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Forrester Says Tech Downturn Is "Unofficially Over"
alphadogg writes "The US IT market will grow by 6.6% as high-tech spending rebounds in 2010, according to Forrester Research's latest estimates. The research firm based its projections on data reported for 2009, though its fourth quarter numbers are incomplete. Forrester says hints of a recovery surfaced in the third quarter, and now the company expects the global IT market to grow by 8.1% in 2010. Forrester's US and Global IT Market Outlook: Q4 2009 reads: 'The tech downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over, while the Q3 2009 data for the US and the global market showed continued declines in tech purchases (as we expected). We predict that the Q4 2009 data will show a small increase in buying activity, or at worst, just a small decline.'"
I was never unemployed during this current downturn, and I am in tech.
Probably the same for most... I'm just sayin...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If you're in sales that's great, but the IT employee pool has become so diluted that it's getting harder and harder to find a good paying job.
Or more like Dr. Clayton Forrester! Push the button, Frank! Amirite?
Quoting Soup is good food by the dead kennedys;
We're sorry
You'll just have to leave
Unemployment runs out after just six weeks
How does it feel to be a budget cut?
You're snipped
You no longer exist
Your number's been purged from our central computer
So we can rig the facts
And sweep you under the rug
See our chart? Unemployment's going down
If that ruins your life that's your problem
=====
I guess it's going up, depending on who's perspective you see it from.
Does this mean I'll get a job this year?
The tech jobs market in Boston does feel less dead now than it did for most of 2009. I entered the job market in April and it was six months before I had an interview. Now I've had three in three months. It's tricky to extrapolate from those data points to locate a job offer but it does give me hope.
... now back to the bit mines.
I graduated last November. I was looking for jobs since August. I did not get any calls at least until end of November. Since then I have had an interview every day and finally had the luxury to choose from multiple offers. I know a lot of companies are starting up new projects. A lot of the jobs in my area - Computer Architecture/Systems/Networks is being driven by Cloud Computing. Datacenter style jobs are big. Most positions require experience in Fiber Chanel SAN etc or hardware for large Datacenter switches.
What makes it official? Netcraft?
Now if only people could eat inflection points.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Is this a real tech boost or just places finally needing upgrades? When Vista was found to be needless for both the consumer and business market, most consumers cut spending much in technology and businesses cut any jobs upgrading. When the recession hit, they still had little reason to upgrade. In previous years, major changes happened, compare the speed boost from a 1995 Pentium to a 1999 Pentium III. Now compare a Pentium Dual-Core to a Core 2 Duo, is there really that much of a difference in the 4 years between a 2006 Pentium Dual-Core and a Core 2 Duo? Yes, if you are a gamer it might make a lot of difference, but for most tasks, you wouldn't notice the extra speed, especially when comparing a Pentium to a Pentium III. So when the hardware is good enough, the upgraded software terrible, who wants to spend the money to upgrade? Now, new hardware advances combined with software people don't completely hate (Windows 7) is giving people reason to upgrade.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Tech workers are comparable well payed and in a good position. Haiti had a sudden downturn--that's real problems. Perspective and all until we all hit Singularity.
now I see why that bill in the state legislature about recreational marijuana made that milestone.
man....it ain't over until the fat lady sings (or I, along with millions of other unemployed workers in the tech field get a job).
"The most likely alternative to our forecast that the U.S. and global IT markets will recover in 2010 is a faltering tech market due to a double-dip recession that returns in 2010 after a brief two- to three-quarter economic recovery," the report reads. "Should this happen, U.S. tech purchases would decline by 3% to 4% in 2010, with a second-half decline offsetting a first-half tech revival."
Maybe if the economy has a double dip recession the politicians will learn that their stimulus plans and the continued inflationary policy of the Fed are bad ideas. By then I think it will be too late, the dollar is on a fast pace to destruction. Perhaps that's Obama's job creation plan, debase the currency so much that it will be too expensive to outsource to Indian and Russian labor. Delaying a market correction will only make it worse, Government intervention cause and prolonged the Great Depression.
Some people predict a second lag down. I won't be surprised if the article has been published in highest point of this year. Looking at VIX (scare factor) it could be the case.
Whatever. If you are annoyed by that phrase, it sounds like a personal problem to me. Anyway, at the end of the day, I still have my job.
Chill out, it's all good. I'm not gonna lie, but, um, can we talk? Dude! I am just doing my due diligence, in trying to help me to help you to be honest about things.
Sheesh. And I thought AC for for warm climates only!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think Forrester is being overly optimistic. CIOs may be ready and willing to spend, but it does not mean the business (read: owner, CEO/Board, CFO) are going to jump on the bandwagon. Each purchase/hire will need to undergo a serious cost-benefit evaluation, and the lowest possible dollar paid. This is a result not only of the recession of the past year-plus, but also the very real and serious concerns businesses have of what upcoming legislation (and associated regulatory environments) is going to cost them.
"obviously leading to increased consumerism, and a happier economy"
This is the typical mantra of an American materialist. The effect of consuming increasing happiness saturates pretty quickly after satisfying the basic needs. Welcome to the post-material society!
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/
100,000 - 150,000 new jobs to be created each month just to stay even.
No, what you need is more wealth.
That is, you will need the resources those people will consume over their lifetime: food, textiles, space, vehicles, energy, and so forth. Plus, those people need to have it.
Of course, a sensible thing to ask of those people is to do something in return for being given those resources, e.g. get a job. But that's not a necessity.
Imagine you had robots who could do all the work we need humans for now, and because they were well built, we only rarely needed to repair, dispose and replace them. And the robot nerds volunteer to do this work on behalf of all of society.
Then there's no need for more jobs just because you have more people. Maybe one job per n people, but n >> 1.
Point being: there's no inherent value in jobs, because your job can be doing something that doesn't have any inherent value. The classical example being "9-1: dig ditch; 1-5: fill it again". What has value is the resources people want.
Wow, at a quick glance it does almost look like real turf....
That's why people like us have advantage over you. We can see the wonders of the Universe and have fun for less than 30 altarian dollars a day, and be quite happy with our lives, no matter which kind of depression you get into.
Then why are stock options being sold like crazy these days ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Point taken! It reminds me of this poster we had in our test lab where I first worked:
(in big bold letters)
We're making REAL PROGRESS!
(in much smaller letters underneath)
Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Also the Marxian view that only the means of production matters, is a bit out of date.
I'm not arguing that view. Leave distribution and marketing to the robots; they're (by unrealistic assumption) programmed to also do that part.
The Marxian view that the only source of wealth is labor
I think I'm especially not arguing that point. At least I'm not arguing that the only source of wealth is human labour---again, leave that to the robot.
On the other hand: the robots originate from human labour. And if nobody ever works, we have no services, and nobody transforms raw natural resources into products, so we have no increase in wealth over what the natural resources are worth in their unprocessed form.
Then again, exactly what is labour? If a behaviour creates or increases value, and we see that and then label it "labour", isn't that some kind of fallacious reasoning?
... and I didn't see anything in the article that led me to believe that this upturn wouldn't just be an increase in business for hardware and software vendors. Most people working in "IT" work for other types of businesses. That hardware manufacturers and software development companies are going to see improvement is great but that's only a small part of the business environment that involves "IT".
I suspect that what Forrester is seeing is that a lot of companies may be, at long last, planning on opening up the purse strings to go out and buy the equipment and software for projects that have been on hold for a long time. Good news for the Dells, HPs, and Microsofts of the world. Call me pessimistic, but I also suspect that they'll be executing those projects with existing employees and some contractors (as needed) rather than adding actual FTEs.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"That 'downturn' hurt, bad. Being out of work for 6 months would have been nice, but there were weeks at a time when there were no tech related positions, and nobody was interested in hiring someone with "professional" work experience for even tasks such as menial labor or food service."
Uh, what?
"Now compare a Pentium Dual-Core to a Core 2 Duo, is there really that much of a difference in the 4 years between a 2006 Pentium Dual-Core and a Core 2 Duo? Yes, if you are a gamer it might make a lot of difference, but for most tasks, you wouldn't notice the extra speed, especially when comparing a Pentium to a Pentium III." - by Darkness404 (1287218) on Tuesday January 12, @11:23PM (#30747018)
Actually, there's QUITE THE DIFFERENCE, between a 2006 AMD Athlon X2 4800+ 2400mhz dual core CPU & an INTEL Core I7 920 2600mhz quad core CPU (& not just in gaming, but in actual "real world" work-oriented tasks - which is what the I7 series by INTEL was noted mostly for as far as where it improved on tasks it was known to be beneficial for).
I personally have seen it during heavy string processing oriented tasks!
(E.G.-> I built an app named "APK HOSTS File Grinder 4.0++" that removes duplicates from a HOSTS file, & no matter how much I optimized @ the code level via compiler optimizations + algorithmic improvements as best I could & inline assembly code insertions via the asm directive possible in Delphi)
I used Borland Delphi, because it happens to be one of, if not THE fastest, programming language & especially @ string & math processing levels out there (which is why I elected to use it to do the job in fact, because as far back as 1997, Delphi was shown to have KNOCKED THE CHOCOLATE out of even MSVC++ & certainly VB5 when in "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" Sept./Oct. 1997 issue entitled "Inside the VB5 Compiler" Delphi absolutely BLEW AWAY BOTH MSVC++ &/or VB5 by DOUBLE in both STRINGS & MATH PROCESSING TESTS... & EVERY PROGRAM DOES THOSE no less mind you)
Anyways/anyhow - After my doing a "primitive profiling" of its code via hi-res multimedia timers firing @ the start of my procedures/subroutines/methods, & terminating them @ the end of said subs/procs/methods (finding the difference & working on the slowest of them all)? At the end, the best I could do the job on approximately 655,500 entries in a HOSTS file was roughly 4 hours to do a removal of duplicated entries from said HOSTS files on the AMD 4800+ dual core CPU (down from 4.5 hours after my profiling & optimizing @ the code level)...
However, when I picked up the Intel Core i7 quad core CPU?? It alone took the job down from that 4 hr. runtime, down to less than 1 hr. of runtime...
(That's a 400% decrease in runtime, or rather, a 400% increase in speed of processing, in other words... from a hardware change @ the CPU level alone!)
There is QUITE the difference between a CPU from 2006 to those released in 2009 my friend, & it exists @ the "ACTUAL WORK RELATED TASKS LEVEL", not just in gaming...
APK
P.S.=> One of the MAIN "selling points" by INTEL regarding their newest/latest-greatest CPU's has been touted as increasing power/speed @ the ACTUAL WORK RELATED TASKS LEVEL, & based on my testing in said area? They were not kidding... it's QUITE the increase, & I've literally SEEN IT, myself, via the example shown above... just some "FYI" for you, comparing CPU's from 2006 to those released in 2009, & not in gaming, but rather in work-related processing type tasks! apk