Depressing IT Job Prospects

[alexanderhenry at cox.net]

---- Joshua Zeidner <jjzeidner at gmail.com> wrote: 
> >
> > >    My take on the economy: there is a major reorientation underway.
> >
> > blah blah blah.  Doesn't mean anything to me or Mike, who started this
> > thread with a "what do I do with my life" post, personally.  
> 
>   Well if you want to make an informed decision as to what skills, etc. to
> invest in these aspects are important.  

Yes, you want to be informed about whether to take basket weaving vs. I.T.  Or, more realistically, going $80k into student loan debt for a degree which might pay no more than $35k, there are a bunch of those out there.

The rest of your post, Josh, went into banking and the depressed economy again.  The only difference that any ups and downs in the economy might make for an individual without a job in I.T. yet is, they might have to be a barista, or as I happen to know in Mike's case a motel manager, for half a year longer or so.  Or maybe you have to accept a smaller salary at a company who doesn't support their I.T. as well.  No big deal.  Mike hasn't started his official education yet, by the time he gets out we might be in another labor shortage.

There is some argument to which technologies you pick can make you more money.  I like Hanz's ideas of following your heart.  I know of PHP programmers who make $125 an hour, I can't do that because I don't like building e-commerce sites.  I don't dislike the technology, I dislike the clientele and the application towards which they are built.  I hear COBOL programmers are raking it in, but I wouldn't go out and get schooled for it if you've never programmed before.  When I used to build stuff for airplanes, I loved it, now I'm building a security system and love it.  I'm sticking to that kind of stuff from now on, and I'm picking up some books and equipment for that.  Within the embedded systems world, people see me as an applications guy, I start with the customer's brain and drill down to the machine code from there.  Other people are bit-twiddlers, they start from the opposite direction.  I'm glad I found out who I am, and I hope everyone who needs to hear it sees the meta-philosophy I'm trying to get across about finding out who they are.