Posted on 12/18/2014 7:46:44 AM PST by SeekAndFind
I'm thankful I got into BI/Big Data before BI and "Big Data" were tech buzzwords/terms.
The biggest problem for our shop is getting qualified people to fill positions for DBAs, BI developers, and experienced Data Analysts.
They also left off large donations to the democrat party. This will get you a do nothing, hardly show well paying position with super benefits and retirement .
What does a “digital analyst” do?
I’m assuming they mean business or systems analysis.
Good accountants are a treasure. My rant is aimed at the politicians and government bureaucrats who keep sliding around (fiscal) accountability in their own realms but use accounting that they dismiss from themselves as a political weapon on others Figures never lie, but liars always figure...as the saying goes. Good luck in retirement.
My 4 year degree in the Marine Corps as an Aviation Electronics Tech and a degree in Geology landed me my first job with Texas Instruments in their Science Services Division exploring for oil and gas. Spent 25 years in the industry.
I was thinking of IRS thugs.
lol - good one!
I’ve done a lot on that list and I’m white....so you must be correct!
They are thugs. Government paid politically motivated thugs with calculators and vanishing e-mail accounts.
They wiped every computer with damning evidence, or crashed and disposed of them.
If you or I did that, we would get 2-5 years in prison.
Good analysts are paid well, but beware of being classified an ‘exempt’ (salaried) employee. That $80K salary offer might look attractive at first, but you will be expected to work 50-60 hour weeks, so that effective $40/hr is more like $30/hr and you have no life to boot.
This is one reason for the strong age bias in favor of under-30 kids with no spouses or families.
STEM skills have always been in demand and short supply during my lifetime. If you had one of these skills you could usually find enough work to sustain a good middle class career or better. That’s the route I followed.
After WWII, there was a boom requiring new STEM skills related to hardware, software, and data analysis that were not present before the emergence of digital computers. When Computer Science was added to the curricula in the late sixties to early seventies, all computer related skills really took off. The demands of employers and the shortage of skilled people drove salaries sky high.
Many of the baby boomer generation started college during and after the Vietnam war. College was affordable and the demand for STEM skills was running high, so a lot of them pursued careers in these fields. I was one of those. Incidentally, a lot my fellow students were from Arab and middle eastern countries here to obtain the skills needed back home.
The market for these skills has been consistently strong over the last 50 years and appears it will continue through the 21st century. As the political and economic climate changes, STEM jobs are being lost and salaries driven downward due to an the abundance of foreign H1-B workers claiming to have the same skills. Also our collages are no longer affordable to the average student, causing many shift to liberal arts careers which take less time and effort. Furthermore, the public school system has failed to teach the Mathematics and Science needed to prepare students for a career in these fields. Hence more foreign workers will fill the gaps.
As long as we are a capitalist society, the laws of supply and demand will affect which careers are the most sought after and the salaries paid. I am a retired IT guy, but if I were to be looking today I would be looking for future trends and demands. One of those might be robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence, fields that are just coming online and have a long way to go. But if you do the analysis you can find others.
Finally, to young people seeking the America dream and a profitable career, I would say choose to attain a marketable skill (something people will you pay for in exchange for your expertise) and build a career plan around it. Don’t spend a 100K in student loans for a law (there are too many already), journalism (propagandist with no morals), or basket weaving (obsoleted by machines) degree. And remember whatever you choose there will always be competition from others in the field. So don’t choose a career if you can’t be the best or better than the competition.
#4 and #6 might become #1 and # 2 by this time next year.
More proof that most degrees today are nothing but Instant UnEmployment Degrees or IUED’s as one of our younger relatives labeled them close to two decades ago.
Google and other hi tech companies and the handful of good universities are scouting for new recruits, starting at the intermediate level of schools. They also send their scouts out to the Math Olympics, Odyssey of the Mind contests and other settings where young and smart kids show their talents and work habits.
We know of a young 15 year old girl with a high IQ, excellent verbal skills with adults and has excellent abilities/skills in math and foreign languages. She has “visited” Stanford 3 times by Stanford’s invitations, since she was 11 years old and will be going again next year.
Re the need for good math skills to get hired.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3238569/posts?page=53#53
My son got his MBA in marketing a few years ago after working for a few years. He works for a company similar to LinedIn and just got a big promotion at work. He’s had many companies try to lure him away. He was always a math whiz and thankfully all of my grandchildren seem to have the same ability.
“Good analysts are paid well, but beware of being classified an ‘exempt’ (salaried) employee. That $80K salary offer might look attractive at first, but you will be expected to work 50-60 hour weeks, so that effective $40/hr is more like $30/hr and you have no life to boot.”
One of our younger relatives went from salary to Exempt last year with a great raise. Fortunately his direct boss and one of the key family owner/bosses told him that he didn’t need to work 50-60 hours a week. He needed to delegate a lot of what he did before. His job was to find good hires and to keep them as long as they were good.
He listened and during the hardest/longest days from about Labor day to now, he delegated and enjoyed life a lot more.
Obviously, his direct boss and the top guy want to keep him happy and healthy.
#7 I hate when all that scrum coats my pots and pans. Thanks for being there for us who cannot clean. : )
Count fingers?
Self study. I'm making a course.
The test costs $100 and does not require that you have taken a course. I did a 3 day course though, but also self study. The course was not necessary to pass the test.
Start with:
1.) Read the Scrum Guide.
2.) Then go to Scrum.org
3.) I like this kid's "Firehose" overload course: Scrum Firehose Overload Version
4.) Once you think you are ready, do some practice tests: Practice Tests
5.) When you're ready, do the test for certification ($100): Scrum Tests
Good luck!
No, I am NOT going to take my Netware certs from the wall. It’s coming back, I tellya.
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