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The State of The IT Industry


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Hello to all,I have been living outside the United States for two years, I live in the Czech Republic, Prague for the curious, where I met and fell in love with my now wife. Before I left I worked as an IT project manager in the financial services industry. Here in Prague I have been running my own company; import exports. So I have been out of touch with IT entirely, until I found Scot's Newsletter and this forum. Which has fired up the slumbering computer side of my mind and rekindled my desire to return to work in IT. Yes Prague is beautiful and living in Europe has been a wonderful experience but theres nothing like home. My appreciation for my country is so much greater having experienced life outside of it. Sorry for the slight digression, my question: I'm planning to return to the US, New York soon and have been contacting old colleague's in the field and the picture I'm getting from all of them is ugly. I'm interested to know what people on this forum think about the current state of the industry? I don't ever see it returning to the days of the Tech Bubble but what are IT managers talking about? What is money being spent on? What projects are being discussed? It seems to me that capital spending especially in IT is way down and I don't hear talk about it returning any time soon.I would appreciate any insight on the subject; What is going on in IT? Is there a next hot tech around the corner? Are job prospects getting better?Thanks,Christopher

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No Spam Please

Once I easily got an IT job when my local IT job market was tight, then another time I had trouble finding a job when the general economy was supposedly good.Your job prospects are probably more dependent on your specific contacts, networking, skills, and experience than on anyone's generalizations.

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I understand all the factors that are needed to get a job. I have always worked as a contractor and moved from project to project. I have never worked as an employee and as such my game plan is different.I apologize if my original post seemed like I was asking for advice. I'm just asking for a broader view of the industry. I'm currently talking to people located in one geographical area New York and they are painting a very ugly picture when it comes to finding work. I agree a tight market in this industry is a factor if you are going in cold. I have a lot of contacts from past jobs that I'm calling on and I'm confident that I will eventually get on another project.Or maybe I'll take Temmu's advice and open a motorcycle shop. I was completely unaware of the new server rollout was happening already. I read about it sometime back and forgot about it. Thanks I'm looking forward to getting back. I'm interested in the generalizations I want to hear and discuss what people from all over the country are doing in the field. I just talked to a programmer who took a very complicated piece of code he wrote to manage traffic on wireless networks and found an application for it in the financial options market. He pitched it to some big banks and they went for it. There goes another self made millionaire.So throw what ever up here it's in the water cooler forum. My original tone may have been a little serious but I really just want to chew the fat and see what people are up too? What's interesting out there?Thanks,Christopher

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inform, I guess it depends where you want to end up. The Northeast's job market is fairly lousy right now, lots of layoffs and budget cutting. What IT jobs there are seem to be in on the development side. I lost my job a year ago and still haven't found anything, I'm working part time at a small company, but I don't consider it a "real" job. By the way, I wasn't in IT, but in engineering at a telecom company. We're all hoping the economy bounces back soon. I can't speak for other areas of the country, but you might look at hotjobs.com and see if any other area seems hot right now.Chris

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badcat,Sorry to hear that. I'm hearing a very similar line from other people in the Northeast. Before I left the states I finished a two year project and was subcontracting for a company that had 160 contractors working. That was in Dec 2001, by March that company was down to 50 and one year later none. They are completely out of business. I originally intended to only stay in Europe for a month and return to start my next job when I kept hearing how things were falling apart and nothing ever materialized. I'm just now starting to hear about new projects coming and a couple of friends who are IT managers in large corps are beginning to rumble that they have projects that need to get done but can't because their budgets are frozen. My impetus for returning was a phone call from one of them telling me to get back I have work. That was in January and I was suppose to be back in March but as usual the start date keeps getting put off. Until companies are confident enough to open capital spending it's going to be touch and go for a while.On the brighter side I think its coming. Companies have to start spending and innovating. My goal at his time is to get back to work small project big it doesn't matter to me and get back in the game. Where I end up well I'll take it day by day, keep my ear to the rail. I have noticed something interesting on the programming side. Does anyone know of a website that acts as a portal for posting and bidding on development jobs? I recently talked with a programmer who lost his full time in-house job to one of these sites. The way he put it: His Company put a job out on this site and received bids on it form all over the world. After a process they choose one bid and had a very nice piece of software developed remotely for a fraction of the costs. It turns out that the person who won the bid was from South America. The company never met the person and they loved the results so much they decided to reduce their development staff. I think this is an up and coming tool of the internet. Any service job could be bided out this way, graphic design comes to mind.Christopher

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