SCARY

[druid]

Check this out (especially you people expecting to grad college in the next 12 years)

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/jobflight.html

[belgareth]

Last week I ran a small ad in a single newspaper for a field technician to fill one open position. Slightly below mid range salary for a starting level computer technician. Between e-mail and phone calls, I got more than two hundred responses in three days. Many of these people had 4 year degrees and most were seriously over-qualified.

I didn\'t keep count but I would say that 3/4 of these people had been unemployed for over 18 months. The really scary part is that companies are still laying off techies, not hiring.

[tallmacky]

It\'s a problem, in the end if fat cats, and big names supported American business both mainstream and odd, the recurring wealth would seem worth it right? Americans spending money in America. I like to watch some of Michael Moore\'s stuff, I agree with a lot his says not exactly everything, but his complaints with big name corporations are great and very true. One should remain a good business man/woman but being that cut throat and selfish is counterproductive in the end. They have the power and with that power they should be thinking more than just what they are stuffing in their pocket at the end of the day. In one episode of TV nation with Miachael Moore they should how many corporations were running huge factories just below the border of Mexico, basically exploiting both sides (American workers/Mexican workers). These are mainly blue collar jobs too, like you linked to think about the white collar jobs. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[druid]

well my BS (I wonder what the BS really stands for!?!?!?) in Computer Science is collecting dust.....

[nonscents]

Reorient by Andre Gunder Frank

[druid]

http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/380

[druid]

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Brecher/Race%20to%20Bottom_GVGP.html

[Hungry]

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well my BS (I wonder what the BS really stands for!?!?!?) in Computer Science is collecting dust.....

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

Druid,

Want a little bit of free personal advice in this area? Ok, I don\'t know what your circumstances are, and maybe I\'m being obvious here but ...

... be better than everyone else.

That\'s not meant as a flippant remark or anything, I\'m being serious.

I\'ve been working in this industry for about 6 years now, and I\'m currently a Lead Programmer for one of the largest technology companies in the world. I regularly conduct interviews for positions we have on offer, from junior programmers up to software architects, and we reject about 95% of them. Most could probably do the job, but we still reject them. Wanna know why? Because with so many applicants, if we wait a week or two or even a month, we\'ll get someone who\'s outstanding. And they\'ll get the job.

What does this mean?

Well, there are still quality positions out there, but not as many, so there\'s far more competition for them. Companies can and will wait until they find someone who\'s really good. The best way to get a job is to be better than the other applicants. That degree isn\'t worth sh!t, there are millions of them out there. You need to make yourself as highly skilled as possible in your area of interest.

The industry will never be the way it was a couple of years ago, because it was unsustainable, so either be better than everyone else or find a new career.

Sorry for sounding harsh, but it\'s the only way to succeed in the industry these days. Survival of the fittest.

Best of luck.


Hungry
(who\'s lost many friends to the IT scrap heap [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img])

[Sagacious1420]

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well my BS (I wonder what the BS really stands for!?!?!?) in Computer Science is collecting dust.....

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">


B.S. = Bull Sh!t
M.S. = Moratha Same
Ph.D. = Piled higher &amp; Deeper

No offense to our degree holding memebers. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Just a bit of humor from days gone by. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[belgareth]

Hungry,

Isn\'t that just a bit short-sighted? I worked for more than twenty years in corporate IT, first as a systems engineer then later moved up through the ranks to manage a large team. Without too much bragging, I was one of the best. I left the corporate world and started my own business because the tech industry is shrinking in this country. It\'s shrinking for several reasons and all need to be addressed if we are to continue to be a player in the world of technology. The alternative is to allow our country to become one of mostly service industry workers while high tech moves to (former) third world countries. Your job may be secure today, but can you really count on it for all the tomorrows to come? Why are we trying to re-emphasize science and mathemetics in school if there will not be jobs for our young people when they achieve those degrees? Are we to raise a generation of highly trained hamburger flippers?

I don\'t claim to have the answers, but saying \"oh well\" about the steady decline of higly skilled jobs in this country certainly is not it.

[Hungry]

Belgareth,

I wasn\'t saying that at all. I was giving advice to a CS grad about the best way I know of getting a job in the current climate. I don\'t have the answers either, but in my opinion if you can\'t personally change the situation, you have to work with it. Since I don\'t know how to change the situation, my advice was geared around the second option. Of course the situation should be addressed, but people can\'t just sit back and wait for that to happen.

Do you think my advice was wrong?

BTW, I wasn\'t specifically referring to outsourcing, I was talking about the state of the industry in general. The heady days of the DotComs where every grad was being snapped up and given a high paying job are well and truly over, irrespective of whether the trend towards outsourcing is reversed or not.


Hungry

[Hungry]

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No offense to our degree holding memebers.

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

My degree hasn\'t seen the light of day since the day I received it. It\'s buried away in a box in some dark and musty part of my parent\'s house. Maybe the mice will eat it. Worthless piece of sh!t. What a waste of three years, I didn\'t learned a thing. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


Hungry

[belgareth]

Hungry

My apologies if I misunderstood you. No, you are right about being the best at what you do, no matter what you do. It\'s the only way to really get ahead, to be part of something good rather than being part of the crowd of mediocracy.

I do disagree about the current situation. We can all continue to accept what is and the path we are following or we can make our voices heard to the alleged leadership in this country about it. We, the technology professionals, as a group comprise a huge voting block as well as a consumer base. Enough screaming about it would get action from both industry and government. The apathy implicit to the statement that we cannot do anything about it is cronic in the US and is a big part of the problem. We not only can but must do something about it. Imagine the reaction if just one in ten tech professionals wrote to their congressman or representative demanding something be done.

You are correct about the days of the dot coms being over, that was always a fluke, in any case. I am referring to a much broader view of the technology fields where even top ranking students are finding it difficult to go to work. The hi tech job market is shrinking and it is in part due to outsourcing to other countries. Should it be increasingly common? What can be done to prevent it? What would encourage hi-tech companies to use the resources we have here? Can new jobs be created in this country for a highly skilled and motivated workforce? If not, how should we deal with it?

My degree is EE, I\'ve never used it other than to cover a small portion of my office wall. One of my friends is a mechanical engineer, he writes code for a major petrolium company\'s website. I don\'t regret for a minute the time and effort I put into my degree. Nor do I regret the time I must invest in continuing ed. Fact is, I have accumulated close to 100 semester hours in unrelated courses since achieving my degree. I\'ll probaly still be a student when they have to push me into class in a wheelchair.

[Hungry]

Belgareth,

Ok, a question then.

If the skills in the countries that these jobs are being outsourced to are lower than the skills in the US, do you think there will be a rebound effect where companies start taking the jobs back to the US? Lower skills usually cost money in the long run, from what I\'ve seen. My last company tried using Indian programmers for some of its development, but ended up dropping the whole thing because they were so incompetent.

Or are the skills in these countries now comparable to those in the US?

Note that I\'m in Australia, not the US, but our tech industry is driven by yours, so whatever happens there, happens here. We have exactly the same issues as you do. Probably because most of the major tech companies here are US owned. Skill levels are comparable too.

Yes, I\'m constantly skilling up on new technologies. You have to or you\'ll never last in this industry. I tend to avoid \"courses\" though and learn privately. I find most courses involve listening to some guy for a few days, and then going off and learning it all from a book anyway. I just cut out the lectures and go straight for the books.

I didn\'t really learn anything at University because I already knew most of it before I went. It was all basic stuff. But I had to spend 3 years pretending to learn it all over again for that stupid piece of paper. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]


Hungry

[belgareth]

My continuing ed in technology is usually provided by the vendors I sell and delivered over the web. The classes I take range from anthropology to philosophy to astronomy. It\'s great fun for me. But I had a real problem in college, sticking to the course material. There were too many other things to learn. The course catalog was always kind of like a candy store to a child.

To answer your question. Yes and no because it depends on the degree of insight at the upper levels of management. Some leaders have the vision to never get into that mess in the first place. Others see their mistakes and correct them. Still others, and I believe this is true of a majority, only see the short term dollars. They do not plan to be with the company for 20 years and it looks so good on their resume to have cut costs by 20% and thereby raised profits. The next guy in the senior VP slot can worry about the fallout. If that sounds unrealistic, I can cite several good examples of that happening in this country, starting with Chrysler, who nearly went bankrupt due to short sighted planning. Same for most major airlines.

So, when the fallout hits, what do they do? Increase service and improve quality? Don\'t believe it for a minute in most cases. Instead, they cut service and reduce the number and skill level of those most concerned with serving the customer. End result is a downward spiral. Look around you and you\'ll see many examples of that.

[belgareth]

Please don\'t think I am picking at Australia, your country is much more a partner than anything else. A level playing field doesn\'t bother me at all. It\'s when we try to compete against countries that have wages and other costs that are a small fraction of what ours are that I object.

As I understand it, you are more unionized than we are. How does that affect the outsourcing situation? Do the unions have a large say in it? How do they respond?

I was doing some work recently for an e-business. I spent a lot of time going around in circles and getting excuses from their technical people. One of the walls I hit constantly was the language barrier, another was the shear arrogance. The answer was almost always that I didn\'t know what I was talking about, even though all the evidence pointed to the problem being at their end. It wasn\'t until a couple weeks later that I found out the support people were in India, even though they told me they were based in the mid-west. Very frustrating experience.

[druid]

I agree I tried to be the best. I have always exceled at math and programming. Aced C++ and all my Java classes. Aced Unix programming (well should have Aced, got a B+ because the teacher made 1/3 of the final on 1 makefile question and I fcked up -- but I wrote an entire C program that was also only worth 1/3 test)...Anyways I can\'t even prove if I am good enough because I can\'t even get a call back for an interview!!!! To say nothing about getting a job. So how am I suppose to get my foot in the door? I tried all my CS friends but guess what? only one of them is working and well his company has no postions....Relocate? well I was thinking of that but I have an MIS friend who moved to the silicon valley area for 3 months and went on about 3 interviews and got nothing he had to move back here (south florida), so no I am not gonna break my bank account to not get job somewhere else when I can live with my parents...And there are a lot of people who have degrees, years of experience, and certs who can\'t find a job, so what hope is there for a recent college grad? I am also tired of emailing my resume to a yahoo or hotmail account and have it come back because the user is over their quota (ie TOO MANY RESUMES). I just wished I would have known about the hype. I could have majored in something else, I had a free ride to college. I could have done something I enjoyed more and still be in the same postion I am now. Something like philosphy or physcology or even math. But anyways I digress....The truth is that I really don\'t want to spend more than the next 5-10 years working for someone else anyway, I want to start my own business, I will just have to raise the funds working a different job....because IMHO a person will never get rich working for someone else, because lets face it that is what the US is really about, money. I am just worried that sending the tech jobs and other white collar jobs -- I have read that some accouting postions and some of the medical postions, such as reading X-rays I hope for our sakes that the tech in Bangalore can tell the difference between a spek of dust and cancer -- could sink our economy and if the US economy goes then the rest of the world can\'t be too far behind.

Also how bel described the short sightedness of corp execs reminds me of how our country is being run now.

[Hungry]

Druid,

I do understand because many of my friends have gone through and are still going through the same thing.

Why do you think other people are invited for interviews and you\'re not? I know there\'s a lot of competition, but others are chosen when you\'re not. Why? They probably don\'t have any more experience than you. The chances are their resumes are much better written than yours. So make yours better. You can put whatever you like in it, but remember that you\'ll need to be able to back it up when you get an interview.

Part of my point was that your studies are worthless when it comes to getting a job. Degrees are a dime a dozen, and excellent grades are very common too. If you\'re relying on that you won\'t get far. That\'s why you need to focus on SKILLS, not grades or what you studied, because nobody cares about them. Learn on your own. Expand your knowledge as much as possible. You need to show in your resume that you\'d excel at the job, not just that you could do it.

I don\'t mean to be harsh, honestly. I\'m trying to help. But it seems that you\'re blaming circumstances for not being able to get a job. I agree that it\'s a huge problem, but thinking that way just ends up being a psychological barrier to achieving your goals. If you haven\'t succeeded yet, you need to focus on what YOU are doing wrong, and what YOU can do to be better. Forget about things you can\'t immediately change. It\'s common sense that the best will be more successful than the rest. Obviously you need to be better. So, be better. Be smarter. Be creative.

I\'m guessing you want to be a programmer. I can\'t quite tell from your post if you\'ve given up on that idea or if you\'re still trying. I hope you\'re still trying.

I don\'t know that I\'ll ever start my own business, because becoming rich just isn\'t that important to me. What is important is what I can achieve in my career (technically that is, not moving up the corporate ladder). My current employer has opened up a breathtaking vista of technical opportunities. For the first time in my (admittedly short) career, I feel there\'s no limit to what I can do. I doubt I\'d get that by starting a small business.

PS: Ever considered moving to India? I hear there are lots of jobs there. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]


Hungry

[Hungry]

</font><blockquote><font class=\"small\">Quote:</font><hr />
As I understand it, you are more unionized than we are. How does that affect the outsourcing situation? Do the unions have a large say in it? How do they respond?

<hr /></blockquote><font class=\"post\">

The big unions are mainly for blue-collar positions, I don\'t think there are too many for the tech industry. Either way, the unions here aren\'t what they used to be. Union memberships have been falling for years now. People got tired of the corruption and the disruption to business that seemed common with the powerful unions, and they simply don\'t have the clout they once had. There were some major clashes a few years ago with the government, and now you don\'t hear much from them.

The funny thing is that when they had influence, the problems they caused at the time drove a lot of business overseas anyway.


Hungry

[belgareth]

Druid,

What an employer is looking for includes skills but also includes attitude. Are you willing to be part of a team and do you play well with others? Will you take inititive and how are you about doing things right the first time. Are you industrious or do you need prompting? Those are hard things to show on the resume but are important. One of the suggestions I hear comes from corporate HR people. With the massive volume of resumes they recieve these days, they usually have some low end grunt go through them first and eliminate any that do not fit the profile precisely. Before you send a resume, find out more about the company, you can do a lot of that over the web. Learn what they are really lookiing for and craft your resume to highlight and best fit what they are currently looking for. DO NOT falsefy anything but highlight the skills most appropriate to the job you are applying too. It increases your chances of the HR people actually seeing it. It sounds like a pain and it is but it is the only way to get past the first stage of the process. Also consider being proactive. Search for the companies in your area that use the skills you have to offer and approah them. It is still a fact that about half the open positions are never advertised and is becoming more true every day. That\'s because more people try to be proactive and get there first, either through directly marketing their skills or through connections. There are several good books about job hunting that outline that method and provide links.

Have you considered doing some free lance work? There are a lot of small businesses that need minor things done and would be happy to hire you. It doesn\'t pay as well as the corporate world at first but might get you started down a different path.

[druid]

I am going to revamp my resume. Also I think I am gonna teach myself a new skill. I was thinking of PHP. what do u guys think?

[druid]

http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/MediaClips.htm