Just felt the ripple of the economy today

Paul Boz

I got laid off in April from a company that I had worked for for five years. Thankfully I got very lucky and landed a job in the IT security industry, so there is no shortage of business. We actually hired someone last week who's start date is the first week of January. If there's one truth in life it's that crime and theft escalates when the economy tanks, so business is booming.

blargoe

vsmith3rd wrote:

steve_f wrote:

Not the end of the world, but I am the newest member of the IT dept (just over a year) so I would be the first to go.
[/list]

Not so fast young Skywalker. I've seem companies in similar situations that look to trim the high fat first. A high salaried Architect should feel no safer than the wet behind the ears noob. Some companies just look at the financial bottom line, which means cutting the lowest salaries brings about the least relief.

That's in part how I survived and advanced over the years... of course the skills help too, but I'm not arrogant enough that skills alone are enough. I was cheap too.

Kalabin

Well, I can officially say that I am feeling it. I was pulled into my supervisor's office last week and notified that December 31st is my last day. I suppose this gives me time to finally bust out my CCNA and possibly my MCDST. I don't work directly in IT, but work as a Network Technician for a telecommunications company more as a field tech. I have been debating on certifying up and trying to get back into the IT / Network equipment side.

sprint100

I took the hit when I got laid off last week, scary thing is that they are still eliminating positions. I just look at this as a good time get out of California (unless I get another job here) and get more certs to finish my MCSA and finally take the CCNA.

CCIEWANNABE

bmcghee wrote:

I'm looking for the above for a 6 month right to hire in Ofallon Il. 25- 30 an hour.

I live in O'fallon, Il. I work at DISA CONUS on Scott AFB. I think you may have contacted me before. I have been there for just over 2 years, and have learned pretty much all that they have to offer in Tier 1 I am pretty comfortable where I am at right now and the compensation is better, but thanks for asking.

blargoe

Starting to hit us now.

I no longer get a company issued cell phone. No one lower ranking than a Director gets one now but I'm free to file an expense report for a personal cell phone and get back some of my monthly cost at a fixed rate per minute, with documentation that I actually used it for business purposes. Since I don't really have working personal cell phone right now, I'm not going to bother. I'm not buying one out of my pocket so they can call me all hours of the night.

Also they're making us document EVERYTHING we do in excruciating detail, every hour, every day. Every email, every phone call, every hardware and software installation, which project we're working on, time spent on documentation, when we are in a meeting, when we are in the bathroom, at lunch, etc. Everyone has to justify their job position.

kriscamaro68

Wow that sounds like it blows. We dont do that here luckily.

jmanrta

blargoe wrote: »

Starting to hit us now.

I no longer get a company issued cell phone. No one lower ranking than a Director gets one now but I'm free to file an expense report for a personal cell phone and get back some of my monthly cost at a fixed rate per minute, with documentation that I actually used it for business purposes. Since I don't really have working personal cell phone right now, I'm not going to bother. I'm not buying one out of my pocket so they can call me all hours of the night.

Also they're making us document EVERYTHING we do in excruciating detail, every hour, every day. Every email, every phone call, every hardware and software installation, which project we're working on, time spent on documentation, when we are in a meeting, when we are in the bathroom, at lunch, etc. Everyone has to justify their job position.

wow man that's insane

dynamik

jmanrta wrote: »

wow man that's insane

Hopefully they appreciate the value of TE

jmanrta

dynamik wrote: »

Hopefully they appreciate the value of TE

I think most employers recognize the value of techs increasing knowledge base and upgrading their skills because as we all know the tech field is constantly changing at a fast pace.

skrpune

blargoe wrote: »

Starting to hit us now.

I no longer get a company issued cell phone. No one lower ranking than a Director gets one now but I'm free to file an expense report for a personal cell phone and get back some of my monthly cost at a fixed rate per minute, with documentation that I actually used it for business purposes. Since I don't really have working personal cell phone right now, I'm not going to bother. I'm not buying one out of my pocket so they can call me all hours of the night.

Also they're making us document EVERYTHING we do in excruciating detail, every hour, every day. Every email, every phone call, every hardware and software installation, which project we're working on, time spent on documentation, when we are in a meeting, when we are in the bathroom, at lunch, etc. Everyone has to justify their job position.

Sounds like they're getting pressure to cut costs in any way possible, and the documentation is so that when they ARE forced to cut folks, they have a paper trail of who to cut & why.

Do they really expect you do document potty time though?? (I'm hoping you were just exaggerating a bit, otherwise, that's kinda creepy...hopefully they don't ask for the details! )

dynamik

Sepiraph

At my company, there is a salary freeze across the board, from the CEO down. No word about bonus this year. There has been a few lay-off in the other department but none in ours, although we are not filling up a vacant spot either.

The source of revenue in my department (and company to a certain extent) comes from long-term government contracts, which is stable. It is the other commercial area of the company where business is hurting.

dave0212

bertieb wrote: »

Good luck to those looking for work at the moment. I agree, it sucks. We had a hefty staffing cut early this year and I wouldn't be surprised if more were to go after the New Year. 'Techies' are a bit thin on the ground and everyone is having to pick up extra tasks/projects as a result so hopefully we'll be ok and scrape by.

I work in a hosting environment, it's pretty quiet at the moment though I have noticed a lot of the smaller companies outsourcing their systems which seems to tie in with them laying off internal staff. Rubbiiishhhhhhh.

Once again, good luck folks and to the OP - at least you managed to keep a job for the time being - pay cuts hurt but the easier option would have been to lay off people.

Keep your chins up people

Looks like BertieB can see into the future

The technical teams were finally hit by redundancies 2 weeks ago as we are closing one of our sites, 1 network admin and one sys admin were cut from the teams. Thankfully myself and BertieB are still here and strangely got a small payrise.

We now have the task of migrating all the customers to the remaining data center, so gives us something to do.

blargoe

dynamik wrote: »

Hopefully they appreciate the value of TE

Yeah, luckily I'm covered this week, I'm on the west coast upgrading our datacenter, all my time gets logged that way.

Devin McCloud

I am struggling to even get and IT job. I had a second interview with the same company for a job last week, both interviews went well I thought, no call back. This was for a $11 an hour 40h/week no benefits job! Has the world gone to hell or what. I can drive truck and still make $17-19 an hour but I can't get an IT job. The best part is the interviewer kept telling how their was a huge demand for IT personnel right now. I can not see it.

undomiel

I guess it depends where you're at. Here in Phoenix the market is about dead for IT. It's been over a month and I've finally scored my first interview for Phoenix! I've been having better luck getting out of state interviews. Everything phone so far though and haven't been able to score a follow-up. All for consultant positions as well.

I haven't been seeing the demand for IT much of anywhere except for a few markets like Seattle. Consulting seems to be where it is at though, as all these small and medium sized businesses eliminate their IT staff.

paintb4707

We cut back on plastic utensils. We now have plates, silverware, and a dishwasher.

Fortunately for me I work for a nutritional supplement manufacturer. Companies in the pharmaceutical industry don't seem to get effected *too much* by the economy, since people will always need their drugs or natural supplements.

arwes

The "ripple" hit us late last year. We're an insurance company and since we had severe hurricane damages in south Louisiana (Boz knows all too well about that) we didn't get our incentives from the carriers like we normally do. So the budget got cut and with it went our proposed TrackIT rollout and some other things like a VPN concentrator and dedicated cooling for the server room (something I advised them to purchase when they first proposed building the thing).

I had a coworker for a short time to help handle the little stuff while I work on setting up remote users, but he decided to act like a fool right before Christmas so now I'm setting up remote users (and fighting with their IT departments), dealing with these crappy Xerox 8860 wax jet printers that we bought (and are getting them replaced with WC 7232's), and working with our new insurance software vendor to stomp out stupid bugs. I miss the simplicity of our old web based insurance software.

blargoe

I got my server budget slashed in half today. Our VMWare project is the ONLY datacenter project that has survived the cut... which is fine, if I had one that's the one I'd pick

Tesl

I'm working in finance, so as you would expect things are pretty grim. More cuts today in some other departments, and IT cuts are going to be taking place next week. No idea right now if that will include me or not.

This is the fourth round of cuts now so I'm somewhat used to it!

vsmith3rd

I've kinda seen the effects, just a little. I work for a bank that was just purchased by another bank. Our bank runs a Windows 2003 Infrastructure, with some Linux sprinkled here and there. The new, bigger bank runs Novell with the Group Wise mail client. Their command center is several states away, so all but four tech positions will be dissolved, mine included. The only positive is that we do have some advanced notice to start looking, but the transition ends May 23. So I'll be let go sometime between now and then. I know I have to be extremely aggressive now with the state of the economy causing businesses to cut back or shut down. I wish all of you the best in your efforts to keep your positions or in securing new positions.

One positive is that I have been motivated to seriously resume my cert studies again, and plan to pursue a degree after starting my new job. I just hope I can find a tech job.

Megadeth4168

No raises this year and our department (The IT department which consists of me and my manager) is expected to make a huge cut in our budget. The only way we have been able to come up with the cuts is by taking on increased workload of projects that we normally contract... I personally have no problem with this since it gives me extra experience and it cuts down on mistakes.... That's a whole different story though.

The reason we are having a hard time coming up with things to cut is because we didn't have any approved projects or computer replacements for this year anyway....

vincentnyc10

Megadeth4168 wrote: »

....
The reason we are having a hard time coming up with things to cut is because we didn't have any approved projects or computer replacements for this year anyway....

doesn't look good...so it would probably be reduction in both of your salary or they would probably will laid of one of you two.

Megadeth4168

vincentnyc10 wrote: »

doesn't look good...so it would probably be reduction in both of your salary or they would probably will laid of one of you two.

No, you misunderstand... Above what you quoted, I pointed out what we did find to cut, that was contractual services. I'm not worried about my job, it's a 2 man IT department for the whole organization of 10 buildings and we do everything from Cable Television broadcasting to Network Administration. Even if I had the lowest seniority in my union (which I don't), no one in the whole organization could bump me.

Crunchyhippo

Fortunately, I seem to be safe in my current contract job. We're only two years into a five year contract with the state, so since they've already paid for me to be here, I should be good for at least another three years as long as I do a competant job. I'm five months into this position now, and it's the "experience" I need to have on my resume. I'm working on my mid-level certification now, and once I have a year under my belt here, plus a CCVP later in the year, I hope to be in a much better bargaining position come time to look for a higher-paying job.

However, I do feel it for those who are hurting. Many of my friends have either lost their jobs or are in danger of losing them. I thank God that I'm in a more secure position, especially since I have a wife and three small children depending on me.

vincentnyc10

^^^^ good god....lol @ ur avatar...remind me of the first lethal weapon movie.

blargoe

Another one bites the dust at my company. Gone from 9 to 6 total.