I can attest that there are lots of jobs for “Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence” experts. However the bar has been set so high that there are very few qualified people. For instance, a lot of companies are looking for Cognos developers, but unless you have worked for a company that used Cognos, there is virually no way you could ever learn it. IBM does not provide evaluation copies to consultants and there is almost no third party material of any use.
I don’t know why, but companies seem to have turned thierback on training. Guys who could write assembler or COBOL or Visual Basic could easily handle Cognos with a couple weeks of training.
Many companies are run by accountants, which is always a bad idea unless it is an accounting firm. I have seen them deny people training, then turn around a pay their salary to learn by goofing off for six months. Then lay them off because they don't know the job. And hire more people.
This is the sort of thing that happens when the only cost you know is the one you can write down on paper. Training gives you an invoice. The cost of dismissing an experienced employee and hiring a far less efficient inexperienced employee doesn't.
However, even our colleges are turning out functionally illiterate people now. If you have interviewed people, you know.
We are living in a transitional time where the Education Industrial Complex will be the “gatekeeper” regarding who gets or does not get jobs.
Let’s face it though, the COBOL guys are so old that the only code they write is how to put on their Depends.
I think it's a direct result of the old adage "Adding people to a late software project makes it later." Rather than bringing in a candidate who is not a 100% match, the team just pulls more overtime rather than dealing with the distraction of training. And since just about every project is always late, they never fix the structural problem of having too few talented developers on staff - they rely on the two or three veteran "geniuses" to pull off everything on time.
Also, business intelligence is difficult to hire for, because HR gets caught up in matching capital letters they don't understand (C++, C#, SQL) when what is really needed is someone who can conceptualize business problems and their technical solutions. There just aren't that many of those people, which is why job postings these days are almost always asking for someone with dozens of capital letters and 3-5 years of experience rather than the 20 year veteran who very often turns out to be a career office politician with a limited ability to learn. Add in the looming expense of ObamaCare, and it becomes clear why your corporate career is essentially over at 40 if you haven't jumped onto the management track.
I think it's a direct result of the old adage "Adding people to a late software project makes it later." Rather than bringing in a candidate who is not a 100% match, the team just pulls more overtime rather than dealing with the distraction of training. And since just about every project is always late, they never fix the structural problem of having too few talented developers on staff - they rely on the two or three veteran "geniuses" to pull off everything on time.
Also, business intelligence is difficult to hire for, because HR gets caught up in matching capital letters they don't understand (C++, C#, SQL) when what is really needed is someone who can conceptualize business problems and their technical solutions. There just aren't that many of those people, which is why job postings these days are almost always asking for someone with dozens of capital letters and 3-5 years of experience rather than the 20 year veteran who very often turns out to be a career office politician with a limited ability to learn. Add in the looming expense of ObamaCare, and it becomes clear why your corporate career is essentially over at 40 if you haven't jumped onto the management track.