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previous: Dr Krumpet Re: About "foreign" workers -- 5/25/2003 6:58 PM

Re: About "foreign" workers..fwiw

5/25/2003 11:51 PM
sr	Re: About "foreign" workers..fwiw 700,000 gross? How many of them are folks who quit? How many are looking for something else to do? How many of them actually got laid off/downsized ? Lest I remind you about lies, damned lies and statistics. How many of them were fired for poor social skills? By the same token, how many were displaced by workers from overseas, downsized by overaggressive mgt teams that bit off too much.. I know it could be 700,001 tommorow with me beating bricks, but the number needs some clarity to it. In my corner of the IT universe, it's a decent time to be a consultant, a good time to be a generalist and a bad time to be a specialist. The market is tough, my dept went from 3 to 2. Of course the accounting dept went from 7 to 1. There's automation for ya. That's the downside of IT management; it's partly my fault that happened. They are my friends. I helped select those products, made the business case why we should get them, built the servers they run on. I am the enemy, sort of. (although without exception they all went on to better positions btw, so change >< a bad thing) On programming, I agree with Mr. Hammer's friend. It will be a commodity if it isn't already. The value in programming is in the product - what biz theory wonks call "the vision thing" and perhaps the process control as well. With tight process control and a clear vision of what you want as an end product, there is no shortage of competent coders out there who can do the job. Coding in my environment is something we hire consultants for. We tell them what we want and how we want it. They produce. The steady job (at the moment!!) is for the generalist; the one who tries to understand the business they are in & the full breadth of technology and attempts to put them together in a productive way. To further the mechanic analogy, look at the value of an MCSE vs say Solaris or Cisco certification. You can't throw a rock without hitting a microsoft certified something or other.. the other 2 pay a good 20-30% more and even then with the ISP blowups there are amazing cisco engineers looking for work... and the best Solaris engineer I've ever worked with is having a hard time finding work. (if anyone needs an amazing Sun/Solaris guy in the MA area, he's the one. I'll get you hooked up!) It sucks to be a specialist. re: American Education System. IT moves way too fast for traditional education to keep up. Telecom moves way too fast as well. Industry can't even keep up with either. There is too much breadth, too much depth.. just plain too much everything. I learned everything I know about IT OTJ. I contend there is not a college on the planet that could have prepared me for the job I entered here. The best course I took in college from an IT perspective was Strategic Management and then Organizational Behavior. Seriously! Luckily these guys were willing to train - bc it's less expensive btw. I was the 'cheap' solution to their problem.

5/25/2003 11:51 PM

Re: About "foreign" workers..fwiw

700,000 gross? How many of them are folks who quit? How many are looking for something else to do? How many of them actually got laid off/downsized ? Lest I remind you about lies, damned lies and statistics.

How many of them were fired for poor social skills? By the same token, how many were displaced by workers from overseas, downsized by overaggressive mgt teams that bit off too much.. I know it could be 700,001 tommorow with me beating bricks, but the number needs some clarity to it.

In my corner of the IT universe, it's a decent time to be a consultant, a good time to be a generalist and a bad time to be a specialist. The market is tough, my dept went from 3 to 2. Of course the accounting dept went from 7 to 1. There's automation for ya. That's the downside of IT management; it's partly my fault that happened. They are my friends. I helped select those products, made the business case why we should get them, built the servers they run on. I am the enemy, sort of.
(although without exception they all went on to better positions btw, so change >< a bad thing)

On programming, I agree with Mr. Hammer's friend. It will be a commodity if it isn't already. The value in programming is in the *product* - what biz theory wonks call "the vision thing" and perhaps the process control as well. With tight process control and a clear vision of what you want as an end product, there is no shortage of competent coders out there who can do the job. Coding in my environment is something we hire consultants for. We tell them what we want and how we want it. They produce. The steady job (at the moment!!) is for the generalist; the one who tries to understand the business they are in & the full breadth of technology and attempts to put them together in a productive way. To further the mechanic analogy, look at the value of an MCSE vs say Solaris or Cisco certification. You can't throw a rock without hitting a microsoft certified something or other.. the other 2 pay a good 20-30% more and even then with the ISP blowups there are amazing cisco engineers looking for work... and the best Solaris engineer I've ever worked with is having a hard time finding work. (if anyone needs an amazing Sun/Solaris guy in the MA area, he's the one. I'll get you hooked up!)
It sucks to be a specialist.

re: American Education System. IT moves way too fast for traditional education to keep up. Telecom moves way too fast as well. Industry can't even keep up with either. There is too much breadth, too much depth.. just plain too much everything.
I learned *everything* I know about IT OTJ. I contend there is not a college on the planet that could have prepared me for the job I entered here. The best course I took in college from an IT perspective was Strategic Management and then Organizational Behavior. Seriously!

Luckily these guys were willing to train - bc it's less expensive btw. I was the 'cheap' solution to their problem.

Replies:

Dr Krumpet You said:"With tight proces... -- 5/26/2003 2:33 AM