November 8, 2013 at 11:48 am
not to make a political statement, but more out of curiosity. Someone pinged me saying they didn't see a lot of tech jobs inside the US, especially permanent ones, and consultants weren't being paid very well. They had seen lots of outsourcing.
I've seen some reported, but also pieces that note there isn't as much outsourcing as we might think.
Thoughts? Do you see fewer jobs inside the US (or your own country) or more outsourcing? Less perm positions? Wondering about experience.
When I ask friends I know all over the US, they tend to say
- hard to find good candidates
- definitely jobs as FTEs
- consultants are busy as can be
A few links:
http://compsci.ca/blog/important-computer-science-jobs-are-not-outsourced/
http://www.beyond.com/articles/are-computer-science-jobs-being-outsourced-9462-article.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india_pr.html
http://www.atlanticfinancial.com/about-atlantic-financial/news/job_oursourcing.htm
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Microsoft-outsourcing-high-end-jobs-union-says-1147259.php
November 8, 2013 at 1:46 pm
I live in Arizona (U.S.) and I see/get lots of notices about companies looking for SQL Server DBAs; both for permanent hire and contract. Some of the notices I get are for work in other states.
So I would say the jobs are out there....maybe not in a specific locale where someone is looking or maybe not the specific type of job. But tech jobs are available.
-SQLBill
November 9, 2013 at 7:04 am
Do you see fewer jobs inside the US (or your own country) or more outsourcing? Less perm positions?
I don't know much about the US market, but I have noticed that I'm geting more unsolicited invitations to apply for jobs in the US than ever before, so I guess someone thinks there's a shortage of local talent; someone not very bright, as my cv/resume/linkedin profile and a few other things make it quite clear that I have have no intention of taking on any full time permanent position in the US (or anywhere else) so maybe their belief in such a shortage isn't actually evidence .of a shortage.
As for the UK, there are articles in the press saying we have a big technical skills shortage, and complaints from comapnies that they can't get candidates, but when one looks at the companies who are complaining they are the same companies who (a) provide no training and (b) want to pay peanuts, so their skill shortage may be imaginary - in fact I'm reasonably sure that in some cases they are advertising with pay that would certainly attract no-one qualified deliberately to create a false impression of a skills shortage so that they can get government to make it easier to employ foreign workers who are often cheap because they don't realise what the cost of living in the UK is until they get here and find out the hard way that what they have been offered and accepted is barely a living wage. Despite that, I also see job adverts with decent pay (why do people send me these things?). At a junior level, it's pretty clear for example that graduates of Robert Gordon University don't have problems finding jobs. There seems to be a shortage of short-term contract jobs, I see only a few and always with crazy requirements (extensive experience in all of SQL Server, SSMS, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, cubes, disaster recovery, T-SQL develoment, replication, fts, C#, .NET, JScript, VBS, IIS, WPF, testing, QA, customer support, pre-sales, reworking old code, migration from SQL 2000/2005 to SQL2008/2012, Business Intelligence, Sharepoint, Replication, Availability clustering, performance tuning, db administration, and the kitchen sink) which of course can't be believed as genuine requirements or aimed pretty low (1 years experience of doing what a real developer or dba tells you will do).
In Spain, there are occassional permanent contract positions for senior database people in Madrid and in Barcelona (perhaps elsewhere too, but those are the only places I've seen job adverts for), some of them paying pretty good salaries (€150k is the highest I've seen), but I've not seen any short term contract positions advertised and the job market generally is hopelessly depressed (unemployment rate is about 26%); things appear to have got better over the last two or three months, but as yet they are nowhere near good (still worse than they were 6 months ago; today unemployment is 3.25 times as high as 5 years ago).
Tom
November 11, 2013 at 6:29 am
I know in Michigan there are plenty of applicants, but the pool of qualified candidates is pretty slim. Granted, I'm not looking so I'm not up on the latest numbers, but I do hear on the radio about how people have been out of work for years.
The other perspective is the resume pile where the individual ranks themselves as "expert" level in so many technologies that it's not humanly possible for a 22-year old. Then in an interview, they can't answer simple questions. I've even seen the years of experience listed as longer than the product has been out in some cases.
November 11, 2013 at 7:22 am
Hm. In my area (Chattanooga, TN), tech jobs are quite rare, unfortunately, and the local government was outsourcing some of its database personnel when I inquired about it last year. Not sure if it's still the case or not.
Also, tech jobs here pay miserably :-D. Or at least my first one did, and the same goes for my roommate. He does database/web design work for a local dealership for about $24K a year, and works weekends/holidays from home by (continuous) demand. My first DBA job here paid a bit less than that. The prevailing attitude seems to be that computer work isn't hard, since you just sit in a chair all day, so the pay shouldn't be too high. My current employers think differently, thankfully, but I still need to extract my roommate from his barbarian encampment 😛
- 😀
November 11, 2013 at 4:42 pm
I'm pretty constantly bombarded by job requests. I'd say the activity is out there. Heck, I just got told of another by a friend (anyone, that I can vouch for, looking around Framingham, MA, get in touch) just this evening. From what I can tell, there seem to be plenty of jobs for experienced DBAs.
I was speaking with some consulting friends at the PASS Summit and they are not hurting, at all. In fact, most of them have more work than they can readily deal with.
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November 27, 2013 at 1:18 pm
I see mostly Contract jobs, or Temp to Perm jobs and mostly with consulting companies.
Very few perm non-consulting company work.
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