What is wrong with the job market? (rantette)

[rjung]

Note: The following is a rant. I don’t really want to make it Pit-worthy, so I’ll start it in MPSIMS. If it gets excessive, though, the mods can do with it as they wish.

Can someone tell me what’s wrong with the US job market these days? I mean, here I am, a software engineer with 12+ years of experience, fluent in cutting-edge buzzwords like Java, C++, OOD, and e-commerce, and I’m finding it damn hard to keep a job for more than a year.

My previous employer was an internet development company that went from 180+ employees to 60-something inside of five months, because the clients stopped coming in. My current employer is an aerospace/defense firm that’s seeing a literal drought of new projects; layoffs are on the horizon if things don’t change quickly. I scour the want ads, and it’s always the same handful of positions being advertised. I can’t even get a response back from the headhunters, who (in the past) tended to jump onto me like a piece of raw meat as soon as I started looking.

So what’s the deal? Yeah, I know, we’re still in a recession, but all the geniuses keep saying that we’re pulling out of it now. And while it’s convenient to blame everything on 9/11, I know there’s more to it than that. And my blatantly-biased political views say that George W. Bush doesn’t give a damn, since the only businesses he cares about are the oil companies.

Anyone want to clue me in as to what’s going on? Or maybe pass along the winning lottery numbers for the next drawing?

[jlzania]

Wrong-he cares about the natural gas companies too.

Yeah-it sucks and you have my sympathy. I’ve seen a lot of my MIS friends laid off in Austin in the last year or so and some of them are having a damned hard time finding anything else. One was laid off just after his wife gave birth to their first child.The company retained his assistant however. Of course, they’re paying the poor sod about half of what my friend was making for putting in twice the hours. I don’t have any answers but my blatantly biased political views says we’re being sold a crock and it ain’t filled with butter.

[CRorex]

I’m wondering if its the death throws of the tech industry implosion… The way it seems to me (from what I hear from my friends bitching about it) is that a lot of services that were getting farmed out from large corps are now getting done inhouse as they finally have their own people getting trained.

Either that or its just a general whole economy issue with everyone afraid the economy will/is tanking following the terrorist attack.

Hell, even my friends in technical suppost positions are all getting laid off.

Rjung, dunno if this will help or not… But if you’re looking for something more stable (and it may or may not end up being a pay cut, I’m not sure what salery levels are in the CS/Tech industry) look for jobs doing computer support/DBA within state/federal agencies. It may not be as interesting as what you’re doing… but I know for example the FBI, NSA, CIA and probably the Homeland whatever thing are all expanding their staffs, and with that expansion comes the need for people with skills like yours.

This is what my dad did finally. He gave up and went to work for King County Metro, he works with idiots by and large, but he’ll never get downsized and the pay isn’t that bad and its at least interesting.

Since you already are working in the defense industry then you’ll have a considerable ‘in’ if you make the shift from corperate to government.

You’d be suprised what you can find if you look around for… I know there is a new branch of the FDA that’s opening up…

Bush probably has something to do with it… But I think its more of a total lack of understand how the economy works in general rather than a bias for oil.

(Hell look at artic drilling bullshit… At most we’d have a 400 day supply of crude oil… [rounding to 2million barrels of oil consumed/day and doubling the low end estimation of reserves up there] That’s not any sort of solution to ending out dependence on foreign oil… Even a jr high school student should be able to figure out that a year’s worth of oil does not make you safe from the evil dependence on middle eastern oil.)

[rjung]

Well, I’m not starving-desperate yet, but I’m not exactly relaxed enough to make any big purchases, either. But the suggestion about working for the local/federal government is a good one; I’ll tuck that away for a rainy day.