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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."
...but not for everyone.
THL phish sticks
I just fired half my staff, but I'm still employed! Booyah.
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?
You don't see people walking around asking the hard questions like 'do we need to get rid of anybody', because there is profit, and everything is going well, something can trigger that talk, like the global "finance" crisis at the moment, and you'll see things like this happening, when you start looking, the bigger the company you are, the more you'll find. It's the way of business.
A couple of business owners have had to lay off some of their skilled labour, it was a last resort, because they know it's going to cost a fortune to replace them when things pick up again.
"Match skills and resources with our client needs" doesn't mean layoffs...its a feature!
Actually, IBM claims that it's not an extraordinary event - in the course of normal business, every quarter they lay off some people with useless skills and hire others with useful ones.
They didn't file an extraordinary activity report with the SEC because a certain level of layoffs is ordinary in an organization that size.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Something that everyone forgets is that many companies use downturns as a time to clean house, to get rid of people that they feel are more dead weight than not.
Now anyone with experience in a large company knows that also can include some good people that ended up on the wrong side of an internal political battle, and doesn't usually include much middle management that may well be overburdened. Even so, layoffs are not always about a company needing to get rid of jobs so much as a natural resetting mechanism (at least at first).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When discussing layoffs or hiring vies-a-vi Microsoft, it can help to remember that the majority of statistics involve expatriates, part-time and temporary employees or short-term contract hires. When MS announces layoffs, it rarely involves the small core of full time, salaried workers the company maintains at HQ.
MS quotes one number that includes the above when it wants to sound like a large corporation, and another, that only includes core staffers, when it wants to sound thrifty. MS's numbers raise and fall in a similar pattern regardless of the overall market.
Point is, MS is not a barometer for the IT industry when it comes to (un)employment.
That does not mean they will fill the reqs. These could be aged openings, and they could be there to give false indicators of growth or expected growth for a presumed 2-year position life expectancy.
Even more, they could silently have in effect a hiring freeze. So, recruiting agencies will *see* postings of openings, and some will scrounge around and competing really hard for those spots for their recruits/temps or consultants, but not get much food out of it.
Further, many of those positions could be advertised as one thing, but become something else as needs change. It's happened to me, where i interviewed (as a temp, over a 5-6 year period) for a position, but because of things in my resume i either became a non-fit (too much experience in some areas), and other times my resume forwarded by an agency didn't convey the whole picture, so my in-person handed resume cinched the opportunity. So, I learned to *always* bring in my own copies the agencies didn't edit. On top of that, I gave a long (5-6 pages) and a chopped-up (bulleted, 1-2 pages) resume. Sometimes that helped because the had... "options": speed read, and dig deeper.
It's going to be ROUGH as hell for all those people competing (qualified and hopeful, but unqualified) for positions which are (being) published but effectively frozen.
If the EU and others chafe over the "buy American" clauses, the Obama administration will have few choices: give in, in the respect for globalism over protectionism, or shift that stimulus money from tech and goods to direct labor costs of people eligible FOR and having the right TO work available only to citizens or those visitors with the appropriate visas and proof of experience.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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.
We're on hiring freeze despite a sizable number of openings posted.
Good point. Since people use job openings to judge the health of a company, it's possible to use it to send a misleading signal to the stock market.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Repair services are essentially recession-proof. People are going to be even more willing to get the computer fixed rather than buy a brand new one if the former is less expensive. The cheaper avenue will often win out for the short term. Secondhand PCs are likely going to be a big market in the coming years as well.
Actually, the theory is to fire the lowest 10% in relation to performance every quarter.
Ugly, yet effective.
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
Here in Mass, I just went through a fairly time consuming round of interviews for an open Sr. Linux Admin position I had open. I must have had more than 300 resumes come my way, reviewing about 200 of them, phone interviewed about 25 people, personally interviews another 15, all over the course of the past 5 months. My bosses were having a very difficult time comprehending why I was having such a hard time finding someone in such a market, but frankly, quality people have been tremendously hard to come by. My bosses were getting frustrated that I wasn't getting the position filled fast enough. I stuck to my guns and recently (finally!) found a solid candidate.
It has already been mentioned, but in speaking with a few recruiters, the general opinion was that the company's that are laying off are cleaning house of dead wood for the most part. Those who are good at their jobs are staying put right now until the market seems to show some sense of light at the end of the tunnel. Of course their are casualties at all levels in various orgs, but I'm not yet left with the overwhelming sense that quality IT people are flooding the market looking for work.
Are the jobs being laid off REALLY Information Technology? I hardly consider sales, data people, or most management positions IT. They might be IT related in that they work with IT people, but they do nothing actually technical and I would not be calling any of them to repair a network or fix a computer. In the same way I dont consider engineers to be IT either, they are engineers, not technicians, related but still different fields.
When it comes to actual IT work, I have no want for job opportunities atm, getting at least one valid offer a month, though I am specifically staying with my not as well paying public position BECAUSE of a questionable private sector market. Be seriously most of these jobs being shed are just not true IT job, and people need to learn what the actual definition of IT is and isnt.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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
There has been a steady but rising flood of semi-skilled people getting into IT increasing the size of IT shops ... and generally their cost. I don't like to see people lose jobs, but in some cases shrinking IT is really, really good. I don't want to work with 50 so-so or worse developers or sysadmins ... but I'd be more than happy to work with 10 stellar engineers/admins. Same goes with management. Speaking with some friends this past year it almost seems there has been a popular trend in adding layers of management for the sake of reporting structures (group A reports to manager who reports to manager who reports to director who reports to ....). In a lot of cases that is just cruft that is not needed that increases cost for little to no gain.
Then again, I've seen the definition of IT being stretched to include positions that have nothing to do with Information Technology.
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.
Please don't think me greedy for what I'm about to say but I'm currently still employed after over 3 rounds of layoffs and I've recently kicked my job search into high gear. While I have to agree that what's currently left at the small company I work for is nothing but the best (at least in the IT department) the workload that was done by 30 is now done by 10 -- with as few as 3 people in one section of IT.
That being said, these *quality* people who probably have nothing to worry about are jumping ship (even management!), some without even having jobs to switch to yet. But I guess that's what happens when reason goes out the window and marketing calls the shots in an attempt to turn a profit for a change. That coupled with pay cuts leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
I disagree with the thought that the good workers will sit idly by and take what the companies are doing and accomplishing what 3-5 of their peers used to. Sometimes what seems like a good job for a while can turn ugly and treat you poorly when things get tough and that's not necessarily a place you want to work. At least that's my reasoning.
I work for a software consultancy as a software developer -- well, at least I do for the next couple of days. Various events have taken place over the last few months that have reduced my happiness in my role in this company.
Coincidentally, this company has clients in the public sector whose budgets have been frozen due to the economic downturn. This brought some of this company's projects to a stand-still and, unfortunately, this company's reaction was to fire the entire development team for one of the projects (this happened two months ago).
My project was suspended indefinitely by our private sector client whose budget was curtailed, and my development team was merged into another ongoing project. Naturally, I perceived my job security as limited. To make matters worse, rumours were circulating that our very old directors were considering trying to dissolve the company and ship their assets overseas. The idea was that some money already paid by clients might be attempted to be recovered and the directors wanted to retire. Combine all this with my growing discontent in my role in this organisation and I had great motivation to find another job before I was made redundant, but how was I supposed to accomplish this in this doom-n-gloom economy?
My wife and I decided that we liked our chances more with the sagging economy than with my dodgy company. So, I looked for a job, and I was confident as I was fortunate enough to have recently acquired some very valuable skills in our current technological landscape and I knew how they were in high demand and how to sell them. It worked out favorably for me, as I was able to secure a seemingly better job in a more experienced role with a higher pay at a different, much more reputable organisation.
I'd say that I am very lucky but I also believe all of my extra hard work paid off. I feel that, at least for the foreseeable future, a lot of people in IT who keep their skills current and relevant will always be able to find a decent job, the key being very much keeping your technical chops polished.
Falun Dafa is good!
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.
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."
The princess probably wants to spend $50,000 on one day so she can have her dream wedding.
Seriously, society's expectations of what should happen with a wedding are seriously out of whack - especially now that the couple are expected to pay for it all. The young couple, at the start of their life, are expected to pay for a very expensive party for their friends and their parents' friends with the better part of a deposit for a house while they continue to pay off student loans.
Whatever happened to just jumping over a chair?
(I'm not actually trying to troll. I hope the OP is very happy in his marriage.)
All those jobs that were lost that weren't "true" IT jobs, do you think they don't impact you?
Connect the dots. Those unemployed people are now out of work. They get the following advice: "Your skills are obsolete, you need to retrain!" Well, which jobs do you think they retrain for? They all rush out and get their MCSAs and CCNAs, because they've been told "We have a shortage of IT workers in this country!"
So now, for every job, thousands of resumes flood in, and it doesn't matter that we're talking about a million-node network that really ought to be sheparded by some MsEE/double CCIE with 15 years of experience, all HR reports is that the job posting attracted 5,000 resumes, which means the suits upstairs assume the candidates for this task are a dime a dozen. They old "If you don't like it, I can have a dozen people to replace you tomorrow" mindset creeps in.
When the H1-B visas first began, domestic employees crowed "They'll never match us on quality." A couple of decades down the line, we discovered they didn't have to -- simply by flooding the market they distorted the wage curve down. The suits looked at two codebases -- one a thing of elegant beauty with 1,000 lines, the other an Abomination Before God with 3,000 lines, and decided the one with more text reflected three times as much work and therefore value.
Unemployment IN GENERAL is a bad thing for people who sell labor. It takes cards out of your hand and puts them in the hands of employers. Don't kid yourself -- those people losing their jobs bodes ill for 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.
Not all companies are populated by morons in the hiring positions.
Right now the good people will raise to the top as long as you are willing to adjust your expectations slarywise.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
God, what is with you people today?
They looked at their 401k...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Everybody knows this (or at least I hope they do) but it's sometimes funny when these things are brought to light.
Many years ago, the U.S. government started putting job announcements online. The process was simple. A local office doing a hire would just cc the announcement document to yet another place. They didn't really think about the fact that the documents in their little office, previously seen by just a few local employees, could now be seen by anyone, anywhere. It took some folks a while to adapt and stop using blatantly obvious tactics to deny jobs to certain applicants.
I will never forget, during the transition period, seeing a number of job announcements that opened and closed on the same day (blatantly illegal; there's a mandated open period for announcements). One announcement sidestepped that requirement by staying open for two weeks, but promising "priority consideration" (a real, technical term with specific requirements that translates into "if you're not priority, you can't get the job" in practice) would be given to applicants who pick up an application package in person within 4 hours of the opening of the announcement.
I'll never forget being summonsed to an execs office and asked if I'd be interested in a job that was opening soon. I was chomping at the bit for the job (I knew it would be announced soon) and had been practicing my interview already. The exec asked me what I thought qualified me for the job. I was totally prepared. "I have solid experience in Fields A, B, C, and D. Those will translate directly and immediately into high productivity and solid result in the position." He thanked me and I left. I was pumped. Obviously, for the first time in my life, I was going to be the beneficiary of some of the underhanded hiring tactics that were common around here. It was obvious the guy wanted me even if I didn't know exactly why.
A week later the job announcement was published. It included something I'd never seen before, an addendum (complete with a big, bold box drawn around it) to the qualifications that specifically said "The following types of experience DO NOT qualify for this position: Fields A, B, C and D." The "A, B, C, and D" in the announcement were DIRECT QUOTES from me, exactly duplicating the verbiage I had used with the aforementioned exec the week previous.
Hiring shenanigans - ya gotta love 'em.
Explain to your hiring manager that Linux skills are 99% interchangeable with with "Unix" skills and watch your costs go down and responses go up.
The largest, most cost-effective data storage company on the planet uses Linux boxes and commodity hardware. But I'll bet you're searching for people whose sole experience is with some obscure 20-year-old Unix OS in conjunction with some overpriced proprietary NAS device.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
You haven't been paying attention. Managers in places like that make fair money, and they are often paid in relatively large bonuses based on particular metrics for that company. Things like food cost, speed of service, customer satisfactions surveys, and surprise anonymous audits are common.
If a manager can come into a faltering store, double its profits and make customers happy, that manager is going to be making pretty good money. Managers can't do that without good employees. And in that industry, you can't even bait in good employees with better pay. The difference between a new hire and the "assitant manager" or "shift leader" might be a couple dollars and hour, max.
So fast food managers have to work really hard to find good help, and really hard to keep good help with very limited resources.
This is based of an old friend of mine who's been in that business for decades, and until just recently managed at a Jack In The Box.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild