Is IT in recovery?

strauchr

OK, since my user account has been deleted in error and its taking forever to sort and all I have is internet access right now hence I am really bored I decided to start up this topic.

I am reading a lot of horror stories on here from people in the US about huge amounts of outsourcing, ridiculously low pays and spending thousands on education which gets you nowhere.

However, I can say that for Australia and the UK I believe the IT industry is going very strong and there are quite good wages and good IT people in demand.

So I ask this, who thinks the IT industry is in recovery mode, that is it is getting better with more job opportunities etc. or who thinks it is just as bad or getting worse and that IT has been a huge mistake and waste of time.

As for myself who was hit very hard by the 2002/2003 major drop out in IT I have certainly lost confidence in my chosen career path but in the last year or so I am gaining the confidence back. However reading some of the forum posts in here shakes my confidence as well as the outsourcing to India trend - which will hopefully subside once the brass realise how much of a mistake it was.

EdTheLad

I for one definitely think the IT industry is back on its feet.
I'm freelance and have been lucky to have worked through the bad times, i remember looking at the jobsites which were basically empty,now their hopping.So because of this i've jacked my job in and finish on Friday for a
well deserved break.
Alot of companies here in Europe are still in denial about the IT market...I wonder why? If i look at the company i'm working for now they have let afew thousand guys go over the past 4 years, this is a great excuse for companies to scale down and lose the dregs of the company.
Earliy retirements, plants moving location is all about removing the wallpaper employees,really when i see some of the guys around my office playing solitare all day i wonder how my company makes any money.
So the longer the company can play the recession and cost reduction card the better for them.But this has been going on for some time over a year or so, now its getting hard to hide.
Regarding the US i have no idea, i'm refering to Europe but i would be surprised if it was different there as we both tend to go hand in hand.

garv221

I never really thought IT was in a slump. No one is just handing out jobs anymore, you have to earn it. Same with the UAW, unions and ect. Only qualified people people get jobs now.

JDMurray

The dot com implosion in July 2000, and the 9/11 explosion in 2001, really slammed all USA tech industries. The USA has certainly recovered from all that, but things have definitely changed. For one, the economic downturn allowed a lot of tech companies to downsize their "deadwood" employees without fear of alarming their stockholders with massive lay-offs. Next, many companies seem to have have tightened their hiring practices to make sure that they acquire only quality people with long-term employment goals (no frequent job-hopping like back in the dot com era). Lastly, off-shoring (i.e., outsourcing to foreign countries) is a much more stable industry, and now much easier for even medium-sized companies to try.

In the USA IT industry, things are much better than they were, but things are also very different. This is true for us software-types too.

Webmaster

Things are going so well here that I have to consider doing some projects on the side. Although it's, fortunately, true that 'they' learned from the booms and bubbles, and demand skilled professionals only, they do need them in all sorts and sizes (from MS sys admins to SAP engineers). And because of the shortage we have in IT, and the expected demand in the EU within 5 years, off-shoring IT is not that a sensitive issue here in the Netherlands and getting a work visa is just a formalitity, 'if' you have the desired skills.

Since it will never be the way it was, I don't think it can fully recover to what it was, but from where I'm standing, it already recovered, and I'm pretty sure things will only get better.

strauchr

Well I have to say it does look good for the 'real' IT people who actually want to be in the field. I do believe that a lot of dead wood was lost in the bust but hard smart workers were also affected by the bust.

I know things will never be the same but to be honest thats a good thing, espicially from a business point of view. Our industry got a very tarnished name from massive spending blow outs, qualified but non-skilled and non-interested people working in the field and the feeling like there was no return on investment. It had to end eventually.

Overall I am positive for myself but do feel sorry for grads and younger people trying to get into the industry as so many entry level jobs are being offshored it is hard to get in the game. And maybe thats a good thing for us experienced people because in a few years time the shortage will be quite bad, the expense of offshoring will have increased due to high demand for workers in other countries and unexpected cost blow outs. Hmmmm, the more I think about it the more positive I am.

Maybe I'll think of Netherlands as my next place to live and work. Trying to decide on Canada or Ireland but never thought of Netherlands.

garv221

We (THE USA) act like we are the only people in the world. When we out source, we are actualy helping another country's economy and giving someone else a job. I think alot of people in the usa want a hand out. If someone wants a job in the usa, they wll find one. There are a million ways to make money. People need to stop bitching about things they cannot change and just make things happen.

TeKniques

garv221 wrote:

We (THE USA) act like we are the only people in the world. When we out source, we are actualy helping another country's economy and giving someone else a job. I think alot of people in the usa want a hand out. If someone wants a job in the usa, they wll find one. There are a million ways to make money. People need to stop bitching about things they cannot change and just make things happen.

I agree 100% with you.

I wish we would stop all the free trade garbage though.

strauchr

Well outsourcing doesn't really affect me but wait till you meet someone it affects. It is not a very nice situation I can tell you. And it is happening everywhere in the modern world not just the USA.

And there is a big difference between skilled people working in and with each others countries but just because its cheaper well that just says we're worthless.

However the truth is we can't stop it so we just ignore it and watch business nature take its course, it'll either backfire like I think it will or it will flourish and we all learn to speak Indian (joke).

Still, I think IT might be on the verge of a boom and business are preparing for it by outsourcing mundane jobs so they can control budget blow outs.

And unfortunately like everything in life it is all about who you know not what you know but that doesn't change being prepared for when your opportunity comes. (Seriously how else would Tori Spelling even get on TV??)

keatron

Keep in mind also that outsourcing doesn't always mean to another country. As a matter of fact, most jobs that have been outsourced in the US were outsourced to companies right here on US soil. My company is a consulting company and I can tell you that we're definantly not hurting for work either. I think we all need to realize that days of babysitting a server and 50 workstations while receiving a $70,000 a year salary are either gone or quickly fading. The industry in it's natural evolution is demanding more advanced skills to really be successful. I remember the times when installing an OS was only attempted by us techno geeks. Now everybody and their mothers can do that. Truth be told, I think some of us became very comfortable with our skill sets and failed to maintain adaptability and failed to continue to enhance and grow our skill sets. Take this and add it to the fact that most HR department are to lazy to do proper research and find out what's required to do a given job, end up asking you to have every cert under the sun to do basic helpdesk work, and you get what we're stuck with today. The industry is also more niche and specialized today. I know people who couldn't build a network if their lives depended on it, but make 80k a year or more because they know how to configure a SAP installation or they know how to do a little more than the average Peoplesoft user.

JDMurray

keatron wrote:

Keep in mind also that outsourcing doesn't always mean to another country.

Actually, "outsourcing" doesn't mean shipping jobs to another county. That's called "off-shoring." Outsourcing is simply using an outside company to perform a service that otherwise would have been handled internally. The classic example is a small company outsourcing its payroll processing to an accounting company.

Outsourcing is very good for the local and national economy because it creates more jobs, businesses, and industries. Off-shoring is generally a bad thing for the local workers who can't compete with the wage levels of foreign workers.

stndrd_123

Where I'm working is the result of double outsourcing; Foremost Insurance outsourced desktop support to IBM, which in turn IBM outsourced some of the positions to Teksystems. So I work for Teksystems for a IBM 1 year contract at Foremost .

darkuser

hmmmm .......
I wonder how re-selling the re-sold services is cost-effective ?

qsub

Not all IT jobs can easily be outsourced. If you don't suck at IT, you've got a chance.

When I say suck, I mean have the "I got a degree/diploma/cert, so I'm entitled to 80k a year" type attitude.

Work hard, and move up.

Is school a waste of money? Yeah, it really is in my opinion. As far as I'm concerned, I walk in, the teacher tells me to buy a book, I read the book, goto the labs if I'm being marked on them, skip all the lectures and show up to the final exam.

Yet I'm still getting my college diploma and a university degree.

Why? Just because, it matters.

JDMurray

spfdz wrote:

Not all IT jobs can easily be outsourced. If you don't suck at IT, you've got a chance.

You also need to pick an IT specialty that can't be performed 15 time zones away. Pick something hands-on-only or that a company is not likely to do out-of-house, such as security.

keatron

jdmurray wrote:

You also need to pick an IT specialty that can't be performed 15 time zones away. Pick something hands-on-only or that a company is not likely to do out-of-house, such as security.

I agree 100%