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The IT job market shrank dramatically after the dot com bubble burst.
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Current News
Project Manager -
Titles Large
Enterprises Mid-Sized
Enterprises $94,471.74 $80,058.56 $95,658.06 $86,119.15 $89,257.62 $62,462.99 $89,004.99 $89,193.04
The one Project Manager type that has been impacted the most by the economy is Network Technical Services. That is the area where many enterprises (Mid-sized Enterprises in particular) have made cuts.
Currently the Mid-Atlantic
market is toughest place to find a job.
Janco Associates is just completing its 2009 Mid
Year Salary Survey and found that the median salaries paid to IT Executives in
large enterprises (over 500 million in sales or with more than 100 IT
professionals) has fallen in the last 18 months. The CEO of
Janco, Victor Janulaitis said, "Over the last six quarters there has been a
noticeable reduction in costs associated with senior level IT professionals
in large enterprise. In New York alone there are over 200 IT executives
that had earned well into the six figures that are now looking for
work." The
2009 Mid Year IT Salary
Survey will be released at the end of June and more information can be
gotten at Janco's websites.
CIO's need to adjust staffing requirements to
address the needs of 2010 versus 1990. Application achitecture has and is
continuing to change.
1990 Applications 2010 Applications Mainframe - Host Based Web - Server Based Designed
to last Designed to change Tightly
integrated Open Architecture, modular Application
silos Enterprise Mirrors Code-oriented Process-oriented Rigid
sequential development - SDM Interactive
and iterative development - SOA Cost-centered Business-oriented Homogeneous Heterogeneous Job content is changing as well as knowledge requirements. more
What
are the signs that the CIOs job is at risk. Unfortunately, many CIOs have a hard
time recognizing their own shortcomings. CIOs and IT managers should watch
for these signs that could indicate that co-workers have a problem with
them:
The top reasons why CIOs and IT Managers lose
their jobs are:
(Reuters) -
Private business activity in Hong Kong stayed below growth levels for the 11th
straight month in May, but the speed of contraction eased
further as staff costs dropped sharply, a purchasing managers' survey showed
on Monday. Respondents
widely commented that further falls in new business and an uncertain economic
outlook were key factors that contributed to the latest decline, Markit Group
Ltd, which compiles the monthly survey, said. However,
overall cost burdens faced by private companies also fell as job layoffs
accelerated and staff costs marked their steepest drop since June 2003, the
survey showed. The Hong
Kong purchasing managers' index (PMI) rose to a seasonally adjusted 44.77 in May
from 44.34 in April. A reading above 50 indicates growth in activity, while a
figure below 50 signals deterioration. The survey
compares business conditions with a month earlier, based on data from Hong Kong
companies across industries including manufacturing, services, retail and
construction.
(Forbes) The cities that are growing in
spite of the recession have: more business opportunities, better weather and
more affordable housing. The top three areas according to the data are Raleigh,
N.C., ranking first, which jumped 4.29% to nearly 1.9 million; Austin, Texas,
which came in second, with a 3.77% increase to almost 1.7 million; and
Charlotte, N.C., which moved up 3.36% to 1.7 million. The in-migration that happened in the middle of
this decade certainly had a lot to do with the housing boom. When that went
bust, so did those crazy population balloons. But these particular places are
still growing because instead of building an economy that relies heavily on one
industry, most of the metro areas on Forbes' list serve as headquarters for a
diverse range of companies. For example, Austin's biggest employers include the
University of Texas, Advanced Micro Devices and Dell. That wide range might have
something to do with the area's relatively low January 2009 unemployment rate of
6.4%. This is the opposite of what happened in true
housing boom-and-bust towns like Las Vegas. In 2004, Las Vegas - a
foreclosure mecca - saw a population increase of 4.6%, followed by 3.66% in
2005, 3.98% in 2006 and 3.22% in 2007. In 2008, that number fell to
2%.
Global IT
service providers continue to be adversely impacted by the economy as BT Group
plans to cut about 15,000 jobs.
This news comes on top of 15,000 job cuts the company made during its
fiscal year, which ended March 31. BT said that as part of its cost savings
program, it had reduced full-time employees during the year by 5,000, while also
reducing by around 10,000 the number of indirect employees working through
agencies or third party contractors. Further reductions of a similar level are planned this year according to
BT. These moves by BT come as its
profits and revenue slide due to the global economic downturn, and fierce
competition.
Microsoft Corp. laid-off 3,000 workers additional
workers in the US. This is second
wave of a major reduction the company announced in January. In a memo to
employees, CEO Steve Ballmer said more cuts are possible. In a letter to some
employees Ballmer said, "As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor
the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take
further actions on our cost structure, including additional job eliminations."
Janco Associates' predicts that if the
new taxes on un-captured offshore revenues are enacted Microsoft will be forced
to more of it operations outside of the US in order to maintain its competitive
advantage in the software market.
This would in turn mean ever-greater lay-offs in the
US.
Terminated
employees pose some unique risks for enterprises; many are angry and are finding
it difficult to find new jobs. As a
result they can do damage to enterprise systems. One such employee, a systems
administrator pleaded guilty in a federal court yesterday to charges that he
tried to extort an undisclosed amount of money and even forcibly secure good job
references from a mutual fund company that had just laid him off.
The best
solution is to have a well-defined set of policies and procedures in place for
security, which includes processes to assist in the management of employee
termination. The Security Manual Template
offered by Janco Associates directly
address how to do this and provides forms to assist enterprises of all sizes to
more effectively manage the termination
process.
June graduates will find a much tighter job market due to
H-1B and off-shoring by US companies. Several recent studies show that between
H-1B visa workers and off-shoring the IT industry has job market has been hit
hard.
The technology sector in the
U.S. has always been in headlines due to various issues. Most recently, the
sector was in news due to the projected decline in the number of deals
because of expected drop in companies' IT spending, which is going to
decline by 3.1 percent in 2009 (as per Forrester's recent study). The
sector is again set to make more headlines with the number of layoffs
announced in the recent past. Companies
operating in the U.S. tech sector have announced 84,217 jobs cut in the first
quarter of 2009, according to a global outplacement company. Of which 18,972
employees were laid off in the telecom tech sector (12,395 more than the number
of employees laid off in the same area in Q1 '08), 33,665 in
computer (26,740 more layoffs than in the same period last year), and
33,665 in electronics (27,737 more jobs cut than Q1 '08). This is the
largest quarterly jobs cut since Q4 '02 when the industry had posted 133,511
layoffs and five times higher than Q1 '08 when it had registered 17,345 jobs
cut.
Every
organization faces pressure to reduce waste and run at peak efficiency. For
many, this means making difficult personnel decisions to eliminate positions
that do not add value to the organization and either eliminating or re-deploying people
in those roles. The
climate in many organizations is tense as these changes take hold, and the
stakes are high with little room for error. This is compounded proposed changes
in workplace regulation making it much more difficult and costly to terminate an
underperforming employee. Your
organization may be behind the curve if job designs have not changed with your
revamped plan of action. If employees are performing their jobs the same old
way, they are holding the company back. Job descriptions are
one of the key components in navigating the current environment.
The economic recession and the resulting widespread job cuts at IT vendors were expected to reduce H-1B demand this
year. However, immigration attorneys and supporters of the visa program had
predicted that the available supply would easily be exhausted again. The CEO of Janco, Victor Janulaitis predicted that the
number of visa requests will fall between 85,000 to 95,000 this year. He
said," The economy has impacted everyone and there is a 'reluctance' by US
employers to hire non-US
citizens and face a possible public back lash." Demand for H-1B visas typically
fluctuates with the economy. The initial number of H-1B applications filed with
the federal government was down sharply from the number filed a year ago. In 2008, in just five days, the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 163,000 applications for
the 85,000 visas that were available. The USCIS resorted to a lottery to award
the visas. USCIS began accepting H-1B applications for fiscal 2010, which starts in October. However, nine days into
the filing period, only about 62,000 visa petitions had been submitted. The
USCIS said 42,000 of those applications were for one of the 65,000 regular visas
that can be issued. Another 20,000 visas are set aside for foreigners with
advanced degrees from U.S. universities; the agency has received more than
enough applications for those visas but said it is continuing to accept
additional petitions. Moreover, that still may happen,
especially after college graduations in May. Foreign students cannot apply for
H-1B visas until they graduate - a restriction that shut them out of the
application process in recent years. That prompted the Bush administration last
April to extend the amount of time that some foreigners can continue to work in the U.S. on their
student visas.
The jobless numbers for March
jumped from to the highest rate since 1983. Unemployment went from 8.1% to
8.5%. About 663,000 jobs were lost. Factoring in part-time and discouraged
workers, the jobless rate is more than 15%. There
were 9,000 more jobs cut than analysts had predicted, and March's losses were
12,000 more than February's. January's numbers have been modified from an
original number of 655,000 to 741,000. Since December of 2007, the economy has
lost a net total of 5.1 million jobs while the federal government has imported
more than 2 million foreign workers. Factories took the hardest hit in March, cutting 161,000 jobs.
Despite some positive news in the home sales numbers from February, construction
firms cut 126,000 jobs. Professional and business services, retailers and the hospitality industry also
saw significant cuts.
In today's
economy, every CIO is faced with pressure to reduce unnecessary expenses and run
at peak efficiency. For many CIOs, this means making difficult personnel
decisions to eliminate positions that do not add sufficient value to the
organization and either eliminating or re-deploying people in those roles. The
climate in many IT organizations is tense as these changes take hold, and the
stakes are high with little room for error. One of the
greatest expenses in most IT organizations is personnel. Even in today's environment unexpected
opening will occur. Janco has identified the best practices that CIOs and IT
managers should follow if they are to succeed in successfully manage their
staffing. Understand
and be able to justify how each position supports the enterprise's key
objectives.
Ways to standout as an IT professional
are:
As the economic news continues to get bleaker, budget and staffing
cuts are a fact of life for many IT departments - resulting in postponed
purchases, delayed projects, hiring freezes and layoffs. IT investments need to
be targeted and focused on the core business and its bottom
line. The situation poses difficult leadership challenges for CIOs. CIOs
need to focus on key IT initiatives so they can proceed as planned, because of a
desire by many business executives to rely even more heavily on technology to
help reduce corporate costs and boost revenues. The recession is not good for IT per se, but CIO do have an
opportunity to clean up the processes at facilities where things maybe were not
as efficient as they could be.
All
of these questions are the basis for an HR process which can insulate an
enterprise from risk and costs associated with terminations that go
wrong.
The Security Executive Council recently concluded research that
highlights key skills that the next generation security leaders need in order to
be successful in bringing value to their company's business operations. The
following leadership skills are considered essential:
With the amount of IT staff turnover,
if you are looking for a job one of the first things that you need to do is have
a killer resume. It is not unusual for an IT recruiter to have a stack of over
200 resumes to look at the challenge that you face is how do you make your
resume stand out so you are called for an interview. This is what we have found
that works.
According to the Congressional Budget OfficeOver the past 15
months, the stock market has wiped out $2 trillion in Americans' retirement
savings . With the downturn in the
stock market and the laying off of so many IT professionals, there now is a
situation where "baby boomer" are competing for the same jobs as the
"millennials" are just getting out of college. CIOs now have to decide whom to hire by sorting through a maze of
competing technical expertise, business acumen, cultural preferences, and career
expectations. That is not always easy. Millennials have a tendency to eat,
sleep and breathe Web 2.0 technologies, and the value of that may not be
immediately clear to a traditional CIO. Boomers
have expertise in more traditional technologies such as IT infrastructure and
operating systems. That's good news for large enterprises, which are always on
the lookout for IT professionals with the skills needed to support its largely
mainframe-based package-tracking system.
That type of expertise can limit boomers' prospects elsewhere.
This
eagerness to learn gives many millennials a leg up on the competition. There is
a managerial flip side to consider. Young IT workers who are bold enough to take
on new technologies are also more likely to be impatient with the constraints of
traditional workplaces. Businesses
that expect all employees to march to the beat of the same drummer, however, may
have a tough time reining in millennials' more spirited work ethic and thirst
for experimentation.
Financial services firms that receive federal bailout
money will be prohibited from hiring H-1B workers if legislation introduced last
night in the U.S. Senate wins adoption. Initial estimates by Janco Associates
shows that Indian offshore outsourcing firms will be hurt the most. Janco estimates that 42% of those
outsourcing firm's revenues are from the financial services sector. Offshore
companies use workers on H-1B visas to deliver services in the
U.S. The U.S. Senate bill would bar any recipient of the
Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the program being used by the government
to purchase some $700 billion of bad mortgage assets, from hiring anyone on an
H-1B visa. The feeling by some on the Senate floor was that
companies going through layoffs that employ H-1B visas (holding workers) have a
moral obligation to protect American workers by putting them first during these
difficult times. Earlier Senator Grassley told Microsoft that it had a "moral
obligation" to give job priority to U.S. workers over foreigners with H-1B
visas.
Helping to ensure that IT security workers have job
security are factors such as industry
(PCI-DSS and ISO) and regulatory (Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA) compliance
demands, increasing data protection requirements stemming from wireless
deployments and rollouts of virtualization technology, and growing consumer
angst over data breaches.
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