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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?
"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
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
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.
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."
Gotta agree. The price of parts alone puts PC repair just fine if you can do it yourself, but if you plan on charging for your services, then forget it. The screwdriver shop market half collapsed already several years ago. For those willing, it's an ok way to make a few dollars here and there, but very, very few can maintain sufficient business to make a living out of it.
The simple fact is that if the computer isn't in warranty, then it's probably not worth repairing. Outside of that period it's not only outdated technology-wise, but physically if one component has reached the point of failure then all the other moving parts are starting to get within that zone too. Replacing the hard drive now, and the DVD drive in another 8 months, then a few fans in 6 months, then the monitor in another year, etc, and you you're getting to the point where you're paying as much upkeep on keeping your crappy computer working as a new one would cost.
As to used computers - generally a waste. Most people get around to selling a computer because it has issues already, and the ones that aren't problematic are at a minimum going to be fairly outdated. PARTICULARLY laptops, which I'd NEVER recommend buying used. When new systems are as cheap as they are already, it normally just makes no sense to buy a used system.
Besides, the computer is generally a purchase that you make and then hopefully can use for a while. Where people (and companies) are going to makeup their differences is in recurring costs. For citizens, that will mean cutting back on recurring costs in places that you can afford to. Cooking more and eating out less for example. Buying the store brand of an item rather than the name brand. Refinancing loans to a lower rate. Possibly moving into a smaller/cheaper apartment or home. Taking in roommates instead of living alone. Going out to the movies or other recreational activities less.
Companies look at it the same way but salaries are their recurring costs. The simple fact of the matter that I've seen is that in many departments (of all types, IT included), people have adapted to a comfortable work level, but if everyone pushed harder the same work could be done with significantly less people. In a good economy people won't take kindly to that and you can't push them that hard, but when people are afraid of losing their jobs, they'll gladly work a bit harder to pick up the slack.
Cutting those recurring costs will make orders of magnitude more difference than simple purchases like a computer.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Gotta disagree. Most people don't have a clue as to how to fix their PC, much less figure out what's wrong or how to install any parts. Screwdriver shops do fine if they know what they're doing. Mix in some business onsite and you've got steady cash. I work in a screwdriver shop and we're cranking out billable labor like crazy right now. Repair industries are almost recession-proof if you're in the right one. You have to remember that the majority of the public knows jack shit about computers and will take it to a shop if something goes haywire and tech support can't fix it. A new computer is pretty daunting as it might have a whole new mess of issues, and this old system of theirs has been chugging along for 1-2 years without a hitch, so they might as well fix it.
Most people don't know and don't care about warranty-less repairs vs new computer if the cost is low enough. Hmm, $150 for a fix that will get it running (quite possibly better than before, ie, bigger hard drive, more RAM, better video card, etc) or $400+ for a brand new one that isn't a total piece of crap, ie, dumpster-diver eMachines bottom end. Vista has kept a lot of people from buying new as well. And that moving parts bit is just plain silly. I've seen relatively few machines bounce back that often.
Utter claptrap on used computers. I've made a bundle in the business. I'm not talking about buying and selling via Craigslist or crap like that. I'm on the mailing list for every higher-ed surplus sale within 100 miles and then some. Some schools will surplus computers as soon as the warranty expires. I'm going to be picking up some 3ghz P4 systems tomorrow for $35 apiece, XP license keys on them, and thus far they've had a very good success rate. One dud in perhaps 25, maybe a few bad but easily-replaced components in others. I can turn around and resell those for as much as $200 depending on what's in them and what I can put in them. I don't deal in laptops. More hassle than they're worth. It makes plenty of sense to buy a used system if the person is on a tight budget (more and more people these days) and doesn't need anything fancy, just something for internet, email, music, etc. Or maybe they need something simple for the kids and a new system would be wasted money. I made a shitload of cash at a local flea market moving used systems, so don't tell me they're generally a waste. If you know where to get them cheaply and reliably and can move them at a low enough price while maintaining a healthy margin, they're a very lucrative market.
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.