Interesting Article 1

[AIXSPadmin]

In the Sunday paper today there was a half-page article about IT professionals starting new careers after being laid off their IT jobs.

Some individuals had been laid off twice in 1 year and they left IT altogether as have others. One man had a wife and toddler to support and had contacted 150 companies and never had an interview. He has started his own company now cleaning vents at restaurants; and in a year he expects to be earning what he was in IT ($80,000). Plus, as a bonus he stated that he did not have stress like he had before, and he doesn't have to work as often so he can spend more time at home with his wife and child. (That would be nice! I generally work at least 2 weekends a month and carry a rotating pager.)

A few weeks ago they had another article about IT workers and their careers. In that article it stated that many IT workers, even if not already laid off were scared of the future and were leaving for new careers.

Some say that with all of the workers being laid off and going to other careers, that when the hiring starts again that there will be a shortage of qualified workers. But, these same people agree that pay levels will not reach the pinnacle of 3 years ago.

I understand fully where these people leaving IT are coming from. Their IT jobs had salaries cut (mine was 6% plus health insurance takes another 1% of check so a total reduction of 7%), the pressure of SLOs (they are always implementing some new &*$&@! measurement where I work - some damn new thing to be accountable for), more work (hell they cut staff or don't rehire and work still needs to be done). All of this for management who always want to know why this happened or that happened, and don't ever let it happen again, we do not tolerate mistakes. When our salaries were cut management was asked point blank if there was going to be layoffs and they side-stepped the question (of course.) All of this leads to STRESS!

Yes, leaving for another career does seem like it may truly be worth it. And besides, if salaries don't go back to the previous levels (and in an article I read they say 2003 IT salaries expect a slight decline) and you still have the stresses I mentioned above, why is it worth it?

 

[dogbert2]

Ok, first of all, the dot-com craze (which should have
NEVER gotten started in the first damn place) contributed
severely to this whole mess.

It got to a point where 20 to 30 year olds with no business
plans were calling shots at companies funded by VC dollars,
and gee, most (if NOT all) of them fell apart due to the
LACK of a business plan.

Now, if all the extra people who jumped into I.T. because
they saw huge dollar signs (and companies were paying
insane salaries to persons who took one or two computer
courses and called themselves GURU's), that's what
sunk the tech sector (along with Enron, Global Crossing,
MCI, + Sept 11. woes).

I've been employed in I.T. for 20+ years, and weathered
the last economic downturn (it wasn't pretty, btw), but
perhaps people LEAVING the industry for different careers
will help the people who remain and decided to stick it
out in the I.T. field (dunno).

As for management, I find that if one takes reasonable
steps to keep stuff running and have redundant systems
in place, management will tend to leave things as is
(and rightfully so)...stable is the key word in business
today, along with your web site being available on a
24/7 basis to sell your wares.

Comments anyone?

 

[Morsing]

I've recently found a job after four months without work (voluntarily). I don't really like the company or the location but it was so hard to get a job or even an interview, that I'm too afraid to start looking again.

I'm not a dot com product and working with AIX has never really been affected by that "era" (I think). It's just bad times at the moment.

I'm also way too stupid to do anything else than Unix work, so changing career is not an option for me.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
IBM Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration

 

[svanels]

Dogbert2, I agree a 100%

It got to a point where 20 to 30 year olds with no business
plans were calling shots at companies funded by VC dollars,
and gee, most (if NOT all) of them fell apart due to the
LACK of a business plan.

If in any other bussiness you have to work hard to put some bread on the table, why it would be different in IT? Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[GGORTT]

It used to upset me that training centers in my area claimed in their advertizements, that they could make a "Roofer" into a CISCO Certified Network Engineer making $70,000.00 a year. Those that were smart enough to get the certification could not find jobs. Why? Because the craze was over and no one in their right mind would hire them because they didn't have any experience. These are the people that are leaving IT.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Maybe not all... but I would guess a majority of them are. iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

 

[RiKM]

Well as for my part I have been in the industry for the last 12 years and have seen many changes. The main worry as I see it now though, is the certification craze that is going around. It has gotten so awful, that despite being qualified in the traditional sense of the word (Master Degree Computing etc), my worth in the industry is only as good as the latest technology I have used. Not only do I feel I wasted my time but am now starting to feel as though I should attend a 'boot camp' (how pathetic is that?!) just to get myself another piece of paper to prove that I can do the job I have been doing for the last 12 years! On the whole I like Microsoft products, but this newfangled notion of cashing in still further on the user community is alarming. The boot camp boasts a 94% pass rate and furthermore there are no pre-requisites for the course so anyone can do it. Now I don't have any problem with that aspect, but surely it is bound to lead to 'roofers' getting a qualification which enables them to be my boss, whilst I had to study for 4 years at a university with 12 years stuck behind a desk!! So for the expense of 3-4000 dollars and 8 (yes 8!) days of my time I too could be up there! Its got to be worth it I guess.
Moral of the story...Can't beat the system!

 

[MichaelNazarow]

The potential of IT is dead in its track, for now. What the industry needs is a champion visionary who can rally all of us towards making that next leap. I believe IT has the potential for improving the standard of living for all of us, however, its use and potential may currently be stalled if not misguided.

On the personal level, the job market that is, is there really that much, if any, difference between IT and other industries, especially with demand and market "forces" fluctuations? I hear that some people in other fields take time to find decent jobs, just as in IT, while others, in both fields quickly find jobs.

Whats the point? That from my perspective IT is a great field to be in, and that IT offers all kinds of varied opportunities, some as much fun (or misery) as programming. What other field enables one to move throughout various industries and get so many different perspectives. Where else get you get such a portable tool kit? IT will continue to offer great opportunities, with greater opportunities and chalanges yet to come.

But you got to love it for more than just the money.

Yes, I worked out last night and took all my vitamins this morning, so I'm up on life (and work). Cheers -- drink good beer.

 

[AIXSPadmin]

It had to be the dot com explosion of a few years ago that pushed IT salaries into the high wages the industry was getting and now that the bubble has burst salaries are going down. Sort of like the over-priced stock market.

Yesterday at work we were having a discussion about the article I mentioned and people leaving IT and salaries. I said that I don't expect salaries to go back to the levels that were there 3 years ago, and even if many leave IT and there is a shortage in a few years, I don't expect salaries to rise like they did before. I also said that IT was just like accounting or finance or any other field and that nothing about what we do really warrants astronomically high pay. We are not surgeons with someone's life balancing on diagnosis or surgery. Most of what we do is not extremely complicated (given true comp sci developing new architectures and software for satellites that peers through cloud cover for the NSA or NRO is different,) given time anyone can learn it.

Don't mistake the fact that yes I do want a good salary so I can live comfortably now and in retirement, however, what I don't believe that just because it is IT it demands $100,000/year. As I said above most of it isn't that complicated and is no harder than what an accountant does.

Experience, education and job all play into what comprises pay, but some accountants work for years and have an education and never reach what IT made 3 years ago.

At work they generally disagreed with me about this but I truly believe IT is not any harder than accounting.

 

[CajunCenturion]

We are not surgeons with someone's life balancing on diagnosis or surgery

No we're not. But what about the person in ICU who is being monitored by computer equipment? Other examples of computer systems where failures can in fact lead to death include: Traffic Light Control System, Airplane Auto-Pilots and Air Traffic Control, Nuclear Power Plant Control Systmes, and if you really want to make it interesting, how about military applications.

The statement that IT is not any harder than accounting is nonsense in that it is comparing apples and oranges, if for no other reason than from an economy of scale perspective. From a systems perspective, maintaining 5 user peer-to-peer network is very different from maintaining a multi-level multi-LAN/WAN system with isolated DB Servers, Web Servers, a DMZ, firewalls, with non-homogenious operating systems, and so forth. From an application standpoint, there is a big difference between writing a payroll program, as part of a full blown accounting system, and a rule-based decision support system for medical diagnosis help. There is a difference writing a POS system, and writing a compiler, or the auto-pilot for the space shuttle. There are definately parts of IT where accouting is more difficult, but the reverse is even more true, some things in IT are considerably more difficult that accounting, and require specialized knowledge outside of IT. It is often the case that a programmer has to know at least on paper, as much about another skill in order to write a program to mimic that skill.

I, at least in this post, will not go into the creative aspect of IT - system design and architecture, DB design and normalization for example. Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein