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Flat Pay Prompts 1 In 3 In IT To Consider Jump
CWmike writes "Companies have cut salaries and training, held back on bonuses and piled more work on employees in response to the economic downturn. These tactics may well be pushing many IT pros to go job hunting, Computerworld's latest salary poll has found. More than one third (36%) of the 343 respondents to a recent poll said they are looking to move to a new employer in the next six months. And 69% reported they had not received a pay raise in the past six months. The poll was conducted during the last two weeks in September. For employers, the warning could not be more clear. As the economy improves, the most able IT workers may leave for something better."
I love a good fiction story.
I'm gonna become a farmer.
The company you "jump" to is facing the same economic realities, and will funnel those same pressures on to you.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Cause they couldn't figure out a better way of saying Switch Jobs...they used JUMP...I was totally thinking something else when I read the headline...
IT really isn't all that hard for the most part. It's time to stop equating yourselves to engineers. Again, for the most part.
We only get annual raises.
Most employers do annual pay adjustments, so asking if they received a pay increase in the past 6 months would, on average, get at least 50% saying no. The report was engineered from the start to get the result that they published.
I work for Hewlett-Packard. "Pay raises" happen to other people
No problem, we'll just ship more jobs overseas .. hire more H1B and just keep making more and more money.
Win, Win, Win.
In years past, it may have been good enough to have six to eight out of a list of 10 technical skills wanted by an employer, but now "there are enough people who don't have work that they can find someone who has all" the qualifications being sought, said Hibbits.
I still see a lot of job ads where the list of mandatory skills and experience is ridiculous, including a half decade of "proven" execution in each of 3-4 often competing technology areas or methodologies. My first thought when I read them is "seriously? you have all that in your shop? and you want a single person to be responsible for all of it?"
Now move on to the list of "desirable" skills where we see pink unicorns prancing through fields of golden sunshine, an acronym farm, and an MBA thrown in for good measure. There is no sane hiring manager who legitimately expects to see a candidate with every checkbox filled in ... or if they do have that expectation at the beginning of the recruitment process they quickly readjust after a few weeks.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Anyone who stays more than 3 years in a position is going to be very much left behind and facing increasing inflation in housing prices, cars, and eventually the basics as well.
Deleted
You could try polymorphism too: "WTF, I'm a chick today! Hey, this feels niiiiice."
Table-ized A.I.
An energy industry employee, who asked for anonymity, said younger workers have greater job security because they cost less, but the better-paid baby boomers are in danger of job loss.
Is that news to anyone?
As far as taking classes, it's been my experience that if you don't have on the job experience with those skills, it doesn't matter. So, if you take classes in something, be ruthless about using it on the job - figure out a way to make it part of your job.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
69% had not received a raise in the last 6 months? Wth does that prove? How about what percentage of respondants that have been working for the company for at least a year have not received a raise in over a year? Or at least what about the percentage that were expecting to get a raise in the last 6 months did not receive it?
Its not always about money. I recently (about a year ago) went from being a partner at an up and coming IT firm, to the number 2 IT guy for an agriculture company. Before, I was stressed out, always worrying about this client or that client, income, taxes, ticket systems, just in general had too much on my plate. I left due to business structure and strategy disagreements, but now I am working in a laid back environment where I do a good job, and can still take the time to study after hours. IT guys are far too often over-taxed, over-used, and under-appreciated. That is why I think there needs to be a shift in the work environment for IT people or else we will continue to see this constant migration to the always greener grass.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
They don't seem to have a problem with CEO pay.
But isn't it funny how the senior management get higher pay with the explanation that "We want the best, so we have to offer a higher salary than other places" but apparently the workers have to get the "industry average". Even (or espeically) when cutting back (though again, they justify high pay with the size of the company, but don't downgrade C*O pay when the company loses size, but UPGRADE it...)
Obviously they don't want the best for the rank-and-file.
And, remember, as they keep telling us, "you get what you pay for!".
Computerworld couldn't find anything else to fill their pages with than this? I knew they were useless, but this is pretty sad.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
My concern isn't so much flat pay - I have more money than I know what to do with - but flat technology. I spend my days fixing idiotic bugs in legacy systems, with few prospects for learning anything new.
...laura
True for me. I made the jump this past January. 2009 my company said no raises for anyone (except executives, of course). 2010 they claimed the same thing, I declined, they offered me an insulting pittance, and away I went.
Cut my expenses to the bone, picked up some contract work, and now doing economic research most of the time. Getting ready to publish my first paper, if the vetting goes well. Also took some time to do my first fine woodworking -- produced two nice footstools(*), which I gave to my parents.
Damned fine thing. I strongly recommend it if you can bzip your budget.
* http://beach.traxel.com/img/footstool-ts/footstool-with-cushion.jpg
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
time for a union?
Mrs. Fiorina, Welcome to Slashdot!
Table-ized A.I.
True.... but its not entirely wrong, 69% is still above the expected 50% by almost 20%. We haven't gotten a raise in about 2 years here, with a hiring freeze. This resonates with me since, its exactly what I told a head hunter last night.... I am looking to leave because they haven't given raises in 2 years, and the group dynamic means that I can epxect to be waiting quite a while for a promotion....all the while being told "you are one of the senior guys"... even though I don't have the title.
That and, I know I could make more elsewhere.
Six months without a pay raise? Is that all? I haven't had a significant pay raise (over the rate of inflation) in several years. Most people in the U.S. have had declining real wages for 30 years.
All you old foggies getting paid to much need to get out of IT and give us recent college grads a chance. We are cheaper, willing to work more hours, and desperate. It's hard to have sympathy for someone making $50K+ not getting a raise in 6 months when your a contractor lucky to get 3 months steady employment.
I never once got a raise I was promised. All any employer ever did was blow smoke up my ass in the performance reviews. I never once got a salary increase that I didn't have to quit my old job for. Once or twice jumping ship for better pay got the rest of the team members *their* promised raises though.
Despite what fanatical libertarians around here may say, this is exactly the sort of situations unions are for.
Where I am at they haven't given any pay increase for the last 3 or 4 years for engineers working on market leading commercial software products. Too busy hiring people in India and China.
Product is making $40M a year... 70,000 customers... Getting great performance reviews... but no raises. Just a matter of time before my job goes as well I imagine...
Maybe this has something to do with it...
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive_excess_2010
I bet the author xeroxed it and left a few copies laying strategically around the office.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes, it is above the expected 50% if the date of pay raises was random, but I doubt it is. My company is within that 50% for its date, but until a few years ago it wasn't. The question is plainly biased.
Further, saying that 36% are looking is a much softer threshold than saying 36% have submitted resumes or job applications. At least it wasn't the completely nebulous "considering" that they sometimes use.
That said, changing jobs is often the best way to get a pay raise, and I don't blame you one bit for trying for it.
Seriously. I want to see the result for the past year. Or better yet, the past two years. Not everyone in the private sector gets a pay raise every year, even in good times.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
You are assuming that pay raises everywhere follow the calendar year. Almost every place I have worked at has adjusted pay based on their fiscal year.
I work in Public Sector, I like my job, I work hard, and I'm not paid very well for what I do (51K/yr) I haven't had a pay raise in two years, and this year they are requiring three furlough days (pay cut). Next year, they're saying four.
I realize that is is popular to criticize Public Employees as being lazy and overpaid Union drones, but guys in IT at the Public Sector are often the exception.
I realize that times are tough, and with unemployment hovering at (or hidden) above 10%, I'm just thankful I have a job.
The world has changed.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Bitchez !
Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout
According to my girlfriend's students they are all going to grow up to be big rich software engineers. They will all run their own companies and have no one to answer to. It's just the old neck beards that worry about the economy.
It and engineering pay has suffered badly because of outsourcing and visa abuse. According to Love to Know here: http://jobs.lovetoknow.com/Facts_and_Figures_on_Outsourcing It seems that if the Obama administration was to take job creation seriously and curb outsourcing of American jobs to cheap foreign contractor slavers it would save close to 1.5 million jobs for Americans. Most of those in IT are familiar by now with the visa abuse that takes place in the US. Many unscrupulous companies are playing games and pulling stunts to meet even the lax standards setup for foreign nationals to obtain work visas in the US. If the Obama administration were again to take job creation seriously then they could come up with almost 5 million US jobs by simply denying visas per the US State Department. http://www.travel.state.gov/pdf/FY09AnnualReport_TableXVII.pdf
Is it normal for companies to give mid-year raises? The company I work for switched to reviews/raises in March a few years back, so I would be covered by the 6 month thing. But people who had received their yearly raises in December would not.
It's pretty clear how most companies work today. They hire kids from the local community college that are half way to getting their 4yr degree and little more than they could make at McDonalds and then don't give them raises with the clear intention of driving them away so they can rehire other students even cheaper. Most places only have 1 or 2 people with any real experience. Usually those are the ones too lazy to go looking for something better.
Desktop is a piece of the IT pie. Usually the entry point for young people. Definately not a career job. IT as this article refers to it is probably a combination of analysts, PMs, Developers, Sys admins, server engineers, and app admins.
Probably not going to jump if you are in desktop, and are skilled and patient, now might be a good time to transition to one of the other "opportunities."
-Paul
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
For a lot of IT people priorities change, when I started out I was content to work my ass off for no good reason as long as there was experience, then it was pay, at some point the pay started to not matter, the fact that life was passing me by mattered, so I changed my situation. Less money rolling in but a lot more sanity.
I see people working around me that find the pace too sedentary and want to work like maniacs and make bigger money, for them, the grass is greener where I was situated before.
What I do find disturbing though is that overall the average IT persons pay doesn't seem to sync up with inflation. I look at seniors who are just a generation or two older than I am and by the time they were my age they had mortgages, vehicles, families and curious things called "savings", most of my peers are still renting, driving older vehicles or riding transit and are all about as far away from family life as one could imagine, I have a mortgage and some RRSP in the bank but not anything like my parents or grandparents.
Does IT in general just have less value these days?
crazy dynamite monkey
Cause they couldn't figure out a better way of saying Switch Jobs...they used JUMP...I was totally thinking something else when I read the headline...
Back in the day we used to call that dual classing. It was the only advantage humans had over elves in the long run but most people used house rules instead.
Now with FFXII you can switch jobs by putting on a new outfit and in FFXIV you can switch jobs just by picking up a new weapon. Kids these days...
"Most employers do annual pay adjustments", you say...
Source please?
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Flat pay means that the poor and mediocre guys stay and are happy, and the good ones leave.
What you reward is what you get.
I agree with the sentiment in theory, but voting with your feet is not as easy as you make it sound.
The extremely large company where I work just fired, well, had a layoff of one, of a guy whose next prospective employer's HR department called to check references. Last I heard, this guy has been unjustly tagged as a malcontent by the boss, and he has not found a new job. HR is giving a very dour and tight-lipped "name and dates of employment only" response that, while skirting the law, makes it very clear the company considers him a horrible employee. It's a small industry, and looking around carries the risk of getting prematurely helped out the door. It can absolutely be done, but the risk is not zero.
Secondly, health insurance. One of the guys I work with has a chronic health problem with one of his kids. Every time he changes jobs, he gets to start the fight anew to get the kid's medical issues covered. It is not trivial, it frequently gets right up to the lawyers, and each time his kid's medical care is interupted, there's a small but real risk that his child could actually die.
Employment has so much "friction" it might as well be considered a market failure. If McDonald's screws you over, Burger King is across the street. If your employer screw you over -- and unjust poor references seem to be the weapon of choice -- then an uphill legal battle lasting years and costing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars might be your only rememdy.
Don't kid yourself. "Voting with your feet" isn't nearly as safe and effective as we would like it to be, or as it should be.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I used to work for a State government, and I hadn't seen a bona fide raise since around 2003. The only pay bumps I got were when I changes jobs, the last of which was in 2006. My pay was actually negative because the money I might have gotten as a raise went instead to health insurance. If it weren't for my outside consulting gigs, I would be in some serious financial trouble.
I finally jumped ship into the private sector a few months back, so we'll see how it goes.
Hardly just pay, my current job is too easy, and the rules concerning personal life is far too strict, plus my boss only has a GED while I have some college. Yes, this doesn't work at all...I'd take less money to get out. I wish everyone luck as always, only had one interview in the past 3 months.
Would I jump ship? A different job usually ends up sending you down the wrong path and then you will want to switch back as you realize the grass may look greener, but thats because it has many bare spots hidden by the fence.
My wife is a nurse with 25years of experience. The local colleges crank out nurses at an alarming rate, all with no experience and willing to work for peanuts. The hospital knows this, and this is why my wife has to work on Xmas and New Years.
For as long as I have been in the market, the company you are at will not give you a significant pay raise. They may give you 3 or 4%, but to get a significant pay raise, you have to go to another company. Then your company will have to hire somebody else (at much more than your current salary, else why would they leave wherever they are now?), and then spend a lot of money to train them. Instead of paying another $10 grand a year on someone who knows their system, they now have to spend another $20 grand plus another $10 grand in one time cost to train someone who is not familiar with the system.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Oh if only it were so easy. *sigh*
My annual review (and salary adjustment) was due four months ago. Assuming this happens to some people but not all, it may affect your assumed 50% distribution of people saying no. As it stands, I'm expecting a 3% bump at best.
I say this after being on both sides of the table. Most people out there are bordering on a waste of oxygen - taking valuable time from the useful ones to solve inane problems. About 10% of workers are truly talented, and can solve problems independently - those are the guys you want. The next 10-15% are good - not really independent problem solvers, but reliable and honest, and would prefer a productive work day to being bored 'cause there isn't enough to keep them busy. Everybody else is just killing time for their meal ticket. An, honestly, I was a combination of the first and last groups for a lot of years. I sure as hell wouldn't have given my former self a raise of any significance. In the past three years I've been asked by several people to join their staff or lead a new department - but I've also got 8 years of running a very successful firm (~30-40% growth every year for 7 years, we'll probably drop back to about 20-25% year with the recession).
If you're not getting a raise, one of three things is happening:
1) the company really is on hard times - they're keeping you, perhaps at a loss, because you're valuable.
2) you're boss is not giving you credit for what you do, or nobody with decision authority sees your brilliance and work ethic.
3) you're in the 75-80% of people who really aren't that good.
If you're in the rare #2 slot (I'm going to put that at less than 1%; good odds are that you're really a #3), I feel for you, and you definitely need to find another job. If you're #1, you have to decide if it's worth bailing on the company who is keeping you employed. If you're #3, good luck. You'll always be disappointed.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Over here and many other employers, it is years. It's rough right now. I'd rather be employed with pay and without raises than having no job.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
If it makes you feel any better, pretty much every profession is suffering now. IT may have been excluded from past recessions. But with the increases in outsourcing, it was only a matter of time before it got hit too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yep... I got tired of being in a place that hasn't had raises in quite a while (since a few years before I came...) so I started applying everywhere. I ended up with an interview, and am expecting to hear if I got the job tomorrow. The cool part is the pay is likely a 20% raise over what I'm making now.
Although, I've also read that my generation tends to change jobs on average once every 2 years... so maybe it's just time.
So that means that 31% have received a pay raise in the last six months? I don't know about anyone else, but quite a few places that I've been do performance/salary reviews annually, so assuming (yes, it's a false assumption, but illustrative) that everyone gets an annual review, and half of everyone deserves a raise, then it looks like 12% more employees are getting raises than deserve them. If everyone in the 40th percentile of performance is getting a raise, that sounds sort of like good news... Especially with relatively low inflation (which I think we have now, purely looking at interest rates as an indicator... but don't take my word for it, I don't keep close track of these things.)
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I work for one of the large IT companies. Pay isn't my concern. I'm pretty happy with my salary.
My concern is job stability. They've been laying off people simply to prop up the stock price. Year after year, its round of layoff after round of layoffs despite near a record high stock price and record profits and revenue. We got rid of the low performers years ago, yet the layoffs keep on coming. They've even laid off distinguished engineers. That tells me that even if I perform so well in my job that I reach one of the highest levels for an engineer, even that's not going to keep me from being laid off. So what's the point? If I stay, I risk being laid off when I'm 50 when it's going to be even more difficult to find a job.
I'd be willing to take a $10k-$20k cut in salary for a more secure job...one that isn't going to lay me off unless it at least has good reason to.
"If the same HR department showered some employees with glowing praise and was neutral for others, then we'd have a problem."
Which is pretty much the standard operating procedure these days.
"Hi, I'm from XYZ Inc, calling to check Bob's references..."
"Bob? *sigh* *grunt* Yeah, Bob. Bob used to work here for the past couple of years. That's all I'm going to tell you."
"Can you tell me if Bob was a good employee?"
"Bob used to work here. Now he doesn't. That's all I'm going to say. Understand?"
"Yes, yes I do."
And this is how Bob gets torpedoed, in a perfectly legal way...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"More than one third (36%) of the 343 respondents to a recent poll said they are looking to move to a new employer in the next six months." Why are they so certain that it will be different with any other employer?
Towards the Singularity.
If they get the standard 1-year raise pattern instead, I'd expect 75% rather than 69%, so maybe this is a good industry to be in?
(Half of employees wouldn't have had their 1-year review within 6 months, and half would not have deserved a raise). There's been no COLI so there's no reason to expect COLA.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
100% of statistics can be made to say anything you want 73% of the time.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/08/political-party-democrat-republican-stock-returns.asp
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Because they are useless drones themselves.
For a few years I worked for a small consultancy with a boss that could tell the difference.
It was bliss.
Eventually it grew to the point where he hired a 'professional HR department'.
Inside of two years I had a 'project manager' over me that couldn't find his butt in the dark if his fingers were flashlights.
I was gone a few years later (before it completely wrecked me mentally).
Good luck managing your growth. It sounds like you understand the importance of hiring well. Don't hire professional HR or you will be very sorry.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They chose the perfect time to do the survey, most companies I have ever known someone at would do it in Dec/Jan for Calendar year, Mar/Apr if their fiscal year ended then, or Oct/Nov if their fiscal year ended then. So in my view it is an expected 66% NO. I hate it when information like this flows around. 100% of people agree**
** - Survey of 10000 people with 1 respondant
We are in a global economy now, and companies that provide products and services in "low cost" countries cannot compete if they make their products and services in "high cost" countries. It's as simple as that.
I cannot stay in business selling widgets if I'm paying people $8/hr to make them and selling them to people who make $0.25/hr.
I similarly cannot afford to compete with my competitors if they are having their remote server maintenance done by people making $0.25/hr when I am paying my people $8/hr.
So, natural market forces must be allowed to prevail.
My company was bought by HP.
It is: yard pruner
Table-ized A.I.
"And 69% reported they had not received a pay raise in the past six months"
Six months...who the hell has received a pay increase in the past six months other than the Wall Street fat cats who are still raping this country? Try two friggin years plus for most.
We're not yet back in the IT heydays of the late 90's and early 00's where you increased your salary through constant motion. Nowadays, if your employer can't afford to bump your salary, the other guy probably can't either so moving won't buy you much.
You know there was a recession in the last couple of years - could it be that employees in most or all industries have received little or no pay raise in the last couple of years? Wouldn't all industries have a similar issue?
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Looking to leave is irrelevant if no one is hiring.
A single source? What would that prove?
It's self evident. Suppose you go and demonstrate that "most" employers either do pay adjustments at other intervals, or not at all?
Go get one.
Blar.
I looked at my social security statement and found that I actually was paid 10% less for the last two years. Nobody was really getting raises, and bonus payouts completely dried up. YET, they did manage to hire new executives, and hire them at higher pay rates than the previous ones. Go figure.
There's not enough data for that to mean much of anything. Additionally, the Republican party radically changed their platform with the Reagan revolution in '80, so any data before that for Republicans is especially meaningless.
Also, http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/10/republicans-democrats-and-stock-market.html
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
He actually understands what the hell is going on (and what should be done about it). The increase of moral hazard of supporting bad creditors is much less bad than the economic certainty of a depressed economy for the next twenty years if nothing is done.
That is all.
I think your sig's a letter.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Seems to me IT is the best career option available out there. It certainly has been for me. Maybe it's rough if you are newly graduated or if you don't keep your skills up, but I get recruiting calls every week and my employer has trouble finding people to hire with the right skill set. Personally, I am doing better than ever, but I do spend at least 5-10 hours per week of my own time keeping my IT skills strong. I definitely think it is my responsibility to make sure that happens - not my employers. I do think employers are using the economy as an excuse to keep wages low, but I really can't blame them. The US is a capitalistic country. Making a profit is actually a primary responsibility of any company and if they don't do that there are no jobs, let alone raises! My company did give out small cost of living raises, but they keep me dedicated to them with family friendly flex hours and telecommuting. At this point, I would need a very large raise to pull me away from my flexible schedule, although I will say that without it I would change employers within 3 months. To everyone that says their company isnt paying for training, I got mine to let me watch Microsoft Webcasts at the office and they provide all the training I need. MS has a ton of free training material free online so there is really no excuse for not training yourself.
When a company puts a hold on raises it is a sign that the company may very well fail and it behooves employees to find a more stable position. At the very least it may indicate a desire at the top to take advantage of employees during hard times. Either way it is time to jump.
Having had some time to think about it, having a union for infrastructure employees in IT is not really a bad idea. If you think about it, in the airline industry, line maintenance personnel are union. Line maintenance, much like IT infrastructure, are critical to the success or failure of an operation. No mechanics means the planes don't fly and no infrastructure gurus means that networks do not operate. I could see a case for IT infrastructure employees; especially because software engineers are given a disporportionate amount of project credit and funds. All of the best code in the world is meaningless if the infrastructure to support it does not exist.
"May"?
I'm currently looking to jump ship to work for an online university. There will be a pay cut, but I will get free tuition for me, and 80% discount for my spouse and children. Where I currently am, no one has gotten a raise in 3 years, and everyone I know is actively shopping the market for new work.
I'm on a chair.
Bush economic meltdown
I'm no fan of Bush
Bush has quite a bit of responsibility for the >1 trillion spent on Iraq. Where is the accountability??? I want the mother fucker dead, or at least rotting in prison for the rest of his life.
Been lucky enough to be employed through the recession, but I haven't gotten a raise in the last TWO FUCKING YEARS and thats on top of my cheap ass company refusing to give me what would be considered an insulting raise at any for profit on a promotion to augment my piddly salary. Piddly salary isn't an exaggeration by the way...they've raised my pay 3 times now (well before the last two years) because they did a salary survey and figured out they weren't paying me enough. I could have told them that.
On top of it all the workload is getting insane and NOW they are talking layoffs, even as they bring on more affiliates. So...let me get this straight...you have money to buy hospitals, but the cost of supporting them is killing you leaving you with a budget shortfall which you have to make up by laying off the already overworked staff. Well that certainly sounds like a recipe for a successful IT organization.
IT is bullshit. Never work for a matrixed organization. If I get laid off Im getting out of this industry. Management uses the recession as an excuse to treat IT workers like dirt.
69% haven't gotten a raise in the last six months? Get over it! There's an economic meltdown going on. Some of us haven't seen an pay CHECK in the last 18 months. Look IT is a support organization, like HR or CorpComm, only less popular. Your job is to facilitate what ever the company does to actually make money. (You can thank the invention of SLAs for that) Until IT professionals build a union strong enough get in with organized crime and rich enough to line the pockets of key senators, you will continue to be replaced by low paid foreign workers (who just bought your foreclosure and are screwing your daughter), worked like a dog and paid as little as possible. It won't get better until you stop whining into the collective void of the internet and start standing together in RL.
Gah, she's running for office. She might get a position of power in the government.
She might get to help our economy the way she helped HP's bottom line!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Aren't you at least glad you have a job, and your company is surviving.
Do you, by chance, work in Irvine, CA?
I'm an IT pro with 20 years experience and there are NO IT jobs in my hometown. And since losing my job 2 months ago (which paid 40% less than the previous job), I look forward to finding an employer who respects my talents and background. But to do so will likely require moving to a larger metropolitan area where there's more competition for work and much higher living expenses.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Not true to say banks lend out savers money, bank don't lend out savers money, they simply magic it from thin air. This is why banks can lend out large multiples of their savers account balances.
If they could only lend out the money their savers put in, then their lending would be a tiny fraction of the amounts they do.
What investments and savings are are REAL assets, whereas the Fed buying a $1 trillion of junk for $3 trillion is $2 trillion of FAKE assets. Fake assets depresses the currency, and the inflation is of a different nature, instead of a growth in the VALUE of real assets, it becomes a subdivision of the currency.
No different than if tomorrow, you simply decides that 2 NEW$ = 1 OLD$, in the inflation equation you appear to have a huge increase in inflation, but in reality you changed nothing.
So I basically agree with you, and disagree with GP, just correcting a misconceptions about what banks do.
If you cut his taxes 90% he'd then keep the money. Or spend it on foreign investment (because there's no money in his country). These are FACTS. They have HAPPENED. That is what we have SEEN.
We have seen when the taxes for the rich is increased that investment grows.
Even Henry Ford knew this.
Or is Henry a communist now?
Better bet: become a politician. Much higher growth, much better healthcare, much better retirement prospects. Hell, even the teaparty have decided to get on the money bandwagon and become politicians.
Oddly enough, there are many Republicans working in government. You never hear them say that there should be fewer politicians or cut politician pay and benefits.
Think about it for a second. What would you do if you were the CIO of your company:
Some companies simply don't care anyway. I worked at hosting company in VA that would fire the techs who were being payed the most in order to hire college kids. The owners theory was.. the customer would eventually figure out what the problem was if they had a problem, and if not, then they were too much work (to costly) of a customer.
It ended up with basically no one in the place knowing jack shit about anything, other than how to install an OS (done through an installer program one of the real techs developed before he left), and get it onto the net (plug and play, plug and play). There was even one "tech" who's answer to any problem was a re-install... regardless of the problem (it was THE only thing he knew how to do). We're talking the level of knowledge where servers would be marked as needing repair or RMA'd when the only thing wrong with them is.. they weren't turned on... I shit you not.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Most people I know are happy just not to be taking pay cuts (4 day weeks or whatever).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Food stamps and other such "stimulus" temporarily increses money flow, but does not improve overall wellbeing. Food stamps make it possible to continue living without producing, to be a net drain on the economy. To make this perfectly clear, since leftists are logic and reality rejecters, consider a world where everyone got food stamps and $1000 a day from the government and nobody produced anything. What would the money and stamps buy, with no production? Poverty and starvation would be universal.
When you run out of victims, you die.
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Also they were used to buy wooden arrows.
But so what? These expenses were trivial. And the bulk of spending was in the US and it was sorely needed.
The claim of reduced savings is based on the government using an obsolete measure of savings, the amount of money in bank and credit union accounts. It ignores investments in stocks and businesses. Likely savings has gone down, but gov't stats can't be used to prove it.
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Excess return is irrelevant. What's important is the gain referred to a constant value, i.e. corrected for "inflation". Historical evidence shows no difference between democrats and republicans before the 2001 crash.
The T-bill is out of phase with the economy and the stock market. Low rates indicate either a stable money base and a moderate economy (late 1950s), or a government desperate to boost a cripled economy, loading up to create a huge devaluation not yet happening (now). On the other side, high rates indicate high ongoing inflation (1979-1980) or an attempt to reign in a bubble.
To some extent, trying to control the economy by changing treasury rates is like pushing on a rope.
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