Real-Life Lesson for IT Job Seekers

Apapito Soto’s story is a lesson that could benefit many IT pros seeking employment. As told in The Wall Street Journal on Monday:

Many workers, especially those out of work, turn to temporary-help firms for jobs. Unlike the past, staffing companies no longer are depositories for dead-end jobs, as they offer higher-paying positions.

"Temporary" is a relative term in staffing. In 2001, Agapito Soto, an Irvine, Calif., information-technology consultant, signed on with Sapphire Technologies, a temp agency that specializes in high-tech work. The agency placed the 55-year-old. Soto in a full-time slot with the Orange County sheriff's department, which continues to this day. Soto says he has notched on-the-job learning in his seven years at the sheriff's department.

He has even passed up permanent jobs that would match his salary because he figures those positions would be vulnerable to cuts that don't affect temps. "With the current climate, employers are looking at spending less," he says.

Follow the Money to Companies Hiring Technology Professionals

Want to know where to find jobs in this recession? Look at the firms where venture capitalists are investing.

Venture capitalist Trevor Loy invests in technology companies that haven’t stopped growing, according to a story posted on the McClatchy news service website. And, he says, these firms haven’t stopped hiring. "The end markets they serve are not shrinking," Loy said of some of the more than two-dozen companies he funds. According to the story:

They're part of a select swath of the U.S. economy that's been protected—so far—from the bad economic weather. They're schools and health-care providers, information-technology firms and green energy start-ups and other firms that, while not thriving, are at least still hiring.

Indeed, healthcare concerns and companies creating solutions to reduce carbon emissions are among ventures most in need of IT know-how.

Bad Economy but Bright Future for Some Info Technology Pros

Software as a service, mobile applications and data security should continue to flourish during the recession.

That’s the gist of a story posted on The Wall Street Journal website:

While the spending slowdown is expected to hit many technology categories, some pockets of tech—such as online software, mobile applications and security—may see increased investment and attention.

Companies investing more in all three of these tech categories make sense. Also known as a variation of cloud computing, software as a service—online apps that replace those housed on PCs, laptops and servers—provide similar benefits at much lower costs. With more people using wireless devices, creating new mobile applications helps drive productivity. And, as The New York Times reported earlier this month—in an article entitled "Thieves Winning Online War, Maybe Even in Your Computer"—securing corporate computers and networks are more crucial than ever.

With vast resources from stolen credit card and other financial information, the cyberattackers are handily winning a technology arms race. “Right now the bad guys are improving more quickly than the good guys,” said Patrick Lincoln, director of the computer science laboratory at SRI International, a science and technology research group.

The Journal's report concurs:

The economic downturn is heightening cyber security problems. Phishing attacks—emails that pretend to be from banks or some other legitimate source—are growing in sophistication. Cyber criminals capitalized on the collapse of several financial institutions this year by sending emails claiming that customers of failed banks needed to log on to a Web site and update their account information. The Web sites were really controlled by cyber criminals.

With the right skills, prospects for many IT pros look solid in these recessionary times.

IT Skills Essential in Recession

An article Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal confirms a tenet of this blog: employers need IT skills especially during an economic downturn:

There are also key areas where businesses—including those that are struggling—can’t go without help, says Jon Zion, president of eastern U.S. operations at staffing firm Robert Half International Inc. "There's still work to be done," he says. "And in bad times, [some] functions become even more essential."

Information technology is one such area, says Mr. Zion. Indeed, there are more than 62,000 employment ads currently listed on the technology job site Dice.com. IT positions are plentiful—even at companies that outsource jobs overseas. Systems administrators, network security specialists and help-desk technicians are still in demand, says Mr. Zion.

As we have noted, IT is so critical in keeping businesses functioning that among the last to be fired and the first to be hired are IT pros. "Today,” says Stevens Institute of Technology IT professor Jerry Luftman, “companies are going to IT and asking them for ideas as to how IT can be leveraged to reduce the costs of other parts of business.”

Can Unions Organize IT Pros?

If legislation to make it easier to organize workers into labor union becomes law next year,
how likely will information technology workers unite to join trade unions?

That’s a question posed in an article in the San Francisco Business Journal. The article quotes labor lawyer Garry Mathiason saying tech employees aren’t immune “merely because they are in technology or businesses where little union organizing has taken place.”

Big labor with the backing of many Democrats, including those in the incoming Obama administration, back passage of the Employee Free Choice Act that would make it harder for companies to battle unionization drives.

Though the bill was written to organize workers at companies like Walmart and not necessarily the information-tech industries, that doesn’t mean attempts to organize high-tech workers in Silicon Valley—where joblessness has jumped 2 points to 6.9% in just a year—won’t take place. Says labor lawyer Mark Ross, in the business journal:

“Times are changing. We’re in a troubled economy. People may be looking for other ways of protecting themselves and insuring that they are compensated appropriately.”

But would core beliefs of Silicon Valley technology workers get them to join a union. Here’s what Jan English-Lueck, a San Jose State University professor who studies the culture of the region, told the journal:

“There is a strong narrative of individuals in garages being successful, and that vision is not something that lends itself to organizing. Unions undermine the idea that I can do anything. You have a couple of really big cultural reasons against organization.”

Yet, the founder of the professional group Programmers Guild John Miano sees it differently:

“A forward-thinking union could set up a web site to create a non-stop certification drive at an unlimited number of Silicon Valley companies. This bill has the potential for having a major impact upon Silicon Valley and technology fields.”

GE Healthcare CollaborationsBode Well for IT Professionals

More evidence that healthcare IT will provide increasing job opportunities in the coming years for IT professionals comes from GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt (left). In a conference call with analysts this week, Immelt discusses how increased collaboration with healthcare institutions will help grow the company’s healthcare IT business that includes high-tech diagnostic imaging, treatment and other wares:

”The trick is in the United States to position our $1.8 billion healthcare information technology business, which I think through some of the collaborations, we're forming with Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Health people like that is very well positioned now in the electronic health record to position this business to really grow rapidly as the government sets new standards and gives hospitals some capability to invest in this activity. … The story is going to be about productivity and efficiency.”

And, among those investments will be IT know-how. How else to connect all these healthcare devices with electronic medical record systems?

Technology Jobs Seen Emanating from Healthcare Modernization

An Obama administration economic stimulus package worth up to $1 trillion could help IT employment in healthcare.

That's the prognosis offered by the career site Jobfox. The top jobs to modernize U.S. healthcare would include IT, bioinformatics and information security specialists as well as software developers, Jobfox says.

Stimulus projects to construct roads, bridges, transit and rural broadband would include, Jobfox guesses, computer-aided drafting specialists and telecommunications engineers among the top jobs.

Where the Tech Jobs Aren't

The massive job losses associated with this recession haven't hit IT professionals as hard as those in other professions. Still, IT vendors are laying off workers, which hits occupations such as engineering hard.

According to the EE Times Asia, which surveyed engineers worldwide, fear is gripping engineers as sales at high-tech companies weaken. From its report:

If the global economic crisis was a high-tech design challenge, executives at high-tech giants like Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco System, Dell, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nortel, Yahoo and even Sun Microsystems would be headhunting, beefing up their R&D teams and scouring the globe for the brightest engineering minds.

Instead, many of these companies, are frantically downsizing, discarding unprofitable business units, selling non-core operations, instituting a hiring freeze and eliminating thousands of skilled and experienced engineering jobs in a desperate bid to reduce costs and remain profitable in the midst of a horrid sales downturn. The result is a mind-freeze.

The article points out that Western engineers are deeply troubled by what they see as assaults by employers on their ability to fend for their families.

Unwittingly, many high-tech employers are encouraging that perception. Job cuts in Western regions are often followed by announcements of continued hiring in lower-cost centers. Seemingly, one set of employees is being swapped for another at a time of economic weakness, hence the rising tide of fear.

Engineers are equally split on whether they'd recommend their field as careers for their children.

Jobs Come and Go at Warp Speed

Here's a scary fact, from economists Martin Neil Baily and Matthew J. Slaughter, as posted on The Wall Street Journal website:

It's important to acknowledge that dynamic product markets create dynamic labor markets as well. In recent years, government statistics show that about 25,000 jobs are destroyed and created every hour that America is open for business. All this economic change is essential, but it presents very real challenges to workers.

IT Industry and IT Jobs:The Correlation is Limited

A report this weekend noted that growth in IT will lag other sectors, at least in Indiana. I don't doubt the report, but remember: the health of the IT sector (or lack thereof) doesn't mean fewer IT jobs in the economy. Too often they're confused.

Michael Hicks is the executive director of Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research, and in his posting on the website of the Muncie, Ind., newspaper The Star-Press, wrote the center foresees a modest rebound in the second quarter, with a few exceptions:

Information technology and construction will continue to lag in the recovery. This represents lagging business investment, primarily in new plant and equipment.

Though the article discusses employment conditions caused by the recession, it never makes a direct link between a decline in the IT sector and IT jobs. Still, the reader could infer that, and such a conclusion would be wrong.

Most IT jobs aren't in the IT sector; they're in regular businesses, and though many IT pros will lose their jobs in this recession, business-technology employment will outperform other occupations, mostly because companies need them to remain functional.

But too often those who should know the difference don't. A posting this summer on Slashdot.com cites government research to contend that IT jobs were getting harder to come by. The Slashdot posting was based on an InfoWorld article that confused the information sector, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Stastistics, with IT jobs. The information sector, according to the BLS, consists of industries such as broadcasting and publishing.

According to a 2006 BLS analysis, fewer than 3% of the jobs in broadcasting and publishing are held by IT professionals. Other "information" industries also employ relatively few IT pros. Among telecom employers, for instance, a mere 6.4% hold enterprise IT jobs. Not surprisingly, a majority of software publisher's employees have IT jobs; yet, more than 40% of positions at the like of Microsoft, Oracle and their smaller rivals are held by non-IT workers.

Here's what I wrote last summer on my CIO Insight blog :

Each month, the government conducts two employment surveys, one of business establishments and the other of households. The establishment survey, the one InfoWorld cites, doesn't break down employment by occupation but by industry. The household survey—the one used to determine the national unemployment rate—focuses on occupations.

Analyzing the household survey ... shows a steady rise in IT jobs. Last quarter, IT employment reached a record high of nearly 4 million, up about 10% for the past year.

Those IT employment numbers haven't changed much over the past few months.

Sure, many IT pros will be caught up in the layoffs brought on by the recession, especially in financial services, a big IT employer. Yet, as an occupation class, business-technology workers will experience fewer jobs losses, and will more likely be able to find jobs in the coming months than many of their unemployed neighbors in other occupations, regardless of the health of the IT sector.

Finance Dreamer Eyes IT Career

On college campuses across the country, students who once thought of a career on Wall Street, now find themselves looking elsewhere as the financial meltdown vanquishes their dreams of making it big in the canyons of Manhattan.

One of the beneficiaries of those shattered dreams could be the IT field. Take, for instance, Vinay Lekharaju who entered college with hopes of becoming an investment banker but now is studying for a master in engineering management at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. Here's what Lekharaju told Jin Noh, writing for The Duke Chronicle:

"I actually applied to quite a few companies and only got a few calls back. The economy makes it difficult and I don't see it improving. Friends of mine are more or less apprehensive to go into investment banking while many are being laid off."

Lekharaju said he'll seek a job in IT consulting once he graduates, but might resurrect his dream to pursue a finance career when the economy improves.

Citing stats from BusinessWeek, the article pointed out that fewer than 3% of the students in Duke's master in engineering management class of 2009 intend to seek finance jobs vs. 17% from the class of 2009.

A few years back, I interviewed then Pratt School Dean Kristina Johnson, now provost at Johns Hopkins University, about getting more students to major in technology fields, including engineering. Click here to watch the video interview of Johnson.

Obama Team Gets to Replace At Least a Dozen Departmental CIOs

There's been a lot of press given to plans by President-elect Barack Obama to create a federal chief technology officer job. In addition, the Obama administration will get the chance to name many other high-level technology leaders, including at least a dozen CIOs at federal cabinet departments.

In the federal government, some CIOs are political appointees and others are career civil servants. It's those political posts that the Obama team can fill with new appointees. I blogged about career vs. political CIOs a few years back.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, analyzed the role of departmental CIOs in 2004 (I couldn't locate a more recent report). To prepare the report, GAO interviewed 39 incumbent and former federal CIOs, and found a lack of consensus on whether the government and public are better service with CIOs who are political appointees or career civil servants. Here's what David Powner, GAO director of IT management issues, wrote:

Some believed that political CIOs could be more effective because they might have more access to, and influence with, the agency head. Others believed that CIOs in career positions could be more effective because, for example, they would be more likely to understand the agency, including its culture and work environment.

A chart from the GAO report showed the breakdown in 2004 between political and career CIOs, and how long they served (click on chart to enlarge):

Source: Government Accountability Office

Survey: Vast Majority of UK IT Pros Would Relocate Abroad for Job

Eight in 10 British IT professionals say they'd happily relocate to a foreign country if a job or work opportunity arose, according to a survey conducted by a British online IT job service.

More than one-quarter of those surveyed said they'd move abroad for career development reasons. Only 16% cited current economic conditions as a reason to do so. Despite the credit crunch, more than one-third of techies believed that the UK would continue to see the biggest growth in demand for IT professionals, according to The IT Job Board.

Other key findings:

• 62% search for IT jobs both nationally and internationally.

• 36% see language barriers as being the main challenge when moving to a foreign country.

• 71% would also relocate to a different UK city for work.

The Most Secure Job in IT, Part 2

A one-time Interior Department CIO who now heads a not-for-profit group promoting information security education sees the jobs of information security professionals being stable in this turbulent economy.

Quoted in a posting on BankInfoSecurity.com, (ISC)² executive director Hord Tipton (left) says:

“Even if downsizing in companies is severe, the IT security folks are generally the last to go because their job functions are critical to continuing the business regardless of how many employees are left. There's so much information that people have to still protect—it's digital, it's in databases and transmitted over wires—networking and security people are going to be required.”

Tipton cites research he says shows that IT security managers and architects rate near the top in terms of the most protected jobs.

“There may actually be an increased demand for them in many cases because the insider threat is greater than ever. The information security staff must monitor the IT department as well as end-users. People are looking for something to make them more marketable when they must leave their current employer, and thus are tempted to leave with your data.”

Other relatively secure IT jobs during this recession are those involving audit and IT governance. In another interview conducted by BankInfoSecurity.com, this one with Deloitte & Touche partner Gary Baker (right), the firm's enterprise risk expert sees a continued need for information security and risk management skills. Baker said:

“With the economic situation that faces us, it is quite likely that those IT security and risk management that can effectively make the connection between security, risk management and regulatory compliance on the one hand, and adding value to the bottom line of the organization on the other, will be the most successful. Management will want to focus on improving bottom line performance—in addition to meeting their compliance requirements.”

An earlier post, The Most Secure Job in IT, referred to a story in The New York Times that contends Internet security is broken, and quotes Phillip Porras, a program director and computer security expert at SRI International, as saying: “To me it feels like job security.”

Online Postings for IT Jobs Decline

No doubt the recession will take a toll on nearly all occupations, including IT. (Healthcare seems exempt, for now.) Just look at the Conference Board's numbers for November on online job postings that show a 29,500 decline for computer and math positions. Here's what the Conference Board reported (click on chart to enlarge):



But other recent reports suggest IT pros may not be as bad off as those in other occupations. Robert Half Technology foresees a net, 8% increase in IT staffing next quarter. Plus, the latest government stats show that IT employment rates remain well above those in other occupations. Indeed, the IT services sector added jobs last month while nearly every other industry had posted losses.

The main reason IT employment should remain relatively strong, as this blog has previously noted, is that businesses can't function today without IT.

Where Do CIOs Come From?

A recent survey by the Society for Information Management, conducted by SIM VP and Stevens Institute of Technology IT professor Jerry Luftman, shows where member companies found their current CIOs (click on chart to enlarge):

The Ultimate IT Security Job

The incoming Obama administration is being urged by a technology commission to create a new cybersecurity post that would report directly to the president.

According to a story in Monday's Wall Street Journal:

The new White House post is likely to be the most controversial of the commission's recommendations. In its report, the commission compared the job to that of the director of national intelligence. The cyber chief would report to the president and have his own staff of 10 to 20 people who would work with a beefed-up National Security Council cyber staff and federal agencies to implement the president's cyber policies.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies created the commission last year after a series of cyberattacks on federal computers. According to the Journal, Obama's transition team is seen using the commission's recommendations to help chart a path for the sprawling $15 billion cyber-security initiative launched this year by the Bush administration.

Click here for a PDF copy of the report.

The Most Secure Job in IT

Cyberattackers have been a thorn for computer users for years, but attacks are growing exponentially, and they're becoming more costly to consumers and business, even threatening our country's infrastructure. Unfortunately, the computer security industry is having a hard time keeping the bad guys at bay.

An article Thieves Winning Online War published in The New York Times on Saturday under contends Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know how to fix it.

One of the warriors against these bad buys is Phillip Porras, a program director and computer security expert at SRI International, a contract research institute that's collecting more than 10,000 unique samples of malware daily from around the global. Here's what Porras told The Times about his job:

“To me it feels like job security.”

The Labor Department expects a big jump in jobs related to computer security in the next decade. Here's what the department's current Occupational Handbook says about computer security specialists:

Demand for computer security specialists will grow as businesses and government continue to invest heavily in “cybersecurity,” protecting vital computer networks and electronic infrastructures from attack. The information security field is expected to generate many new system administrator jobs over the next decade as firms across all industries place a high priority on safeguarding their data and systems.

The government doesn't specifically track IT security occupations, but classifies them under the category computer support specialists and systems Administrators. That category is projected to grow between 2006 and 2016 by 18%, much faster than most other professions.

Recession Be Damned! IT Services Jobs Rise

American businesses cut 533,000 payroll jobs in November, the biggest monthly job loss in over 30 years as nearly every sector eliminated jobs. But one sector bucking this trend—computer systems design and related services firms, commonly known as IT services—increased payrolls last month.

In November, an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by The IT Job Analyst blog shows, IT services firms added 2,700 jobs. IT services firms employed in November some 1,435,900 people, a record high. Since November 2007, employment at IT services firms rose by 48,400, or 3.5%. As a comparison, all American employers shed 1,870,000 or nearly 1.4% from their payrolls in the past year.

In past recessions, IT services firms suffered along with the rest of the economy as business leaders didn’t highly value information technology. From March 2001 through August 2003, IT services firms payrolls shrank by 18.4% or 248,300 jobs.

Why is this recession different? Companies can’t function without IT. Today, IT know-how and the efficiencies technology brings business are among the last thing companies forfeit in troubled economic times.

Here’s what Jerry Luftman, a Stevens Institute of Technology IT professor who surveys CIOs for the Society for Information Management, told me earlier this week (read a fuller version of Luftman’s observation at our previous blog posting):

“This economic downturn is very, very different from previous ones. Today, companies are going to IT and asking them for ideas as to how IT can be leveraged to reduce the costs of other parts of business.”

But the recession is having a mildly negative impact on IT services employment. Payroll growth is slowing. A year ago, IT services payrolls rose by 5.8% or 76,300 jobs. Since January 2005, IT payrolls have consistently risen each month, except for one, this past March. Few other sectors can make that claim.

The computer systems design payroll numbers reflect the relative strength of IT employment when compared with the rest of the economy. The national unemployment rate jumped 2 points to 5.7% in November, a 15-year high. The government doesn’t furnish a separate IT jobless rate. It does release specific occupation figures on a quarterly basis, however. And, my analysis of those numbers from the third quarter shows IT unemployment hovering near record lows. In the third quarter, IT joblessness rose one-tenth of a point to 2.4%, with 4,010,000 Americans employed in the profession, a record high.

When the current quarter's employment figures become available next month, don't expect IT unemployment to remain so low. IT professionals aren't immune from this recession. But it would be surprising if IT joblessness came anywhere near the levels of overall unemployment. If it does, our nation would be in even worse shape than it is today.

What Recession?

IT recruiter Robert Half Technology's quarterly IT hiring index foresees a net 8% increase in IT hiring for the first quarter of 2009. Not bad in a recession.

Click on chart to enlarge

It's not surprising, though. Companies run on computers, and that means managers can't automatically layoff IT pros when staff levels must be reduced. Here's what Jerry Luftman, distinguished professor of at Stevens Institute of Technology, said to me in an interview earlier this week:

"In previous economic downturns, IT used to be the first place to cut, slice and dice: 'It’s expensive, no value, get rid of them.' This economic downturn is very, very different from previous ones. No, I’m not going to say that IT is not going to get impacted; it clearly will, it’s going to depend on the severity of recession. But clearly, this time is different, because now IT isn’t the first place being asked to be cut.

"Today, companies are going to IT and asking them for ideas as to how IT can be leveraged to reduce the costs of other parts of business. Innovative IT leaders are being proactive and going to the business people and saying here are some ideas you might want to consider. This is how we can work together in leveraging IT to help improve productivity, to improve processes, whatever, which in these trying times is critical as companies are trying to figure out how to reduce costs and survive during this downturn.

"It’s very, very different than previous downturns, which is excellent news ... but they better deliver because here’s an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons, and really turnaround and take a giant leap forward. Because if IT can be successful during these trying times and help the company internally, the next logical step would be looking at more strategic initiatives externally to the paying customers."

And, I guess there are paying customers, considering the Robert Half Technology survey shows that nearly one-third of respondents from companies that plan to expand their IT staffs next quarter are doing so because of business growth. That's something you don't hear a lot about these days.

Who Is an IT Pro?

Are there 4 million IT professionals or more than 10 million in the United States? Both. It just depends who's defining an IT pro.

In an article I wrote four years ago titled The New Math: Seeking The IT Workforce's True Size, I noted the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Information Technology Association of America used different methods to define an IT worker. At the time, the government pegged IT employment at 3.3 million and the ITAA at 10.4 million. The numbers may have changed a bit, but the rationale in determing those stats haven't.

Here's what I wrote in 2004, which holds true today:

The answer can be found at Liquid Pictures, a four-employee company that creates computer-generated animations. Owner Zachary Rymland turns to senior animator Piyatida Shiozaki when he needs extra aesthetics in an animation. Shiozaki, with a master's degree in computer arts, doesn't think of herself as a technologist. Senior animator Jeffrey Reynolds is the resident techie, a math whiz who customizes and automates processes to generate a complex animation.

Are they artists or IT pros? The Labor Department likely says they're artists; ITAA, technology workers. Shiozaki and Reynolds are the 7.2 million gap.

But Shiozaki and Reynolds reflect what's truly happening in today's workforce. A convergence in the workplace is occurring where more and more jobs require a higher level of tech- and business-savvy.

IT's No. 1 Asset: You

A decade ago, as an editor at InformationWeek, I began to explore information technology employment and workplace trends, and discovered that no one—not even the government—reported an IT unemployment rate. With advice from a Bureau of Labor Statistics and other economists, I developed a formula to determine the IT unemployment rate that served as a basis for many stories I wrote for InformationWeek and later for CIO Insight.

But IT employment (or unemployment) isn’t just about the numbers. IT’s most important assets are the human ones, the executives, managers and staffers who make up the profession. The character of the IT workforce has changed in the past decades, and this blog will track those changes and predict where the profession will head.