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Posted: 8/24/2001 2:49:19 PM EDT
[#1]
I run a web design company. The only bright spot is that I'm still around while all the big consulting companies that were just buzzword factories are dropping like flies.
The good thing is that if I can survive this, I can survive anything. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 3:17:39 PM EDT
[#2]
I am CCNA certified, I have years of electronic and network and telecommunications experience, and I am Unemployed! if anyone in Phoenix needs me, pls HIRE me.
Worst part is my wife got in a little finder bender, she is fine, but the $500 deductable killed my LEGP money!!! oh well, i guess maybe next year. Gun show this weekend, maybe I can sell a few things. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 3:17:39 PM EDT
[#3]
I work in IT and my company was sold! I found a better gig about a month later. I have friends who have been laid off from Compaq and they are having trouble finding new work. It is actually kind of good that the IT market is slowing down. I interview lots of paper MCSE's and CCNA's that have lowered the overal earning potential of the people who actually know what they are doing.
Yes the bubble has busted. I'm a little tense about it too. But there will be plenty of work for those who have a solid skill set. Hopefully it will send all the bandwagon jumpers back to their former disciplines. I feel for those misdirected college kids who are getting MIS degrees in droves. I have seen quite a few of them shocked to find out they cannot even get a $15/hr job, let alone a real salary. The market is pretty saturated with both good and bad. In time the good IT people will be alright. We went through this with CAD in the early 80'. Experience and not a freshly inked degree are going to get you through this lull. Sounds like you are in Austin. The jobs are a lot thinner there cuz mommie and daddie sent there kids there to go to school. Now they ALL want to live there. I can't blame them one bit Austin is a awesome town. But you have all these degreed kids willing to work for peanuts so they can stay in their bad ass city. Dallas isn't as cool, but they seem to have the strongest Texas IT job market right now?!? AR50Troll |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 3:28:00 PM EDT
[#4]
Yes, im in Austin. I make $22 hr with no Degree or Certs. all hands on. I got lucky. Im real lucky to have a job now. AMD has basically promised not to let me go. There is alot of work on the R&D side of AMD for me to do. I test 3rd party MB with our chipsets and other chipset makers. And with Nvidia getting into the chipset market we will have our fill of work.
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Posted: 8/24/2001 3:32:12 PM EDT
[#5]
I work on the hardware side (design and manufacture) and our business worldwide had gone down about 12% this year compared to last while in US it has gone down almost 20%. We used to have double digit growth every year for past 10 years.
They have cut jobs accross the board by 11% so far and maybe another 5% by end of the year if the situation doesn't get better. My job is secure for next 12-18 months but after that it will depend on how much we can recover. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 3:40:06 PM EDT
[#6]
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm [:\]
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Posted: 8/24/2001 3:44:48 PM EDT
[#7]
I'm a Senior Contributing Editor for a well-known computer magazine. I used to be their Lab Director, but about 2 months ago I took an equity position with a systems management software firm as CTO.
Business is actually picking up in the systems management software world, but it's dropped significantly in the computer publishing business. I had two books, for which I had signed contracts, cancelled. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 4:11:15 PM EDT
[#8]
I am an MCSE working as Systems Engineer for a large Chemical concern. Currently fooling around with that CCNA in my spare time. I am glad I have experience and time on the job as many people I know are out of work and looking. It is a tense time in this business as the market is saturated with folks looking for work. We just hired a PC tech who used to be a Network Admin. He is bummin' that he had to take the big pay cut and the 'demotion', as he sees it.
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Posted: 8/24/2001 4:14:17 PM EDT
[#9]
field CE for IBM. Primarily specialize in networking and unix HA servers. I have more work than i can stand. We are screaming for more people in the field but our management has not seen the need yet.
mike |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 4:21:07 PM EDT
[#10]
I have a BS in Comp Sci (Carnegie Mellon 1987) and an MS in Software Engineering (U of Scranton). A few years ago, I went over to the dark side of management after coding for about 10 years. I'm currently employed as a Software Engineering Manager for a company that develops SW for banks and insurance companies.
I'm amazed at the number of IT people I meet on the gun range. Then again, southern NH is loaded with them (IT people and gun people). Regards, SOL |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 4:26:35 PM EDT
[#11]
hell we can't shoot end users and the kill user command for unix just doesn't work well. We have to let off steam somewhere [;)]
mike |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 4:30:10 PM EDT
[#12]
I'm an experienced PC Tech who is now working a menial office job for peanuts. I left an excellent job with good pay and super benefits in my home state to come to NM. Problem here is, they won't even talk to you if you don't have the "paper". Never mind that you know your way around a PC backwards, forwards, inside and out. I hope you're right about the experienced surviving in the long run. Maybe there's still hope for me? [:\]
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Posted: 8/24/2001 4:42:10 PM EDT
[#13]
I am Sales Manager of a Custom Server and Systems shop. [url]www.palpc.com[/url] AMD processors ROCK! We built a 1.4GHz with a Geforce3 card and it benchmarked at 5500+ on 3D mark 2001.
shadows |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 5:10:56 PM EDT
[#14]
OO software engineer. The slowdown hit me. First time in my career (5 years!) that I didn't get a double-digit raise. Guess I've finally topped out my salary bracket
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Posted: 8/24/2001 5:25:55 PM EDT
[#15]
IBM software engineer developing Z/OS formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS, etc.
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Posted: 8/24/2001 5:33:37 PM EDT
[#16]
Quoted: IBM software engineer developing Z/OS formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS, etc. Dang dude, your one of the serious software guru's aren't you [:)] mike |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 5:51:11 PM EDT
[#17]
Quoted: Quoted: IBM software engineer developing Z/OS formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS, etc. Dang dude, your one of the serious software guru's aren't you [:)] mike He's working on one of the last three they still have running [:)] |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 6:27:47 PM EDT
[#18]
I am a software engineer for an SF Bay Area software company. Mostly, I work with clustering software (Unix and NT).
The economy has hit me pretty hard. There are little or no bonuses, the stock is in the tank and my options are worthless. I lost big dough in the company stock plan, and I could be "downsized" in a few months if things don't turn around. I'm sure I could find another job, but salaries are down in my area of expertise. Hopefully, a more stable company will buy us out since the stock is so cheap. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 6:34:57 PM EDT
[#19]
I'm not in IT, I'm in DP and have been for 24 years.
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Posted: 8/24/2001 9:42:00 PM EDT
[#20]
BeerSlayer,
Actually some guys in I think New Mexico put together a Quake interface to systems administration. Processes were little guys running around in Quake, and to kill a process you whipped out your shotgun and blazed away at them. The dying soldiers executed a kill() on the process they represented. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 9:58:54 PM EDT
[#21]
My parent company is getting hammered, but the guys that I am contracted to support are unwilling to let me go because I know half their systems better tham any of their actual employees. I'm basicly a jack of all trades there. I handle everything from simple user problems to hardware failures to LAN/WAN issues. What really impresses tham is that I'll tear into any laptop and usually be able to fix the thing in a short period of time (no big deal to me, I used to do hardware repair on Thinkpads, here I only have one at a time to work on instead of the multiple I used to). I'm pretty secure, but that is about all I can hope for. There is no real chance to move around or jocky for higher pay because everyone is still hunkered down, hopeing the economy is going to turn around soon. I know quite a few guys who haven't faired so well...
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Posted: 8/24/2001 10:47:30 PM EDT
[#22]
I'm in Software QA in "Silicon Valley", I do a lot of automation, and some white box testing.
Not as fun as collecting and shooting but it pays the bills. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 11:02:54 PM EDT
[#23]
I'm an MCSE (worthless), CCNA, CCDA (both worth their weight in gold) and certified by Apple to service hardware. I paid my dues working for a consulting company for five years getting solid real world experience, started my own business in June 2000. I don't do as much LAN and WAN design as I'd like and as I've been trained to do, it's not every day my clients want to open up a branch office elsewhere or redo their current LAN, I get stuck with desktop and server support which is my bread and butter. This economy has hit many people, fortunately none of my clients has been impacted by it, so neither have I.
I waited so long to go on my own because I feared the lack of stability, but as I found out, there's no such a thing as job security when you work for someone else. After working your ass off making someone else rich, the moment profits take a dive, they let people go as if their hard work had meant nothing. |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 11:43:06 PM EDT
[#24]
You guys who have jobs, be grateful.
Here in Western PA, "right-sizing" is in full swing. If you've seen the movie Office Space, guys like Satish and Michael Bolton are chopped left and right. Marconi cut 300+ people, reclaiming stock options promised, because it take 5 years to be vested. FreeMarkets is a bloodbath. See computer guys in all industries walking dead. Was a programmer for 2 Fortune companies. Talk about organizations being successful in spite of themselves . . . Now a contracting net admin (?!), and act as IT depts for outfits that've cut to the bone. From Econ 101, "To be rational in an irrational world, is irrational." "Tomorrow, you might win a million dollars, or get hit by a truck. Or you might win a million dollars, then get hit by a truck." |
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Posted: 8/24/2001 11:49:17 PM EDT
[#25]
I was a project lead software engineer with 14 years experience working in R&D for a French company in Hayward, CA, up until the middle of last month, when I got layed-off because the company moved R&D to France. Gone is my fat six-figure salary, replaced with this:
[img]wsphotofews.excite.com/028/Xw/Dn/ri/Dj64885.jpg[/img] To add insult to injury, I received only one month's severance pay. And to top it off my tech stocks are down 90%-95%, which resulted in a paper loss of $150k. And my pregnant wife was recently layed off from the Fire Dept, so to put it bluntly, I'm screwed! :) The only good thing is I signed a small contract with Cal. State University to develop an n-tier database server in C++ based on DCOM, with a little Java up front, so things are looking up. And I have more time to go shooting! he he So, once I'm finished with the database server (a few months -- it's a small project), I might have to start looking for work. So, yes, the slowing IT situation has affected me in a major way. |
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Posted: 8/25/2001 12:18:39 AM EDT
[#26]
I am in Austin working as a Network Admin. and my situation is as follows. I have no certs "never seem to have the time" and am 100% hands on experience guy. In the past 14 months I have been laid off once as the company went out of business, had a contracting job terminated as the company went out of business, quit another job because I saw the writing on the wall and could not have timed it better. My last day there,I came to work to find 80% of my department was in the parking lot with their stuff in boxes. So I am now at my 4th job in 14 months, have only been out of work for 6 weeks through it all, have continued to raise my salary, and I consider myself extremely lucky. I have learned that unfortunately the trick is to always be on the job hunt. I also try and keep track of how much money the company has, the burn rate, and calculate potential layoff dates. I try and do at least one interview a month to keep my interview skills sharp and to always give myself an out when the time comes and most important, never bury my head in the sand and pray that it won't happen to me. I have developed a real Mercenary attitude through all of this, i.e. if you are willing to pay more and are a more stable company than I am willing to move, nothing personal, as I am sure you feel the same when you lay people off. It business plain and simple. Good luck to everybody in the job hunt. |
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Posted: 8/25/2001 5:28:31 AM EDT
[#27]
I am an MCSE-2K. Going for the CCNA soon. I have no complaints.
Tyler |
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Posted: 8/25/2001 5:44:02 AM EDT
[#28]
att.net
Turnover is high enough that mass layoffs are almost unheard of. |
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Posted: 8/25/2001 5:45:48 AM EDT
[#29]
My official title is systems analyst, but I gave that up early on and lucked into a hardware job. I work for a company that builds high end systems and I am currently involved in a project providing a box that runs a blood analyser that is shipped all over the world. I was just informed that I am secure for at least the next two years, so we will see where all this goes. It should be interesting!
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Posted: 8/25/2001 8:40:30 AM EDT
[#30]
Hey Beer_slayer, nice to meet another IBMer!
Sfoo, we have a poster here that has a picture of a dinosaur. The caption reads "We're back and we're pissed!" . The mainframes are doing quite well. A lot of people are starting to run thousands of Linux images on one mainframe. Supporting one mainframe beats supporting thousands of individual systems. We had a near-death experience back in the early ninties. Functions with over 200 people were wacked (less than 10 survivors) when we switched over from Bipolar to CMOS. It was a terrible time but I think that we are in a stronger position becuase of it. We have been sheltered from the bad economy so far but I know that the current economic conditions will affect next year's raises. We also did suffer some selected layoffs. |
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Posted: 8/25/2001 8:59:00 AM EDT
[#31]
BrainBench certified Linux Network Administrator (General). Unemployed. Linuxgruven offered me a job for $52K back in March conditional upon me getting the SAIR cert(through their training program). They said if I got a CCNE, it'd be $120K. Of course, they went tits-up without telling anybody, and there are a lot of people who are STILL waiting for the pay they had already earned. I was one of the lucky ones who hadn't lost any money.
Oh, well. Semper Fi! Ken Little |
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Posted: 8/25/2001 9:10:36 AM EDT
[#32]
I came back from Korea in 1998 and found the ISP I now work for, since coming on board I have learned enough to pass the A+ ...I spend my days troubleshooting dsl lines with ILEC Repair, and reprovisioning dsl lines, opening and closing trouble tickets, removing and reinstalling software with End Users who don't know the difference between a right and left click.
I was hired by Jamcracker ( A kind of ASP) and then told they didnt have the money to hire me a week later, that was last december...that woould have been a 10,000 raise. The downturn affected them and everyone that left here to go there is now laid off. In my opinion, an ice cream store like Maggie Moos or Coldstone creamery is what would make me happiest....one day my kids will go to show and tell and say, 'My old man makes [b]ICE CEREAM!!![/b] |
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Posted: 8/26/2001 12:48:22 PM EDT
[#33]
AR-15gal,
I work here in Albuquerque for a contract IT firm and I'm on government contract. If we get an opening I will let you know if you are interested in Albuquerque. We don't care about certifications. They are nice but we have a 2 hour oral technical interview we will put you through and if you pass that we don't care if you have certs or not. By the way, the team I'm on is 50% shooters and we own everything from Barrett's to full auto M-16's. Our government boss is a lady who used to reload. [^] Tom in NM |
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Posted: 8/26/2001 1:44:21 PM EDT
[#34]
I'm a VB/ASP programmer with about 9 years experience. As of Tues, I will have been out of work for 4 months! Man, things are rough all over. Wish me luck, I have my 1st second interview Tues.
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Posted: 8/26/2001 2:02:35 PM EDT
[#35]
I am an Oracle DBA/Lawson Administrator (SUN/HP based) in North Atlanta and I managed to dodge the bullet when they laid off 25 people with the company I am with last Jan. 25th. I used to get 3 to 4 calls from headhunters a week and now I am lucky to get one and he is looking to place someone! Here in Atlanta the hardest hit are web services people, those that I have kept in touch with are still either looking for work are out of the industry altogether.
My manager told me recently that management wanted to lay off me off along with the others on the 25th as I “cost too much”. My manager told them if they laid me off all of our custom built systems would grind to a halt in less than a week and we would have to pay all of our clients mega $$$ in fines for lost business. Suddenly I did not look too expensive to them! Needless to say my morale/loyalty to the company is tenuous at best! And companies today wonder why there is no loyalty left! I cannot wait until I get my Green Card next year. The thing that really irks me is that I was employee of the year last year and they want to dispose of me over a few $$$$$! Heck by industry standards and local pay scale I am underpaid by 15%, cheap b*stards! At least I have a gig, too many good people out there don’t. |
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