2010 Salary Survey Highlights IT Woes

CWmike writes "Trapped between flat salaries and ever-increasing workloads, IT professionals are about to explode. That's the top takeaway from Computerworld's 2010 survey of nearly 5,000 IT workers. 'Bonuses and benefits are way down, and workloads and work hours have increased. Meanwhile, salaries are stagnant (rising just a microscopic 0.7% on average), and — not surprisingly — satisfaction is on the wane.' Another finding of note is the shrinking female IT workforce. Have a look-see at how IT fared in your neck of the woods with this smart look-up tool."

Comments

You control your own destiny

[alain94040]

career experts say you have to take a strategic approach to your job search and application process. The best candidates are always taking steps to manage their careers...

I fully agree. If you sit passively and wait for your next raise, you may be waiting for a while... But if you are proactive, good things eventually happen to you. Contribute to an open-source project. Become the co-founder of a cool iPad app or whatever cool idea people are trading nowdays...

It doesn't pay off instantly, but a year or two later, your resume stands out from the crowd, and more importantly, you may not even need a resume anymore to get a great job!

Re:You control your own destiny

[MightyMartian]

I still find something trouble about the notion "take your happy pill and be glad you have a job..." It's certainly true, but it allows companies to railroad over employees, and not just IT departments specifically. But these companies will suffer if they can't find a way to make up a lack of salary increases with some sort of compensation when the job market opens up.

The bigger point is that IT is not alone in this. All sorts of departments are basically being told to do more with less, and expect no monetary compensation in the short-term for it.

Re:You control your own destiny

[MBGMorden]

That's basically what I'm looking at. I've spent enough time working with enough types of obscure proprietary apps to have all sorts of ideas on how to do the concept of them right. There are tons of things that there are niche markets for out there that you'd never think of, and that reality alone is why the existing apps cost a fortune often for old buggy software written in VB6 (or worse). These programs cost tons of money not because they're really any good, but rather because often times there's just no good competition to offer alternatives.

I'm still working my day job, but in my spare time I'm writing a lot of various little tools and such. iPhone development, .NET app development, etc. If any of them turn out to be marketable, then great, I'll market them. If not, I'll probably just put the code under the GPL and give it away. Either way, a lot of time success will be achieved through extra-curricular work - not working a salaried job. It's at least worth a try.

Re:You control your own destiny

[RichMeatyTaste]

The article is fairly accurate, as is your reply.
If you are working your way up the tech ladder you should really be living as transient a lifestyle as is possible. This means renting rather than buying a home, not buying roomfulls of furniture (harder to move all of your stuff), limiting debt, etc.
If you are able to be mobile and local opportunities are limited you will always have options elsewhere. I am fortunate that I live in an area that is still growing (Raleigh, NC) so I still have plenty of opportunities locally; I would be in trouble if I had to move right now (house needs work, would need to hire a mover, would probably lose a little money, etc). I know some guys who are stuck in areas like Boston, NYC, Michigan (multiple cities), etc who can't sell their house (not only is no one buying, they owe more than it is worth) which means they can't afford to move at the moment. If I could get them down here I know of multiple jobs they could get but they just can't make a move.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, man. For the past 10 years, I've worked at the same company which has always trained me and treated me well. Well, that all went to hell in a handbasket when we were sold. Now I'm frustrated, pay frozen for 3 years, they want more and compinsate less. Benefits are costing more, what benefits they didn't cut.

You are absolutely right in being proactive. I'm honing my Linux/UNIX skills, scripting skills, and even thought about participating in an open source program. I did in fact notice a co-worker who has participated in an open source program and he really does stand out.

Thanks for being positive.

Re:You control your own destiny

[PPH]

Its not just money. In my last job (as an engineering grunt in a large corp.), I was paid pretty well. OK, I'll be honest....very well. But they had that attitude; 'be happy we're handing you piles of cash and shut up'. So I left. For less money (initially). They just couldn't figure it out when they tried to get me to come back. Its not just about the money, its about the culture at the company. And theirs stank.

This is why women steer clear of a lot of IT jobs. They have a much greater sensitivity to interpersonal factors. And when a company, or industry, starts playing behaving like assholes, they leave (or just never show up). Women are like canaries in coal mines.

Re:You control your own destiny

[walterbyrd]

If you want to be a business person, not an employee, then why learn software development? Just hire some dirt-cheap offshore bozo from rentacoder for next to nothing.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

This is why women steer clear of a lot of IT jobs. They have a much greater sensitivity to interpersonal factors. And when a company, or industry, starts playing behaving like assholes, they leave (or just never show up). Women are like canaries in coal mines.

Exactly. And then various people start hand-wringing, asking "why aren't more women in IT or engineering", and trying to "fix" the problem, when in fact there's no problem at all. Women have seen that these careers mostly suck, and have decided to pursue other careers instead. I'm an engineer, and I wouldn't recommend this job to anyone unless they're the type of person (like me) who simply can't see themselves doing anything else in life. I know I never would be any good as a manager or really any job where I need to interact with people a lot, so basically for me it's either engineering (as an individual contributor) or some type of skilled labor like auto mechanics. Engineering obviously pays better (though it's debatable how much), so that's what I went with. If you have any people skills at all, I'd recommend doing something else for a living. However, if you live outside the USA, this advice should be ignored, as things are very different elsewhere. Germany, for instance, is still very strong in engineering, and I doubt companies there treat their engineers as poorly as American companies do.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why women steer clear of a lot of IT jobs. They have a much greater sensitivity to interpersonal factors. And when a company, or industry, starts playing behaving like assholes, they leave (or just never show up). Women are like canaries in coal mines.

There are good or at least decent companies to work for so I doubt this explains the gigantic sausage party that is IT. By and large, most women look at the world in terms of relationships both with people and with objects such as tools they use. By and large, most men appreciate the relationships they specifically want to participate in but view the rest of the world in a more utilitarian fashion. IT is all about utility and pragmatism. It's not a surprise that most IT folks are men while i.e. most teachers are women. Women either don't have the IT skillset or don't wish to do that kind of work and that's why many of them don't choose IT as a career path.

Honestly I don't see what the big deal is with this issue. Not every demographic disparity is because of racism or sexism, though that idea appeals to people who just refuse to admit that women are different from men and tend to have different preferences. I think they refuse to admit this because they think that saying "women are different" is the same thing as saying "women are not our equals" and that just isn't true. If anything, refusing to appreciate their differences is a disservice to them, a denial of the way they want to be. I think you'll find that actual discrimination against women is rare, that most men prefer a co-ed environment over a sausage party and would be glad to see more women who share their interests.

This reminds me of the absolute lunacy perpetuated in the name of feminism. Professors and others have been fired merely for suggesting that a woman's brain is "wired differently" than a man's brain, nevermind that this is demonstrably true. I think the same people who can't deal with such realities are the same ones who would automatically assume the scarcity of women in IT must be due to sexism. If some kind of discrimination is really going on, it's probably not sexism. It's probably discrimination against obesity, as the few women I've ever seen who were highly skilled in IT were all rather chunky. It's a shame this is so important to people because the bottom line in a workplace is whether they can do the job, not whether they make good eye candy, but this does happen.

Re:You control your own destiny

[PalmKiller]

Man up AC. You are not giving us 110% by posting anonymously.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

If you are working your way up the tech ladder you should really be living as transient a lifestyle as is possible. This means renting rather than buying a home, not buying roomfulls of furniture (harder to move all of your stuff), limiting debt, etc.

Don't forget not getting married, or if you do, marrying a housewife and not a woman with any career aspirations beyond perhaps working at the mall.

would need to hire a mover,

Moving isn't quite as hard as you make it out to be; I've done it many, many times. These days, the best way to do it is to use a freight shipper. I used ABF when I moved cross-country in 2000, and it worked out quite well: you get some friends and move all your stuff into a trailer, close it up, and then the company comes with their semi-tractor and takes it away. 10 days later, your trailer shows up at your new home, ready for you to unload it.

Whatever you do, NEVER hire a full-service moving company like Mayflower. They'll hijack your stuff and hold it hostage, demanding extra payment for you to get it back. If you don't have any friends to help with your ABF move, then you can hire local movers (like from Craigslist) at each end to do the work for you. With locals that don't have any connection to the trucking company, you don't have to worry about anyone hijacking your belongings.

I know some guys who are stuck in areas like Boston, NYC, Michigan (multiple cities), etc who can't sell their house (not only is no one buying, they owe more than it is worth) which means they can't afford to move at the moment.

They can, but they'd have to walk away from their homes. They really should look into this; if they're underwater any significant amount, and don't want to be stuck in their current location for the next decade or more, then they NEED to walk away. House prices are NOT going to go up significantly for 5-10 years; it'll take them decades to recoup what they've paid for their homes. It's easier to just walk away, take the credit hit, and buy a new house in a few years (or at most, 7). Also, they can try to do a short-sale, which has less of a negative effect on your credit score.

Re:You control your own destiny

[BabyDuckHat]

The 1950's called. They want they're attitudes back.

Re:You control your own destiny

[couchslug]

"Women are like canaries in coal mines."

If I find them passed out or dead around the office, I'll be sure to evacuate!

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

Women normally pass out after I've evacuated.

Re:You control your own destiny

[y_axis]

"Women are like canaries in coal mines."

If I find them passed out or dead around the office, I'll be sure to evacuate!

Meh. I'd hit that. (too much?)

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That's one of the most sexist comments I've seen in a long time. What a jerk. (I am a man, by the way, and I know plenty of hardworking women.)

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1950's called. They want they're attitudes back.

Your 3rd grade teacher called. She wants your English grade back.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Broken scope]

Just because you find an environment tolerable does not mean that the environment isn't broken.

Re:You control your own destiny

[TooMuchToDo]

They can, but they'd have to walk away from their homes. They really should look into this; if they're underwater any significant amount, and don't want to be stuck in their current location for the next decade or more, then they NEED to walk away. House prices are NOT going to go up significantly for 5-10 years; it'll take them decades to recoup what they've paid for their homes. It's easier to just walk away, take the credit hit, and buy a new house in a few years (or at most, 7). Also, they can try to do a short-sale, which has less of a negative effect on your credit score.

In some cases, you can find your new home, purchase it, and than short sell or deed-in-lieu your underwater property.

Re:You control your own destiny

[TooMuchToDo]

How do you like Raleigh? My wife and I are considering moving to South Carolina from Illinois, and while I know Raleigh is a bit to the north, I'd be interested to get your take on the area.

Re:You control your own destiny

[PPH]

Men, on the other hand, shame one another when they aren't giving 110%.

I think you've got that backwards. To risk making a bunch of sexist generalizations:

Men compete to accomplish goals. They don't worry so much about tripping up the high performers or ostracizing those that don't measure up to the group's standards. You do your work, to the best of your ability, keep your head down, and let management (or the coach) cut the slackers from the team. Women are the ones that form the cliques based on social status, wealth, behavior, etc. And they are the ones who dish the dirt about each other. Write down descriptions of these behaviors with all references to gender removed. Then have subjects identify what genders they attach to each. I've seen this study done and the results are quite interesting. And not at all in line with what you've stated.

Men, on the other hand, shame one another when they aren't giving 110%. When I see a fellow man giving less than I would give, I feel a twinge of shame and doubt his masculinity. In the world of men, this is rather typical.

There's a couple of things going on here. The whole thing about 'masculinity' in the IT/Engineering world is sort of a non sequitur. I've worked in industries like utilities, construction, etc. where strength is (or was, before the advent of hydraulics) an important factor in job performance. I just don't see that requirement in the white collar field. The little guy with the coke-bottle glasses, or the little Indian lady might be the best coder or engineer in the group. The need to attach the attribute of masculinity to such careers seems a bit odd. The classic stereotypical social group utilizing such tactics to maximize performance and discipline is the Spartans. And we all know the stories about what extents they went to to reinforce the requisite social structure. Perhaps that's why our present day military os so homophobic.

Stereotypes aside, this isn't the sort of atmosphere that would attract women, and probably not a lot of guys, either.

Re:You control your own destiny

[PPH]

By and large, most men appreciate the relationships they specifically want to participate in but view the rest of the world in a more utilitarian fashion. IT is all about utility and pragmatism.

And so we have the stereotype of the geek, sitting in his basement, plugging away at code. Or the s/w engineer who doesn't need any stinkin' input from the customer.

It's not a surprise that most IT folks are men while i.e. most teachers are women.

This may also explain some of the spectacular failures implementing IT projects.

Face it. The technology isn't that demanding. Most decent apps don't go anywhere near the cutting edge of CS. This isn't a story of heroism, with John Henry swinging away at some keyboard. Its about dealing with people. Both customers and team members.

If some kind of discrimination is really going on, it's probably not sexism. It's probably discrimination against obesity,

Man, you should drive by the Microsoft campus some time (I do practically every day). The Cheetos franchise for that outfit would make me wealthy.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

Yes, that's a good thing to keep in mind too. It's a little more difficult of course because you have to come up with your down-payment and have a good enough debt-to-income ratio to get a lender to give you a loan for the new house while you're still paying for the old one, but it's obviously the best alternative.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

The grammar police called. Please report to the precinct at your earliest convenience.

Re:You control your own destiny

[spectro]

Fully agree with this, more important is you don't have to restrict yourself to be an employee.

According to that lookup tool the Salary for my area (Dallas-Fort) Worth and experience (10+ years as web developer) is around 62k...

I quit my last salaried job 2 years ago. I have been working independent since then just finding gigs on Craigslist. I work 60 hrs a month in average and earn plenty of money to cover all my expenses and to buy anything I need.

Re:You control your own destiny

[causality]

The whole thing about 'masculinity' in the IT/Engineering world is sort of a non sequitur. I've worked in industries like utilities, construction, etc. where strength is (or was, before the advent of hydraulics) an important factor in job performance. I just don't see that requirement in the white collar field. The little guy with the coke-bottle glasses, or the little Indian lady might be the best coder or engineer in the group. The need to attach the attribute of masculinity to such careers seems a bit odd.

Physical muscles are one particular kind of strength. The determination to realize your goals by facing head-on all of the difficulties you encounter is another kind of strength and often does not involve lifting heavy objects. So is the discipline to put in the extra hours, to make the extra effort, to go the extra mile. I honestly believe that what you wrote there reflects an artificially narrow concept of strength.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Smauler]

Professors and others have been fired merely for suggesting that a woman's brain is "wired differently" than a man's brain, nevermind that this is demonstrably true.

This is demonstrably false. On average, women's brains are wired slightly differently than men's. However, there is a lot of overlap there, and there are a hell of a lot of men with more "feminine" minds than a hell of a lot of women. The actual disparity between men and women is very small - around 10% either way with very specific tasks, and with wide bell curves meaning that around 40% of men will be better at female tasks than most women, and 40% of women will be better at male tasks than men.

Re:You control your own destiny

[sesshomaru]

The whole thing about 'masculinity' in the IT/Engineering world is sort of a non sequitur.

What they mean is that men are more gullible and easily tricked. That's why they can be tricked into thinking a fairly low prestige way of making a living is a holy vocation open only to a chosen few who must dedicate their best years to it for relatively low wages given the hours worked.

I consider it a Darwinian reproductive strategy by the alpha males, akin to the way they tricked their smart competitors into monasteries during the Dark Ages.

At least the monks thought they were going to Heaven...

Re:You control your own destiny

[MightyMartian]

I imagine your mother deserves piles of compensation for having to put up with you, and likely with the demented woman-hating father you had that taught you to think this way.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Dragonslicer]

I honestly believe that what you wrote there reflects an artificially narrow concept of strength.

Or, ya know, maybe they were only talking about physical strength. Context is a useful thing; you may want to read up on it some time.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

Thanks, man. For the past 10 years, I've worked at the same company which has always trained me and treated me well. Well, that all went to hell in a handbasket when we were sold. Now I'm frustrated, pay frozen for 3 years, they want more and compinsate less. Benefits are costing more, what benefits they didn't cut.

You are absolutely right in being proactive. I'm honing my Linux/UNIX skills, scripting skills, and even thought about participating in an open source program. I did in fact notice a co-worker who has participated in an open source program and he really does stand out.

Post your resume on Dice.com and start looking for a new job. They're out there.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget not getting married, or if you do, marrying a housewife and not a woman with any career aspirations beyond perhaps working at the mall.

I second this comment. I'm wanting to move back to the much larger metro area where I started my career, instead of sticking around this area with it's 15-20 large corporations (as the only places with need of IT staff) that only accept one resume every three years from you. My wife, however, has a very good position with one of those 15-20 corporations, and refuses to move.

A wife and family limits your options drastically. There's a reason it's called "putting down roots"...it means it's danged near impossible to leave the spot you're in.

Re:You control your own destiny

[cayenne8]

"Its not just money. In my last job (as an engineering grunt in a large corp.), I was paid pretty well. OK, I'll be honest....very well. But they had that attitude; 'be happy we're handing you piles of cash and shut up'. So I left. For less money (initially). They just couldn't figure it out when they tried to get me to come back. Its not just about the money, its about the culture at the company. And theirs stank."

Interesting..for me is only about the money. I mean, let's face it...if I didn't have to work for a living, say if I won the powerball jackpot, I'd never work again. To me a job is only a means to an end...the end being having enough money to live my life in the lifestyle I prefer. I like to travel, have nice cars and other toy...go out, party..etc.

I'm certainly not defined in any manner by my job. Don't get me wrong, I like to futz around with computers, so what I do is always somewhat fun, but, if I didn't have to work, I would not do so.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

All you need to do is slack off, and get yourself laid off. Then, she'll be responsible for supporting both of you, while you can sit at home and do fun stuff like work on open-source projects, play video games, sleep late, etc. If she doesn't like that, then she has precisely two choices: 1) learn to like it, or 2) pack up and move to a larger metro area where the employment situation is better. (or 3), get a divorce...)

Re:You control your own destiny

[King_TJ]

I think you're right about much of what you said, but recommending people just walk away from their homes if they're "underwater any significant amount" isn't the most responsible thing. Our country is in such bad shape right now, partially because of people with this attitude of "I'll just walk away from what I owe as soon as I don't like the terms anymore that I agreed to initially!"

Granted, there are plenty of exceptions out there. I recently read about a Hispanic family in California, for example, who spent about $440,000 for a home in a new "village" that had its "family friendliness" as a major selling point. They had several kids and he wanted to invest in their future - so they weren't being raised in a bad neighborhood with high crime, drugs, etc.

Well, with the recession, almost everyone in the village filed for bankruptcy and was foreclosed on. His home is now worth well under $200,000 and it'd be impossible to find a buyer right now if he wanted to sell at that kind of loss. Everyone living around him is a drug dealer or "shady" in some manner or another. He said someone already smashed in his family room window one night, and tried to steal his work van another time.

In a case like his, yeah - walking away is the only sensible option left to him, really. (He said he already tried to renegotiate his mortgage with the lender, but they refused to help him.) Basically, he tried to do the right thing and kept up his end of the deal this whole time, but he can't help the fact that everyone else around him didn't, leaving him hanging out to dry. And it's not just about him. It's about the safety and welfare of his whole family.

All in all though, I suspect the majority of Slashdot readers who are in technical fields aren't in this drastic of a situation. A short sale is probably a much better recommendation for them, if they really feel they can't go on with the housing deal they're in. At least that way, the house gets an actual buyer who has plans to get it re-occupied in some manner (often renting out to low income families as section 8). It's not just a case of letting it sit, empty, while the bank gets struck trying to figure out what to do with it, and your credit rating is decimated.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

I think you're right about much of what you said, but recommending people just walk away from their homes if they're "underwater any significant amount" isn't the most responsible thing. Our country is in such bad shape right now, partially because of people with this attitude of "I'll just walk away from what I owe as soon as I don't like the terms anymore that I agreed to initially!"

Bullshit. I'm only advocating living up to the contract you signed.

Every home loan is a collateral-backed loan (as opposed to an unsecured loan, such as credit card debt). The terms are really quite simple: you have two choices: 1) pay your mortgage on time, and you get to stay in your house until the loan is paid off, or 2) fail to pay on the loan, and the bank is allowed to take the house back from you.

It's no different than a car loan. With a car loan, you make the payments, OR, the repo man comes and takes your car away from you.

I'm only advocating exercising option #2. There is a penalty, however: you get a hit on your credit report, saying to other creditors that you're a credit risk. If you're OK with the penalty, then there's no shame in exercising your option to default.

Remember, these lenders had a responsibility (to their shareholders) to exercise due diligence and proper judgment in handing out these loans. Every loan, of any type, carries a certain amount of risk. There's a risk that the borrower will default, and you'll lose money. To mitigate this risk, there's several steps you can take: 1) require the borrower to pay for PMI. Most underwater loans have this, so lenders are getting reimbursed for defaults. 2) require the borrower to put up collateral. For home loans, this is obviously the house itself. So, if the borrower defaults, you can take the house back, and re-sell it to recoup your losses from them not paying their mortgage. Now, it should be obvious (but it's not to a mortgage lender apparently) that you should make sure the house is actually worth what you're loaning out for it, because if it's not, then you're going to be screwed when you try to auction it after a foreclosure.

It's not the buyers' fault that banks/lenders colluded to artificially drive up house prices, and then didn't bother to actually make sure they weren't sitting on trillions of dollars of highly risky loans on properties that weren't worth half what they loaned for them.

(He said he already tried to renegotiate his mortgage with the lender, but they refused to help him.)

They do this for everyone. They've already been paid off by the government for all underwater loans, so there's no reason to renegotiate, as they profit more from a foreclosure.

Do it: walk away. You are NOT hurting anyone, you're only helping yourself. The lenders aren't being hurt, because they've already been bailed out by YOUR tax dollars. You might as well take your share by saving your finances now.

Finally, yes, I do agree that a short sale is a better route in most cases, if you can manage to get one. It's a lesser hit to your credit.

Finally,
Our country is in such bad shape right now

People walking away is NOT what put our country into such bad shape. It was extreme greed and shortsightedness on the part of major corporations, and especially the government, whose very job it is to regulate large industries to keep giant economic problems from happening in the first place. They learned their lesson in the 1930s with the Great Depression, and enacted many laws to regulate the finance industry to keep it from happening again. These laws were dismantled in the 90s, and the expected result has occurred.

Only, it's worse now. The bailouts are only prolonging the situation, and making it seem less bad than it really is. We're going to have another big drop in the near future I think.

Our country is going down the tubes, from many factors (religious fundamentalism, greed, growing separation of classes and disappearance of the middle class

Re:You control your own destiny

[PPH]

So is the discipline to put in the extra hours, to make the extra effort, to go the extra mile.

Sadly (and IT is an excellent example of this) there is a large, sometimes order of magnitude difference in productivity between the average performer and the best. The whole 'put in the hours' concept is sports/military thinking. "Move that pile of dirt, soldier! And when you're though, move it back." Ask why? I doubt it.

What about the person who can whip out an excellent piece of code in a fraction of the time anyone else can? If she goes home early, and gets shit from her co-workers for "slacking off", is that better for the company? In my past life, I worked for an outfit with exactly this culture. And eventually, all they had left working for them were the slow workers. And when I left, having them on my resume was like the stink of death.

Re:You control your own destiny

[publiclurker]

Been watching too much of that strange Japanese pron have we?

Re:You control your own destiny

[PPH]

There's something to this idea. Every army needs its cannon fodder (or Jihaddist with a bomb vest).

I consider it a Darwinian reproductive strategy by the alpha males,

Possibly that's why the "Protestant Work Ethic" goes hand in hand with admonishments against promiscuity. You work hard and keep your hands off the harem. Those are for the king.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

4chan called. They want their spelling back.

Re:You control your own destiny

[PPH]

What they mean is that men are more gullible and easily tricked. That's why they can be tricked into thinking a fairly low prestige way of making a living is a holy vocation open only to a chosen few who must dedicate their best years to it for relatively low wages given the hours worked.

Like painting the white picket fence in 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'.

Re:You control your own destiny

[King_TJ]

Sorry, but I don't think my suggestion was "bullshit" .... I hear what you're saying, but despite a home (or car) loan being collateral-based, that doesn't imply that the lender is just as happy to have your property back as getting paid.

Banks aren't in the auto sales business, nor are they in the business of selling homes. Whenever people default on these loans and cost the lenders money to collect, and again to hire people to resell the goods for them, they make it tougher on everyone else who needs a loan.

I'm with you that our nation is "going down the tubes" right now, and I'm in 100% agreement that greedy bankers and Wall Street traders are largely responsible, along with a federal govt. that's ever increasing in size, scope and desire to try to manipulate the market. But to suggest that the best course of action is to "take whatever you can get, before the ship sinks" is to admit defeat, and is the cowardly way out, IMHO.

If I was going to "get the heck out" before it "all falls down", where do you suggest I go? We're in a global economy, like it or not, and the bankruptcy and failure of the United States wouldn't be some isolated event you could just run away from. Our collapse would create a ripple effect that would probably collapse a few other economies along the way, and definitely shift the "balance of power" in the world in a new direction. (Since we owe so much to China, presently, I assume they'd be the ones to step in and claim our assets for defaulting on their loans. That would make China the new "ultimate world power", owning two large nations on opposite sides of the globe.)

But back to the original discussion point for a moment? I *do* hold the "Average Joe citizen" partly responsible for our mess, too. Far too many people were living beyond their means, trying to buy the biggest home or the priciest car or truck they could possibly get a loan for, instead of using common sense and taking a long-term outlook on things. (EG. Just because I can afford to make this payment today ... am I reasonably confident I can still make it years down the road? Am I taking into account emergencies that might come up that I'll need money for?) Despite the complaints about the "deregulation of the finance industry", that alone wouldn't have caused the problem we have now if the consumers were using their heads, instead of listening to any lender who would tell them what they wanted to hear.

Re:You control your own destiny

[haruharaharu]

Well too bad - the discussion wasn't restricted to physical strength, and shifting the discussion like that is duplicitous: we're talking about gender differences, and physical strength isn't terribly relevant to that in the context of IT.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

hah! your wife was sitting next to you while you typed that, huh?

Re:You control your own destiny

[haruharaharu]

What the hell are you talking about? Womens' brains aren't 10% more social with a large overlap to men, with men being 10% more direct. Men and women are different, they tend towards different goals, different social structures, etc. and this has been demonstrated repeatedly.

Re:You control your own destiny

[cavebison]

If I find them passed out or dead around the office, I'll be sure to evacuate!

If you find a woman passed out, you will leave? You definitely work in IT.

(Offensive joke of the day.)

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

White Knight Syndrome Detected!

Re:You control your own destiny

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, but I don't think my suggestion was "bullshit" .... I hear what you're saying, but despite a home (or car) loan being collateral-based, that doesn't imply that the lender is just as happy to have your property back as getting paid.

I never said they were "happy", I'm only saying that's the bargain they struck. Not only that, it was THEIR OWN appraisers who told them that these properties were worth what they were lending out for them.

If they didn't like the bargain, and didn't like the risk it carried, then they should never have loaned out the money. Any time you invest money, it is YOUR responsibility to properly assess the investment, and make sure it's a worthy investment that carries the amount of risk you're comfortable with.

Why is it that if I invest my money in something stupid, like a dot-com stock, and lose most of my money when the bubble bursts, I don't get any kind of help, but when a big bank makes a really stupid investment, they get a government bail-out with MY tax dollars?

Fuck the banks. If I can screw them over in any way, I am happy to do so.

Banks aren't in the auto sales business, nor are they in the business of selling homes. Whenever people default on these loans and cost the lenders money to collect, and again to hire people to resell the goods for them, they make it tougher on everyone else who needs a loan.

Tough shit. They signed up for this when they decided to loan money for houses that weren't worth that much. They're the professionals; if they made bad investments, then they deserve to lose their money and go out of business.

I'm with you that our nation is "going down the tubes" right now, and I'm in 100% agreement that greedy bankers and Wall Street traders are largely responsible, along with a federal govt. that's ever increasing in size, scope and desire to try to manipulate the market. But to suggest that the best course of action is to "take whatever you can get, before the ship sinks" is to admit defeat, and is the cowardly way out, IMHO.

No, it's the pragmatic course of action. Anything else is foolhardy, and makes just as much sense as sticking around on the Titanic trying to patch the leaks. What else would you suggest people do? Empty out their life savings and hand it over to the banks, so that they can prosper, while everyone else suffers? Sorry, that's crap. What do you think all the CEOs of Bank of America and AIG are going to do when things get really bad? They're going to move to Costa Rica or wherever and retire on the beach with the money they've been saving up in a Swiss bank account (in some other currency than Dollars most likely).

If I was going to "get the heck out" before it "all falls down", where do you suggest I go? We're in a global economy, like it or not, and the bankruptcy and failure of the United States wouldn't be some isolated event you could just run away from. Our collapse would create a ripple effect that would probably collapse a few other economies along the way, and definitely shift the "balance of power" in the world in a new direction. (Since we owe so much to China, presently, I assume they'd be the ones to step in and claim our assets for defaulting on their loans. That would make China the new "ultimate world power", owning two large nations on opposite sides of the globe.)

I don't have all the answers, but I'd suggest getting out before it all falls down, because the countries that recover the fastest will be the ones best-managed, and in the best economic position to do so. That won't be the USA; we really can't do anything here any more. We don't make anything except a bunch of genetically-modified crops, and some raw materials like coal. I'd suggest either Europe or China. Eastern Europe is doing better and better, and there's a lot of tech jobs there. If you have a bunch of money saved up, however, you might want to move to a safer third-world country like Costa Rica or Uruguay and retire.

I *do*

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

admonishments against promiscuity

Nah, that's there to keep you from having too much fun. If people figured out that you could have pleasure without being a Good Person, the entire Protestant ethic would collapse in on itself. Why, how long after that discovery would it take for people to realize that just because something bad happened to a person they weren't a Bad Person?

It's hilarious watching the people infected by this meme argue about stuff like healthcare. The first things out of their mouth are why should they pay for irresponsible people, as if (type-2) Diabetes, (sexually transmitted) AIDS, and (smoking-induced) cancer were the only diseases anyone gets. After all, you must be a Bad Person to get sick!

Re:You control your own destiny

[RAMMS EIN]

``This is why women steer clear of a lot of IT jobs. They have a much greater sensitivity to interpersonal factors. And when a company, or industry, starts playing behaving like assholes, they leave (or just never show up).''

That, and they just don't want to do IT work to begin with. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of women just aren't interested in computers. In my CS programme at university, the ratio of men to women was about 100:1. Outside university or work, I find that most girls get someone else to fix their computers (i.e. software) for them and have absolutely no interest in learning what they can do about it, whereas most guys try do learn a couple of things about their computers and software even if they aren't in IT.

Given this, I find the number of women I have met who work in IT is actually _greater_ than what I would have expected.

Re:You control your own destiny

[linuxguy]

Ha ha. This is way way harder than you may think.

If you don't want to feed shit to your customers, then you cannot depend on rent-a-coder or a dirt cheap offshore engineer.

If you are doing some really really basic programming then yeah this might work. But for complex stuff, forget it. My experience has shown that about 1 out of 12 offshore engineers you hire is worth anything at all. You go through a lot of shit to find one that has some basic skills to be able to help in any way. Outsourcing was a huge time sink for me. I learned a lot of lessons and I am not going back to it for some time.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

I preferred the 1950's you insensitive clod! It was before all you damn hippies. Now look at America! Shit!

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot - Where young leftoids can practice admonishing unapproved thoughts that they'll one day grow up to criminalize.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Vectormatic]

Interesting..for me is only about the money. I mean, let's face it...if I didn't have to work for a living, say if I won the powerball jackpot, I'd never work again. To me a job is only a means to an end...the end being having enough money to live my life in the lifestyle I prefer. I like to travel, have nice cars and other toy...go out, party..etc.
I'm certainly not defined in any manner by my job. Don't get me wrong, I like to futz around with computers, so what I do is always somewhat fun, but, if I didn't have to work, I would not do so.

i have to disagree. Sure my primary motivation for working is getting paid, but i also need some sort of rythm in my daily life, which work provides. It also provides me with some challenge to aply myself.

Conversely, there is work where i couldnt be paid enough to do it. My current job in that respect is really pushing it. The company is old (average age here is way to high for an it firm) and extremely bureaucratic, nothing ever gets done, and on top of that the money isnt all that briliant either.

This the point where i start looking around, for either much better money for the same job, or a much more interesting and bareable job (or idealy, both)

Re:You control your own destiny

[Reservoir Penguin]

If female brains are wired differently through biology then why there are female scientists and engineers at all? And why is in our local university (in Russia) close to 40% of math major graduates are women? Are female mathematicians not real women? Are Russian women not real women? Seems more likely that any difference in wiring is due to cultural differences in child upbringing, if in America girls are bought Barbie dolls that say "Math is haaard" then no wonder their brains develop unsuitable for mathematics and IT.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL You've never worked in the medical field. Nurses are treated like crap and have an absolutely horrid job and mediocre pay for the amount of education required, but 98% of the nursing students I see are women.

Re:You control your own destiny

[cayenne8]

"i have to disagree. Sure my primary motivation for working is getting paid, but i also need some sort of rythm in my daily life, which work provides. It also provides me with some challenge to aply myself."

I can easily provide a 'rhythm' for my life without a job.

About a year or so ago, I was between contracts for about 7 months. My schedule? I'd get up about 8am or so, walk the dog, then jump on my motorcycle and go to the gym...work out for about 2hours or so, home for lunch, spend some time online looking for jobs, etc. Then, I'd get on my motorcycle, and go ride all around New Orleans...stopping off here and there. About 3-ish, I'd start to make plans to meet friends with jobs for beers after they got off work.

I'd maybe eat dinner out, or head home to cook (I love to cook)...and do whatever that evening.Next day, rinse, repeat.

Honestly, I'd have no problem doing basically that the rest of my years, with the occasional vacation to somewhere like the Keys in FL, or maybe island hop in the caribbean a bit.

If I didn't have to work to live comfortably, I'd not work....

Re:You control your own destiny

[Vectormatic]

kudos to you then, i guess i don't have the self-discipline to do that myself.

last year i spent 6 months at home, and while the first few weeks were fun, after that i just basically got out of bed, hid behind my pc, and waste my entire day on the tubes...

sounds an awefull lot like how i spend my time at work though..

Re:You control your own destiny

[causality]

That's why "put in the extra hours" was a very tiny part of my overall comment, precisely because I did not wish to put too much emphasis on it. What I had in mind there had more to do with 3am emergencies (servers going down, etc) that somebody has to handle yet is often rather thankless work.

Not to mention there is more to IT than coding. If you are physically running CAT5 through a building, it takes a certain amount of time to do that no matter how skilled you are. If you are cloning hard drives, you can't do that faster than the transfer rate of the drives. Etc. If your clients have requirements that must be met, these things could mean staying after hours. That's all.

Re:You control your own destiny

[Anonymous Coward]

As one of the few women here, I'd like to chime in with the reason that I no longer want to work in IT - because it sucks.

I've worked as a sysadmin for 8+ years and was recently laid off when the recession hit, lucky me. I don't have any children and so I don't fit in the "needing time off to spend with the family" bucket, and I'm certainly not one of those ladies who worked in IT for 5 minutes and then decided it wasn't for them because of the culture. I grew up breaking and fixing computers so for me a career in IT was a natural fit for me and I enjoy geeky talk in the workplace, but most companies don't want you to use your brain or pay you well. These days it's all about getting people to work for the least pay possible, preferably on a contract basis, and then eventually outsourcing them. I'm pretty much just fed up with the whole thing, time to be a consultant methinks.

P.S. Most of the people I worked with were overly politically correct (way more than I am anyway) so it's not a "hostile work environment" or any of that other B.S. which have driven me away - the problem is to do with hours of work and the fact that my salary has declined over recent years. If I'm going to make a crappy salary anyway I might as well be a slacker and sell junk on ebay not have to put up with ridiculous meetings and conference calls. kthx

Re:You control your own destiny

[cayenne8]

"last year i spent 6 months at home, and while the first few weeks were fun, after that i just basically got out of bed, hid behind my pc, and waste my entire day on the tubes...

sounds an awefull lot like how i spend my time at work though.."

LOL...it sounds a lot like when I'm at work too!!

:)

Hmm..seems I'm more productive (at least on a personal basis) when I'm between jobs!!

"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Vinegar Joe]

Maybe they are going into a better paying industry.

http://newsone.com/nation/news-one-staff/more-women-considering-stripping-in-struggling-economy/

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[shemnon]

Maybe they are going into a better paying industry.

http://newsone.com/nation/news-one-staff/more-women-considering-stripping-in-struggling-economy/

Or maybe they are running away from an industry that considers jokes like that acceptable.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Beardo the Bearded]

Possibly, but maybe not to where you are expecting.

The thing is, if you're in IT, you're probably smart. You understand basic math. For example, you can easily see that [(weekly pay) / 60] [(weekly pay) / 40]. If you're expected to work longer hours for less pay, you'll understand that you're getting paid less. There's a reason overtime is supposed to be time +; it's because it's shitty work that makes you neglect your Real Life. Women are just as smart as men, and they are surely aware of the same basic math. Why end up as a slave with worse pay than retail sales? It's not worth the hassle. I'm sure a lot of folks are moving into management, HR, and other fields that don't have 3am emergencies.

For what's it's worth, my pay is 165% of what I made at my first post-grad job in 2004. I've left a job that wanted me to work 60+ hours a week "because I'm a computer guy" (I'm an EE). Now, I never work overtime. I've also got an 8% raise coming up this summer. If you look for better work and hold the same level of loyalty to a company as they do to you (i.e. none at all) then you can be more successful at home and at work.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[CAIMLAS]

How is that an unacceptable joke (or even a joke, necessarily - it's an extrapolated guess based off of disjointed but related data)? I know of a guy who left IT to become a Chip'n'Dale stripper because it paid better and was less stress (go figure). Woo, nakedness - big deal! If it's acceptable to say "men are leaving IT for construction jobs" (some are) why is stripping (physical labor for work) any more offensive?

If you want equality, then you better want it equally. People are sick of this "equally better" PC bullshit the women's lib movement has been pushing for the past 50 years. If you can do the work, great: step right in and pull up a chair, etc.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Maxo-Texas]

I'd guess that it takes at least a hundred employed people to support one stripper.

If the economy continues to be bad, this will not end well.

Plus- 2 of the 3 strippers I've known were messed up by the work and the 3rd skitters along the edge and may lose it at some point.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[GigsVT]

I'd guess that it takes at least a hundred employed people to support one stripper.

That's kind of silly logic. I guess it's based on some misconception that economics are zero sum, or that some services are inherently worth more than others. Being a stripper is employed. It's providing a service that people want, just like an auto factory or an amusement park or a grocery store.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[eth1]

...and other fields that don't have 3am emergencies.

My female keeps talking about quitting and raising kids, so this can't possibly be right...

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[dkleinsc]

I'm not sure about that particular article, but the trend in general is nothing new, and not a joke. When the economy goes south, more women end up doing sex work in order to make ends meet. One could argue about the morality of that decision, but the reality of it is hard to dispute.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Good that I still have my trusty /usr/bin/strip. But those poor blondes in Iceland will have to deliver unstripped binaries anyway, because their /lib/eral government has forbidden it.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Zerth]

I'd guess that it takes at least a hundred employed people to support one stripper.

So? It takes about 80 employed people to justify my job. Without them, my company would need one less full-time geek. And each of them requires a client with dozens of employees to buy the stuff they make. And each of those companies presumably has hundreds of customers, etc.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe, just maybe, you need to get a sense of humor. Sure, some jokes may not be funny to you personally, but to claim that all women are as uptight and politically-correct (read: brainwashed) as you seem to be is stretching it a bit. Thankfully so - political correctness and all this hyper-sensitivity bullshit are killing what little there is left of individual personality in North America. Ever notice how most personable and funny people *aren't* politically correct?

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they are going into a better paying industry.

http://newsone.com/nation/news-one-staff/more-women-considering-stripping-in-struggling-economy/

Or maybe they are running away from an industry that considers jokes like that acceptable.

If it's the truth that more women are deciding to become strippers, then there is nothing insulting about saying so. Many of these women probably have expenses to pay and families to feed and are doing what they feel like they have to do. If women don't feel like there is a demand for them in IT, why is it a joke or an insult to suggest they might move into another industry that has a great deal of demand for them? You've never had to take a job you didn't like because you needed the money?

If the article was about the way a struggling economy is making more women want to become nurses or accountants, would you still feel like it was an insult or a joke? If not, is your indignation a reaction to a genuine insult or merely a type of Puritannical discomfort towards adult entertainment? To be honest, your assumption that women are "running away" from something because they just can't take it, rather than running towards something, is sort of like calling them weak and cowardly. I doubt you meant it that way, but it's something to consider. I prefer to believe that women who become strippers are doing what they believe is best, and they are doing it whether you would approve of their choices or not.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[jimbolauski]

They'll be running for a while because that's some funny shit no matter how you make your living.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[TooMuchToDo]

Having worked with strippers and porn stars before (long scary year in Las Vegas handling the IT for an adult film org), *everyone* comes out of it messed up but the pay is fantastic. I can not even describe in words how sad it is when you see it in person (and one of the reasons I never go back to Vegas).

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[TooMuchToDo]

Can't Nagios and a Honda robot take care of this?

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Beardo the Bearded]

You can deal with a 3am barf emergency without actually waking up.

Trust me, I'm a father of two.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why shouldn't such jokes be considered acceptable?

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Maxo-Texas]

Aye,

How much pent up demand is there? There are already over 4000 strippers in my city. If we, say, doubled the number of strippers, do you think there would be any increase in the total amount the 8,000 strippers got vs the 4,000 strippers?

They are being attracted by high pay. My bartender friends indicate things are getting dicey in the normal bars. I would reasonably expect they are getting tough in the strip clubs too.

As people run out of unemployment benefits, lose buying power to inflation, lose bonuses and get no raises-- it's not exactly a growth market.

But I suppose a stripper is a cheaper than a girlfriend or a wife as long as you don't lose control.

Potential strippers do need to consider the risk of falling into substance abuse and prostitution. Of course, there are downsides to any job.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The females in my local workforce may be doing a lot of things, but they are NOT shrinking.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[DamonHD]

Please try.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Rgds

Damon

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[andy1307]

It's not a joke. Read about Allie, the prostitute featured in the book Superfreakonomics.

Q Do your parents know about what you do for a living? What was your occupation before you became a call girl? What made you go into this line of work? Was it just the money or was it the flexible hours and the chance to be your own boss? – Dmitri

A. My parents don’t know about my work, or anything else about my sex life. I was a programmer when I decided to quit my job and become an escort. I was single and meeting people through a popular dating website. Finding someone “special” proved to be difficult, but I did meet many nice men. At that time, the reason I gave up my programming job was the free time. I was caring for a family member with a serious illness — the free time and money was a huge benefit.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whole lotta bitter slashdotters out there. That's why it's hard to even read this site anymore. Bunch of people whining about being mistreated, while the rest of us realize it's generally pretty easy work (if stressful at times). Most of us share a fairly uncommon skillset, so we get paid well to sit at a desk all day and push a few buttons. I'm up 300% from 10 years ago, granted I was young then.

If you don't like tech work, you never should have gotten into it.

If you're treated like shit at your current employer, find a new one. Here in the valley I hardly know anyone who's been laid off, but I know plenty of people swapping jobs for something better.

Housing "the one tool that the middle class can use to build wealth?" Shit, once I finish paying off my school debt (another 6 months or so) I'll have roughly $3k/month extra just sitting around. I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to build wealth with that kind of money, even though I rent a nice place.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I'm _still in_ a technical field and my post made that confusing. To be clear, I didn't swap trades -- I swapped employers. I now work for a large company that treats me with respect. I've got benefits, RRSP matching, bonuses, training, etc.

My job is one that can never be outsourced, so I am quite secure in that aspect.

But yes, I've worked actual labour jobs, and what I do now is pretty easy, even if I have to go aloft every now and then.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice how most personable and funny people *aren't* politically correct?

No, I haven't noticed such a thing. All I see is a bunch of jackoffs who think it's funny and edgy to repeatedly say "beaner", "nigger", etc over and over again. The only people who find such shit funny are closet racists.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in IT.

What does / mean?

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[skudenfaugen]

Can't Nagios and a Honda robot take care of this?

throw in a little cacti too while you're at it.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[haruharaharu]

Maybe they are going into a better paying industry.

http://newsone.com/nation/news-one-staff/more-women-considering-stripping-in-struggling-economy/

Or maybe they are running away from an industry that considers jokes like that acceptable.

Or maybe they find stripclubs less degrading as a work environment. Also, you don't have to worry about paying back student loans.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Zerth]

That's an interesting question. Are strippers fungible? Some of it is looks, some of it is practice, some of it is customer preference.

If they held existing pricing, they could possible make more as a whole(although perhaps less individually) when unmet niche needs were fulfilled by those who would otherwise not strip in better economic situations.

However, increased supply would probably lead to reduced pricing when newbies charge less to steal business, as it were.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[joebagodonuts]

Using the term "racist" means you fall for the lie, too. There is only 1 human race.

People might hate because of skin color, religious belief, etc etc ad nauseam. But they cannot hate because of race differences. Such differences are a fiction.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[arndawg]

Congrats on your new brother or sister.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Joey Vegetables]

I'd appreciate if you could elaborate. I'm guessing that there is a very significant human cost to pornography that most people don't see, and that perhaps their attitudes about it might be different if they understood that.

Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your guess is correct. I typed out an extremely long story to reply to your comment, but it had details I'd prefer not made public, not to protect me but the person in question. Long story short, you're basically mortgaging your body for a short period of time for substantial pay. There isn't anything left for you after you're out of the industry, so you better have been saving while you've been working. Some stars transition out to mainstream life, but one person who I become close with (friends, very much just friends) had enormous problems trying to get out. She had no skills other than being a porn star. Folks like that usually fall into drug addiction and prostitution until death. I bought her a place (I own a large tech consulting firm now), cover her bills, and have a life insurance policy that dumps into a trust to provide some semblance of a life for her if I croak (I'm 27, but you never know). Not even my close friends or family know about this, so...yeah, it's important that I properly communicate the gravity of what the adult film industry does. Is this my responsibility? Not at all. But that's what you do for friends who've been eaten alive by an industry because they weren't able to (for whatever reason) have a more mainstream life.

Hope this helps.

What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

What jobs are you talking about?

Most of the jobs that actually pay a salary don't give a rat's ass about any F/OSS projects you've worked on. Recruiters want to know what your paid experience was. If you're applying for your typical corporate IT department (read a MS shop), no one really gives a shit. They want their laundry list of skills and at least 2-3 years experience with each.

I would be astounded if someone post a job description that says FOSS experience a plus.

Re:What?!?

[Sarten-X]

From the listing for the job I now hold (emphasis mine):

BS in Computer Science, MS is preferred.
Knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and complexity analysis.
Fluency in two or more of: Java, HTML, JavaScript, AJAX.
Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills.
Working knowledge of Microsoft Windows and Unix (preferably Linux).
Working knowledge of SQL and data warehousing principles.
Knowledge of PHP, Perl or Python a plus.
Open source experience/contribution with any Linux or open-source projects.

The company uses a lot of open-source projects in their work. Being familiar with the open-source community (especially the self-managed, team-oriented development and the community-driven support system) is practically required for the job.

This is what happens when you stop looking for just a "typical corporate IT department" and start looking for actually decent jobs. With no previous paid employment, I'm starting at a salary roughly equal to the average given by the linked search. You may now be astounded.

Re:What?!?

[jdunn14]

Actually as a person currently look to hire F/OSS experience would be a definite plus. It shows that an applicant is really interested in the field and the work. Granted, we're not the corporate IT office you refer to, but if an applicant for our software position (if anyone is curious and interested in north central FL.... http://tdt.com/news/jobs/softwareengineer.htm) was actually interested enough in programming to do outside projects that would be a positive.

In general you need something to make you stand out, and contributing to or starting a project is a reasonable way to stand out. I interviewed some current master's students and was optimistic until it was clear that they did exactly what coursework required but weren't interested in exploring for their own interest.

Re:What?!?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Most of the jobs that actually pay a salary don't give a rat's ass about any F/OSS projects you've worked on.

That's because it's considered a hobby. Also they have no way of measuring how much work you actually did. It's not the same as paid experience where they KNOW you spent 40 hours/52 weeks doing it each year.

I wonder if they had these kinds of surveys in the 1800s or pre-WW2 1900s?

Somehow I can't imagine an engineer sitting in his primitive wood-paneled office and saying, "I wish I made more money," or "This job is not satsifactory." More likely he looked out his window at the distant farms and thought, 'I'm glad I don't have to shovel ____ for a living.'

Re:What?!?

[tsm_sf]

If you're applying for your typical corporate IT department (read a MS shop), no one really gives a shit.

Agreed, but if you think this ends with their hiring practices you are probably in your early twenties. An IT shop that isn't excited about an applicant's FOSS experience will never be a positive work environment.

Caveat mancipior.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently hiring developers for a "corporate IT department". FOSS experience isn't actually a requirement - but it's certainly a big plus.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Current company: http://www.onehippo.com/en/company/career/senior+consultant?backpage=en/company/career

(...)
Qualifications:

        * University degree
        * Extensive knowledge of Java, Spring, JSP, JSF, Wicket, SpringMVC, or other (Java) frameworks;
        * Familiar with content management systems and portals;
        * Standards like JSR 168,286/170, REST;
        * Application servers like Tomcat, JBoss;
        * Open source projects such as Lucene, Jetspeed Portal, Hippo CMS, Cocoon, Jackrabbit;
        * knowledge of open source libraries en testing frameworks;
        * agile methodologies like XP and Scrum;
        * Web technologies like AJAX, JavaScript;
        * Quality is important to you, so you work precise and use best practices when possible.
        * quick learner with a natural interest for new technologies;
        * creative mind;
        * eagerness to excel, but capable of working in a team with people probably smarter than yourself ;-).
(...)

Re:What?!?

[TooMuchToDo]

I just finished up working for a year at Fermilab on the data storage/reconstruction (the IT side) of the CMS detector at the LHC. My background is heavy in open source technologies, hence the reason I was chosen. Open source tech experience may not get you in the door at Ma and Pa shops, but it gets you in the door at more.....interesting places.

Re:What?!?

[PopeRatzo]

I wonder if they had these kinds of surveys in the 1800s or pre-WW2 1900s?

No, they probably didn't have surveys of IT salaries in the 1800's.

That's just a guess, of course.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come fucking off it already. Jesus christ.

I'm fucking SICK to death of the FOSS community. If you're not using Linux, you're not a geek. If you don't contribute to Open Source projects, you're not a geek. FOSS is the holy mother, all hail the holy mother.

Fucking BLOW ME already.

I've put over 15 years into a mostly-microsoft IT career. Sure, I can use/have some Linux in my environment, and I'm not a retard and can use whatever flavor of *nix you want. And I have a touch of Apple in my marketing department. And yeah, some *nix experience is mandatory now. But people who don't understand that its a Microsoft ruled world with required skills of interoperability between OS's in the corporate arena are fucking delusional and a waste of fucking space.

And it might change too someday...Microsoft isn't the holy fucking mother either. There's a lot of shit that I HATE about proprietary software. But you know what? I work hard, I enjoy life, I have a good gig, and I'm fucking happy where I work...and these people could give two fucks about the FOSS community, and they're a "positive work environment"

Really, the freaks in the FOSS community are no better, and often worse, than their Apple Fanboi cousins, or the pure Microsoft fanbois too. Its all fucking bullshit really, and any IT person who is unwilling or incapable of supporting a fully blended environment will go the way of the fucking dodo just the same as any Microsoft shill. And its not that FOSS is worthless...we use and contribute to a few FOSS projects out there that meet corporate need. Of course, its my fucking job to find the "product", FOSS or proprietary, that will actually solve corporate need and not just my desire to use "free" software...and often times, the best answer is NOT the FOSS community.

Last time I had to hire for a non-programming IT job, the first guy that I turfed the resume into the circular filing bin spouted on and on about his FOSS involvement. And beyond that, he didn't have a fucking class, session, certificate, traning program, or touch of experience in the Real Fucking World that actually shown he would have been useful in a real world corporate office.

The caveat to all this: If you're a programmer, and heavily involved in a GOOD and WORKING FOSS project, it can HELP on your resume. If you're applying for anything BUT a programming gig, its wasted space on your resume.

Re:What?!?

[teg]

Most of the jobs that actually pay a salary don't give a rat's ass about any F/OSS projects you've worked on. Recruiters want to know what your paid experience was. If you're applying for your typical corporate IT department (read a MS shop), no one really gives a shit. They want their laundry list of skills and at least 2-3 years experience with each.

One good thing about contributing to OSS, is that you it demonstrates knowledge in areas that your paid job might not. These areas might be relevant for the job you are applying for.

Re:What?!?

[causality]

I've put over 15 years into a mostly-microsoft IT career. Sure, I can use/have some Linux in my environment, and I'm not a retard and can use whatever flavor of *nix you want. And I have a touch of Apple in my marketing department. And yeah, some *nix experience is mandatory now. But people who don't understand that its a Microsoft ruled world with required skills of interoperability between OS's in the corporate arena are fucking delusional and a waste of fucking space.

It's hard to look at interoperability problems and then blame them on the Open Source folks who use open standards. So perhaps people agree with you, in a way, and are just more up-front about where to assign the blame. Not to mention that it will forever remain a "Microsoft ruled world" if no one is ever willing to value alternatives.

And it might change too someday...Microsoft isn't the holy fucking mother either. There's a lot of shit that I HATE about proprietary software. But you know what? I work hard, I enjoy life, I have a good gig, and I'm fucking happy where I work...and these people could give two fucks about the FOSS community, and they're a "positive work environment"

Honestly you don't sound very happy or content to me. You sound angry and venomous. If you have a great source of joy in your life, something that makes it easy have patience and be at ease with all the things you don't like, you seem rather selective about expressing it. Even if you're right and they are indeed foolish, why would the opinions of some "fanbois" take away your happiness by making you so upset?

Last time I had to hire for a non-programming IT job, the first guy that I turfed the resume into the circular filing bin spouted on and on about his FOSS involvement. And beyond that, he didn't have a fucking class, session, certificate, traning program, or touch of experience in the Real Fucking World that actually shown he would have been useful in a real world corporate office.

If someone has no formal training and still managed to become an important part of a real software project, doesn't that tell you something about his or her resourcefulness and ability to take initiative? Why do you believe they would fare poorly in an environment like an office that comes with additional advantages like structure, training, clearly spelled-out expectations, and financial compensation?

Re:What?!?

[Weslee]

My company only has ~200 IT workers, but as a manager I can tell you F/OSS project work counts more then college.

Re:What?!?

[tsm_sf]

Last time I had to hire for a non-programming IT job, the first guy that I turfed the resume into the circular filing bin spouted on and on about his FOSS involvement. And beyond that, he didn't have a fucking class, session, certificate, traning program, or touch of experience in the Real Fucking World that actually shown he would have been useful in a real world corporate office.(emphasis mine)

I can't bring myself to believe that you have 15 years of experience in the IT industry and don't know the real value of these "certificates". They exist solely to help HR tick off the appropriate box on an application.

I've seen plenty of your kind, and they were all asking for five years of Java experience back in 1995.

Re:What?!?

[Eric Green]

Folks looking for all these classes, sessions, certificates, and training programs are looking for folks who are good at lying on resumes, by and large. Tells you what the work environment is like -- a dog eat dog back-stabbing cesspool of liars and braggarts. Those of us with a long history of what, for a better word, I'll call getting s**t done, avoid such places like the plague, which is why those places whine and complain that they can't find anybody who knows anything who's willing to work for them.

Re:What?!?

[agw]

I interviewed some current master's students and was optimistic until it was clear that they did exactly what coursework required but weren't interested in exploring for their own interest.

I think this is important. If people apply to be a UNIX app support engineer in the year 2010 at the age of 30 and never came across Linux or and never used any Unix at home before, then there is something wrong. I'm not saying you can't be good at your work and never bring it home. But the chances are high you will never love your job if you never even thought about doing something similar in your own time. Or someone studying Computer Science/Engineering without owning his own computer at home until the second year. For some reason this case actually turned out pretty well, but chances are low. Maybe it's like someone applying for a job as a mechanic because he has heard it can be an interesting job, but never done any mechnical work until the age of 30.

Re:What?!?

[DamonHD]

Then you're missing out on a bunch of good jobs in banking, for example, where Linux, Java, Spring, etc, etc, in free and paid-for flavours remain a very healthy source of reputation and income.

What a lot of hirers care about is that you are smart, adaptable, and able to work with the tools and products that they do. And a lot of those are F/OSS.

I'm in one of those roles now, and according to the linked tool, I'm getting decent pay for my work! %-P

Rgds

Damon

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK...you asked...

Certificates are mostly fucking useless, especially the old-school certification mill crap. There are a couple of decent ones though...CCNA comes to mind...some of the really specialized MS certs (Such as a MSITP in Database Development) are okay. But yeah, they're mostly trash. Classes & training programs though (and I include degrees in that) at least tell me someone spent time sitting somewhere hopefully absorbing information. Really, what it comes down to, is I look at the certificates and/or education of people that apply here as essentially interns...people with no real-world experience in IT. And the education gives me a starting point of what to ask to make sure they actually know something.

But the real important part of my quote is the part you chose to ignore: "or touch of experience in the Real Fucking World that actually shown he would have been useful in a real world corporate office"

And to reply to the guy above you at the same time: If he was applying for a Developer position, and had actually worked on some "useful" FOSS projects...then yeah, it would have mattered & I wouldn't have pitched his resume without an interview. But he applied for a infrastructure position with nothing on his resume but "Worked on the following 6 FOSS projects:" with no indication as to what his role was on those projects....yeah, goodbye, thanks for wasting 2 minutes of my life on your resume.

And also to answer the same guy above you...yeah, I really do like my life, and my job, and the people I work for. But I do get angry when some fucking loser sitting there "contributing" (whatever in the fuck that may mean to the individual, from running a project to fixing one bug) to the FOSS community from their parent's basement thinks that they're god's gift to the universe and any IT shop thinking otherwise is a pile of shit...well, sometimes you're the pile of shit, not the corporate world.

I didn't want 5 years of Java experience in 95, and I don't ask for 5 years of experience on Server 2008 R2 either. You don't need shit to get past our HR drones, I do my own hiring in my department. But you better have education OR real-life verifiable paid experience on your resume, or you're a fucking waste of my time.

Again, the preceeding does not apply (entirely) for developer positions.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I have to disagree. I'm responsible for interviewing potential candidates for my team and whilst it's not a deciding factor, if I see a CV which shows an active interest in OSS and/or open standards (or other computer-related interests), it -will- catch my attention. Not because it's 'cool' or otherwise, but because it (possibly) demonstrates to me that this person has passion. Along with good work experience and a decent education, having a passion for what you do counts as a definite plus.

Also, considering that many CVs tend to list any and every technology (i.e., they worked with Java for a month), it's the small details that I tend to look for. A 'laundry list' of technologies kind of defeats the point - especially when everyone is doing it - I'd much rather have someone who specialises in the needed skills. I've found that people who have a wide variety of skills (and I don't disagree that this can be beneficial) tend to be in the 'jack of all trades/master of none' category.

I would encourage people to become experts on 1-2 technologies of their choice, have a fundamental understanding of programming principles and practices - and keep abreast of the latest technologies. Additionally, find your passion and never, ever stop learning. In my own life, I've found that this will get you to wherever you want to go.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I responded in general to your comments in a post below this one, but I had to comment specifically on:

Why do you believe they would fare poorly in an environment like an office that comes with additional advantages like structure, training, clearly spelled-out expectations, and financial compensation?(Emphasis mine)

Sorry, but generally speaking, structure and clearly spelled out expectations can be the death knell for someone who has no experience other than the FOSS world.

I've personally seen a few friends who were good programmers strugle in Corporate America, because they were used to working on things as they wanted to, in their free time, with no expectations as to when the next release or patch would come out. And once again, that is the exact opposite of the Real World.

Look, I wish the world was full of sunshine and lollipops and all sofgtware was open source which solved all of the needs of the real world. I also wish I could shit gold coins, but thats not coming true anytime either.

Linux and the FOSS world have an important part to play, without a doubt. And good IT people/managers know you don't just blame the FOSS project when things go to shit...its just as likely its a MS problem, or an Apple problem, or whatever. And some of the FOSS stuff is by far BETTER than any propriatary software out there. And some of it is steaming turd.

And some morons think they're god to IT because they've "worked" on a couple FOSS turds out there. That was obviously the resume in question, and I handled said resume as it should have been.

Look, theres two sides to every coin...sure, I agree that FOSS work should have some merit on a resume, especially in developer positions, and I have always treated such accordingly. But some of you need to grow the fuck up too and realize that the world doesn't revolve around your unverifiable volunteer work.

Re:What?!?

[lastchance_000]

There's a distinction between using FOSS projects, and contributing to FOSS projects. I thought the latter was being discussed.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the expectation should be that F/OSS experience will get you in the door, aside maybe from an entry level job. But it will differentiate you once you get your foot in the door. As an example, if you are an embedded systems developer, the fact that you have some submitted patches to a game few people have ever heard of is unlikely to help you get noticed by the hiring manager of a group building internal business web apps. But when you are applying for a spot at xilinx, and you are one of 20 candidates that got to the phone screen stage, that should make you stand out quite a bit from those who just code 9-5.

This might change if say you are working on a really high level project or doing library/system level work. If a resume came across my desk from the implementer of one of the Boost components, I am reasonably sure I want him on my team no matter what the fark his past professional experience is, getting a lib accepted into boost speaks of his technical skills highly enough. Similarly, there is a multiplier effect if you are working on a high profile project in the same domain as the job opening. If you have been submitting patches to ActiveMQ for quite awhile, you would be much more attractive to the people at Tibco than some schmoe off the street.

Re:What?!?

[SETIGuy]

IT was divided into accounting and secretarial services in those days. A systems person would be an "office manager." And, if you were an office manager, you wouldn't get fired for checking out a secretary's code in those days.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem with you sarten-X types is that my Mom (above me) keeps talking about u. But there's just you. She never talks about all the other people who are not Sarten-X

I have NEVER EVER seen a job that required OSS skills in particular. I wish that was not the case but it is. And I'm pretty sure the MS people got all the Unix jobs - it was the people with the paid experience in MS that had no interest in UNiX, NOT the people with a passion and active use of Unix, and no paid experience. Yeah sure a couple of Sarten-X's got there but they were the exceptional few.

Re:What?!?

[Javagator]

Most of the jobs that actually pay a salary don't give a rat's ass about any F/OSS projects you've worked on

Actually, that depends. I'm a senior software developer who participates in interviews and hiring decisions. One of the questions I ask is, "What is the coolest program that you have written, just for the fun of it?". For extra credit, if I can go on line and look at the code, and if it's good (sometimes that's a big if), you have a great chance of getting a job.

Re:What?!?

[Yvanhoe]

I would be astounded if someone post a job description that says FOSS experience a plus.

I left a position in a small company two weeks ago. As my workcharge wasn't very high, they were looking into hiring a "junio" (just out of school) developer to replace me. I asked my boss who just finished ten interviews if he had any good candidates. He told me that their diplomas were alright, but that he wished they had something more, like a personal project on the side, to show their motivation/competence.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Recruiters might not give a shit, but lets face it, they'll pass you on regardless of whether or not you're qualified if they think there's a remote chance of you getting hired. It's a numbers game.
The people DOING the hiring will often research their top X candidates, and if you see that someone is interested in programming outside of work that shows that you have drive and are probably dumb enough to work overtime to get the job done. On top of that they can see what kind of code you produce.

As someone who's been impressed at candidates OSS contributions and someone who's had his own projects come up in interviews, I gotta say, you're full of shit.

Re:What?!?

[Courageous]

*shrug*

I would not *POST* for FOSS experience, but one of the things that I look for in any job candidate is a commitment to the art besides their paycheck. One of the things that will usually perk my attention on a resume is things that indicate this. Open source software development is one of those things. My experience is that people who are in it for the love of the art itself are usually the hands down leaders amongst their peers.

C//

Re:What?!?

[TheSpoom]

You're insane, or you're simply not looking in the right places. LAMP jobs are everywhere, and almost always like open source experience.

Bitch about your job-finding experience if you like, but don't claim that only Microsoft folks are hired, it's just simply not true. Plus, your argument conveniently ignores companies like Canonical, where open source simply is everything.

Re:What?!?

[Mycroft-X]

* Quality is important to you, so you work precise and use best practices when possible.

Was this part a joke, or were they just testing you?

Re:What?!?

[dbIII]

The problem is your "real world" can often be written off as being not paticularly real by others which is why it's often dismissed as a sign that whoever uses the phrase is out of touch. If I've worked in a steel mill, an oil refinery and coal fired power stations I can still be written off as knowing nothing about the "real world" of selling small fluffy toys.

Re:What?!?

[jvin248]

Engineering was held in much higher social regard then than now. Which is surprising given that today's world depends so much more on engineering and science than the 1800s.


btw, your signature line is great.

Re:What?!?

[haruharaharu]

It appears that, in addition to that mess, the sort of nasty pit you describe actively thwarts getting shit done: even if they did hire one of those people, they'd get fuck all out of it.

Re:What?!?

[b4dc0d3r]

I've personally seen a few friends who were good programmers strugle in Corporate America, because they were used to working on things as they wanted to, in their free time, with no expectations as to when the next release or patch would come out. And once again, that is the exact opposite of the Real World.

We did this thing where we tracked estimates heavily, with a target of +/-15% on estimation. Estimate correctly and you can set expectations on the release date of the next patch or update. Our process involved making the estimation, doing design, build, testing, sign-off, and project clean-up. Yeah we borrowed time from other slots and in general retroactively updated the estimations so they were right. When asked for a date, we'd say something reasonable. Then when the top execs started looking closely at a few deadlines, we just multiplied the work estimates by 1.5.

They were honestly more worried about meeting an arbitrarily set deadline than being efficient. If I said 2 months and it took two and a half months, we were in the shitcan. If we multiplied it and said 3 months, we took 2 months and 3 weeks and goofed off for a week essentially - take off early a few days or cancel meetings and just zone out. 3 months, just like we said, we made our goal.

If you're doing development, you're doing something you have done before, in which case you should be able to copy and paste, or you're doing something new. The third option is team-wide incompetence where you keep repeating yourself, but those teams are a lot better at estimating. They know exactly how long it takes because they do it all the time.

I've worked in open source, and since I'm writing it for free you'll get what I give you when i give it to you. More businesses need to be like that, but they can't because clients won't agree to pay for anything unless they can get it on a schedule.

Why do we have cost overruns on IT projects which become legendary, like the FBI information sharing software and the child support system that requires operators to fake data so children don't get forgotten? For that matter, why do we have tangible projects like the southern US gate which cost a billion dollars and was so poorly mismanaged that the project just got halted?

Poor estimation is pretty common unless you're doing assembly line type or repeatable work, but when you break new ground it's harder to know what to expect. Open source mindset is more honest about that. Because it can. Walk in their shoes for a week and become a better manager and those open source guys will blossom. That or they are part of the emo gimme generation and you might as well take them out back and show them which grave they will fill if they don't quit whining. That's just fair.

Re:What?!?

[Eil]

I would be astounded if someone post a job description that says FOSS experience a plus.

You must be lucky enough to not have had to search for a job in the past few years. Almost every non-government IT department these days wants people with at least some Linux experience. Sure, most places still have loads of Windows machines for desktops and Exchange servers, but the really mission critical stuff (web servers, file servers, application servers) almost universally runs on some combination of AIX and Linux.

And if anecdotal evidence matters, all 3 of the jobs I've held in the last decade were offered to me specifically because of my deep familiarity with open source solutions. Morons who stack certification acronyms for proprietary tools after their name like degrees are a dime a dozen and absolutely never end up being a good investment for the company. Every employer that I've ever worked for liked that I spent my free time learning, using, and hacking open source software. It means they don't have to expend time and money training me to do the things that they hired me to do.

Re:What?!?

[minus9]

This is why IT salaries are down, people equating MCSE monkeys with IT professionals. Not all IT is asking if you've tried turning it off and on again.

Re:What?!?

[Vectormatic]

I can't bring myself to believe that you have 15 years of experience in the IT industry and don't know the real value of these "certificates". They exist solely to help HR tick off the appropriate box on an application.

in my eyes, you are a bit overly-cinical. Sure those certificates are mostly checkboxes for HR, but i can state from my own experience that getting my sun certificates really helped me in my first job, partly since i didnt do a pure CS/IT study.

now microsoft certs (where candidates get testkings a few days before the exam), those are worthless in my eyes. At best they prove the person has the ability to memorize a couple hundred multiple choice question/answer combos

Re:What?!?

[Reservoir Penguin]

Do you really think I would want to work for companies that have fracking typos in their job descriptions? And yes, I double checked, it is also on the actual web page. Give me a break.

Re:What?!?

[pointbeing]

...I can't bring myself to believe that you have 15 years of experience in the IT industry and don't know the real value of these "certificates". They exist solely to help HR tick off the appropriate box on an application.

Not entirely. If everything else is equal the guy with the cert gets the job. I understand that all the cert does is show you can attend a boot camp but it does bring a measurable skill set with it. For instance if you've got an MS Exchange cert and I'm looking for an Exchange administrator the cert will definitely help you get the job.

However, if you put yourself out there as a certified Exchange admin and you can't do the job I'd be considerably more inclined to fire you than try to train you.

I still put my MCSE (even though it's an NT 4.0 MCSE), MCP+I and A+ on resumes mainly because it gets my resume past the first cut - which in my industry is done by a machine.

Re:What?!?

[Xest]

I'd also like to add when looking at the job market in the UK on www.jobsite.co.uk as I do regularly just in case I decide it's time to move on I've seen a fair few jobs citing experience on FOSS projects as a plus.

They most certainly are out there, the parents job isn't just a one off.

The only thing I will add though is that they don't necessarily pay well, all the money still seems to be in Java and .NET at the end of the day. So although I've seen plenty of job ads citing FOSS experience as an advantage, I've not seen many (or in fact any that I can recall immediately) that actually offer a decent wage. They've pretty much all been targetted at fresh graduates paying only £18,000 - £23,000 or so which is little use for experienced developers who are probably wanting to break £30k of which there are plenty of .NET and Java jobs paying that amount.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not looking hard enough.

I've had three consecutive jobs specifically because of my contributions to F/OSS projects, all with companies who are F/OSS sponsors.

I could probably earn more money elsewhere, but I have *excellent* working conditions.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've put over 15 years into a mostly-microsoft IT career.

I've put almost twice that into a rarely-microsoft IT career.

If you're applying for anything BUT a programming gig, its wasted space on your resume.

Programmer, sysadmin, now tech-support eng.

You're wrong, and you're so far wrong you can't even see right over the horizon.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, I've been told by a recruiter that they went with another candidate for a job because of their extracurricular activities so to speak... messing around with optimizing their Linux box in their free time, experimenting with virtualization etc, stuff I had done but didn't bring up in an interview because it didn't really apply to what I was interviewing for. Now I always try to work it in. Sure they might not hire you because of it but it shows that you have a passion for what you do, it's not just a paycheck it's something you strive to learn about and excel in.

Re:What?!?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Most of the jobs that actually pay a salary don't give a rat's ass about any F/OSS projects you've worked on.

That's because it's considered a hobby (not by me, but by HR persons). They have no way of measuring how much work you actually did on open-source development. It's not the same as paid experience where they KNOW you spent 40 hours/52 weeks doing it each year.

I wonder if they had these kinds of surveys in the 1800s or pre-WW2 1900s?

Somehow I can't imagine an engineer sitting in his primitive wood-paneled office and saying, "I wish I made more money," or "This job is not satsifactory." More likely he looked out his window at the distant farms and thought, 'I'm glad I don't have to shovel ____ for a living.'

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

For instance if you've got an MS Exchange cert and I'm looking for an Exchange administrator the cert will definitely help you get the job.

Not here. A cert is an indication that they're checkbox thinkers, don't have any depth and are unlikely to be able to do a good job whenever anything even slightly out of the ordinary happens. e.g. a software upgrade. There are some good people out there who got certs along the away but certs are definitely a red flag for second raters.

Re:What?!?

[NickGnome]

Yes, there's a lot of work process and tools implicit in that one line about open-source projects.

Re:What?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fucking fuck is wrong with you, you fuck? For fucking fuck's sake, fucking fuckety-fuck-fuck fuck.

Fuck.

Rate of inflation

[Lord Byron II]

What was the inflation rate last year? Zero? Slightly negative? As long as your wages increase faster than inflation, then your purchasing power is going up. And .7% is better than the 0% raise I got.

Re:Rate of inflation

[ckblackm]

According to the BLS, the annual rate of inflation for 2009 was -0.4%, whereas Jan '10 was 2.6% and Feb '10 was 2.1%. (Dec '09 was > 2% as well).

Re:Rate of inflation

[darkstar949]

Inflation in part depends upon where you are and speaking purely from the stand point of the United States, the national average was -0.4% for FY2009; however, for FY2010 we are already sitting at 2.35% so any nominal raises have already been overtaken by inflation [Source].

Re:Rate of inflation

[smooth wombat]

As long as your wages increase faster than inflation, then your purchasing power is going up.

Not quite. While your salary might beat out the rate of inflation, other things need to be considered. For example, I was notified my rent is going up starting next month by 9.8%. The actual amount happens to coincide with the exact amount of my monthly pay increase. In other words, I'm treading water because my pay increase will now go towards my rent increase.

On top of this, mother nature decided to force my decision on replacing my 12-year old car, I'm taking classes to (hopefully) get out of this urine-soaked hell hole (thank you Krusty) which are costing me over $1,400 per class and whose prices are also going up in the coming semester and my electric rate just rose by 30%.

So, while my pay increase was higher than inflation, it is completely overwhelmed by everything else that is going on.

Re:Rate of inflation

[jellomizer]

Not really...

If your pay goes at the same rate as inflation it means your value in the company even after an other year of experience hasn't increased. Normally you should expect a 10% increase in your pay per year until you reach 15 years of experience then it will slope down as your years experience is having a slower rate of return.

Re:Rate of inflation

[smooth wombat]

Correction. That should be (thank you Sideshow Bob) and not Krusty, though one could argue that it was because of Krusty that Sideshow Bob was the way he was.

Re:Rate of inflation

[war4peace]

If you're counting the US only, maybe it was.
I am living in a totally different country (somewhere in Eastern Europe). I got hired by a large multinational company (a very large one indeed) in June 2007. I got promoted twice. My responsibilities tripled (I was a Helpdesk Analyst, then a Team Lead, now I am a Service Delivery Manager and in couple months will move to another position, or so they said), my salary raised 0% in all this time. I mean ZERO. No raise. No compensation. Nothing.
I am paid in local currency. Local currency took a sharp decline compared to Euro (roughly 30%). So where I was getting (let's say) 1000 Euro per month in 2007, I am now getting around 700. And most prices here are in Euro (rent, IT stuff, cars, electronics, houses, pretty much everything with a net value over 100 Euro... is specified in Euro).
I like what I am doing and the department is nice. However, the way the company is treating its employees plainly sucks. My purchasing power went down 30%, if not more, and I started working week-ends and overtime and taken night shift just to try being on par. And still am not on par with prices around. I work more, but I am poorer.
You might ask why don't I get the hell out of here. Well, I'm just fixing to climb the ladder a bit more before I do, and them jump boats with a large salary increase somewhere else (hopefully). But keep in mind, if you think -5% is a lot, think -30%.

Re:Rate of inflation

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

They exclude the price of food and energy in those numbers though. If inflation is going up(which it always does), the purchasing power of your savings is going down. Furthermore, inflation is an increase in the money supply, not an increase in prices.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Znork]

What was the inflation rate last year?

Most measures of inflation are highly politicised; what may be a somewhat useful simplification in a local economy is far from reality in a situation with global wage arbitrage.

The largest deficiency IMO is the failure to account for asset price inflation, a failure which is inherently connected to the boom/bust cycles (most politicians don't want to see interest rates raised, which the central bank would be force to if any of the more 'real' inflation measurements were used or non-fractional banking/market set interest rates were used, with the end result that we get basically uncovered money creation and financial crisis when loan expansion turns to contraction).

On the positive side, last year had a 'real' deflation of between 1-4%. So you got a great wage increase. On the negative side, that would be after a decade of 5-15% 'actual' inflation per year. A bit ahead of most peoples wage increases.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah inflation is flat, but not for me. The crap I buy has had a marked increase in price over the last 8 mo to 12 mo. Freaking Diet Coke's at Mickey D's moved from $1.60 to $2.50, candy bars are now a buck 25 at 7/11, and I cannot get out of Chili's without spending 40 dollars per person (yes i'm fat, personal choice). Point is, the crap I buy has inflated significantly this last year. WTH is deflating to balance my fast food!

Re:Rate of inflation

[GigsVT]

The CPI has been gamed and tricked out so much that you can't believe it.

For example they have this idea about cheaper substitutes. Basically as the price of something nice goes up, you'll use a cheaper substitute, so they change their baseline to include the cheaper substitute instead.

The classic example here is "hamburgers for steak". Which the BLS has responded to:

http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiqa.htm#Question_3

Their rebuttal, if you read it carefully, actually admits that they do substitute less desirable goods within categories, just not technically hamburger and steak because those are in different categories. But they will substitute cheaper cuts of steak for nicer ones if it suits their tinkering.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always pick numbers to support your case, but with my (expected) zero percent raise blamed on the lack of inflation added to the increase in benefits costs and co-payments, and reduced benefits, there's no way you can argue inflation.

Re:Rate of inflation

[tool462]

10% yearly pay raise over 15 years works out to over 4x your initial salary. Unless you're starting in the 30k ballpark, I don't see how that is reasonable at all. An exemplary employee working at an excellent company, perhaps, but a typical employee at a typical company? Not a chance.

Re:Rate of inflation

[clintp]

As long as your wages increase faster than inflation, then your purchasing power is going up. Not quite. While your salary might beat out the rate of inflation, other things need to be considered.

It's not just inflation, but consider taxes too.

Your taxes will go up as your pay increases -- and it's not a linear increase either for US workers. The tax rate itself increases. Some deductions just go away as your income increases (EIC). Some deductions are deductible as long as they exceed a percentage of your AGI (uncovered medical expenses, 7.5%). Other credits and allowances are simply capped.

Example: W2 earner, buying your house (2x annual income at 5%), are married, have 1 kid, and squirrel some money into a 401(k). The sweet spot right now seems to be about $60k. Below that, you pay almost no federal income taxes at all -- or shouldn't if you're doing it right. After about $75k, you've lost most of your "middle class" (mid/low income) deductions and start paying taxes for real on everything. At $100k there's very little you can do to keep money from the IRS and you'll have to pay your fair share -- and everyone else's too. There's no relief for a while after that.*

A $10k increase at $50k will represent most of a 20% increase in net (discounting state & local). A $20k increase at $100k won't net you nearly 20% at the end of the day -- not even close.

* At $106,800 there's a Social Security cap, but that's not Federal income taxes, strictly.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Red Flayer]

A $10k increase at $50k will represent most of a 20% increase in net (discounting state & local).

Well, I should hope that's the cap, since a $10k increase at $50k represents a 20% increase in gross -- why should the net increase be larger than the increase in gross?

But your logic is flawed. Your argument tries to make the case that if you earn more money, you take home less because of the loss of things like the EIC (which, by the way, likely does not apply to *anyone* working full-time in IT). But that's not the case. The higher your gross, the higher your net. Yes, we have a progressive tax rate. But is that really a disincentive to take home more money?

Re:Rate of inflation

[sesshomaru]

Why without Krusty, he wouldn't even have been called "Sideshow!"

Re:Rate of inflation

[causality]

I got hired by a large multinational company (a very large one indeed) in June 2007. I got promoted twice. My responsibilities tripled (I was a Helpdesk Analyst, then a Team Lead, now I am a Service Delivery Manager and in couple months will move to another position, or so they said), my salary raised 0% in all this time. I mean ZERO. No raise. No compensation. Nothing.

There needs to be a Web site with a well-maintained registry of companies that treat their IT workers this way. It could be modelled after the various consumer-protection sites that inform people about scams and abuses in the marketplace. The goal would be that such companies have terrible difficulty finding anyone in IT who actually wants to work for them while the talent flocks to their competitors. This could save many people from having to invest their time and hard work before they find out what you did. It's deplorable that taking three gallons of milk and paying for one of them is called stealing, but receiving 3X work and paying 1X salary is called management.

Many other industries have unions to address the same problems. The trouble with that is that a union is like any other bureaucracy; the organization takes on a life of its own that is often at odds with its original purpose. A loosely organized, grassroots type of effort based on reputation and the open exchange of information might remedy some of these problems without all of those disadvantages. What I know for sure is that this kind of mistreatment is most successful when it's unopposed.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Lord Byron II]

Yes, we have a progressive tax rate. But is that really a disincentive to take home more money?

I've heard many politicians, usually Republican, claim just that.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

The inflation (for a great part) records increases in the CPI (rent, energy, food, etc). This has been stagnant. You're just getting screwed, personally, by your situation. You should move.

The average of all housing and energy costs have not done what yours has.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

There needs to be a Web site with a well-maintained registry of companies that treat their IT workers this way. It could be modelled after the various consumer-protection sites that inform people about scams and abuses in the marketplace. The goal would be that such companies have terrible difficulty finding anyone in IT who actually wants to work for them while the talent flocks to their competitors.

Check out glassdoor.com. There's anonymous reviews and salaries posted so that you have an idea of what you're getting into when you're considering joining another company.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Matheus]

SO... um... sweet. Salaries for my profession in my region are higher than the national average. Mine is even above that.

Combine that fact with your comment about inflation and what do you get?

I still hate my job.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

Individual salaries go up by that much, but it's generally reasonable to expect an organization of fixed size to have its payroll increase at the inflation rate.

I don't think it's reasonable to interpret this study as a devaluation of IT workers. 2009 was a tough year for everyone and IT workers made par.

Re:Rate of inflation

[reidconti]

So don't pay it. My apartment tried to raise their rent by ~180/mo on me in May '09. I told them to piss up a rope. They instead lowered it by ~260/mo.

Just because they're telling you to pay more doesn't mean they aren't trying to screw you. Or, more likely, trying to screw you in order to make up what they're losing on the smarter tenants who are all paying less.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

You're complaining about *life*!?

Things like your electricity bill going up - that's what inflation *is*. You can't say "yeah, inflation went up 1%, but I also had an electric bill increase". Your electric bill increased, but a number of other things you buy didn't increase, and some may have become cheaper.

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the situation at HP/EDS.
Everyone in the last two years that has taken on extra responsibility has been shafted because of the global pay freeze to give Mark Hurd and his minions millions in bonuses.

Re:Rate of inflation

[war4peace]

It's a bigger company, actually :)

Re:Rate of inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you cross the manufacturing industry off of your list.

I was the IT for our plant. Then they decided that they didn't need IT as much as they needed guys on the floor. Guess what my new responsibilities included? Yeah, full time labor on the shop floor. I've been looking for another job, but so far all I got was a sympathy note from our CEO who heard about it when visiting...

Exactly.

[khasim]

In addition to developing your skills for your current job, you need to focus on your NEXT job.

Where do you want to be and how do you plan to get there?

Re:Exactly.

[commodore64_love]

On the other hand, after a year without a job, I decided to just take whatever was offered (i.e. $30,000 below my former salary). In 2011 I'll look for something better but for now, having a job is better than not having a job.

I'm also working lots of paid overtime to make-up some of the loss.

Re:Exactly.

[wmbetts]

What's paid overtime?

Re:Exactly.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Same with me- just trying to hang in there at this point. In an effort to get more hours working on a project that is viewed by consulting company management as "non-billable hours", have even offered to cut my hourly just to get more hours.

And the stress level on my billable project is way up, as Fortune 500 company expects 40 hours worth of work a week on a project that I'm limited to only billing 20 hours a week on. I'm being stubborn on that one though- sooner or later they'll notice that I'm only hitting 1 deadline in 5 and ask why.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

sooner or later they'll notice that I'm only hitting 1 deadline in 5 and fire me

FTFY

Re:Exactly.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I hope so. Fire me in the right way, by making my consulting company lose the contract, and I can claim a lack of work through my consulting company and thus unemployment while I put out 50-100 resumes a week looking for other work.

Or do the right thing and add hours to the project.

Either way, I've lessened my stress level (though also my earnings).

Re:Exactly.

[BlackSnake112]

There is something wrong either with your knowledge of the material, the pace at which said company expects you the contractor to work at, or a combination of the above.

Maybe you are not as fast on the subject as you thought you were. Or the project takes longer then 20 hours a week because of X,Y, or Z.

The company hired you the contractor to do a job. The expect you to do said job in the amount of hours they are paying for. Either the price they are paying is really, really high, and they had to cutback on the hours per week, or maybe the consulting company over sold what they actually could do?

That could happen and often does. Bottom line: negotiate better. You will be better off. Better does not always mean more money. They are strings attached to the bigger paycheck. Also negotiate honestly. Honestly here meaning not saying you can do anything just to get the contract. I have seen too many people do this. They usually lose.

Re:Exactly.

[Trent Hawkins]

What's paid overtime?

Well, in Canada, getting paid for over time is the law. Check with your government and you will probably find similar laws protecting you. A lot of companies insist that these laws don't exist and as long as you don't check they'll get away with not paying you.

Re:Exactly.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Maybe you are not as fast on the subject as you thought you were. Or the project takes longer then 20 hours a week because of X,Y, or Z.
 
I was honest about what I could do; they were not honest in how well this project had been documented in the past. And the price they are paying is $25/hr LESS than what I was paid for similar work in 1999 in the same city; they're just trying to cut corners.
 
And yes, I will not be making the same mistake in negotiating again. I will insist on seeing *ALL* project documentation up front AND a full code review with former developers before agreeing to take on the work of an entire software team alone for part-time pay.

Re:Exactly.

[beakerMeep]

'Computer professionals' are exempt from FLSA at certain salary levels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/index.htm

Re:Exactly.

[edjs]

Well, in Canada, getting paid for over time is the law.

Unless you are a high tech professional in BC: High Technology Companies Fact Sheet

Re:Exactly.

[shentino]

The key word is "salary"

If you're punching a clock, it's not a salary.

Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[MillionthMonkey]

If anyone wants a good Java programmer in the Bay Area email MillionthMonkey at gmail...

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[bz386]

Bullshit. After 1 minute of searching I found this: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/mountain-view/swe/software-engineer-business-applications-mountain-view/index.html "Strong programming skills in Java or C/C++ and extensive knowledge of Unix/Linux and scripting skills (Perl, Shell, Python, XML) " Oh, I thought you said "good Java programmer". Thought so...

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[MillionthMonkey]

I knew someone was going to find an ad for an unfilled position at Google (entry level at that) and then declare that anyone who lives on the peninsula must be unemployable.

Google initially sets you up with a 20 minute phone screen interview where they ask you puzzle questions over the phone. I called last year and got all the puzzle questions that the dude asked, except for some algorithmic one about enumerating collinear points in 3D. I had only found the shitty O(N^2) solution before the phone call ended and as per Google policy I got screened out for that type of position. ("Should your interests or skillset change and you want to pursue a different position here at Google..." Maybe I'll talk to one of the cafeteria chefs, if they're still there.)

What's really annoying is that nobody around here can come up with good interview questions- i.e. technical questions relating to the position. They all ask stupid puzzles instead. The algorithmic ones have easy O(N^2) solutions, and O(N) solutions that make you think a bit. But often some comp sci researcher once wrote some paper on a way to do it O(log N), so of the six applicants (on average) who apply for the position, you have to be the guy who comes up with that one. Basically to get a job you have to study the puzzles. Although I've occasionally seen the same stupid puzzle surface in different interviews, I refuse to study puzzles.

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[bz386]

Right, and because you refuse to study puzzles the obvious conclusion is that Silicon Valley is dry as hell.

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[MillionthMonkey]

No, my obvious conclusion is that you're such a pussy you're posting from your sockpuppet account.

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[rm999]

I'm actually curious, how do you enumerate a set of 3d points in better than O(n^2) time?

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[Blakey Rat]

When I did a phone interview with Google, they asked me (seriously) what a .pst file was, and what limits applied to it. Despite never having worked with Exchange or Outlook, I correctly guessed that it was an Outlook email file and the limit is likely either 2 GB or 4 GB in size. Despite the extremely good educated guess, they turned me down because I "got the question wrong."

Of course the really retarded thing is that's the kind of question I use Google to answer. Why would anybody bother keeping trivia like that in their heads when you can look it up in a third of a second?

Ugh. Google might be a great place to work, but their interviewing skills suck.

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[MillionthMonkey]

The IT guy at my last company applied at Google. (I knew him for 8 years; they would have done well to hire him.) I forget the details, but the question he got asked was something like, how could you find a file on some filesystem as fast as possible? (That wasn't it, precisely.)

Whatever it was, he had the right answer. "I'd use the find command."

That wasn't what they wanted. They were trying to get him to write some clever shell script that would construct a tree index of letters or something fancy like that. But he kept saying, "It'll take take forever to do stuff like this, why would you waste your time when find is just fast enough?" So the guy keeps pressing him, "ok, say you get an input file that's gigabytes long, and marketing wants the files as fast as possible, blah blah blah" but he kept answering, "use the find command". Really, marketing doesn't want to sit around waiting for you to write algorithms, so that was the right answer. I think the guy got him to write a shell script parsing each line and invoking find on it, but that was it.

Re:Silicon Valley is dry as hell

[haruharaharu]

funny, there's already locate if you want a preindexed list of files on the system. Still, if you want it once, find is great.

female

[Spy Handler]

Another finding of note is the shrinking female IT workforce

If you're female there is no reason to go into IT... nursing pays better, comes with better benefits, better hours, way less stress, no bullying from male coworkers, no worries about your job going offshore to Inida, more respect from the general community, just a better future period.

In fact males should also go into nursing, but constantly being made fun of (such as being called Gaylord Focker) might be too much to take for most men. However, it is undeniable that healthcare is the wave of the future in the United States; aging population and an entitlement mentality ("I deserve free healthcare as a Gaea-given right") means the demand for healthcare will grow and grow and never stop growing until the nation is bankrupt. So men should suck it up, go back to school and get a medical degree, and leave the codemonkeying to the Indians.

Re:female

[walterbyrd]

My sister has been a nurse for many years. I once suggested to her that more men would be willing to work as nurses if they just changed the named. The name "nurse" (also a synonym for breast feeding) is clearly emasculating. There are plenty of men in every other of health care. My sister actually agreed.

Re:female

[commodore64_love]

>>>it is undeniable that healthcare is the wave of the future in the United States

Except that the U.S. government is paying LESS than actual cost of procedures, so many doctors are quitting the profession due to increasing losses. You're better off to stay in a profession that doesn't have top-down price fixing (i.e. commercial, engineering or programming).

Re:female

[nmonsey]

The problem with your logic is that writing code is fun. Changing bedpans or dressings or being around sick people is not fun.

Re:female

[eln]

The nursing crisis isn't going to change because people going into nursing misunderstand where the need is. The whole reason the nursing crisis exists is because we have a bunch of aging baby boomers who need someone to take care of them when they get old and decrepit. A whole ton of people have heard about the nursing crisis and decided to go back to school for nursing. The problem is, most of them are going into Labor and Delivery nursing, which is not where the need is. Nobody wants a career cleaning up incontinent old people, they want to take care of cute babies. So, I predict you're going to have a bunch of disgruntled nursing graduates complaining that they can't find work while nursing homes and other providers of geriatric care complain they can't find enough qualified nurses.

If you want to be guaranteed a job for the next 30 years or so, go into geriatric nursing. Unfortunately, you'll be spending the next 30 years changing diapers for 90 year olds, but at least you'll always have steady work. Depending on whose IT department you work for, this may or may not be an improvement over your current situation.

Re:female

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're female there is no reason to go into IT... nursing pays better, comes with better benefits, better hours, way less stress, no bullying from male coworkers, no worries about your job going offshore to Inida, more respect from the general community, just a better future period.

In fact males should also go into nursing, but constantly being made fun of (such as being called Gaylord Focker) might be too much to take for most men. However, it is undeniable that healthcare is the wave of the future in the United States; aging population and an entitlement mentality ("I deserve free healthcare as a Gaea-given right") means the demand for healthcare will grow and grow and never stop growing until the nation is bankrupt. So men should suck it up, go back to school and get a medical degree, and leave the codemonkeying to the Indians.

This seems to hold true for many professions where it is male dominated. Look at the physical sciences in academia. Very few woman are stupid enough to do 60 hours a week working after spending 10-15 years of advanced schooling and then 3-6 more years of advanced training and only get paid 80k a year if you're lucky. The job application is a pain and very competitive plus once you have the job you're no longer doing science but spending all your time writing to get more money so others can do the science for you. Not to mention putting off childbearing until their thirties or later.
And yes I am a man and stupid enough to go through this crap. I'd rather do this then deal with MDs. Hell I'd rather open my wrists then deal with MDs most of the time - quicker, cheaper and more efficient.

Re:female

[commodore64_love]

Secretary became "adminstrative assistant". Or admin for short.

Maybe nurse can become "doctor's assistant".

Or docs'ass for short.

Re:female

[Kiaser Zohsay]

My SO is taking nursing classes right now, in a class that is mostly female with a handful of males sprinkled in. It turns out that hospitals need a certain number of male nurses for specific tasks (heavy lifting, if you will) and the relatively small number of men going into the field means that those men that do pursue a career can have their pick of jobs.

I'll just stay here and keep grinding code though.

Re:female

[techhead79]

This is the dumbest thing I've read in a while. So you're basically telling anyone that is in the field to drop what they are doing, retrain for a new field where virtually none of the college credits they currently have will do jack for them...pushing them further into debt all because IYO health care is the wave of the future.

People in the IT field are closer to the BIOtech field than medical health care. Talk about brain drain...telling a bunch of bright people to stop what they are doing so they can service others. Do you honestly want that a**hole that took your phone call at tech support to be responsible for the care of your mom or dad when they get older? Customer service is a joke in the IT field for a reason...personality does not mix well with others. And your solution is to have them all jump on the medical band wagon?

Re:female

[goldmaneye]

As someone with several family members in nursing, one of whom does research on the factors that are driving nurses to leave the profession, I wanted to correct some of the misconceptions in your comment. First, there's still bullying in nursing, sometimes from patients, sometimes from management, sometimes from co-workers; second, there's plenty of stress, since most hospitals assign enormous patient loads to their nurses to cope with the nursing shortage or to keep costs down; and third, there are definitely long hours, with shifts that can last twelve hours or more. Don't think the shortage will necessarily improve pay or benefits, either, which are currently on par with salaries in IT. Nursing jobs don't go to India, but hospitals fill the gap by importing nurses from overseas.

Re:female

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

Well said. Also, if you're a hot female...why even work. Just marry some rich guy, spend all day at the spa or boinking the pool boy...wait 10 years, take half his shit, and collect alimony for the rest of your life.

Re:female

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't there men in India?

Re:female

[CAIMLAS]

Wow, seriously? Do you know anything about nursing?

If you're female there is no reason to go into IT... nursing pays better, comes with better benefits, better hours, way less stress, no bullying from male coworkers, no worries about your job going offshore to Inida, more respect from the general community, just a better future period.

There are plenty of reasons to not go into IT. Nursing pays worse (IT 5 years experience = 50k; nursing 15 years experience = 50k), the hours are usually worse (no such thing as 9-5s or holidays, and everyone is "on call" almost all the time), constant bitchiness and "office politics" cattiness (if you want to hear someone lie about someone else, listen to an orderly...), and (very likely) increased hours + shifts with decreased pay in the very near future (on account of the increased burden that will be put on healthcare due to recent legislation).

Nurses get no respect, either. Orderlies get more, from what I've observed. It's a similar situation to IT (not programming, IT), where you're in the position to have responsibility but often have no ability to do anything about it. Doctors treat nurses like shit, typically. Administrators are similar to IT management: they haven't a clue what's going on but damn it, they're going to tell you what to do. Except with nursing (unlike computing) the balance of life (or health) and death often hangs in the balance, and stupid mistakes made by others often do directly fall on your shoulders.

In fact males should also go into nursing, but constantly being made fun of (such as being called Gaylord Focker) might be too much to take for most men.

No, the biggest problem would be having a predatory and/or inherrently bitchy (female, not that it matters) jerking you around for stupid political reasons.

There's a good reason why nurses have the highest percentage of illicit drug use in the country by career. Their jobs suck. I'd rather go into law enforcement.

Re:female

[c-reus]

sysadmin is "administrative assistant of systems"?

Re:female

[Kozz]

If you're female there is no reason to go into IT... nursing pays better, comes with better benefits, better hours, way less stress, no bullying from male coworkers, no worries about your job going offshore to Inida (sic), more respect from the general community, just a better future period.

Yeah, but the challenge is that in some areas, it's nigh to impossible to get into a nursing program unless your grades are in the top 7% of the applicants that year (or some incredible number). My sister has been trying to get into a nursing program in Oregon for quite some time. Perhaps if the teaching positions for nursing paid more, there would be a greater number of instructors, resulting in higher enrollment capabilities, and so on (trickle down).

Of course I'm not an expert in this field (I'm an IT guy, too) and perhaps my sister's experience is unique, but that's not the impression I've been getting.

Re:female

[couchslug]

Great troll, except nursing has plenty of rough schedules, doesn't always pay well, and is frequently hectic. Patients are often demanding, not to mention contagious (I'd rather have RSI than MRSA, TYVM!).

Re:female

[c-reus]

The problem with your logic is that writing code is fun. Changing bedpans or dressings or being around sick people is not fun.

This depends on the point of view. Nurses might find helping injured/sick people fun, too. If not fun, then at least emotionally gratifying. Meaning that they like that they are able to make someone's life better (or less painful), save a life every now and then or see someone being brought to intensive care and see the same person walk out of the hospital a while later. After a working day a nurse could go home knowing that there's one guy that survived that day because the nurse was doing her job. Is that really so different from a programmer finishing some fancy feature of a web app he/she had been working on for a while? At the end of the day they both feel that they have accomplished something, or made the world a better place for everyone.

Re:female

[ModernGeek]

You're an idiot. You can't have an entire nation of nurses. The nations economy would collapse and no real work would get done. That would be like having a nation of firefighters. How about more efficient hospitals, and a healthier population? We need more Engineers and Scientists who create and develop things that make the world a better place to live in, while making their respective countries GDP go up. Nurses are a dime a dozen, good Engineers are hard to find.

Re:female

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that hospitals need a certain number of male nurses for specific tasks (heavy lifting, if you will)

Literally. Almost every male nurse I've met either worked in radiology or got disability after 10-15 from lifting injuries.

Re:female

[TooMuchToDo]

Cost is subjective. Your time is only worth what someone will pay for it.

Re:female

[Red Flayer]

Except that the U.S. government is paying LESS than actual cost of procedures, so many doctors are quitting the profession due to increasing losses. You're better off to stay in a profession that doesn't have top-down price fixing (i.e. commercial, engineering or programming).

Citation please. All I've seen attached to this claim over the past several months is anecdotal "evidence" that involves a lot of other factors. Such as doctors who have inadequate controls over their expenses, and bemoan their inability to reduce expenses as the reason they are unable to provide service at the amount paid. Honestly, if we want to get some societal control over medical expenses, we *should* eliminate the practices that can't get by on the same amount of cash other practices prosper under.

There's a practice local to me that was making this claim... but I find it hard to stomach when they drive $85,000 dollar cars, they lease 180,000 square feet for a 2-doctor practice with a lobby (almost always near empty) that seats 30 and has three large-screen plasma TVs. It's an urgent-care facility that has a full suite of rehab equipment that they lease. Seriously... what a waste of cash. People in physical rehab should be going to a rehab center or specialist, not to a general urgent care facility. The only reason I could see them maintaining such a huge facility is if they are receiving payments for the capacity to handle urgent care overflow from the local hospitals. Otherwise, they are hemorrhaging cash, and then blaming lack of income for their negative gross.

Re:female

[glwtta]

Slight problem there: nurses aren't doctors' assistants.

Re:female

[Maxo-Texas]

Procedure for hemorrhoids 20 years ago. 15 minutes with a scalpel in the doctor's office. $50.
Basically lance the hemorrhoid, tweeze the blood clot and draw it out. Hemorrhoid fixed.

Procedure for hemorrhoids 20 years ago. Multiple visits with a special infra-red machine at $500 each.
But the negotiated price with the insurance companies is more like $250 (which is profitable since that's $250 for 15 minutes).
Government probably pays $200.

Doctors are grossly over compensated and don't *touch* the patients like they used to.

Re:female

[Vectormatic]

don't *touch* the patients like they used to.

ah, so now we see what this is all about. You know you can probably get your touching fix for significantly less then $250 for 15 minutes, although the doctors outfit might cost extra...

on topic, yes healthcare in the US sounds ridiculous, last year i had bloodwork done, an ECG, an echo, an X-ray and a gastroscopy (honestly, you dont want this...), and a nice bunch of pills. From all the paperwork i've that amounted to a grand total of 160 euros (yet, they didnt find anything significant... stupid sensitive stumach)

Re:female

[Vr6dub]

I'll give my little anecdote. My wife went to the hospital on my son's due-date. The wanted to do an NST (No-Stress Test) to make sure the baby was fine and perform a quick ultrasound to make sure fluid levels in the uterus were ok.

The NST consisted of a nurse strapping a heartbeat monitor and contraction sensor or something like that to her belly. They came back in after 30 minutes, looked at the charts and said we were ok. Walked to the ultrasound room, guy does a 20 minute ultrasound and says all is well and we could go home. We were there for an hour tops.

The bill? $1600!!!!! $700 of that was the NST. THEY LITERALLY JUST PUT TWO SENSORS ON HER STOMACH AND QUICKLY GLANCED AT THE RESULTS!!! Insurance covered all but $170 of it, but damn! People don't pay attention to the true costs of these silly little procedures. I'd love to see the price breakdown of those two procedures.

Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly what happens when you have non-technical accountants and marketers making technology-related decisions. Look at the executives for nearly any American company. You'll find the number of technical people at or near the top is virtually none.

Accountants are concerned with one thing: the next quarter's numbers. Software and IT infrastructure, on the other hand, often takes longer than that to properly implement and to see their benefits. So these accountants ignore IT, and often do what they can to deny funding, especially if it won't result in a near-immediate balance sheet gains.

In the past, when America still had some manufacturing base, engineers often had a prominent place within the leadership of most companies. They could think beyond the next quarter's financial results, and saw how technology could make their companies more efficient in the long run. Unfortunately, these people have retired or been forced out.

America now generates its "wealth" not through the creation of tangible goods and improving productivity at existing enterprises, but rather by creating and selling a variety of bullshit financial instruments. Things won't improve until technical folks are making the calls, rather than accountants and marketers.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick question, genius.

What intrinsic worth does a tangible object have?

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck kind of a question is that? Tangible goods hold intrinsic value because they are made of some material, and that material has some value. Are you so American that you didn't even realize that?

Take a wooden chair, for instance. Even if you don't want to use it as a chair any longer, you can always reuse the wood for some other purpose, or burn the chair for heat, or even repaint it for fun.

Most financial instruments are actually nothing more than a few values in a database. They don't even exist in the form of a certificate that could be, say, burned or used as paper to write on. And even if you "own" one of these instruments, you don't actually have anything physical in your possession (such as the hard drive sectors where the data is stored).

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Orne]

I'll let you in on a secret, since I'm in a Management of Information Systems class right now as part of our MBA curriculum... We're being told not to worry about being intricately familiar with XYZ technology, since XYZ tends to have a useful lifespan of 3-5 years... we're there to learn how to focus IT to best provide a service to the other parts of the business, and how to manage people. We learn what relational databases are, not how to do an installation of SQL Server 2008. What SOA represents to standardization and business intelligence, not how to set up the ESB, write adapters, etc.

It is interesting that in the "business side", the knowledge tree is inverted relative to IT, in that the business managers are expected to know every detail of their underlings workflow. Bank managers can step in and be tellers, loan officers, or just help you open a line of credit. But in IT, the higher up you go in management, the less technical knowledge exists (or at the least, skills have been depreciated) such that the managers truely lack the ability to drop in and fill the position. Be honest, how many .Net-programming, router configuring, DBA managers are there? IT has become comfortable with "niches", and the delegation mindset drives productivity... IT managers exist to coordinate, not implement.

In a way, it's specialization at it's finest, but compartmentalization comes at the price of becoming interchangable... Hense, a company's IT's service becomes replacable, and the managers don't pay it any mind. A help desk service could be in-house, or outsourced. Internal programming staff could just be a consulting company hired for a one-off job. It's the way that IT has been evolving, so it's not a stretch to see that competition is forcing costs (i.e. salaries) down.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Red Flayer]

Accountants are concerned with one thing: the next quarter's numbers

Bullshit. What you think is fact is not true in general.

Accountants may be responsible for reporting next quarter's numbers. They may need to make some decisions based on quarterly numbers. That does not mean they work only to maximize next quarter's numbers. What is done with that reporting is a different matter.

My experience in finance is that accountants are more likely to consider the long-term impact of spending than a lot of other backgrounds. The worst, in my experience, are sales & marketing backgrounds. These people have been paid and judged their entire careers on quarterly and monthly numbers... and somehow we expect them to drop that background when they rise to positions of authority.

Also keep in mind that in most companies, decision-making is not made by accountants. It is made by CxOs, then given to the Controller or CFO to implement. Management says, 'We need to reduce expense 10% across the board, except for departments X and Y (usually marketing and sales)'.

America now generates its "wealth" not through the creation of tangible goods and improving productivity at existing enterprises, but rather by creating and selling a variety of bullshit financial instruments.

Ah, I see where you are coming from. You equate accountants with investment bankers. Never mind the fact that the people driving the investment bankers to do what they do are people like you and me, with their money in 401ks or other vehicles, who select investments based upon quarterly and annual returns.

Accountants are not the problem. Idiots who only understand one piece of the pie and then generalize their understanding of that one slice to the entire pie are the problem.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*

Couple things here:
  - First things first, I believe you mean income statement (and maybe cash flow statement) impact. The B/S only has net income (probably what you meant) as a component of retained earnings.
  - It appears you've made some sweeping generalizations. Accountants generally (and I'm biased, so have your grain of salt prepared and ready) have a better view of the business than most folks purely from exposure to virtually all functional areas. If you think that IT is the only department screaming for more funding, you're sadly short-sighted. Most accountants I know (and I'm completely surrounded by them as I'm writing this post) hold IT development in very high regard as it has been so integrated into what we do.
  - I'd go ahead and say if anyone's concerned about next quarter's numbers, it would be the finance group. This would be akin to confusing a sysadmin for an electrician.

In conclusion, if you want things to improve, I might suggest you abandon the "woe is me" IT attitude and learn something about the business so that maybe you can actually make a change other than posting some anecdotal evidence on /. Oh, and quit it with the sweeping generalizations. Us CPAs get enough of that with everyone and their mother asking us to do their taxes this time of year.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

We learn what relational databases are, not how to do an installation of SQL Server 2008. What SOA represents to standardization and business intelligence, not how to set up the ESB, write adapters, etc.

This is exactly the wrong attitude to be taking. Unless you know the nitty-gritty details about any technology, you won't truly understand its implications, and thus can't make good decisions regarding its use.

This is why we have so many managers who think that MySQL is a relational database that's equivalent to Oracle. They know at a high level what a relational database is, and they know that MySQL is cheaper than Oracle, but they don't realize that going with MySQL will likely result in lost data, performance problems and severe scalability issues because it's technologically-inferior to Oracle. Then when everything goes to hell, that manager doesn't realize that he made a bad decision, and instead blame some IT underling who was just using the technology that was hand-picked by that manager!

Since you guys are pretty much fucking clueless about the technologies you're working with, you buy into all of the marketing hype surrounding the buzzword technology of the day. SOA is a good example of this. Web apps are another. Cloud Computing is by far the biggest fuck-up we've seen in a long time. Huge amounts of resources are being wasted thanks to managers who don't truly understand distributed computing, yet heard from a friend who heard from a marketer from some vendor that Cloud Computing is the cure for all problems.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Samalie]

I agree with you completely.

I'm an IT Manager, but I'm very hand-s on as part of my position. So I can easily fill the role of whatever IT Skillset we need at any given moment.

Although, even then, my programming skills suck. I can build a relational database system complete with functions, triggers, etc as needed. I can setup and manage routers, VPN's, etc. I can handle the helpdesk...but if someone needed some C# written, I'd be fucked LOL.

Now, progress to my boss, who happens to be (as is most of the small/medium business corporate world) the Director of Finance. I cant pay off the bastard to look at my proposals, and even if he did he wouldn't fucking understand a thing. Same at the executive level...there are NO people understanding technology at that level, but they're making the budgetary and project decisions. THe only saving grace is (finally) they'll actually ask for my input (I'm still trying to get a seat at the big table for the strategic planning sessions so that some clueless executive doesn't promise undeliverable IT solutions).

I still hold and believe though that all this outsourcing will bite a ton of companies in the ass in the future though. I know in my own Relational Database world that from time to time a situational bug creeps into the code - I had one procedure that once went to hell because it was a leap year in code written 3 1/2 years prior to the incident. I was a rookie, and my date formula was wrong for leap years. But it didn't get discovered until the next leap year...and if I had been a lazy fuck that didn't document things properly, and had left the company...that bug could have crippled them at least for a little while. Outsorucing o the lowest bidder is just asking for a product that is likely to have a situational bug that won't be discovered immediately, and when it is the programmer will probably be all but unreachable.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Large_Hippo]

Actually, U.S. manufacturing output has risen steadily since 1960. "There is a common theme across the internet: US manufacturing is dead. ... there's a big problem with that analysis: it's not true" http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/us-manufacturing-is-not-dead.html

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

The most popular undergrad major for Fortune 500 CEO's: Engineering (22%), followed by economics (16%)

Yes, America's manufacturing base has been eroded. Yes, corporations are slaves to the profit margin. It was famously said that any company can look great for two years. Move your inventory, fire your workforce, stop maintaining infrastructure. But for a company to last longer than that, they have to do SOMETHING of value. Technical minds are not so uncommon at the top.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

Devilish advocacy moment here: actually, all those financial thingies ARE representing some tangible thing somewhere. Stock is part ownership in a company (which has a physical location and physical, monetary, intellectual, and human assets). Debt maps back to the physical at some level (a little more abstract, but most debt ties to a physical thing the debt was used for (house, car, starting a company) or to the other assets of the debtor). Insurance maps back to property in one direction and money in the other direction.

None of the financial mumbo jumbo is actually imaginary; it's just another abstraction layer on top of tangible stuff. The only actual intangible industry would be owning submarine patents on stuff that doesn't actually exist (but that you think might someday exist, so you can pounce on the person who did the actual work to make a real product).

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[Anonymous Coward]

This decline began with Harold Geneen and the ITT conglomerate of the 1960's, which led the "financial management" movement. Geneen started on wall street, and understood that the investment people didn't have a clue about industry, but valued steady financial returns and steady financial growth (numbers they could understand.) What should have been the invention of the mutual fund (reducing volatility) instead was a movement of buying industrial companies, component manufacturers and cuttng R&D to milk them dry. The Japanese saw this happening and invested in component R&D and just took over the electronics business by the 1970's.

The U.S. temporarily recovered only because the early character mapped PC technology couldn't handle Asian languages, giving the U.S. a head start on computers and then networking. We weren't superior, we just got lucky. Our financial managers transferred the business to Asia as soon as they could though.

The MBA's, marketers, and lawyers who run this country don't understand a thing about the process of making things, so they just ignorantly cancel project after project when the engineering hits the interesting (hard) parts. We finally build a real space station, and then cancel the shuttle. Brilliant.

I think we're now a combination of the Soviet Empire before its crash, giving away its manufacturing base to please its "partners" who hate it, and the Ottoman Empire in its cultural sclerosis. But at least we have Goldman Sachs. Maybe they can sell us another tulip frenzy.

Re:Accountants and marketers running the show...

[dbIII]

Unfortunately it is the widespread opinion of many that most of what is taught in an MBA is utter bullshit. I don't have one, but two of my siblings that had real degrees and real management experience (military and medical) before getting an MBA as a ticket to get past HR are very strongly of that opinion.
To refute the point you made, one of the largest systemic problems we have in IT is that that industry in general only has an attention span of 3-5 years and useful things tend to be re-invented poorly in other places or the same mistakes happen over and over again. Companies that have an attention span longer than that tend to do well - for instance IBM has effectively been in "cloud computing" for a few decades.
A glaring example of short attention span hit me last year (2009) when some macromedia crapware prevented me running some software due to a Y2K bug of all things (permanant licence was dated as 00 - software saw it as expiring in 2000). The helpdesk guy asked me "what's a Y2K bug?"

Monkey?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a contact email like that it's a wonder you haven't gotten more offers. I can really use someone who fails a basic self-awareness test.

Re:Monkey?

[MillionthMonkey]

That's not what you said when I spoke to you last week.

Re:Monkey?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said!

IT professionals are about to explode

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with a bunch of them, and I've been hiding behind the penguin on top of my television so as to not get so messy.

Re:IT professionals are about to explode

[avandesande]

You work with Mr. Creosote?

Yup, no raises these days.

[Kenja]

But on the plus side, I get to work from home where naps are a daily event and pants are optional.

Marketing

[Prien715]

I love this survey. I write software; it's what my degree is in, and it's what I do.

I can choose "Software developer", "Software engineer", or "Programmer/analyst". I like engineer. It sounds fancy; that's what the concentration was in school.

Salary went up in my region by 6.3% -- that's better than I've seen in 3 years. But what if I choose developer. That's what I call myself on my resume. My salary went down 1%.

That's why this survey is laughable. And they use average. Everyone else in the statistics community switched to median years ago. Where's your sample size per category? And seriously, 10 years experience as the first hurdle? No standard deviation either?

Re:Marketing

[MBGMorden]

And they use average. Everyone else in the statistics community switched to median years ago.

Median IS an average, as is the mean, which is what you're probably thinking of. If they simply state "average" though, then it's possible that they went with the median over the mean (or not - it really doesn't indicate either way).

Re:Marketing

[royallthefourth]

...and don't forget that "Web Developer" is still another choice. For some reason writing programs that happen to get executed by a web server puts us into totally different territory.

Re:Marketing

[DeadDecoy]

No, median is the number in the middle of everything. Index [N/2 rounded up if odd] or the average of the two middle numbers if even. The median is used in concert with the average to determine if your data is skewed one way or another; useful if you want to know whether you're dealing with a guassian or poisson distribution. I believe the mean is typically synonymous with average though. If they state average, I suspect they used count(N)/N.

Re:Marketing

[kuroth]

Median IS an average

I think I see why your salary isn't increasing.

Re:Marketing

[CAIMLAS]

I was thinking much the same thing. However, it is a good "omg I'm not making enough" benchmark, particularly for those in urban areas.

For instance, I'm currently making 15k+ less than my job description (or a half dozen variations of the description) make - and I'm at the intersection of their Mountain and North Central parts of their survey. That's a substantial discrepancy.

They'd have been better served with a larger sample size as well as a metro-size sub-categorization as well.

Re:Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

The median is not an average, it is the middle number in the series. Example 1, 2, 3, 4, 100. The median is 3 where the mean is 22.

Re:Marketing

[iamhigh]

They do include exactly what the sample size is if you use the tool to lookup your specific area. It tells how many in that area and how many nationwide. It even noted that my area had few responses, and told me not use this number for much past "huh, neat". So it wasn't that bad.

Re:Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like someone failed basic statistics...

Re:Marketing

[Red Flayer]

And both the median and the mean are "averages".

It's common for people to think 'average' and 'mean' are synonyms, but they are not.

Re:Marketing

[rm999]

A lot of people responded to the GP post with similar skepticism as you.

I'm a stats person, and in my world GP is correct that "average" is a general term that includes both median and mean. The only time we use the word "average" is when we want to be purposefully vague: "something around the middle", not "add up all the numbers and divide by N".

But yes, most lay people use mean and average interchangeably because they believe the mean indicates the average well enough. As has been pointed out in this thread, though, this is never a guarantee, and more and more people have been using median to calculate an average.

Re:Marketing

[DragonWriter]

Median IS an average, as is the mean, which is what you're probably thinking of.

All means are averages, including the arithmetic mean, which is probably what they are thinking of.

If they simply state "average" though, then it's possible that they went with the median over the mean (or not - it really doesn't indicate either way).

Usually, if they simply state "average", it means the arithmetic mean, though since average is ambiguous, it could be the median, mode, or any kind of mean (geometric mean, harmonic mean, or something else.) But really, the arithmetic mean is almost certainly what it means. But, in practice, virtually no one ever uses "average" to mean anything other than the arithmetic mean when presenting numbers.

Re:Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Median is the middle of the dataset, bro.

Median = Array[Array.size()/2];

Re:Marketing

[Your.Master]

It's true that very often the word "average" is conflated with "arithmetic mean average" (even in formal contexts), but that doesn't mean median is not an average. It is also an average.

Re:Marketing

[King_TJ]

You're just not interpreting it properly....

The only reason it has all those job classifications is because that's what the people surveyed reported as their respective titles.
If you notice a significant difference in salary on there between several different titles that in your opinion all describe the same work you do, then maybe it's a hint that your resume should be referring to yourself with the most favorable one of those titles?

My current job gave me a title of "Network Supervisor", which isn't even on their list ... so what do I pick? I'm often referred to as the "Network Manager", at least by people trying to reach me to discuss technical things I'm trying to take care of in the typical work-day. So I gave that one a shot. It showed the average for people in my part of the country as about double what I'm being paid currently. BUT, it also warned me that the sample size for that description was only 11 participants ... so not a lot to really go on.

Ultimately, I consider the fact that my job doesn't really ever expect me to come in during "off hours". (We don't run 24 hours/7 days, and if people aren't here and a computer crisis happens, nobody will know anyway until they come back in and find out it's down.) It's a small business, too, so I know they can't afford the salaries some places pay. But it's relatively low-stress, MOST of the time, and they're flexible about letting me come in later than usual because of my kid and having to get her to school first. If you need to take a long lunch or what-not, you can usually just do that too, without any real worries. Things like that have value to me beyond the rate of pay.

Re:Marketing

[MBGMorden]

I'm well aware of what the median is.

As you said:

Median = Array[Array.size()/2];

is a very good representation of what median is.

However,

Mean = SUM(Array)/Array.size()

works quite well too.

Mode is harder to represent in equational form - it's the value that appears most frequently in the set.

That has no bearing on the fact that all three are types of averages. Average does not inherently imply the mean. Mean, median, and mode are all TYPES of averages.

Re:Marketing

[haruharaharu]

And when some random article says average, they usually mean mean. It's best to assume it's whatever screws you the most, though.

Re:Marketing

[RAMMS EIN]

Yes. There is even a sentiment that web developers aren't real developers, despite the fact that web sites have certainly evolved from "static page with perhaps an image or two" to full-blown applications.

Re:Marketing

[DeadDecoy]

Ah, looked it up, you're right.

Re:Marketing

[Richy_T]

There are three ways of taking averages, mean, median and mode. Average generally is taken to mean "mean" bit it isn't necessarily so.

Visa cap increase

[Anonymous Coward]

So many unemployed IT workers, yet according to tech sector managers we don't have enough and need to raise the cap on visas again.

Re:Visa cap increase

[Anonymous Coward]

"not enough IT works willing to take our abuse and work for third-world wages while having to pay to live in a first world (?) country"

T,FTFY

I dunno mang,

[melted]

My pay nearly doubled in 2010. Maybe it has something to do with me working on my skills portfolio for over a decade and pent up demand for those skills.

One thing for sure - if you want to make more money, you need to ALWAYS be thinking on what skills you could acquire to achieve that goal. Any retard can poorly code up a web page - why would anyone pay a pretty penny for that?

Another life's lesson - if you want to grow, you need to move. Don't sit on your ass in the same job for a decade. Change teams, companies, industries, roles. If you don't do this, the best you can hope for is a 5% merit raise, and that's in a fat year.

Re:I dunno mang,

[Itninja]

if you want to make more money, you need to ALWAYS be thinking on what skills you could acquire to achieve that goal.

Well, that, and working for one of the few companies that can afford large pay increases. Ones level of skill really has very little to do with ones salary. I had a job working as a one-man IT dept making something like 30K/year. I wanted more money. My boss said 'you're not worth it', so I quit. Seven month later, after a string of weirdos and losers who would work for that salary, I was offered my job back for nearly double. Three years later I was at 66K/year. But I quit again for another job offering more. Now I am at about 80K/year. New skills needed to 'climb' in this way? Zero.

It was all timing, luck, and playing against the 'unkempt, slovenly IT' type in job interviews.

Re:I dunno mang,

[walterbyrd]

I have worked in IT for 30 years. To me, you sound like a staffing company recruiter.

if you want to make more money, you need to ALWAYS be thinking on what skills you could acquire to achieve that goal.

Of course recruiters will always say that, no skin off their noses. Truth is: you can acquire all the skills you want, if you don't have recent, paid, professional, enterprise-level, verifiable, experience, in those skills, then your skills count for nothing. Don't take my word for it, look at the job ads.

Don't sit on your ass in the same job for a decade. Change teams, companies, industries, roles.

Yeah, great advice, employers just love job hoppers - ask any employer about what they think of job hoppers. IMO: one of the key reasons that US employers have such a strong preference for offshore guest workers is that offshore quest workers can not easily change loves.

Re:I dunno mang,

[Seakip18]

Yep. You don't get more money by showing your worth...you get it by someone buying into the promise of your worth.

Every story I hear just reinforces the idea that if you want more money, find a job elsewhere.

Re:I dunno mang,

[melted]

>> for one of the few companies that can afford large pay increases

What part of "you need to move" did you not understand? :-) There's no way I'd have gotten to my level of compensation had I stayed with just one company. Change jobs every couple of years. Build great reputation along the way. That's all there is to it.

Re:I dunno mang,

[melted]

I don't know, I practice what I preach. I change jobs every 2-2.5 years. Sometimes stay in the same company, sometimes move to another. So far I have no complaints.

And you're right about having verifiable experience, but there's nothing preventing you from acquiring this experience while doing your current job, if it's not too drastically different, or in a different team within your current company. Lateral moves within the company are always easier.

Re:I dunno mang,

[CAIMLAS]

If employers have a hard time keeping their employees, who's fault is that? The employers or the employees?

Consider that not long ago, people were working the same job for their entire career. People, by their nature, prefer stability (that's why many go through all that effort of getting a good degree, and why government job preference has been on the uptick for some time).

If employers don't want employees to jump ship they need to make their employees feel like their jobs aren't in danger and provide them competitive pay. People don't leave a good job for 5% more: they leave for significant lumps of cash; they leave due to business instability; they leave for (inter)personal reasons. They also leave because they know the company doesn't hold them in high esteem as a person, more than likely, and that if push comes to shove, the company's going to dump them.

Ultimately, it's a cycle - but a cycle which companies started. God bless the Business Management types.

Re:I dunno mang,

[Fujisawa Sensei]

I have worked in IT for 30 years. To me, you sound like a staffing company recruiter.

if you want to make more money, you need to ALWAYS be thinking on what skills you could acquire to achieve that goal.

Of course recruiters will always say that, no skin off their noses. Truth is: you can acquire all the skills you want, if you don't have recent, paid, professional, enterprise-level, verifiable, experience, in those skills, then your skills count for nothing. Don't take my word for it, look at the job ads.

Don't sit on your ass in the same job for a decade. Change teams, companies, industries, roles.

Yeah, great advice, employers just love job hoppers - ask any employer about what they think of job hoppers. IMO: one of the key reasons that US employers have such a strong preference for offshore guest workers is that offshore quest workers can not easily change loves.

Guess what?

Offshore resources job hop as well. Ever in your 30 years of IT hear of a Bangalore lunch? That's where they offshore resource is fed up, goes to lunch, gets a job and doesn't call back.

We had a guy in Mexico do exactly the same thing, he was fed up, and just walked.

Back in the 80, under Greenspan, employees got used to the cyclic nature of business, they stopped feeling safe. Because the figured that as soon as there was a downturn, their job was toast. Now us peons have taken our lesson from the people at the top and have the balls to walk and find another job once management starts bringing in less experienced peons for more money than we're making; because that's what the market is paying. We have taken a lesson, from the people at the top.

Job hopping will be a way of life as long as employees don't feel comfortable and raises don't at least equal the market. And that doesn't take domain specific knowledge into account. It takes a long time to bring engineers up to speed on the enterprise specifics, yet most companies don't value that. They're quite happy to give out 2 and 4% raises, when the market is good, but pay the guy coming in 10% more than they were paying last year.

So yeah, we're not going to stick around, when the market is good, deal. The sharp guys are smart enough to know when we're getting the shaft.

Re:I dunno mang,

[Red Flayer]

IMO: one of the key reasons that US employers have such a strong preference for offshore guest workers is that offshore quest workers can not easily change loves.

Horsepoop. It's about price. Offshore workers are notorious for jobhopping. That's changing right now, since growth has slowed in India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, etc... but my experience is that you're very lucky if you get a full year out of a worker in India before they jump ship for a 3% pay increase at another company (even when they are getting 5%+/yr at your company). If you mean onshore guest workers (like H1Bs in the US), then I think you're spot-on.

Re:I dunno mang,

[walterbyrd]

IMO: one of the key reasons that US employers have such a strong preference for offshore guest workers is that offshore quest workers can not easily change loves.

Horsepoop. It's about price. Offshore workers are notorious for jobhopping.

Please note, I said guest workers.

Re:I dunno mang,

[Richy_T]

Exactly. If employers want to discourage job hopping, they need to ensure that compensation keeps up with experience. Many companies seem to think that they can continue to offer poor raises and people will stay out of "loyalty". Well, that ship sailed a long time ago. When you get a miserly raise then you hear of someone else being hired on in a similar (or sometimes lower) position for 50% more than what you're getting then you're told raises are being held in the low single digits this year, what exactly are you supposed to do?

Though personally, I don't really like the whole automated raises thing. People should be encouraged to negotiate their raise and justify it each and every year. This would work best for all concerned.

Re:I dunno mang,

[Red Flayer]

OK thanks... I was thrown off by the "offshore" part, since offshore workers are not guest workers & both descriptors were used...

That's why I apologized in advance at the end in case you mean onshore guest workers :)

Dissatisfaction with IT jobs is increasing

[walterbyrd]

A recent study suggests that IT people really don't seem to like their jobs very much. Apparently, only 4% of IT people found themselves "highly engaged" with their jobs -- a number that has dropped from the still low, but not as low, 12%, two years earlier. There are concerns, of course, for what this means for companies and their IT staff. It certainly raises some questions about whether or not this is a potential issue going forward, and how companies might deal with this. Are the problems caused by the way IT people are treated? Or does it have more to do with their own worries about the future of the IT profession? And given that so many people in IT aren't particularly enthusiastic about their jobs, how can that be dealt with?

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/itinnovation/articles/20100216/0318428178.shtml

All that, but still the best job in the US...

[Itninja]

At least according to this report. Can't really say I disagree. Of the friends and family who do have jobs now, I think mine is the best. Maybe not in term of money, but certainly in a money-to-suckiness kind of way.

Econ 101

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In a perfectly competitive market, the price of a commodity equals its marginal cost.

When that commodity is you, "marginal cost" -> "subsistence mode of existence".

Just hope that you die before our imperfectly competitive economy reaches this particular state.

Re:Econ 101

[Anonymous Coward]

And where does the "rest" go? Actually in US population is not expanding. And by that logic intrest rate on capital is going to go to marginal cost, so where does the "extra money" (that's present in current imperfect price) going?

Note: I agree, if you have to compete with Chinese and Indians, you will earn like them. (I just think that this "perfect market" thing isn't working in every sector of the economy. See: bailing out the banks.)

Re:Econ 101

[selven]

And when the commodity is employers, marginal cost = the usefulness of the work you're doing.

Clearly, we must kill 50-75% of the existing programmers.

The smart look up tool makes me depressed.

[orsty3001]

I really need to get out of this field.

well, shit.

[archangel9]

brb, blocking that piece of crap misinformed survey site from our HR/CxOs. According to them, my salary is right on track.

Depends where you are

[Wyatt Earp]

The report there lumped where I am now (Alaska) with the job hell I just left (Oregon/Washington). I'm looking at an 18% raise for next year and I still get almost three months off.

I moved up here and had three offers within a month of getting here and had one of the places I turn down call me back and offer 5% more.

I figure by 2011 I'll be able to get another 20-25% in salary.

Welcome to the rest of the USA

[Xistenz99]

I don't need to read a chart about dwindling salaries, bonuses, and etc with increase in hours, this is already the same with every business out there in down economic. Save the box of Kleenex because there aren't enough to go around IT guys.

IT field avoidance should be a no-brainer

[walterbyrd]

Occam's razor: off-shore labor is a lot cheaper, therefore employers will off-shore every possible job. If you do your job sitting in front of a computer, then your job can probably be off-shored - if not now, then certainly in the near future.

Furthermore, the simple laws of supply and demand dictate that the few jobs that are not off-shored, will have a glut of qualified applicants. The experienced developers who have their jobs off-shored, will clearly try to leverage their existing training and experience into the few remaining IT jobs that can not be easily off-shored. This causes a glut, and drives down wages.

The IT worker glut will be increased even more by improved automation of information system maintenance, standardization of software, and non-IT specialists who are increasingly sophisticated with information technology.

There can be nothing to stop this devastating trend, due to the following:

1) Corrupt USA politicians
2) USA IT workers are not willing to organize
3) Influential corporations have effectively distorted the issues

So there you go, it's as simple as that.

IMO: this trend is presently in it's infancy. The present trend has very little to do with the present economic slump. In fact, when the US economy recovers, this trend will accelerate even faster. The present situation for US IT workers is much better now, than it will be five years from now.

http://techtoil.org/doku.php?id=articles:no-brainer

So what?

[ned14]

Firstly, IT workers != computer programmers. In there are support staff, data entry people, helpdesk, admins and so on. For some of those, the writing is without doubt on the wall and your pay/conditions per work unit is going to carry on dropping. For others, the annual pay rises may have slowed but the trend is accelerating. What else would you expect from a still infant industry heading into its teenage years?

If I were a betting man, I would say that anything which isn't tied to locality and is not specialist/niche in nature is doomed to become as crappy as any normal job. Locality is real important because boilerplate services which are not niche such as auto maintenance are highly localised to the customer, and hence a mechanic or plumber in a rich neighbourhood will tend to earn loads for identical work done elsewhere. Compare auto maintenance costs between Berlin and Addis Ababa for example.

As my daddy said to me many, many years ago, the secret to high earnings and excellent work conditions in the free market is to be perceived by those with money as being able to do something valuable which is perceived as hard to find elsewhere. I know a guy who fits spiral staircases - he's good at it, but his talents are hardly unique. Yet Elton John had him fit a spiral staircase in one of his houses a few years ago, then the other celebs saw it and suddenly he's putting in spiral staircases all over the world and charging six or seven times the normal cost. In the end, it is cheaper to pay seven times the odds and avoiding finding your own worker when your opportunity cost per hour is like US$500!

The second thing my daddy said to me is to leave the free market when you start thinking of having children. The free market will throw you away if you get sick or you lose your reputation which someone influential can easily cause. He suggested a highly unionised public sector job where if you feel a bit peaky you can just go on sick leave for twenty years. Personally, I wish there were some middle ground between excellence being rewarded and the dead but safe hand of guarantee, but we as a society are still too torn between the old Babylon myth even after all these millenia later :(

I would also say that from my personal perspective as a specialist IT consultant, work is still paying US$750-1000/day upwards but the recession means that there is simply a lot less of such work, so much so that you have to find other sources of income which are usually totally unrelated to IT as so to prevent reputation damage. However in my subjective opinion there is certainly no pressure to reduce payments for high quality specialist work, if anything in some fields the rate is actually rising as more skilled professionals quit permie jobs for their own IT consultancy business. At the top end things keep on getting better, and at the bottom they keep on getting worse. Just like the wage gap in all Western countries since the 1980s!

Cheers,
Niall

I am in the same boat

[KharmaWidow]

I am not in IT but my employer is doing the same: increasing costs of healthcare contribution, decreasing benefit packages and vacation time, and skipping raises.

But, I have to point out that the cost of living has generally decreased according to the Obama admin.. And, while many of us are doing more work, an even greater amount of us are doing the same amount of work - in some cases, less. I question the ideology that one gets a raise simply for putting in time. The cost of labor is a huge problem for American companies causing them to leave (move jobs from) major states and the country altogether. I would prefer to keep my job at my current pay than to lose it.

Re:I am in the same boat

[Vectormatic]

I question the ideology that one gets a raise simply for putting in time.

I would personally expect to keep at least equivalent purchasing power, thus inflation compensation (an employer will raise their prices to compensate this themselves anyway), add to that that i am still early in my career, and getting noticably more experienced and knowledgeable every year, and yes, i should be seeing a periodic increase in my euro/hour ratio.

I have no problem with going the extra mile sometime, but if an employer fails to make me feel apprieciated (not necceserilly with raises), i would quickly default to just putting in my hours

I would prefer to keep my job at my current pay than to lose it.

No argument there, although i am thinking of option C

Re:I am in the same boat

[KharmaWidow]

"I would personally expect to keep at least equivalent purchasing power"

And that was part of my comment. Obama is reporting that the cost of living is decreasing.

However, I also question why, if we are doing the same amount of work and the revenue-value of our widgets is dropping due to inflation, why we would be compensated for inflation? What you are proposing is that we get more money even though the value of our work is worth less.

"an employer will raise their prices to compensate this themselves anyway"
You do realize that you appear to be saying that you want to be compensated for the inflation you and your employer are causing, don't you?

"but if an employer fails to make me feel apprieciated"

I agree. Many studies show that appreciation does not need to be monetary, however.

What real IT Pros are saying

[walterbyrd]

Here is a quick look at the work experiences of real US IT pros:

http://techtoil.org/doku.php?id=articles:news_and_commentary

Meh, what is IT?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Really, what is this IT sector. Does it include EA? Id? IBM? The guy who fixes the printer? The help desk retard who tells you to reboot?

If you read some slashdot posts, you might almost think that programmers do not belong in IT at all. Or at best are a minor influence.

So, whose job is going down the drain?

I can only speak from my own experience in Holland (un-employment rate 3.9%, that is socialism for you, suck it yanks) and yes, some people are loosing their jobs and finding it hard to find new ones. But having done my fair share of interviews, I am not entirely sure these people belong in the industry anyway.

Come on, what developer can't answer the question of what a join is? What debug tools do you use?

I got jobs from intern to senior but I expect you to be worth your salary. Don't come to me demanding a senior salary if you fail questions I knew when I was a junior. And no, I don't care if you don't know every function or the correct order of parameters. I want to know you understand the concepts behind the tools you use and that you know how to test that what you build works works as it should and how to start tracing problems.

Is that to much to ask? Well, yes, for a lot of people it seems to be.

So I am not surprised with current situation in the US. We had this before, in a recesion the dead wood is sorted out and salaries for the barely adequate settle down. The rest, the few who actually are any good at their job do fine. My own salary has been steadily rising. Not because I am a genius, far from it, but because I am an above average coder. And yes, that does mean that I am on occasion dealing with outsourced work, testing it and fixing it. Can't blaim them. It is not that we don't want to hire western developers, but there just aren't any. Not good ones.

Please tell me that expecting a medior web developer to know what a join is, is not to much to ask.

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[bodland]

"help desk retard" - Anyone who actually thinks of their help desk like this should be fired.

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[frank_adrian314159]

... un-employment rate 3.9%, that is socialism for you, suck it yanks

Indeed.

A few years ago the Conservatards were talking about how we needed to have no social safety net and low taxes because those were the keys to our low unemployment rate. That doesn't appear to be correlating very well now. So now the Libertards are screaming about "freedom". I hope that socialism comes to our land soon.

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmers are not typically employed by the IT industry. IT exists to support business. Software development is a business.

EA? not IT; ID? not IT; IBM? Possibly, depending on what you hire them for; The Guy who fixes the printer? Probably not; The help desk retard? Most definitely.

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, what developer can't answer the question of what a join is?

A developer that wasn't raised on writing web-apps backed by relational databases!

I do understand your point, but you kind of give yourself away as a web developer by saying that- I am fairly confident that if you went to work for a game programming company, an embedded shop, or a desktop application shop, they wouldn't ask you what a join is or care if you knew.

Now to be honest, its rare to find a developer that hasn't been exposed to relational databases in their life, but it could certainly happen. The group I am in now builds very high performance server apps where reducing latency by milliseconds can mean a significant competitive edge and revenue for the firm, and we don't use relational databases- they are far too slow for our uses. And you may not want my job, but I am pretty certain you do want my paycheck- demand in this area is red hot, and my total comp went up about 40% this year, though I do expect some kind of truce will have to be formed in this arms race and my comp will come back down to earth.

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[/dev/trash]

But what if it's true?

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[Joey Vegetables]

I'm something of a generalist; I do Web, desktop, database, embedded, and other kinds of development on the Java, FLOSS, and .NET platform stacks, among a handful of others. I certainly know how to design and implement a proper relational database (and I do know what "relational" means).

But I also can see a place for people who specialize more in the Web side of things. They might be interacting with an application server, ORB, O/R mapping layer, Web services, or any number of other things rather than having to touch the database directly. They might also be able to do stuff with Ecmascript or CSS that I would never have thought possible, and in a standard-compliant, cross-browser fashion to boot. I would not necessarily expect them to be full-fledged DBAs, any more than I'd expect my DBAs to be CSS experts. I do expect them to be able to know how to get at the data they need. I also expect them, and anyone else in IT, to be able to learn new things, including things outside their usual areas of expertise, if that is the fastest/best/cheapest way to get the project done. But just as generalists like me have their place, specialists do as well, and the good ones can usually pretty much name their price if they can find a good market and make their abilities known.

Re:Meh, what is IT?

[NickGnome]

"Really, what is this IT sector. Does it include EA? Id? IBM? The guy who fixes the printer? The help desk retard who tells you to reboot?..." Yes, "IT" is a wide-open general term. It includes the old "data processors" and "computer operators", and software architects, and CIS managers, and sys admins and network admins and data-base admins, and programmers, and analysts, and computer scientists, SQA testers, and software engineers. It includes working on software for accounting, for design of parts for nuclear weapons systems and of sky-scrapers, wholesale electricity transmission transaction processing, embedded systems in your toaster and microwave and cellular phone, games, software to do animations and movie editing, econometrics, linguistics, psychology, neuro-physiology... General! But most of the people who use it seem to be talking, most of the time, about the house "geeks" or "techies", kept caged in a non software or computer firm to hold the hands, spoon-feed, and do the dirty work for the clueless B-school bozos, or the bodies shopped to go out to firms to customize the interface and configuration of pre-packaged software like Oracle. Actual software product developers (lumped with all of the other production workers in their firms) are a small minority according to BLS. Let's see... http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoEconData.html employment by industry... Here, we go, "software publishing" versus bodies shopped: http://www.kermitrose.com/images/blsSIC2.jpg They changed the series names and codes on me, but you can see the difference back at the peak. Ugh. You just reminded me. New metropolitan area unemployment rates are supposed to be out, today. Gotta go.

here in atlanta, it's not that great

[Anonymous Coward]

educational requirements have shot up to the point that most "entry level" IT jobs are now requiring a Bachelors Degree and even if you have the necessary experience from previous jobs and a associates degree, you're still out of luck.

Also it's gotten to the point where a lot of local Atlanta companies are firing their permanent IT department employees and contracting out with 3rd party companies. That is what happened to me back in December.

Re:here in atlanta, it's not that great

[Anonymous Coward]

I would disagree. Atlanta has a ton of opportunities. Best IT sector in the SE and probably top 10 in the nation for IT opportunities IMO. I work for a small shop that specializes in VMware. We interview a lot of people as VMware is the hot technology these days and people want to work for us. It's amazing the number of people that cannot backup what they put on their resume. They installed a couple ESX hosts in a lab and feel they are qualified to do it for a living. People have some very high opinions of themselves. As for the Atlanta companies outsourcing, sure, some of the larger shops maybe, but for every large shop doing this, I bet there are another 100 small to medium size shops looking for local talent.

Re:here in atlanta, it's not that great

[noc007]

I hope you're right. I'll probably be on the job hunt soon if things don't shape up well for me in the current job.

Re:here in atlanta, it's not that great

[NickGnome]

Yah, body shopping has ramped up since the beginning of 1983, with what seems to be an ever steepening curve. Meanwhile, employment of production workers in software product firms has been flat since 2000 (well, not flat, really, it's making a sort of scalloped curve since then, down and then up about to where it was, and then diving down again), while the available talent pool has continued to expand.

Where's your patriotism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has to provide financiers with their bonuses. Times are hard. We are at War. Your Bankers Need You.

and please raise your hand

[butterflysrage]

if you have seen a 10% raise any time in the last ten years? Gods know I haven't (hell, I'm making less now then I was in 2006).

Up nice and high folks so I can see em!

~Generic IT girl.

Re:and please raise your hand

[Anonymous Coward]

*raises hand*
40k in 2007
55k in 2008
80k in 2009
95k in 2010
A combination of job changes and requests for raises have worked well for me. If I had sat in the same job or not made very clear to my management that a raise was required to keep me around, I would not be where I'm at now. This is 21 years old, right after graduation to 24 years old now; your mileage may vary if you're further in your career than me.

Re:and please raise your hand

[Grishnakh]

I have. However, all my "raises" came from changing jobs. It's simple: if you want more money, you need to find another job. Employers these days NEVER give out pay raises, unless they're a pittance. However, in their utter stupidity, they're more than happy to give new hires much more money than the people who've been working there for many years. My advice is to stay in a job for about 2 years, and then go looking for a new one. You should be able to get a 10-20% increase.

Watch as some trolls try to refute my comment. Of course, if job-hopping were such a bad thing in the eyes of employers, they wouldn't be hiring, now would they?

Re:and please raise your hand

[tirerim]

Every raise I've gotten since I started my job in 2003 has been more than 10% (one was about 75%), and I've gotten one most years. On the other hand, I started out at $10,000 a year (AmeriCorps VISTA stipend), so that's not really saying much.

Re:and please raise your hand

[kiddygrinder]

This is absolutely true, as long as the economy is good enough to get a new job of course. Also I've never met a potential employer who gives a crap about job hopping as long as you do it every couple of years rather than every 6 months.

Re:and please raise your hand

[Grishnakh]

This is absolutely true, as long as the economy is good enough to get a new job of course.

There are jobs out there (it got better with the new year; Spring is when employers always start looking for new employees), you just have to look. There aren't nearly as many as there used to be however. Also, it helps if you're specialized in something more obscure. And finally, you might have to pack up and move to a new city.

Re:and please raise your hand

[jvin248]

I had one guy I worked with in the early 90's go around the office and ask everyone what they made when they first hired in and the year. Most were proud of how little they got '20 years ago when I started here'.

Then he'd ask them if the number on his spreadsheet was close to what they made today. Jaws would drop - it was always so close. It was funny but instructive. The company (most large corps are this way) would give existing employees a standard 'performance variable' increase, more standard than performance based. Meanwhile the outside world was seeing real wage inflation. So to get new hires out of college it would cost 15% more than a five-year experienced current employee.

Between that and seeing all the 52-year olds getting early retirement 'packages' - I knew then not to try keeping the 30 year career with one company route. So I took the path of more adventure and changed jobs every five years (two as noted in the prior post seems a bit too short).

The key though is to keep your expenses low early on - so you can have a cushion and an FU account built up.

Bullshit

[SmallFurryCreature]

My job history is a nightmare, constant job AND career switches and I got no problem finding decent work that pays well.

It is about being able to sell yourself. An employer only wants to know one thing about you. "Am I going to make a profit with this guy."

That is it. And if you can't sell yourself without resume's or a portfolio, then yes you need that. But only if you can't sell yourself.

Sure, there are jobs that ask for 10 years iPad developer experience. MOVE ON. That is what we in the trade call a RED FLAG. Warning, douche bag HR monkey doing the interviewing.

Go for the jobs where the first interview is done by a techie, who grills you. That means they got work to be doing, if you can do it, then you are solid. No techie will care about your papers because every techie knows people with papers who are useless.

So, not much chance of getting a job at IBM, but then, who wants to work in India anyway? Go for the real tech companies. All I really want to see you on your CV is code. Code that shows me you are worth of hiring as an intern or senior because I can see you got potential.

Re:Bullshit

[walterbyrd]

Maybe it depends on the job. I can introduce you to plenty of employers that will not consider a job-hopper for a regular full-time position, especially in IT. Nobody wants to train somebody for their next job.

No matter how good you may be at coding, or whatever, it takes time time to learn a particular employers code, practises, and systems. It usually takes, at least, a few months before somebody is fully productive. No employer that I have ever heard of, wants somebody is likely to leave as soon as that person is productive.

I'm sorry, but I have worked in IT for 30 years, and your post makes no sense to me. Maybe if there was a sever shortage of IT workers, in your particular specialization, you could get away with that. But with today's glut, and massive IT staff layoffs, depression level unemployment, massive offshoring, massive replacement of US workers with guest workers . . . I just can't see it.

Hmm

[OrangeMonkey11]

Looking at the list i should be making considerable more than what I am now. Granted this is a nationwide statistic and it all depends on your location.

In other news, we're in a major recession

[Eric Green]

Median salaries across the board shrunk last year. If IT salaries are merely stagnant, that's still better than everybody else in this cruddy economy. I'm happy to be making the exact same thing I made last year. Heck, I'm happy I have a job right now, though I'm not sure how much longer that's going to last. Given what's happening elsewhere in the economy, treading water is a major win. But I guess there just has to be whiners in any profession who will take any excuse to complain...

It isn't worth paying people more

[gelfling]

When you can outsource them and pay them zero.

Recipe for a mid-life crisis

[jeko]

If you are working your way up the tech ladder you should really be living as transient a lifestyle as is possible. This means renting rather than buying a home, not buying roomfulls of furniture (harder to move all of your stuff), limiting debt, etc.

Renting rather than buying. Forgoing the one investment the middle class can make to build wealth.

Not buying roomfuls of furniture. Living like a starving student forever. Unable to hold something even as simple as a Saturday barbecue at your place.

As transient a lifestyle as possible. No marriage. No children. No long-term friends. Never putting down roots. Never building a support system. Depending on the company for everything.

You're going to arrive at 40 to find you've sacrificed everything for a career that couldn't care less about you.

Re:Recipe for a mid-life crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

Housing is a poor investment (currently in strong evidence but even in general) - rent and put the rest into a retirement plan.

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/buying-a-house/

Re:Recipe for a mid-life crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgoing the one investment the middle class can make to build wealth.

Even in the absence of the periodic real estate bubble crashes (hey we made it 20 years since the S&L implosion!) homes are a lousy investment because nobody seems to count the amount of money that is pumped into it just to keep its value. New roof, painting, etc. Oh hey the water heater sprung a leak and now you've got to replace a bunch of sheetrock and buy a new heater. Uh oh, termites! Maybe it works better in New England, if you buy a house built back when builders were proud that their work would outlive them. Now, builders just hope to finish a subdivision before they dissolve the corporation and leave the homeowners to discover all the corners that were cut on their own. Not only that, but holding the house over any significant period of time you risk having society move on without you. Your stellar school district loses it's star principal, your neighbors lose their jobs and the entire street is nothing but boarded up foreclosures, etc.

That aside, I suspect that the number one pusher of this "gotta buy a house!" meme are the baby boomers who are staring retirement in the face and realizing that nobody wants to buy their oversized piles of falling-down termite nests so that all millions of them can downsize into little cottages all at once. Please, buy a house, won't someone think of the grannies!

No marriage. No children.

"Don't start a family you can't support". Gotta wonder how many times I've heard conservatives say that in the last two years. Especially to 40 year old guys who'd been doing just fine for 20 years before getting laid off and losing their house with 10 years left on the loan "they couldn't afford".

Bailed out banker says:

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit whining you babies or I'll call up the H1b store and replace you. The H1b is ready to work for $15 an hour :)

Wow..

[spiffmastercow]

I'm vastly underpaid, according to this. Anyone in Oklahoma want to hire an exceptional programmer at an average salary($86k)?

Really?

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

Here the jobs dominated by females are the less paid. When a line of business starts to be mostly female-crewed, it means the salaries have gone down enough.

Maybe they can sell us another tulip frenzy.

[jeko]

Oh please. The tulip mania had the practical outcome of leaving Holland awash in pretty flowers for centuries to come, contributing to the tourist trade.

You don't think our current financial geniuses and other leaders could come up with something that practical and beneficial, do you?

Re:Maybe they can sell us another tulip frenzy.

[Anonymous Coward]

People go to Holland for the hookers and weed in Amsterdam, not for the tulips.

Less women because of more guest workers

[walterbyrd]

I think that, one of the reasons, there is a shrinking female IT workforce, is that few guest workers are women. So as guest workers take over IT, the percentage of female workers decreases.

Re:Less women because of more guest workers

[Anonymous Coward]

excellent point

Re:Less women because of more guest workers

[dbIII]

I don't think it's that simple.
When I studied engineering in the late 1980s I looked at the five girls in the entire year's intake and then looked over at computer science where more than half of the first year students were female. So where were all those women in IT in the 1990s? To be frank there are more women in engineering or even the dirty jobs in the mining industry.
It doesn't make sense to blame these things on recent events. The female IT workforce is so small that the observed shrinking may be mere noise.

60 40; and mandatory on-call 40

[mrflash818]

"For example, you can easily see that [(weekly pay) / 60] [(weekly pay) / 40]. "

Agreed.

Also worth mentioning:
(40 + mandatory on-call) > 40, too.

un-employment rate 3.9%

[mrflash818]

That is certainly better than what I am reading as overall United States unemployment via calculatedriskblog:

"The current recession has been bouncing along the bottom for a few months - so the choice of bottom is a little arbitrary (plus or minus a month or two)."

The graph on this news blog shows 6% currently, for the United States overall.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/percent-job-losses-during-recessions.html

80 Hours/wk or Take a Hike

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the mantra in the hallways these days. We're now managing NOC operations that used to be spread across 4 facilities. We're down to 12 employees working 12 hour shifts 7 days/week. We recently had our employee contribution to medical benefits raised from 15% to 50%, and our 401k matches have been eliminated.

By Neruos

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's paid opensource experience, it's worthless unless you're going to open up shop or launch some new app that will bring in some captial or profit.

As a IT hiring manager, If your primary skill set includes skills with no paid experience, then they are skill I'm not going to gamble on, even more so when it's my job on the line if you fail.

Yeah sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a certification in Solaris 10 lets say, I know you sat an exm and understood what you were being asked at the very least.

All things being equal having a certification will triumph any expertise *you claim* to have, since the verifications are carried out by an independent third party.

The World is your oyster.

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife and I have worked for the last 15 years in Fortune 100 companies only.

Sometimes we follow her carreer needs (Norway-Mexico-Malaysia-UK) sometimes we follow mine (US-Mexico-Thailand-UK-Germany-Spain).

So what is the problem again?

Typical chauvinist reply.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "joke" was sexist. It creates an uncomfrotable environement for some of the people around you, specailly if the person saying the "joke" is in a position of privilege in relation to the people being the butt of the joks (women in this case).

Your reply is typical of the person sitting safely in the mindset of an opressive majority: you deal with things the way we tell you, otherwise you are found lacking, all this normally coated in a self certified fairness ignoring the context in which the situation is taking place (to say that you want only capable people in a male dominated environment is hypocrisy, the context is telling you that the environment in which you develop is not fair to start with).

That is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

No company will give you a 10% raise, let alone do that for several years in a row (15 years in a row? really?)

You are either extremely lucky or simply lying.

Lets talk that dirty word - Union

[MrKaos]

Not having a union has really worked for us I.T Professionals. Yep we've been able to negotiate higher pays and generally everyone is so much better off by not leveraging a network of people to represent our interests. Of course the corporations that pays us really do have our interests at heart, that's what they are thinking of when they lobby the government.

How can any of this be happening to us.

Of course it's because we are so much smarter and wiser than everyone else in IT that we don't need unions. None of us are brainwashed, we know unions are baaaaaaaaad.

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

re: lenders, etc.

[King_TJ]

I never said that I was for the bailout. In fact, I think that's one of the WORST decisions our government has ever made!

The problem is, the banks and the government are in collusion. The Federal Reserve is going to look out for the interests of those they're closest to, and that would be the bankers and big brokers on Wall Street. They hold all the power, because they control all the wealth. As long as government places trust in the Fed, and treats their word as the "best financial advice" to implement moving forward, we'll continue to see them looking out for their "buddies" at everyone else's peril.

I'm not absolving lenders of their responsibility. But what I am saying is, for better or for worse, we DO rely on a central banking system in this nation. People collectively decided long ago that the barter system was awfully inconvenient, and there were some big advantages to setting up a network of banks that could loan sometimes large amounts of money to people. This requires a degree of a thing called TRUST, for it all to work smoothly.

I'm sure we all know someone who felt (or felt ourselves) that they were mistreated by lenders in the past, because they were so fixated on a FICA score, vs. really sitting down and evaluating credit-worthiness of the INDIVIDUAL. In the not so distant past, a simple handshake agreement held some actual weight. There was an understanding that one's promise and word was something of value, and not to be squandered. These days, all the lenders reduce you to some numbers, purchased from one of several big credit agencies who typically have inaccurate and/or outdated records in their files. People willing to "game" the system can do all sorts of things to artificially inflate those scores and get credit they don't deserve, while others get punished by those numbers, despite having the best intentions and motivation to make their payments on time.

Many things are broken with the current system of lending on BOTH sides of the equation ... and I'm pretty sure you actually have a better handle on the relative risk involved in lending to your poor cousin than the typical bank does on lending to your poor cousin!

If the banks decided to "minimize their risks", they'd simply quit loaning money to anyone but the people with the absolute highest of credit scores and largest incomes. But that won't do us any good. So we demand they do some more risky lending, for the sake of the "people" -- but we get pissed off when they do so and it doesn't work out.