Where are these computer jobs? I have 6-7 differend friends who graduated with degrees or diplomas in various computer field.
Its been 3-4 Months of hard looking and they still cannot find a job.
Like for instance one of my close friend, whos a grad from computer engineering program from humber college with some technical support help desk workexperience experience, cannot find a job since he graduated. Hes working in a warehouse driving forklift.
Now i know there was an overflow of grads in computer field, which dropped the salary range for alot of computer professions. Every year over thousands graduate just in ontario from different colleges and universities in the computer field, but are there 1000 new job openings in Ontario each year?
Question: If your in computer relatd field, what do you think the future outlook is ? Which area of computers can ONE expect to get jobs in future? Will the salary range Stay stable or will they fall?
The future is not so much in doing technical work as it is in IT Project Management.
That's my $0.02, anyway. Any technical work can be done much more cheaply offshore, but they will always need the Project Managers to be locals in the West.
Not only computer field the whole industry is hit by a bad economy. You will hear teachers,engineers and even lawyers crying about the bad economy and being unemployed. Unfortunately Computer industry has been affected the most but I believe when there is money in the market in general more opportunites will open. In IT field there are new technologies banging the door real bad but the compnies in a large scale are afraid to invest money on these new innovations .
Couple of days ago there was an article in msn talking about the degrees that is worth paying for.
Computer science and computer engineering holds the top 5 postions. Chemical Engineering was at number one.Yes there is still lot of scope for computer grads.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mAd_ScIeNtIsT: *
The future is not so much in doing technical work as it is in IT Project Management.
That's my $0.02, anyway. Any technical work can be done much more cheaply offshore, but they will always need the Project Managers to be locals in the West.
[/QUOTE]
Mr. Scientist, you can't be a Project Manager straight out from college.
I dont know, i just feel that every paki brown kid that you talk to and ask them what they are doing? they are like COMPUTER SCIENCE or COMPUTER ENGINEERING. Then i go sigh, cuz when u graduate from 4 years of uni with $30,000 in debt from loans, ud wanna get a job which pays good amount of money. I think the only job a computer science grad these days be LUCKY to get is the technical support JOB which use to pay over $18+ per hour, and now starts from $10 per hour. Its also about salary ranges which dropped drasticaly. Anywayz for now i guess well just strap on the seats and see what happens.
I say the computer engineering industry is safe, as the plastic transistor age is almost here, and will usher a new era of electronics, something similar to how silicon based electronics once emerged.
I agree with Mad Scientist’s viewpoint –quintessentially, clean and simple technical training is going to be less and less a ticket to a career in information technology. The industry demands I.T. workers who have business skills, such as business analysts and project managers.
This is not to undermine the importance of pure technologists. For instance in Application Development, a typical management consultant’s recommendations to companies is based on the overt distinction between commodity programming and advanced programming. Whereas most companies are outsourcing the repetitive routine work abroad, they’re still keeping the more advanced functions in-house. This is to help them keep control and guard their project management logistics.
So my advice to the technologists out there is to complement your education with:
1- Business Context – while in college, make sure you take courses such as Business Process Reengineering, Enterprise Resource Planning and Project Management. Better yet, give yourself a line of specialism that you can highlight to employers by courses in Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management etc.
2- Industry Endorsed Qualifications – University and College education tends to lag behind by a couple of years in terms of the technology base. Make sure you’re in-sync with the current technology. When you come out of school, you can “sell yourself” based on your competitive advantage in new technology. For example, I had close to 8 industry endorsed certifications in addition to my B.Sc. in Software Engineering when I came out. I can’t stress enough how much this helped !! If you’re wondering where to focus your energies, in my personal opinion, here’s a starting list:
I meyself am wondering the same thing.
I have 12 yrs of IT exp, all of it in net centric and client server. After looking at the current mkt trends in IT, I know for sure that in the next 4 to 5 yrs the mkt for "grunt" programmers will be no more or it will be very little. Most of the grunt work is now being shipped out of the country. This leaves me in an uncomfortable position.
I have done some project management work but am not certified to any type of industry standard PM. Any one who has any info into an Industry Standard type of certification please share.
zman..One of the article I read which was posted here mentioned that in the next t 5-10 years(not sure) 1 out of 10 jobs will go offshore. If I understand this stat correctly, IT field won't be saturated that quickly maybe in next 50 years? who knows..there will be jobs in upcoming future assuming the economy kicks in..
Oh btw, Zman, you don't have to worry about when you have 10-12 years of experience under your belt. I believe the premium chunk will stay in US and rest of entry-mid level programmers in states might be affected..
the above is just a personal opinion - based on my experience and perhaps somewhat extraneous industry insight... but here's why I think what I think...
I don’t think of either J2EE or .Net as an altruistic initiative.
All vendors that participate in J2EE are after financial gains, as well as just their weapon against Microsoft. At the same time, I see .Net as a monopolistic initiative dressed in the magnanimity of open and interoperable web services when in reality Microsoft is making its web services closed and proprietary.
Anyways, with most of the consulting engagements I’ve been involved with, technologists express their concerns in being tied to Windows as an operating system, and the risks in doing so - with Microsoft’s poor track record in security and stability when compared to Unix. In comparison, Java's eight years in existence, combined with Unix's decade-long evolution, make the Java/Unix combination very effective in mission-critical production sites. This may very well change, but this is just my view of the current-state.
As a consultant, I always ask businesses to make their choice based on more crucial business concerns such as developer skill sets, existing systems, existing vendor relationships and customers. These should almost always drive the decision, not the system features in isolation. With respect to developer skill sets, I also wonder when I look at the curriculum for any post-secondary institution. Most schools teach basic and advanced programming in Java. The same phenomenon pushed Unix from just a research curiosity in the 1970s’ to the operating system that it is today. The students of today will be the programmers of tomorrow, and they are learning Java and Unix.
:-) :-)
The J2EE v.s. .Net battle is gonna be the soap opera of the decade for geeks to watch.
I guess being an IT pro with 13 years under my belt, I can certainly jump into this thread with passion. This is my own opinion based on my own experience. BTW, I do not believe in polls and magazine, I believe they are all biased.
Here's the scoop, software/IT jobs are going to India and some to philipines. Hardware related jobs including compiler etc. are going to Israel and Russia. So what's going to happen to US, CN and Uk IT Pro's ... sadly ... real tough times ahead of them. This trend will continue for long time to come. For american companies it is all about the bottom line and offshore development not only saves them money but also gets the necessary evil out of their door.
What jobs will stay, jobs that often require presence, that is defence sector and services industry, functions such as IT integeration, software sales, business analytics and some IT management. There will always be some midsize and startup firms that will have in house development, but these jobs will not pay as much as they used to and the competetion for these jobs will be tough for some time to come.
My recommendation for new grad is that stay focused and keep abreast with industry by staying active. Such as join one of the many open source communities, get involved and learn. Once you have your first job, which you may have to wait for some time, manage your career wisely. Do not get comfortable, keep broadning your knowledge and set career goals and keep moving when ever you have to.
As far as J2EE and MS .NET is concerend they are both here to stay. Neither one will beat the other. Since I know both of them I can honestly recommend one verses other purely based on merits and business needs. They both have their +ve's and -ve's. For a school kid I would recommend starting with Java first. Mainly becasue it is free and has a big open source community where you can learn advance skills.
I happened to be the brown/pakistani guy who was doing computer science 6 years ago ....
Only... I had interest in it ... I loved gadgets ... I loved technology ...
and then came Y2K ... I was offered a job in multinational company b4 i even graduated ... I worked hard .... and then came y2001 ... and the company was taken over by another and all IT staff was laid off including me ....
Now its year 2003 and I am still unemployed .... I tried to stay in touch with research and stuff ... worked on gr8 areas like automated knowledge aquisition, grid computing, genetic programming, blah blah... met with people with exceptional backgrounds including people from nasa ... I thought I was goign to get a job for sure with such a high profile work specially when I am just 24!
I was wrong .... No body cares what u have achieved.
Moral of the story: Stay Away from IT .... Don't invest more money into getting urself certifications etc Coz thats just another means of exploiting your position.