IT Job Market Is Tanking, But Not For Everyone 371
CWmike writes "Shortly after the COO of Automated HealthCare Solutions learned that Microsoft planned to cut 5,000 workers over the next 18 months, he and another employee of the medical services provider flew out to Redmond. AHCS now has more than 100 resumes, some of them from Microsoft employees, for about a dozen open positions. That's how the tech job market is these days: there's no doubt the market is tanking, but not for everyone. While numerous IT vendors are laying off workers, and corporate IT jobs are being lost as well, plenty of companies are still hiring. Microsoft's careers site lists more than 700 open jobs in the US, both technical and administrative positions. And IBM has about 3,200 jobs and internships listed worldwide, more than 550 of them in the US — even as it cuts thousands of workers in a move that it is describing not as a layoff, but an effort to 'match skills and resources with our client needs."
In good times (Score:4, Interesting)
A couple of business owners have had to lay off some of their skilled labour, it was a last resort, because they know it's going to cost a fortune to replace them when things pick up again.
Lots of companies use downturns to advantage (Score:5, Interesting)
Something that everyone forgets is that many companies use downturns as a time to clean house, to get rid of people that they feel are more dead weight than not.
Now anyone with experience in a large company knows that also can include some good people that ended up on the wrong side of an internal political battle, and doesn't usually include much middle management that may well be overburdened. Even so, layoffs are not always about a company needing to get rid of jobs so much as a natural resetting mechanism (at least at first).
Machiavellian strategy (Score:1, Interesting)
There's a theory I heard that if you hear of large companies laying off staff, you should instantly decide to cull about 5% of your staff -- not in order to downsize, but to give yourself room to poach any particularly talented staff that were let go by the companies that really had to downsize.
Not so fast (Score:1, Interesting)
My fortune 30 company has tons of job postings which aren't actually being filled. We're on hiring freeze despite a sizable number of openings posted.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to believe that. I've got a damn good resume, and I'm damn good at what I do. I'm working the network of friends and ex-coworkers, all of who say, "damn we'd love to hire you, but we don't have any openings."
I'm 38 years old, and I've NEVER experienced anything this shitty.
damn.
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
3 or 4? We hope for ratios more in the 10-50 range. One really good hire can completely replace a 20 person dev team that is not delivering.
Of course, many of the new hires turn out less good that hoped, but that is solvable. Also, you have to keep the bad team around until it's clear its product is inferior. But hey, that's business.
Pretend job openings (Score:5, Interesting)
We're on hiring freeze despite a sizable number of openings posted.
Good point. Since people use job openings to judge the health of a company, it's possible to use it to send a misleading signal to the stock market.
Re:Machiavellian strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the theory is to fire the lowest 10% in relation to performance every quarter.
Ugly, yet effective.
Re:No surprise (Score:1, Interesting)
And the best part is that the one really good hire won't quit due to your unreasonable demands until the economy is back into full swing at which point you'll be able to hire 10-50 people to replace him.
Good People Hard to Find ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It has already been mentioned, but in speaking with a few recruiters, the general opinion was that the company's that are laying off are cleaning house of dead wood for the most part. Those who are good at their jobs are staying put right now until the market seems to show some sense of light at the end of the tunnel. Of course their are casualties at all levels in various orgs, but I'm not yet left with the overwhelming sense that quality IT people are flooding the market looking for work.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IBM layoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
Growing up as a kid in the 80s, I remember Reagan being on TV talking about "layoffs."
It was a new term, at least to me. It seemed to mean that the folks who were let go weren't really fired from their job, that there was some hope that they'd return if business improved.
Now, it seems that "laying someone off" is exactly the same thing as "firing that lazy bastard." If we remove the political incorrectness of the latter, then, can ANYONE bloody tell me the difference between how these less-useful people were oh-so-gently laid off, and just fucking firing them?
In other words: If I underperform at work, I expect to be fired[1]. If my job is shifted to someone else new to the company (no matter what country that they're in), I'd consider it that I was fired. Only in a business downturn, without a replacement, would I think that I was laid off. Am I wrong? (Why?)
[1]: Alas, I've got a quasi-IT job in small business that isn't going anywhere. I'm a bit of a generalist, with skills ranging from technical support to systems administration to tower climbing to cable-pulling monkey to systems integrator and troubleshooter supreme, working in public safety wireless communications and internal support. For the past year or so, I've done everything from just show up when I feel like to being totally AWOL, due to a number of personal, psychological, and financial issues that my employer isn't exactly aware of. I yell at my coworkers when they do stupid things. I'm a bad employee. I've cost the company a lot of money in the past 12 months, but they keep telling me that I'm an asset that the company needs. OTOH, we're having our best year ever. My Christmas bonus hasn't gone down a bit. I guess I'm lucky -- somehow, I think that if I were anyone else at any other company, I'd have been let go years ago.
Re:Good People Hard to Find ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup. I just recently got a new job for a very senior position for a very cool company, one of the best to work for in the region anyway. There was multiple openings for the team. Not a single one, ZERO, nadah, none, of the candidates they interviewed had what they needed (and what they needed wasn't obscure by a long shot, and the required skillset wasn't 16 page long...they just wanted someone good). They couldn't find any.
In the end, I got the job even though I didn't have one of the major requirements, because they thought I was good enough to be worth training. Even with that concession, I was the only person they could find on the continent (no one in the region at all, big metropolitan area, and no one on the -continent- who was willing to move). Finally, they found ONE other person for the job, who had worked for them in the past across the globe in asia (no, not in a third world country...I'm being vague since, well, can't post all the details on the net), and they're relocating him.
Qualified people are almost inexistent if your requirement goes beyond raw computer science or script kiddies, the two extremes. And for the AC that posted, no, they weren't looking for someone with 20 years of experience, I have something like 7.
Reason why this is happening (Score:1, Interesting)
As the economy goes downhill, companies that are not doing as well will strat to become critical of their structure, where before they didnt care how much was spent because they were making fantastic sums of money, so much that even the run of the mill A+ cert people who only know as much about computers as their college classes told them with no experience actually using a computer beyond playing WoW can get away with slacking off and putting the burden on the other IT people. So when the company starts hurting, they begin to review their staff. I know, my company did it as well, except no lay offs because we have a positive income still, just other factors not related to the downturn are affecting us. What I see here is a house cleaning, they're finding the flakes, and even the decent people, but naturally, any company out there wants the best, so they set a number, and try to categorize their best people in that number, anyone who isnt in it, gets cut out. Given the flop that Vista was (and what a piece of shit it was, I can run windows 7 on "legacy" hardware just fine where vista takes ages to boot) microsoft's layoffs are more than likely justified.
Now, if they replace them with foriegn workers immediately at a lower wage, then I believe someone needs to be audited hardcore by SEC and whoever else maintains fair business and workers' rights.
Re:As I always say (Score:2, Interesting)
Your right about sales ... for sure it is not IT. Data folks can be ... it depends on how an organization is structured and at what level (IE: are they schema and reporting administrators or guy who looks at data in an application). Same thing goes with engineers. A lot of companies consider things like web applications the domain of IT so web engineers are in the IT departments.
Don't Discount The Flood (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been a steady but rising flood of semi-skilled people getting into IT increasing the size of IT shops ... and generally their cost. I don't like to see people lose jobs, but in some cases shrinking IT is really, really good. I don't want to work with 50 so-so or worse developers or sysadmins ... but I'd be more than happy to work with 10 stellar engineers/admins. Same goes with management. Speaking with some friends this past year it almost seems there has been a popular trend in adding layers of management for the sake of reporting structures (group A reports to manager who reports to manager who reports to director who reports to ....). In a lot of cases that is just cruft that is not needed that increases cost for little to no gain.
Then again, I've seen the definition of IT being stretched to include positions that have nothing to do with Information Technology.
Re:Yeah, I know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, when MS-DOS was just entering version 5, I worked for Micro(-)soft, and I was on the shell team. One little optimization could be made to the PAUSE function, I thought, so I added it in, and even when I told my manager of the patch, he said surely a promotion would soon ensue, and Dave Cutler might even consider me for this project called "Windows NT"!
So everyone approved, and the patch was added. It was written in assembly language, by the way. So the patch was added, and soon the final build of MS-DOS 6 shipped. However, soon we started getting calls from users saying their batch files crashed DOS, and a thorough code inspection went under way. While inspecting the last couple of patches, many bugs were found, some even I fixed, and we were sure MS-DOS 6.21 was the final solution.
How wrong were we! The test batch files still crashed the OS, and upon further inspection, it was found that the PAUSE() function would crash just after printing the characters to the screen. They inspected my patch, found an erroneous jz mnemonic (despite our getch setting the eax [return] register to a non-zero ASCII character).
The log showed it was my patch, and I was soon speedily fired before the compilation of MS-DOS 6.22, which corrected the PAUSE function I messed up so bad. I have since regretted that function every day of my life, and I put it in my
Never forget, slashdot, never forget.
Employed but looking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please don't think me greedy for what I'm about to say but I'm currently still employed after over 3 rounds of layoffs and I've recently kicked my job search into high gear. While I have to agree that what's currently left at the small company I work for is nothing but the best (at least in the IT department) the workload that was done by 30 is now done by 10 -- with as few as 3 people in one section of IT.
That being said, these *quality* people who probably have nothing to worry about are jumping ship (even management!), some without even having jobs to switch to yet. But I guess that's what happens when reason goes out the window and marketing calls the shots in an attempt to turn a profit for a change. That coupled with pay cuts leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
I disagree with the thought that the good workers will sit idly by and take what the companies are doing and accomplishing what 3-5 of their peers used to. Sometimes what seems like a good job for a while can turn ugly and treat you poorly when things get tough and that's not necessarily a place you want to work. At least that's my reasoning.
Re:Yeah, I know... (Score:5, Interesting)
The downturn gave me an excuse to upgrade my job (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a software consultancy as a software developer -- well, at least I do for the next couple of days. Various events have taken place over the last few months that have reduced my happiness in my role in this company.
Coincidentally, this company has clients in the public sector whose budgets have been frozen due to the economic downturn. This brought some of this company's projects to a stand-still and, unfortunately, this company's reaction was to fire the entire development team for one of the projects (this happened two months ago).
My project was suspended indefinitely by our private sector client whose budget was curtailed, and my development team was merged into another ongoing project. Naturally, I perceived my job security as limited. To make matters worse, rumours were circulating that our very old directors were considering trying to dissolve the company and ship their assets overseas. The idea was that some money already paid by clients might be attempted to be recovered and the directors wanted to retire. Combine all this with my growing discontent in my role in this organisation and I had great motivation to find another job before I was made redundant, but how was I supposed to accomplish this in this doom-n-gloom economy?
My wife and I decided that we liked our chances more with the sagging economy than with my dodgy company. So, I looked for a job, and I was confident as I was fortunate enough to have recently acquired some very valuable skills in our current technological landscape and I knew how they were in high demand and how to sell them. It worked out favorably for me, as I was able to secure a seemingly better job in a more experienced role with a higher pay at a different, much more reputable organisation.
I'd say that I am very lucky but I also believe all of my extra hard work paid off. I feel that, at least for the foreseeable future, a lot of people in IT who keep their skills current and relevant will always be able to find a decent job, the key being very much keeping your technical chops polished.
Re:Let's not forget one segment: (Score:5, Interesting)
Gotta agree. The price of parts alone puts PC repair just fine if you can do it yourself, but if you plan on charging for your services, then forget it. The screwdriver shop market half collapsed already several years ago. For those willing, it's an ok way to make a few dollars here and there, but very, very few can maintain sufficient business to make a living out of it.
The simple fact is that if the computer isn't in warranty, then it's probably not worth repairing. Outside of that period it's not only outdated technology-wise, but physically if one component has reached the point of failure then all the other moving parts are starting to get within that zone too. Replacing the hard drive now, and the DVD drive in another 8 months, then a few fans in 6 months, then the monitor in another year, etc, and you you're getting to the point where you're paying as much upkeep on keeping your crappy computer working as a new one would cost.
As to used computers - generally a waste. Most people get around to selling a computer because it has issues already, and the ones that aren't problematic are at a minimum going to be fairly outdated. PARTICULARLY laptops, which I'd NEVER recommend buying used. When new systems are as cheap as they are already, it normally just makes no sense to buy a used system.
Besides, the computer is generally a purchase that you make and then hopefully can use for a while. Where people (and companies) are going to makeup their differences is in recurring costs. For citizens, that will mean cutting back on recurring costs in places that you can afford to. Cooking more and eating out less for example. Buying the store brand of an item rather than the name brand. Refinancing loans to a lower rate. Possibly moving into a smaller/cheaper apartment or home. Taking in roommates instead of living alone. Going out to the movies or other recreational activities less.
Companies look at it the same way but salaries are their recurring costs. The simple fact of the matter that I've seen is that in many departments (of all types, IT included), people have adapted to a comfortable work level, but if everyone pushed harder the same work could be done with significantly less people. In a good economy people won't take kindly to that and you can't push them that hard, but when people are afraid of losing their jobs, they'll gladly work a bit harder to pick up the slack.
Cutting those recurring costs will make orders of magnitude more difference than simple purchases like a computer.
Re:Good People Hard to Find ... (Score:3, Interesting)
It shouldn't take that long, sounds like a bit of a joke. Either you are a perfectionist, or a bit useless.
On a brighter note, sticking to your guns had probably proved to your bosses that you aren't any good at hiring, and a possibility that you might be the next one out the door.
Re:Yeah, I know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, I had more fond memory of doing optimization. I'll chip in my story.
I just graduated in the early 90s, and started working the next day after my last exam, at a small telecom equipments company. The system was running on QNX 2, with every software components developed in house, except the OS and some of the drivers.
The company was built by hardware engineers, and I was the first guy from a CS background. There were 6 people in the engineering group. The "database system" was actually a small engine of simple linked list, and must load all data into memory to do anything. Insertion, modification, deletion, etc, were slow, database-related work is so slow, but everyone was used to it. Especially on a 386SX with 1MB of memory, and QNX had no virtual memory, the physical memory was precious.
After I started working, I saw this and said: "What the fuck?" Being good at data structure and algorithms, I decided to do something. Not to interfere with my day job, I spent a couple of evenings and one weekend, writing a memory-mapped B-tree engine, with some quite primitive transaction and rollback features, while trying to keep the same API as the original linked list engine. The memory-map part was so that I wouldn't have to load all data into memory to do the work.
After testing for 5 or 6 hours on the Sunday afternoon and evening, I plugged it in, replacing the old engine. I "checked in" the code. We didn't even have CVS, we just mount to the manager's machine, and put the codes there (basically, replacing what was there). I made the mistake of not informing the manager.
I went home the evening, it was raining hard, got wet, and had a fever. The next day, I called in sick.
At noon, the manager did a new build for testing. People where shocked that database-related operations just returned back right away. This normally would be an error situation. A few panicked, as there was no CVS to track who checked in what, and the db engine was there for almost 2 years already, and considered the most stable component. So no one looked there. But everything seemed to work just fine.
While I was sick, I also wrote a design document about the new engine, how to call the API, etc. On the 3rd day, I came in. After my first cup of coffee, I heard the news from my neighboring coworker. So I went to see the manager, told him about what I did, and handed him the design document. This was the first "real" design document, BTW.
The manager was relieved and excited, and finally, called in the CEO of the company too, and said: "Dude, you scared the shit out of me, but this is great work. Next time, tell me first before putting in the code, ok? I'm too old for that. BTW, do you see other areas that we can improve?" The CEO said: "I'd like to hear that too." With that kind of encouragement, I gave a list of areas that should be reworked, but with very low risk, and some areas that might need extra works.
The CEO said: "I want you to work on those items".
So, for the next 6 months, I was working more or less on every component of the system, including the UI framework that we developed (no, QNX Photon was still many years away), to do optimization and in quite a few cases, re-code them.
And I also downloaded CVS at home with my oh-so-slow modem (the company has no internet connection yet, only the CEO and VP had dialup), brought the floppy to the company, compiled the CVS source on QNX, asked and got a new machine to build a CVS server, so that we can track the codes better.
At the end of the year, I got a big bonus, with 2 extra days off for the Christmas holiday. It was fun.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
I know the feeling, except that of being 38 ;)
I'm an IT janitor. I fix things. No formal training in most fields (but a few certs I feel have some meaning, and some Mirosoft certs I feel are meaningless), but I still do everything (except maybe DBA-type stuff and art). People with all sorts of levels of competence say I should be able to get jobs with Big Name Companies. This I've tried, skillfully avoiding open source-unfriendly companies (not so many anymore, thank fuck). I rarely hear anything back, so I guess the market is either quite full of people like me, or somebody somewhere is spreading crap about me.
So I said "Fuck it!" and have sort of started on my own, doing the usual things. Helping friends and family here and there (different rates for the stupidly rich!), making webpages (being no designer, I'm happy to work with people who do the design with me before I make the magic happen) and thinking up THE iPhone app everybody will want. I'll get back to you when I figure that out :P
A note about those "available positions": I know for a fact that many of them are fake. Sorry, guys. The big companies are being assholes. They are required by law to post all open positions and take in people for interviews in some countries, but they have really writen some of the positions with specific employees already in mind. It's a frickin' scam. I know IBM did it, I know the ISPs sometimes do it (and enjoy temps they can easily shed, rather than actual employees).
To hell with all that! No boss hanging over me now, and I can sleep till noon before I code away/spit out some hawt CSS/fix somebody's printer. Not getting rich yet, but I have some backup money until luck turns.
"Fake" Job Announcements (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody knows this (or at least I hope they do) but it's sometimes funny when these things are brought to light.
Many years ago, the U.S. government started putting job announcements online. The process was simple. A local office doing a hire would just cc the announcement document to yet another place. They didn't really think about the fact that the documents in their little office, previously seen by just a few local employees, could now be seen by anyone, anywhere. It took some folks a while to adapt and stop using blatantly obvious tactics to deny jobs to certain applicants.
I will never forget, during the transition period, seeing a number of job announcements that opened and closed on the same day (blatantly illegal; there's a mandated open period for announcements). One announcement sidestepped that requirement by staying open for two weeks, but promising "priority consideration" (a real, technical term with specific requirements that translates into "if you're not priority, you can't get the job" in practice) would be given to applicants who pick up an application package in person within 4 hours of the opening of the announcement.
I'll never forget being summonsed to an execs office and asked if I'd be interested in a job that was opening soon. I was chomping at the bit for the job (I knew it would be announced soon) and had been practicing my interview already. The exec asked me what I thought qualified me for the job. I was totally prepared. "I have solid experience in Fields A, B, C, and D. Those will translate directly and immediately into high productivity and solid result in the position." He thanked me and I left. I was pumped. Obviously, for the first time in my life, I was going to be the beneficiary of some of the underhanded hiring tactics that were common around here. It was obvious the guy wanted me even if I didn't know exactly why.
A week later the job announcement was published. It included something I'd never seen before, an addendum (complete with a big, bold box drawn around it) to the qualifications that specifically said "The following types of experience DO NOT qualify for this position: Fields A, B, C and D." The "A, B, C, and D" in the announcement were DIRECT QUOTES from me, exactly duplicating the verbiage I had used with the aforementioned exec the week previous.
Hiring shenanigans - ya gotta love 'em.
Re:Machiavellian strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
You haven't been paying attention. Managers in places like that make fair money, and they are often paid in relatively large bonuses based on particular metrics for that company. Things like food cost, speed of service, customer satisfactions surveys, and surprise anonymous audits are common.
If a manager can come into a faltering store, double its profits and make customers happy, that manager is going to be making pretty good money. Managers can't do that without good employees. And in that industry, you can't even bait in good employees with better pay. The difference between a new hire and the "assitant manager" or "shift leader" might be a couple dollars and hour, max.
So fast food managers have to work really hard to find good help, and really hard to keep good help with very limited resources.
This is based of an old friend of mine who's been in that business for decades, and until just recently managed at a Jack In The Box.