Depressing IT Job Prospects

[der.hans]

Am 11. Aug, 2008 schwätzte Josh Coffman so:

> Best advice I can give about IT, is don't do it for the money.  You won't be
> happy as it is really draining and there is no guarantee the money will
> always be there.  That's true about anything really, but I think its
> especially true in tech.

Excellent point! Many jobs and industries have really bad downsides.
Teachers don't get paid or treated well and the administration puts
considerable effort into interfering with the education process. Nurses
are overworked, underpaid and often have to deal with people who are not
on their best behavior.

Tech isn't that bad, but you have to learn a lot and keep learning a lot.
If you don't like what you're doing, you won't keep current and you'll
stagnate. Tech fields change quickly and Free Software accelerates that
change.

No one needs to justify their interest to the group. It's an internal
decision. Doing tech stuff for work or not does not imply interest or lack
of interest in Free Software or PLUG. In other words, we don't need any
judgemental posts.

There are areas in tech where the learning curve isn't quite so high. Many
of them are non-tech jobs in tech groups or sometimes tech jobs in
non-tech fields. There's also the possibility of being highly specialized
or in a field that has large barriers to entry.

You could also make your own job by starting your own company. The current
economy is ripe for small companies that can produce good results at a low
price. Free Software gives you many advantages in that arena :).

As to specific fields that might be doing well, I see more and more need
for networking, VoiP ( start playing with Asterisk ), java programmers and
security.

Database admins are still in demand, but I mostly see requests for
Oracle. I think it's because Oracle is a pain and you have to keep
searching and searching for Oracle DBAs in this market. MySQL and
PostgreSQL admins seem to be fairly easy to find, so you don't see those
jobs since they actually fill.

PHP jobs might also be in the 'fill quite easily' category.

Finding outstanding candidates for most any field is difficult, but most
jobs don't require someone who's in the top 2% in the field.

ciao,

der.hans
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