IT Hiring Strongest Since June 1998

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
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Many of you idle IT Specialists are about to go back to work thanks to a hiring frenzy, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1998. The Bureau of Labor Statistics point to cloud infrastructure for the rise in hiring.

The unemployment rate for technology professionals fell to 3.8% in July, from 4.2% in June. For the overall workforce, the unemployment rate stood at 7.4%. Technology consulting added 4,300 positions in July and 40,300 jobs this year.
 
I believe its a combo of the XP migrations to Windows 7/8, MDM (Mobile Device Management), Office 365, and pushing of more mobile computing in which is driving the hiring now. I wish I could say my company saw this and started to hire more yet they rather just send the jobs to Argentina to our "Managed Services".
 
What the article fails to mention is that most IT jobs make a Fraction of what they made in 1998.
 
What the article fails to mention is that most IT jobs make a Fraction of what they made in 1998.

You can thank foreign IT workers for depressing wages. Right now employers are asking for ridiculous experience for ridiculous salaries.
 
What the article fails to mention is that most IT jobs make a Fraction of what they made in 1998.

You can thank foreign IT workers for depressing wages. Right now employers are asking for ridiculous experience for ridiculous salaries.

Oh no, you have to have experience now. Perhaps, back in the 90's, IT guys were way overpaid?

IT guys still get paid as much as an electrical engineer with a PE license. I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it.
 
I don't think wages have dipped too much. I started out at about 55k as an associate software engineer in April 2012 having graduated 3 days prior with a BS in Computer Science.

Does that seem really low?
 
Mid/late 1998 was the very beginning of the .com bubble burst, so while it's nice that jobs are up (blame Obama? - just wanted to get it out there first), 1998 is too highly regarded with rose-tinted glasses.
 
I don't think wages have dipped too much. I started out at about 55k as an associate software engineer in April 2012 having graduated 3 days prior with a BS in Computer Science.

Does that seem really low?

Depends on where you live. However, you need to consider how much gets eaten up by income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, insurances, and all the other "mandatory" things I forgot.

How much do you have left and how much should you save for retirement? You need to make closer to 100K to live a decent life and save enough for a half-decent retirement. People who say otherwise haven't run the numbers.
 
Depends on where you live. However, you need to consider how much gets eaten up by income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, insurances, and all the other "mandatory" things I forgot.

How much do you have left and how much should you save for retirement? You need to make closer to 100K to live a decent life and save enough for a half-decent retirement. People who say otherwise haven't run the numbers.

lmfao not where i live... i'd be rolling in the dough if i made 100k a year...

i make 45k and am saving for retirement, it's all about how you're willing to live... i don't have nor want cable television... i drive a chevy and a honda

if you think you need 100k to live a decent life and save enough money for a half-decent retirement, you haven't run the numbers honestly...
 
Depends on where you live. However, you need to consider how much gets eaten up by income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, insurances, and all the other "mandatory" things I forgot.

How much do you have left and how much should you save for retirement? You need to make closer to 100K to live a decent life and save enough for a half-decent retirement. People who say otherwise haven't run the numbers.


My area cost of living is 84% of the national average. It's probably one of the best valued areas in the country. I drive a $35,000 car, pay $800 in rent plus utilities, and still have over half my income in discretionary spending after placing 9% in my 401k. I agree that I would certainly rather make $100k, but l disagree that it's a necessity to living relatively comfortable. At 24 and singleish, things don't seem horrible.
 
I don't think wages have dipped too much. I started out at about 55k as an associate software engineer in April 2012 having graduated 3 days prior with a BS in Computer Science.

Does that seem really low?

I imagine it depends on where you live, but in most places 55k a year entry for a SE would get you employer laughed at.

If I recall correctly, in 1998 I was an Entry level network engineer and pulled 95k + overtime. In 2011 I had all that experience, + a 4 year degree, + numerous microsoft and Cisco certifications + VM ware and a slew of other shit and companies wanted to offer me 50k. Also in 2011 I told the corporate IT world to go F itself, got a job handling patient monitoring and hospital networks and easily clear 100k and don't have to put up with a fraction of the bullshit.
 
lmfao not where i live... i'd be rolling in the dough if i made 100k a year...

i make 45k and am saving for retirement, it's all about how you're willing to live... i don't have nor want cable television... i drive a chevy and a honda

if you think you need 100k to live a decent life and save enough money for a half-decent retirement, you haven't run the numbers honestly...

You clearly don't live in a city like Chicago.
 
You can thank foreign IT workers for depressing wages. Right now employers are asking for ridiculous experience for ridiculous salaries.

no more "paper MCSE's"? thats a good thing. have wasted too many hours of my life cleaning up after these people with little practical experience.that know just enough to be dangerous
 
no more "paper MCSE's"? thats a good thing. have wasted too many hours of my life cleaning up after these people with little practical experience.that know just enough to be dangerous

LOL you know what's funny? When you leave your current employment for other opportunities/retirement, your replacement will say the same thing about you :)

Fact is unless you have all best practices memorized and tattoed to your arm, your going to screw up as I'm a firm believer that its 99% something somebody did and 1% hardware failure. ;)
 
Actually kind of of curious but have any of your ever had a salary offer to which you could not contain your laughter and promptly left when they told you they were serious?
 
Actually kind of of curious but have any of your ever had a salary offer to which you could not contain your laughter and promptly left when they told you they were serious?

Not really. Although I was never in a position to be much of a picky person.
 
Actually kind of of curious but have any of your ever had a salary offer to which you could not contain your laughter and promptly left when they told you they were serious?

As a matter of fact yes. I had one company post a job looking for a Network Admin/Department manger. They basically wanted someone to run the network as well as run the entire IT staff. This was a department of around 25 members. They wanted a 4 year degree, 10 years of IT experience (which I had), the usual Cisco and MS certifications and required 50% travel to several of their remote sites. They offered me 44k, which I promptly laughed in their face and walked out.
 
You guys all sound like the air line pilots, over time you will see your wages slip and you will keep saying the same crap over and over. The reality is you can compare your job to the average US wage of 45K, if you are making more than that on 4 year degree you are doing OK. You can laugh at any offer you want as long as you can easily walk into a better offer. When you find it harder and harder to find better offers you do what dekoth did and try to run to a new sector. But what happens when all the sectors dry up? The reality is IT will be OK for a while as more and more goes online but it is fattening up for a nice bubble and long term its going to slide down. For the amount of work done salaries of 100k are not going to last, someone is going to be willing to do it for less.
 
As a matter of fact yes. I had one company post a job looking for a Network Admin/Department manger. They basically wanted someone to run the network as well as run the entire IT staff. This was a department of around 25 members. They wanted a 4 year degree, 10 years of IT experience (which I had), the usual Cisco and MS certifications and required 50% travel to several of their remote sites. They offered me 44k, which I promptly laughed in their face and walked out.

LOL. Please tell me you said "you must be joking?" On your way out.
 
You guys all sound like the air line pilots, over time you will see your wages slip and you will keep saying the same crap over and over. The reality is you can compare your job to the average US wage of 45K, if you are making more than that on 4 year degree you are doing OK. You can laugh at any offer you want as long as you can easily walk into a better offer. When you find it harder and harder to find better offers you do what dekoth did and try to run to a new sector. But what happens when all the sectors dry up? The reality is IT will be OK for a while as more and more goes online but it is fattening up for a nice bubble and long term its going to slide down. For the amount of work done salaries of 100k are not going to last, someone is going to be willing to do it for less.

Personally I'm already moving toward another career soon. I'm really tired of this industries excessive requirements, responsibilities and stress for so little compensation.
 
You guys all sound like the air line pilots, over time you will see your wages slip and you will keep saying the same crap over and over. The reality is you can compare your job to the average US wage of 45K, if you are making more than that on 4 year degree you are doing OK. You can laugh at any offer you want as long as you can easily walk into a better offer. When you find it harder and harder to find better offers you do what dekoth did and try to run to a new sector. But what happens when all the sectors dry up? The reality is IT will be OK for a while as more and more goes online but it is fattening up for a nice bubble and long term its going to slide down. For the amount of work done salaries of 100k are not going to last, someone is going to be willing to do it for less.

For a generic sysadmin, yeah, 100K isn't going to last.

On the other hand, you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find qualified, motivated people in the IT field. Those people (most of whom work for VARs/MSPs) are worth every penny of 100K.
 
I'm seeing a trend in my area where companies are not hiring but pulling in contractors to supplement their staffing needs. Its the equivalent to hiring IT day laborers. My company is hiring a 30-ish people just to "outsource" to clients to supplement their IT staff. Good for my company and for those needing work in IT. Not so good for guys used to systems engineering who get thrown out to do help desk and desktop deployment. But, its better than not being employed or in the field.
 
O365 keeps my team and I very busy.

Silly outlook disconnect issues.

Our company use O365 too. Our biggest issue with them is that Lync and Outlook connectivity would fail on a few users' computers until we found out that it had something to do with their clocks being a couple minutes off. Easily remedied by turning on the Internet Time option and pointing your time server to time.windows.com.

Otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with our migration to Office 365. Long term, our company saves money after I finish backing up and archiving all of our dedicated SharePoint server and on-premise Exchange server. The 5-license-per-user Office 2013 Pro Plus option is also fantastic. That alone saves our company thousands per year in MSDN subscription for Office licenses.
 
Our company use O365 too. Our biggest issue with them is that Lync and Outlook connectivity would fail on a few users' computers until we found out that it had something to do with their clocks being a couple minutes off. Easily remedied by turning on the Internet Time option and pointing your time server to time.windows.com.

Otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with our migration to Office 365. Long term, our company saves money after I finish backing up and archiving all of our dedicated SharePoint server and on-premise Exchange server. The 5-license-per-user Office 2013 Pro Plus option is also fantastic. That alone saves our company thousands per year in MSDN subscription for Office licenses.

How does that compare to using the VLK's for Office? I'm thinking about getting off of eopen for our company and moving them towards O365 but I'm concerned about the 5 user license limitation. Currently through our VLK a single device (Laptop) is able to have multiple VMware OSes with Office installed and the devices are only considered to be using one license. Since I have many developers that use this licensing I'm concerned that there is a 5 device activation limit and that each activation is looked at as license being used. So if one of my users has a PC with 10 VMware guests but the host is covered that after 4 other VM's for testing they'd run out of licenses.

I'm curious on how this is handled in the O365 sense and any info you can provide would be appreciated.
 
How does that compare to using the VLK's for Office? I'm thinking about getting off of eopen for our company and moving them towards O365 but I'm concerned about the 5 user license limitation. Currently through our VLK a single device (Laptop) is able to have multiple VMware OSes with Office installed and the devices are only considered to be using one license. Since I have many developers that use this licensing I'm concerned that there is a 5 device activation limit and that each activation is looked at as license being used. So if one of my users has a PC with 10 VMware guests but the host is covered that after 4 other VM's for testing they'd run out of licenses.

I'm curious on how this is handled in the O365 sense and any info you can provide would be appreciated.

A screenshot might show you better than me explaining it. You log into your Office 365 portal (every user have their own portal in the organization), then go into Office 365 Settings, then Software, then hit the Install button and it'll run from there. It only take about 10 minutes on broadband to install it.

Once installed, instead of using an activation key, you sign into Office 2013 with your Office 365 credentials and it'll record it on your portal as shown in the screenshot.

O365Licensing_zps2b33d315.png


you can deactivate a computer at any time on the portal if you need to free up a license.
 
Hiring frenzy? Not from what I've seen in Boise, ID. The good jobs are more competitive than ever so all you have left are the call centers for HP, Micron, Xerox, and some of the government contract ones. Not my idea of where I want to start a career. I've done call center work for a managed services company in the area. Tried it for a month, never again.
 
Of course I also realize that being a new college grad, I haven't exactly been put in the best position when it comes to the job market anyway. Regardless if it is improving, it still sucks ass out there. My buddy has been looking for another IT position longer than I have and still has had no luck...but at least he can say he currently has a job, which is better than what I've got.
 
Hiring frenzy? Not from what I've seen in Boise, ID. The good jobs are more competitive than ever so all you have left are the call centers for HP, Micron, Xerox, and some of the government contract ones. Not my idea of where I want to start a career. I've done call center work for a managed services company in the area. Tried it for a month, never again.

Look, I realize you can make a potato into a battery, but you can't make a potato into a computer.
 
Look, I realize you can make a potato into a battery, but you can't make a potato into a computer.

lol

Micron is headquartered here and HP employs a few thousand. It's not all potato farms and public land...
 
lol

Micron is headquartered here and HP employs a few thousand. It's not all potato farms and public land...

Medtech is likely a much stronger field over there. In fact, I think many people are taking notice of this, which is why traditional IT is needing so much labor at this point.
 
The core IT sector is hiring but the labor market is shifting. If you are picky and looking for good work you are likely to take a pretty sizable pay cut to go non consultant.

Not that you have to but if you have a time table in order to keep things like.. a roof.. and food on the table for a family. ;)
 
lol

Micron is headquartered here and HP employs a few thousand. It's not all potato farms and public land...

Corsair has a facility out in Nampa, too. I went for an interview there a couple years ago. Apparently, when Micron went downhill, there were a LOT of IT people looking for work. So, competition was fierce. So, I moved back to Eastern Oregon and got a job here... Decent pay, but I did love Boise... Awesome place.
 
You guys all sound like the air line pilots, over time you will see your wages slip and you will keep saying the same crap over and over. The reality is you can compare your job to the average US wage of 45K, if you are making more than that on 4 year degree you are doing OK. You can laugh at any offer you want as long as you can easily walk into a better offer. When you find it harder and harder to find better offers you do what dekoth did and try to run to a new sector. But what happens when all the sectors dry up? The reality is IT will be OK for a while as more and more goes online but it is fattening up for a nice bubble and long term its going to slide down. For the amount of work done salaries of 100k are not going to last, someone is going to be willing to do it for less.

You have no idea what you are talking about. We aren't talking low level help desk guys making 100k here. We are talking high level network engineers and programmers with a decade+ experience who have to spend thousands of dollars every couple of years to re-certify or gain new certifications in the ever expanding list. I am talking about jobs that at bare minimum you are working 60+ hours, no overtime just salary, tons of weekends and possible holidays if shit goes down. Oh sure you might find someone temporarily cheaper, but the reality is they are just there until they find a better offer and are out the door. Those aren't the people that care or even do quality work. They are also the ones who Burnout in 18 months tops because they are in way over their head because they got hired for being cheap, not necessarily skilled.

LOL. Please tell me you said "you must be joking?" On your way out.

I believe it was one of the statements I included with "You people are out of your damned minds". Interesting note, they contacted me again 2 weeks later because they couldn't find anyone qualified (Big surprise), and upped the offer to 60k. Still a pretty terrible offer for what they wanted, but at least slightly more realistic. I however already had taken a far better job anyhow.
 
Help Desk does not mean low level or unskilled. I have taught more DBA's how to manage a DB server than I can reasonably keep track of. Not to mention "skilled" systems administrators why Virtual isn't always the best and how to make a proper test case to their upper management.

I know there are tiers of "Help Desk" as well. Real enterprise support needs true skilled people. You don't want to call into an enterprise support line and hear a script.
 
Hiring frenzy? Not from what I've seen in Boise, ID. The good jobs are more competitive than ever so all you have left are the call centers for HP, Micron, Xerox, and some of the government contract ones. Not my idea of where I want to start a career. I've done call center work for a managed services company in the area. Tried it for a month, never again.

Different places have different levels of demand.
 
Lost my job back in March. Took time off. Started tossing my resume arund in June - a plethora of calls back and interviews later, I landed a job, and quite easily. I'd have to agree, the jobs are there.
 
Corsair has a facility out in Nampa, too. I went for an interview there a couple years ago. Apparently, when Micron went downhill, there were a LOT of IT people looking for work. So, competition was fierce. So, I moved back to Eastern Oregon and got a job here... Decent pay, but I did love Boise... Awesome place.

I knew a few who were laid off in my degree program a couple years ago. Sad times. Probably got their jobs with Associates and when the lay offs hit, they had to go back to school just to get back into things again. Of course I'm not finding much myself. I've got 4+ years experience and a Bachelors now. Only thing I don't have are certs. Wish I had the money for those...
 
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