Depressing IT Job Prospects

[alexanderhenry at cox.net]

I was the one who suggested you should go for network administrator.  I was looking at both your current knowledge base as well as your character.  I think you would be pleasantly bored in class, up to a point right at the end when you go for your CISCO cert tests, which would have left time for you to make money at your day job.  You also seemed to be the type who liked 15 minute jobs, not a software developer like me who bangs their head on one line of code for a week at a time.

I've been at that point where everything in my life was whatever was told to me by the media.  It sucks, bad, don't do that.  Dave Ramsey, http://www.daveramsey.com/ , loves to tell how the mainstream media is like Chicken Little.  They don't report, they don't provide a balanced view of information, it's lead with bleed, man bites dog.  One article in USA Today last month or so headlined, "Leading real estate value stat down 14%.".  Read the article, it said it measured the housing markets of the largest 20 cities of America.  Dave went the whole half hour doing pretend melodrama, "OMG REAL ESTATE IS DOWN FOURTEEEEEEEN PERCEEEEEEEENT"...  Then explained that the universe which that statistic was based on wasn't large enough, if you take all the house sales in the MLS in America, the statistic you get for many months is more like a growth of 2%.  Then he took his own skewed universe, leaving the real estate bombs like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and New York out of the picture, and got plenty of up 4%, up 6%, and up 9% cities.  But that's not how the media writes it, the way they do it you get something that sounds like "REAL ESTATE IS DOWN FOURTEEEEEEEN PERCEEEEEEEENT", when the reality is, we have an unexciting, very slowly growing, with no shrinkage in growth, real estate market.  Why do they do that?  To make the presidential candidates happy?  Because the media people live in LA and New York and consider the rest of the country "flyover" where nothing happens?

I have a contract.  They just renewed it for four additional months last month.  I know this company better now, they'll probably renew again.  I paid off my x-wife's car, which she deserved because she stayed with me through the times when I was jobless.  I have 4 months expenses saved up, if I get 2 more roommates today, that number will go up to 6 months.  My personal economy is great, so that stuff that happens in the news...  is just stuff.  When you're ready to take bumps and unexpected hurdles, they don't affect you, and I'm going to work as hard as I can to keep it that way.  Anything that slows down my plan of paying my house off in 6 or 7 years I won't accept, I'll be on top of it and change my situation that week.

The jobless statistics are relevant only for the jobless.  If you're a network admin of a company who likes you, and who you like, you aren't going anywhere.  It's like their accountant or their HR director or even their HVAC guy.  They know the company, the company knows them, any change would disrupt their company for three months or so.  And the news stories: "oh real estate is down, we have to let go our accountant and only HR person and HVAC guy until it improves" doesn't happen.  It does happen if the company is about to close down, not because "the economy is slow".  If the company plans their personal finances well (as you should plan your personal finances), then they should be able to absorb the slowing in sales until the next surge comes.

Now as a software guy like myself, it's almost the opposite.  The economy could be going great, but the project I'm working on has ended.  If I'm a W-2, it's like they have to find a really bizarre excuse to keep me busy.  No thanks, let me know when it's ended so I can start looking again, and pay me big so I can afford to take those months off.  But that's just me.

Hope that helps on your outlook.  




---- storkus at storkus.com wrote: 
> I've seen a pair of articles on /. about the depressing state of IT
> right now, and it's making me, well, depressed!  My plan was to go to
> community college in January (after getting my year residency here in
> Arizona) and fix what I screwed up years ago (dropping out of college),
> but now I'm wondering whether I'd be wasting my time and money.  Someone
> at an installfest a few months ago (sorry I forgot your name, I'm
> horrible for that) said to go for Network Admin because it's a fast
> course and pays well (I'm 37), but now that I see all this with,
> depending on how you look at it, 44k to 50k IT jobs gone this year alone
> and more to come, well...maybe I should resign myself to hospitality or
> driving for a living.
> 
> Is this mostly FUD or is it really as bad as it's being made out to be? 
> Is Net Admin the way to go for someone my age, or is there something
> else I should consider?
> 
> Thanks for reading my 3am thoughts.
> 
> Mike
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