November 1, 2005

O'Reilly Network has published an article about preventing your IT career from imploding. Some of the recommendations include keeping up with the latest programming languages, keeping your mind sharp through bug fixing, communicating with non-techs, debating merits of new technologies with other technical people, and practicing system design even when your job is strictly support oriented.

August 26, 2005

According to an article at CNN/Money, India's dominance of offshore outsourcing may be coming to an and, as wages for IT and other professionals in India continue to climb. These conclusions come from a new research report by Gartner. The report also states that American and European corporations are starting to move their offshore outsourcing initiatives into lower cost countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Hungary, Poland, and Russia.

August 6, 2005

According to the most recent U.S. Department of Labor statistics and other surveys by staffing firms, the job market for technical professionals improved considerably in July.

June 10, 2005

According to a new study by technology recruiting firm Robert Half, the U.S. information technology job market is improving steadily. The percentage of CIOs planning to add full-time IT staff in the third quarter is the highest it has been in three years. The poll was conducted with more than 1,400 CIOs from U.S. companies with more than 100 employees. Executives at the largest firms — those with more than 1,000 employees — and those in the Northeast plan to do most of the hiring, according to the survey. In addition, an article in the USA Today citing Labor Department statistics states that the number of workers who are quitting voluntarily and moving on to better jobs is nearing a four-year high, suggesting that the job market has improved significantly.

June 8, 2005

A new report on technology outsourcing has found that the number of customers satisfied with their offshoring providers has dropped from 79% to 62%. In addition, the number of customers prematurely terminating an outsourcing relationship has doubled to 51%. The report was based on surveys and in-depth interviews with 210 senior IT executives at Global 1000 companies and 242 senior executives at outsourcing service providers.

May 20, 2005

According to IBM, there will be a critical shortage of qualified IT people in the U.S. over the next five years. The company says that an additional 2.2 million people will be needed in information technlogy-related professions by 2010. The company is working with universities to increase the supply of qualified people while attempting to quickly recruit the existing supply of top graduates.

May 10, 2005

Venture capitalists have been raising new funds and moving back into tech start-ups. Among the hot areas for investing are energy, open source, RSS, blogging, and podcasting. Although hiring at start-ups is on the increase, many are also taking advantage of lower cost talent offshore.

May 7, 2005

According to the latest data from the U.S. Labor Department as well as anecdotal evidence from technical recruiters, tech hiring was up significantly in April, and salaries are rising steadily. In addition, venture capitalists have been making bigger investments in new software, wireless, and Internet companies. All this points to much better times ahead for techies looking for new and better jobs.

May 4, 2005

IBM today announced that it will cut between 10,000 and 13,000 jobs and attempt to reorganize its management. According to an article two weeks ago in Forbes magazine, in recent quarters IBM was booted out of big contracts at J.P. Morgan Chase, Cable & Wireless, Invensys, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Piper Jaffray, and other clients.

April 28, 2005

Bill Gates spoke at the Library of Congress and said that he wanted to see H1-B quotas, which currently stand at 65,000 per year, be eliminated. He said that H1-B quotas pose a great threat America's competitiveness against countries like India and China.

April 26, 2005

According to a new report by Gartner, security and privacy are becoming major concerns for companies looking to outsource their IT operations. The main concerns include foreign government interception and access to data, intellectual property risks, restrictions on the use of encryption, and the risks of identity theft and financial fraud by low wage workers.

April 23, 2005

The World Privacy Forum is warning job seekers about posting their personal information and résumés on Internet job sites. Criminals are using this type of information to commit identity theft and other types of financial fraud. According to the privacy group, over the past year more than a dozen Americans have been accused of felonies because their identities were used by online criminals. Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum states: "If you post your résumé publicly you are asking for identity fraud. If you have a fantastic résumé, that puts you at a high risk, because your identity will get nabbed, and they will use your information to set up a new account in your name and do criminal acts and it will look like you participated in that scheme."

April 20, 2005

According to a new study released by IDC, China and India are experiencing massive growth in the number of professional software developers between 2003 and 2008, with compound annual growth rates of 25.6% for India and 24.5% for China. This growing supply of inexpensive IT talent will continue to exert pressure for U.S. and European companies to outsource large parts of their IT infrastructures.

April 19, 2005

Deloitte and Touche has released the results of a new study that reveals the truth behind IT outsourcing. According to the survey of IT outsourcing client companies, 70% percent had negative experiences with outsourcing, 25% realized that they could handle functions better and cheaper internally, 44% didn't see any cost-savings from outsourcing, 57% ended up absorbing costs that they believed were included in the contracts with outsourced vendors, and 50% cited hidden costs as the biggest problem. Other statistics include: 80% had either limited or no transparency to a vendor's pricing schema, and 73% are now working to reduce outsourcing vendor dependancy. A study by Gartner last month noted that customer service outsourcing could cost as much as one-third more than doing the job internally and anger your customers at the same time.

April 16, 2005

According to a new report, job postings at tech job site Dice.com rose 22 percent in the first three months of the year. Most of the growth in job openings were in the New York and Washington D.C. metropolitan areas. In addition, earlier employment data from the U.S. Department of Labor showed that the average number of unemployed technology workers fell from 210,000 in 2003 to 146,000 in 2004.

April 16, 2005

After announcing poor revenues and earnings, IBM may be ready to fire 10,000 employees in order to boost profits. IBM suffered a huge drop in sales of mainframe hardware, software, and services. In addition, because of revenue growth at Apple, Dell, Sun, and Accenture, many analysts believe that the problems are specific to IBM and not related to the overall IT services business. In recent quarters IBM was booted out of big contracts at J.P. Morgan Chase, Cable & Wireless, Invensys, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Piper Jaffray.

April 11, 2005

According to a new report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, technology companies eliminated 60,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year, which is twice the number eliminated during the same period last year. The telecommunications industry accounted for more than 35,000 job cuts. Other companies in the computer industry accounted for the remaining layoffs. Many of the cuts have been blamed on the AT&T Wireless/Cingular and the Sprint/Nextel mergers. Other consolidations like AT&T/SBC and the buyout of MCI by either Verizon or Qwest are expected to continue this trend for a while longer.

April 11, 2005

A number of people who worked at an Indian call center have been nabbed for stealing $350,000 from their client, a large U.S. bank. News sources are saying that the employees used caller information to perform money transfers. Forrester Research is now predicting that outsourcing to call centers in India may drop significantly because of this breach. Trying to put a positive spin on the situation, the spokesperson for the outsourcing firm is quoted as saying "the reputation and credibility of the entire system is actually preserved and enhanced."

April 2, 2005

Research firm Gartner is predicting that 30% of IT jobs in developed countries will be offshored by 2015. Currently the number of offshored IT jobs in the United States and other developed countries stands at 5%. Helping drive the shift is the decreasing cost of data connectivity to the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Despite this, experts predict that automation will eliminate or displace more U.S. service jobs than offshoring. Another article at CRN about Wipro comfirms that interest in outsourcing is rising once again.

March 31, 2005

According to a recent survey, the confidence level of technology workers in the employment market has risen. In addition, labor statistics show that the number of unemployed IT workers has dropped from 210,000 in 2003 to 146,000 in 2004. With a lower supply of quality job candidates, salaries and job hopping are on the increase.