Depressing IT Job Prospects

[Randy Melder]

Has anyone checked out Dice.com for San Diego (where I am now)?
Exploding IT market.

; ) .randy

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Eric Cope <eric.cope at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can offer slightly different (point of view) advice. I would recommend
> doing what ever you are good at, or more precisely, where you are most
> valuable. To clarify, what ever skills you can obtain that some one else is
> willing to pay (a lot) for, get those skills. If those skills can align with
> what you like, fantastic. The key to success in the workplace, is having
> marketable skills. Marketable skills will keep you employed when times are
> tough, as alexanderhenry at cox.net stated below. That is where school can be
> good, training you in areas of marketability. Just my 2 cents...
>
> Eric
>
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 8:50 AM, <alexanderhenry at cox.net> wrote:
>>
>> 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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