Not to get off topic, but America has 10 x more people than Japan does and 20-30 million of those people don't pay taxes. America can't afford to foot that bill.
Speaking of Japan, that place has a worse work ethic than Americans. By worse I mean, work too much. As Americans we have our priorities out of order.
I don't give verbal recommendations. I give written ones and have management sign off on it. So if they refuse it, my professional reputation isn't in jeopardy when something goes wrong. When all eyes are looking at me, I politely bring up my recommendations.
The buck should always stop at the top. I never allow anyone to pass the buck to me.
If you aren't from India, your precious little "Computer Science" degree and $1 couldn't buy you a value meal at Mickey D's. If you are lucky enough to land an interview with less than two Indians in the room, then you'll simply be undercut by a paper-certified hack or a high-school drop-out who's been freelancing for three years who will under cut you by almost half.
I hate to sound like an asshole but that's the state of affairs in IT at this point. IT is seen as an expense by CIOs and IT managers who are mostly bean-counters at heart. When you interview for a IT position, the hiring manager doesn't give a fuck about your experience with.Net or Java (let the technical guys in the room grill you for a couple of hours), he sees you as an expense. How cheaply can he get you? When it comes to the new CPA in Finance the guy has to be a whiz with numbers, they'll pay him whatever he wants. But the IT guy is just an expense with the rest of the IT crap (why do we need to spend $4,000 a piece on servers every three years any ways?).
I'm a hardware guy (Sys Admin) and I don't have to worry about Indians as much as I worry about paper-certified hacks still in their Applebees outfits who spend 3 grand on a bootcamp and then call themselves "Engineers" (see, their "Cisco Certified" polo shirt proves it). They'll undercut me in a heartbeat.
$40k a year might not be alot of money to a kid fresh out of college with a B.S. in CS and a 3.9 GPA, but it is alot of money when you're used to making $15k waiting tables or you transfer American dollars back to India.
IT as a career is dead. Your B.S. degree is useless. I would suggest that you minor in business because that's the future of the American CS graduates: Business Analysis. All of the programming will be offshored and all of the hardware stuff will be handled by people with vendor certifications. A CS degree alone will be useless.
Expect CS programs to get a major overhaul and be consolidated with Business programs. So instead of a B.S. in CS you'll have a B.S. in Business Analysis which will be a more math and computer-oriented business major.
Get with the program and cast away your obsolete viewpoint. The IT of the 90's is dead...in America at least. In India it's booming.
If I were Indiana, I would tell the developers to go back to the drawing board because the software doesn't meet the requirement of actually WORKING in a practical way.
Why the fuck do you blindly base what you'll pay based on someone's prior history? Some companies simply cannot pay as much as others--especially smaller ones and non-profits.
Based on your logic, grads fresh out of college should make no more than $10k since they were making $0 before. Do you see how screwed up that is?
It makes NO SENSE to use previous salary as a litmus test for what you're willing to pay. I'd lie to you about my salary and tell HR at my current job to only disclose my start date and my job title--most do that anyways.
Bad advice. We don't need more paper tigers littering the streets with their hopes dashed. A certification without real-world experience is useless and limits you to one vendor's technology.
The most valuable certs are vendor neutral, requires re-certification and X amount of years of actual industry experience in the discipline. Both the CISSP and PMP require such. MS and Cisco certs just turn you into a marketing bitch for the rest of your career and if someone threw a Linux box or Procurve switch in front of you, your eyes would cross and glaze over.
The people without degrees who got into the industry during the boom and feel threatened by people with degrees say:
"You don't need a degree! They are a waste of time and money! I've worked with people with degrees and they were absolute idiots!"
The people with degrees who are working on their MBA and currently in management say:
"Degrees prove that you are dedicated and have soft skills unlike the unwashed masses of rack monkeys in the Datacenter. If given a choice between a degreed and non-degreed individual, I will choose the degreed. BTW, my boss just told me that my lip-print has been permanently branded onto his ass. He showed me. There's absolutely no hair in that area. I was flattered!"
Then there are realists like me who have a 4 year degree in C.S. 5+ years real-world experience and a couple of certs and a job working as a Sys Admin says:
It all depends on where you live and where you apply. Some companies and hiring managers resent any type of degrees (because usually they don't have one themselves), then there are the HR filters from the Fortune XXX companies that use keyword filters to reject certain resumes. Then there are the anal companies that require you to have a certain GPA in order to even be considered. It's your job to figure out which company is which and apply accordingly.
This ain't the 90's and the days where people who "like computers" get hired into IT positions with insane salaries are long fucking gone. The truth is that the market is glutted with experienced IT talent fighting over meager salaries. IT job seekers these days need every competitive advantage they can get. That includes a degree, certifications and real-world experience. If you have neither or one out of three, you're fucked. That's the cold hard truth.
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Not to get off topic, but America has 10 x more people than Japan does and 20-30 million of those people don't pay taxes. America can't afford to foot that bill.
Speaking of Japan, that place has a worse work ethic than Americans. By worse I mean, work too much. As Americans we have our priorities out of order.
I don't give verbal recommendations. I give written ones and have management sign off on it. So if they refuse it, my professional reputation isn't in jeopardy when something goes wrong. When all eyes are looking at me, I politely bring up my recommendations.
The buck should always stop at the top. I never allow anyone to pass the buck to me.
Hahahahaha! It isn't 1996 any more.
If you aren't from India, your precious little "Computer Science" degree and $1 couldn't buy you a value meal at Mickey D's. If you are lucky enough to land an interview with less than two Indians in the room, then you'll simply be undercut by a paper-certified hack or a high-school drop-out who's been freelancing for three years who will under cut you by almost half.
I hate to sound like an asshole but that's the state of affairs in IT at this point. IT is seen as an expense by CIOs and IT managers who are mostly bean-counters at heart. When you interview for a IT position, the hiring manager doesn't give a fuck about your experience with .Net or Java (let the technical guys in the room grill you for a couple of hours), he sees you as an expense. How cheaply can he get you? When it comes to the new CPA in Finance the guy has to be a whiz with numbers, they'll pay him whatever he wants. But the IT guy is just an expense with the rest of the IT crap (why do we need to spend $4,000 a piece on servers every three years any ways?).
I'm a hardware guy (Sys Admin) and I don't have to worry about Indians as much as I worry about paper-certified hacks still in their Applebees outfits who spend 3 grand on a bootcamp and then call themselves "Engineers" (see, their "Cisco Certified" polo shirt proves it). They'll undercut me in a heartbeat.
$40k a year might not be alot of money to a kid fresh out of college with a B.S. in CS and a 3.9 GPA, but it is alot of money when you're used to making $15k waiting tables or you transfer American dollars back to India.
IT as a career is dead. Your B.S. degree is useless. I would suggest that you minor in business because that's the future of the American CS graduates: Business Analysis. All of the programming will be offshored and all of the hardware stuff will be handled by people with vendor certifications. A CS degree alone will be useless.
Expect CS programs to get a major overhaul and be consolidated with Business programs. So instead of a B.S. in CS you'll have a B.S. in Business Analysis which will be a more math and computer-oriented business major.
Get with the program and cast away your obsolete viewpoint. The IT of the 90's is dead...in America at least. In India it's booming.
If I were Indiana, I would tell the developers to go back to the drawing board because the software doesn't meet the requirement of actually WORKING in a practical way.
If the market rate for the position is $60k, if you have the budget pay $60k.
Why the fuck do you blindly base what you'll pay based on someone's prior history? Some companies simply cannot pay as much as others--especially smaller ones and non-profits. Based on your logic, grads fresh out of college should make no more than $10k since they were making $0 before. Do you see how screwed up that is? It makes NO SENSE to use previous salary as a litmus test for what you're willing to pay. I'd lie to you about my salary and tell HR at my current job to only disclose my start date and my job title--most do that anyways.
Bad advice. We don't need more paper tigers littering the streets with their hopes dashed. A certification without real-world experience is useless and limits you to one vendor's technology. The most valuable certs are vendor neutral, requires re-certification and X amount of years of actual industry experience in the discipline. Both the CISSP and PMP require such. MS and Cisco certs just turn you into a marketing bitch for the rest of your career and if someone threw a Linux box or Procurve switch in front of you, your eyes would cross and glaze over.
The people without degrees who got into the industry during the boom and feel threatened by people with degrees say: "You don't need a degree! They are a waste of time and money! I've worked with people with degrees and they were absolute idiots!" The people with degrees who are working on their MBA and currently in management say: "Degrees prove that you are dedicated and have soft skills unlike the unwashed masses of rack monkeys in the Datacenter. If given a choice between a degreed and non-degreed individual, I will choose the degreed. BTW, my boss just told me that my lip-print has been permanently branded onto his ass. He showed me. There's absolutely no hair in that area. I was flattered!" Then there are realists like me who have a 4 year degree in C.S. 5+ years real-world experience and a couple of certs and a job working as a Sys Admin says: It all depends on where you live and where you apply. Some companies and hiring managers resent any type of degrees (because usually they don't have one themselves), then there are the HR filters from the Fortune XXX companies that use keyword filters to reject certain resumes. Then there are the anal companies that require you to have a certain GPA in order to even be considered. It's your job to figure out which company is which and apply accordingly. This ain't the 90's and the days where people who "like computers" get hired into IT positions with insane salaries are long fucking gone. The truth is that the market is glutted with experienced IT talent fighting over meager salaries. IT job seekers these days need every competitive advantage they can get. That includes a degree, certifications and real-world experience. If you have neither or one out of three, you're fucked. That's the cold hard truth.