Posted on 09/07/2010 8:23:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For years the technology sector has been considered the most dynamic, promising and globally envied industry in the United States. It escaped the recession relatively unscathed, and profits this year have been soaring. For years the technology sector has been considered the most dynamic, promising and globally envied industry in the United States. It escaped the recession relatively unscathed, and profits this year have been soaring.
“I apply for everything I can find, but there are just not that many jobs,” said Rosamaria Carbonell Mann, a software engineer.
But as the nation struggles to put people back to work, even high-tech companies have been slow to hire, a sign of just how difficult it will be to address persistently high joblessness. While the labor report released last week showing August figures provided mildly positive news on private-sector hiring, the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent.
The disappointing hiring trend raises questions about whether the tech industry can help power a recovery and sustain American job growth in the next decade and beyond. Its tentativeness has prompted economists to ask “If high tech isn’t hiring, who will?”
“We are talking about people with very particular, advanced skills out there who are at this point just not needed anymore,” says Bart van Ark, chief economist at the Conference Board, a business and economic research organization. “Even in this sector, there is tremendous insecurity.”
Government labor reports released this year, including the most recent one, present a tableau of shrinking opportunities in high-skill fields.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I can attest to this. And at my age, I am competing with much younger guys for even the jobs doing what I was doing 10 years ago. The wages are seriously down as well.
You and I are also competing with the scads of Indians brought to these shores by MS with the intention of
destroying the earning power of native-born engineers.
RE: I can attest to this. And at my age, I am competing with much younger guys for even the jobs doing what I was doing 10 years ago. The wages are seriously down as well.
Well my friend, let’s face it... once you decide on a career in technology, you are DOOMED ( for want of a better word ) to a life of perpetual study and catching up.
What you knew a year ago would eventually become obsolete this year and if you are an expert at one aspect of technology, there is no guarantee that your expertise will be in demand today.
I know of a lot of very skilled software developers who are out of work today because their skillset ( e.g. development in the TANDEM COMPUTER platform, development on the OpenVMS platform, etc.) are now OBSOLETE.
Even if you hitch your career on a competitive company like Microsoft or Oracle, you have to continue upgrading your knowledge of their product or your old knowledge will be obsolete before you know it. Who wants someone who knows Oracle 9.0 for instance, when people now want Oracle 11.0 ?
Technology is a field that continues to evolve and just because you have 25 years experience does not mean you will be more valuable than the college graduate you happens to be at the cutting edge of what companies want.
That’s just the reality of things.
They aren’t even always bringing them into the country. They are just shipping the work off shore.
The barrage of regulations under rat control has been great for offshore firms. The rats have substantially increased government imposed employment costs. With falling tech wages in the US, employment should be shifting back here.
The Lilly Ledbetter Law is just one law with possibly devasting consequences for employers. Why would an employer allow themselves to be target of discrimination lawsuits with no effective statute of limitations? Large employers have bulls eyes written on their foreheads.
The rats have been on a feeding frenzy to increase employment regulations. Every federal agency has been engaged in a competition to levy additional regulations. The rats have some incredible regulation bombs that they hope to detonate. The Equal Pay Act is effectively government control of compensation. Card check will strangle employers with labor cartels among its white collar workforce.
I suppose these regulations and laws are great if you have position in a protected industry. For the rest, the additional regulatory cost is a major factor in the lack of hiring.
If you read this article from SFGate.com (the web page of the San Francisco Chronicle):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/05/BUHI1F8C8F.DTL
Note that my contention that American businesses are massively offshoring operations for tax avoidance reasons is 100% true. This article supports my contention that we really DO need massive income tax reform, if only to entice American businesses to keep their operations as much as possible in the USA.
H1-Bs are total BS and they get their klans/tribes in companies and Americans are blocked from being hired.
However - if you are doing Open VMS programming and think it is going to survive then these guys are lazy or stupid. If you are a programmer you have to stay on top of the current crap being pushed. Java or whatever. Yeah it sucks.
RE: However - if you are doing Open VMS programming and think it is going to survive then these guys are lazy or stupid
I really would not call those doing OpenVMS programming lazy or stupid. I know of many companies thathave HUGE legacy systems that need to be maintained (OpenVMS and Tandem being a few of them).
Now, in the middle part of this decade, they embarked on an effort to MIGRATE away from these systems to LINUX or UNIX.
This migration effort STILL NEEDED the skills of those who knew OpenVMS and Tandem. If you are an expert in these systems, your skillset would be still be needed then DURING the migration project.
Once the migration is complete, your skills are no longer needed and buh-bye to you. That happened to a few former colleages of mine last year (2009). They had a good run from 2003 to 2008, but they are no longer needed.
Suffice it to say that it was not because they were lazy or stupid. It was simply because they were doing their job TOO WELL and forgot to plan ahead (OK forgetting to plan ahead is not wise I will concede).
It seems to me one way to serve notice on these out sourcing companies is for laid off engineers to immediately collaborate and come up with innovative services and products that compete with the companies that laid them off. Screw non competitive agreements and intellectual property clauses...if those companies can’t use the powerhouse talents and experienced techs that have been laid off then why be loyal? One has to eat! (and tie these companies up for years in court as they try to justify to an increasingly angry populace as to why their former employees should be allowed to starve.)
Forgetting to plan = stupid. These guys and gals needed to be looking a bit further down the road.
2009 and they think Open VMS is a marketable skill?
They could have bought “Someone Moved My Cheese” on Amazon used for probably .50 cents.
What? Actually compete?!? Next you'll be saying we don't have any birthright to prosperity and we should expect to get paid the market rate! ;-)
Remember... Shift Happens
Get Politically active (Tea Party).
Both parties (R and D) have been pushing raising the 401B Visas.
These are the “legal” migrant tech workers - there are hordes of them now (I personally know many companies that have 1 or 2 USA citizens and then 20 or so 401B Visa workers).
Can you believe with unemployment what it is that we are still “importing” workers? And paying taxes to administer the program!!!!
Get thee to your local tea party before it’s too late and YOUR job is outsourced (inside or outside the country)
I think you mean "H1B" visas.
But, yes.
silicon valey, where age discrimination is not only legal, it is required.
Most techies I know voted and love Obama, even now.
So what are you going to do?
RE: silicon valey, where age discrimination is not only legal, it is required.
IMHO, ageism is RAMPANT in corporate America. I would say most of those white collar workers who have been let go by the banks, investment houses and other industries are above 50 years of age. They would add a smattering of young ones, in order to avoid being called on “age discrimination” ( AKA firing diversity), but by and large, it is the older folks who are being let go.
Now here’s an interesting but disturbing trend -— with Social Security on the road to insolvency, there has been suggestions from both Republicans and Democrats to UP THE AGE of those eligible to receive SS to 67 !!
The question I want to ask these folks is this -— if ou get laid off at 55 and up even if you still want to work, who’s going to hire you?
You’ll have to wait over a decade to receive what you were forcibly asked to put in when you were working.
RE: I think you mean “H1B” visas.
Take note that the Microsofts, Oracles and IBMs of this country are the ones LOBBYING for INCREASING H1B.
The GOP and the Dems are simply responding to the lobbying ( and their generous (AHEM) contributions of course ).
There’s lots of legacy OpenVMS work that needs to be done, I’d actually say OpenVMS guys have an advantage over the Windows/Linux clones out there in the field.
The answer is for these laid off people to start their own businesses of one sort or another.
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