Largest IT employment gains in four years reported

www.computerworld.com ^ | August 7 2012 | Ellen Messmer

[AbolishCSEU]

My twenty something liberal Obama voter colleague (with a stay at home wife and two young children) cited this tidbit of news which I'm thinking is as pumped up as the "jobs" numbers at the White Hut--Anybody care to debunk?

Largest IT employment gains in four years reported

Network World (US) The nation's employment outlook for IT professionals has suddenly surged, gaining 18,200 jobs, the largest monthly increase since 2008, according to tech employment-research firm Foote Partners.

[JimRed]

...the job is in Harrisburg.

The Ithaca of Pennsylvania? Oh noz! Run away, run away!

[Mr. Jeeves]

Spot-on! I'm hiring and that basically describes the A-player I need!

I used to be one of those, before I gave up IT work to start my own business three years ago. One problem for the industry is - people with good business and people skills can usually find much more satisfying (and lucrative) careers outside of IT. Since most of today's graduates have been so badly miseducated by the government school system, anyone who can write and speak and employ a minimum level of critical thinking does not need to put up with IT's long hours, short deadlines, high pressure work environments, constant reeducation, and senior corporate management's resentment of the mere need for their existence - they have better options. :)

[wbill]

Yeah, my Dad has a "Dilbert" cartoon, on his desk still. "Bob the Dinosaur" is on a Y2K project and asked if he is a COBOL programmer.

His answer "No, but I'm often mistaken for one."

Hilarious on about 31 levels, but only if you program in COBOL. :-)

Dad does, or did. 1998 and 99 were really, really good to him.

[bobcat62]

I’m not sure the nerds over at Slashdot agree with the claim:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/08/07/203204/report-cites-highest-it-job-growth-in-4-years

[drunknsage]

Im curious about how many of these are contracts (windows 7 deployments) or H1B workers. A ton of places are upgrading their OS to Win7. Unfortunately its short term work. (at least its something)

IT work is getting more and more difficult these days. Companies dont want to hire, dont want to train, and dont want to properly invest in technology. I am currently looking for a perm position in Houston and it’s tough. Im in the sys admin area and companies are looking for skillsets that are rare / hard to find. A decade of pillaging good people from big companies hasnt helped the new guys.

Harley Davidson just gave the boot to their entire IT staff and outsourced the work to a company notorious for exploiting the H1B system. They keep the jobs here but they bring in low cost people from places like India for half the pay of what American workers are used to.

http://news.dice.com/2012/07/30/harley-davidson-infosys/

[khelus]

... I am currently looking for a perm position in Houston and it’s tough. I'm in the sys admin area and companies are looking for skill sets that are rare / hard to find. ...

Part of the game is to define jobs in such a way, no one can fill them. Then lo and behold, a guest worker shows up with all the exotic requirements on their resume. How convenient /sarc. This way the employers can pretend they are not replacing American with CHEAP guest workers who are virtual indentured workers.

This article is just cheer leading for more guest workers. We currently do not create enough new STEM, including IT, jobs for new grads, much less experienced IT people.

Yet we continue to import an alphabet soup of guest workers. At last count we are down to 125,000 new legal workers each month. Those in IT, and I'm certain other STEM professions, also compete with illegals (visa overstays).

[khelus]

>> Here in the SE, the developer market is hot right now.

I see openings in the southeast all the time. The problem is, pay scales are too low. In one case, I had someone offering $20 per hour, with no benefits.

This is what happens when you flood the market. Here in the northeast, if you get an offer, you are likely to be offered less than it costs to commute. There's no way one can compete with someone who pays no, or very partial taxes of any kind.

[frogjerk]

Infrastructure is medicore. Not great, but there is a little movement. Lots of contract work, not much for permanent positions.

You couldn't be more correct.

[wbill]

A lot of this-style outsourcing is cyclical. I've seen 2 rounds of it at one local company.

12-14 years ago, they outsourced everything locally to contractors. Then, to "save money", they hired the contractors in house. (I was one of them)

7-8 years ago, they offshored and/or outsourced everything to "save money". This devastated their internal knowledge base, as 80+% of the 200 or so IT people quit. (I was ALSO one of them). The effort wound up being an unmitigated disaster, nearly all management from the CIO down was sacked.

The company learned that it took as much money and effort to have internal people micromanage the offshore workers, as it did to actually hire internal people who could do the work. They're now rebuilding, having sacked all of the contractors and/or offshore staff, and hiring people internally again. Actually bringing back a lot of those that were brought in 12-14 years ago. (I'm NOT one of them, I learned my lesson.)

My guess? In a few years, Management will have forgotten what they learned and the process will start all over again.

It's all a cyclical process of destruction and rebuilding. My cynical take on it was that if a company keeps outsourcing to "Save Money", then insourcing to "Save Money" ... then sooner or later enough dough will be saved so that IT will become a profit center. :-)

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Many companies are looking for superstars and workers we refer to as 'walking Swiss Army knives' those with the right mix of technology, business and people skills to handle some very tough jobs.

Remind you of anyone we know?

[Billthedrill]

Many of these IT openings are written with a list of requirements that could never be filled by a single individual.

No kidding. I recall asking a recruiter last month, "Uh, if I could do network security, Oracle coding, and Web development simultaneously on a professional level, why on earth would I be doing it here for 36K?" I swear I'm not making one bit of that up. That job, incidentally, has been listed on Craigslist repeatedly for the last two years. They don't learn.

[wally_bert]

Part of the game is to define jobs in such a way, no one can fill them.

100% true.

[wally_bert]

I had a couple of bad ops with crowds that did not want to train or cram everything at once and leave one to sink (usually) or swim. Daring to ask a question regarding installation of obscure quirky in-house developed software or ask for a few minutes to at least make a note or get a screenshot and get an hour of fire and brimstone sermon about being incompetent at one state agency department.

Another one involved the “head man” coming out to train me to run an electronics resale and refurb department that I had been specificially hired for.

That yo-yo and his minion spent almost the entire week making lists of everything to take back with him to the midwest. I got at most 45 minutes of anything useful. The winning statement was “to push puffed caps back in place and mark them fixed.” This was caught by the PTZ cameras and heard by several others. I was internally dumbfounded.

[bobcat62]

>> Part of the game is to define jobs in such a way, no one can fill them.

The companies are looking for the proverbial ‘purple squirrel.’

[khelus]

The companies are looking for the proverbial ‘purple squirrel.’

ROFL. Love that phrase.

[central_va]

I’ve seen ads for people with 5 years experience for a computer language that had only come out a year prior. No kidding.

[khelus]

Re: >> If you want to know how well the US IT sector is doing, ask the people who know: the Indians.

Tell me about it. I had one recruiter suggest I change the last name on my resume to ‘Patel.’ The phone would be ringing off the hook with that change.

One of those things no one dare speak about. Our latest 'perfect minority' fires Americans to hire their own. A local company replaced the head of IT with an Indian guest worker who proceeded for fire the native born and import Indians. You know - for those jobs Americans can't/won't do.

In an interesting back handed complement, when some nasty work was needed on the billing system, they hired native born as temps and proceeded to let them go the instant they were not needed.

[IronJack]

The Indians I have worked with have generally been unreliable, have exaggerated their credentials, lie constantly, will not take guidance, and mask their incompetence with a grating servility.

I suspect the friction is largely cultural. Indians, like Arabs, regard Truth as a transient state defined by context. It can be whatever it needs to be at the time, and can change as circumstances change. So a commitment to have something done a certain way by a certain time really doesn’t mean anything since the method may change or the time frame may be unachievable. But rather than raise those issues, the Indian will politely nod and agree, then go out and do it his own way and in his own sweet time anyway.

Then he is genuinely hurt when you criticize him for failing to meet his obligations.

To be fair, I’ve also met some Indian techies who were sharp as razors. But the demand for offshore resources has far outstripped India’s ability to supply all but nominally qualified candidates.

[zeugma]

7-8 years ago, they offshored and/or outsourced everything to "save money". This devastated their internal knowledge base, as 80+% of the 200 or so IT people quit. (I was ALSO one of them). The effort wound up being an unmitigated disaster, nearly all management from the CIO down was sacked.

The company learned that it took as much money and effort to have internal people micromanage the offshore workers, as it did to actually hire internal people who could do the work. They're now rebuilding, having sacked all of the contractors and/or offshore staff, and hiring people internally again. Actually bringing back a lot of those that were brought in 12-14 years ago. (I'm NOT one of them, I learned my lesson.)

I've seen this personally myself as well. Hiring offshore doesn't save any money except in PHB's vacant heads. Before I left the last company I was at, they layed off their entire internal Oracle DB team. One of the guys had been with the company for over 30 years. (This is for a company btw, that is essentially an analytics company. Knowledge is their primary product, all of which is contained in --- databases) They don't realize that you can't buy that kind of institutional knowledge.  Recently they've started to re-hire locally, but word is out, and they can't get quality folks.

[wbill]

Yep.

Some of the guys were talking about internal emails that went around management at the company. They were expecting 25-30% turnover with the move, not 80+%.

And, they weren't expecting it all at once .... one local firm poached their entire email team, all in one shot. Zap, gone. Team I was on had 13 people on it. It took 9-ish months of looking (for me) then the market turned around. I got 3 offers the same week and was the first one out the door. The rest of the team followed me out in 8 weeks. Counting people who came on short term and said "to heck with this" (One guy trained his replacement, and his Replacement's replacement, all during his 2 weeks' notice!!) my team had almost 200% turnover -that I know of - in that 2 months. I'm sure things didn't get any better after that, but I didn't have any more connections left working for the company.

I tell ya, when companies start messing with outsourcing, there's rarely a good end. Smart, motivated (IT) people don't have to stand around and take their lumps, at least not for long, and not very often.