XP Hurts/Helps IT Ratio

[wimpy]

Talked to a nationally known headhunter.
Used to be 1 full time pc person would be hired when the number of pcs a business had was 58 on the national average. Now in April, that ratio went down to 45 pcs per full time pc persion needed.

Any guess on the drop in effeciency? My bet is Windows XP from personal experience. On the message board, how I cringe at each mention of reloading a system because XP won't do what its supposed to do.

 

[EddieVenus]

except there are maybe a handfull of companies using XP, and of those only a handfull that have it rolled out company wide. I work with dozens of companies, from 5-500 employees and few are using XP on any kind of scale. Now I could see this being the case if we were all idiots, and never delt with win2k or NT, but as it stands XP is too new for any company with 45+ machines to just make the jump to. Most of my clients are trying XP on a few machines here and there if at all, none are full blown XP, heck most are still looking to go full on win2k. This stat is probably due more to the fact that as time goes on, more of these employees have home machines that they are getting to know better and try little things out on their work boxes that they do at home, making a steady stream of trouble for IS teams everywhere. Plus there are more higher end boxes going in, from different vendors, due in large part to the percieved lose of Compaq (though their coprperate line will probably stay alive). On top of that any IS person can tell you that they are overworked, underpayed, and need more support/assistance in order to make all their project goals. Maybe the market is just now catching up to number of open jobs in the market. I think blaming it on XP is premature. I remember this banter when 2k came out, heck I remember trends of hiring that far exceeded this 45-1 ratio around the time of 2k, but that had to do with the .com boom and not the latest OS. But I too cringe because it means that XP may not have been as ready for prime time as was previously thought. Who would have guessed?

 

[DBSSP]

I don't know about all of that but we are making the jump to XP this year. The company supports 4 centers with approx. 2500 - 3700 PC's per center. It's just that XP is new and the ratio probably includes your average mix of trainees. Ratio here is about 70:1. Jay

"Jeezus-sqeezits Bob!"