they are quite good, it might actually work. If they are indifferent or worse, you'll cut your own throat in short order. Nothing like an office full of people gaming the metrics and covering their asses to get things done.
Advice for the sub average? Well if you are sub average then you're always going to be at high risk. The same applies to any industry - it is not just a computer thing. Find something you're better at.
If you're sub average and insist on being in the industry then face it that you're only going to be employed 50% of the time.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Schools will always turn out code monkeys. You can't learn innovation and leadership in the classroom - you have to learn them by applying them.
Yes, but especially today there is very little innovation being used/taught in the classroom. Whereas in the 1980s or 1990s you would get high marks for finding a different, better way of coding a program, today the "know-it-all" IT professor is more apt to fail you because you didn't do it his way that might have actually been a disaster. There also seems to be less innovation in the workplace. It used to be that faster ways were praised and lead to promotion, today they are frowned upon because innovation makes it a pain to teach the secretary how to use it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
BUSTED
Oh, here we go, cue the chorus of "Dude, if yer the best you can alwayz get werk..."
Listen up. You have to look at this systemically. If there are a thousand people willing to do your job for less, it doesn't matter how leet and brilliant you are. You are an expensive widget, and the business side will always sacrifice quality for cost. Do you really think the suits upstairs can tell the difference between Linus and Zaboomafoo the Typing Lemur?
My phone rings daily with scared-crapless kids whose networks are falling apart because they don't have the experience the position requires. Every one of those kids replaced some grey-haired 40-year-old who would have avoided the disaster months ago, but was let go because Billy the Paperboy braindumped his certs and offered the do the job for less.
No one, No. One. Ever connects the million-dollar disaster with the now-incredibly-cheap-looking salary that would have saved the company untold amounts of money.
So, for the Beavis-and-Butthead crowd sitting around crowing about how they're the best, look at it this way: The surplus resumes flooding the market may not cost you your job, but they will cost your your raise, as well as any leverage you might have had to push back against bad ideas. They'll cost you in the midnight calls you get and the tribute of overtime demanded because your boss knows you don't have any other options. And if you really are that good, it still might not save you.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
A lot of us here on /. are IT workers, why not just ask us?
How has the current economic landscape affected your employer?
It might actually provide some useful insight. #6 applies to me.