San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Get on linkedin, I've gotten two calls in the last month from them.

Why did it take them nearly two years to get this servey out? Dont tell me the tech association is doing this stuff on paper.

Sure, there's plenty of need for technology "workers". Just don't expect them to be filled by U.S. Citizens. Offshoring and outsourcing are here to stay.

The latest volley on the H1-B battlefront:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnfl...

Notice how they talked up MicroSoft's contribution to the Seattle job market, but fail to mention that MS is opening a new facility just over the border in Vancouver. Why? Because Canada doesn't limit the number of foreign workers the way the U.S. does.

Wonder what the long term impact of this will be on the Seattle housing market, especially if this becomes a new trend?

There isn't a shortage of qualified U.S. workers, only a shortage of ones that can afford to pay off their college loans (and feed their families) on a third-word salary.

Brad

Storage.

I work in the tech industry and I get weekly calls from headhunters looking for people with storage skills and background.

If you know anything about direct-attached or SAN storage, zoning, etc. then you could easily get a job.

I'd also recommend that if you don't want to risk your job getting off-shored then you should go into sales, pre-sales, etc. Presentations and demonstrations are best done at customer sites. Weekly face-to-face meetings with customers cannot easily or routinely be done month after month from overseas. Customers like seeing the same face week after week - especially from large corporations.

You can't press the flesh through a telephone.

And for any of you techies out there there's a new technology just coming out - I think still in v1.0 phase - called Fibre Channel over Ethernet a.k.a. Convergent Network Adapter (CNA). I'm not a storage person myself but customers are just now starting to ask about CNA for their data centers.

I am an IT industry vet, and I will tell you right now there are way more applicants than there are jobs.

Those phone calls from headhunters/recruiters - rest assured 99% probabilty they really don't have a job and they will just waste your time.

I can tell from some comments above that many on this forum are newbies to IT.

Also, if you are over 40 - it's even harder to get a decent job in IT.

IT is brutally competitive in basically all aspects and specialty fields (with the possible exception of defense companies).

If I were just starting out in my career, I would never go into IT. Especially now with offshoring and H1B's.

Seconded, Paramount. Additionally, it is the most thankless of jobs. You'll be expected to be available 24/7, and no matter what stupid users, DBA's, and assorted nincompoops do to mess up the systems, it's all supposed to work all the time, right?

The trend is towards using cheap H1b labor and of late using even cheaper L1 labor. I know some L1 workers who have come here as an exchange from a big Indian company, they are not paid a proper salary but a $800 allowance every month. They have to pay all their living expenses with that including rent. Therefore they are living 4 in a 2 bedroom apt.

They have to work until 10pm everyday and also be available on the weekends. Basically modern day slavery.

The L1 route is a popular loophole these days because it is a largely unregulated visa in terms of minimum wages and caps.

Cheap Labor and IT

Agree- I too get tons of emails from Indian recruiters who are the worst to deal with and most jobs pay peanuts for senior level IT work. Best way is to become a niche expert in a specific high demand area that requires critical assistance and can bill high rates and do short contract work.

Full time jobs are not stable or secure anymore with H-1B/L-1 and off shore cheap labor.

Me- plan to go back from advanced degree in a field that cannot be off shored so easily or replaced by cheap labor. Maybe some type of finance or legal field that is not sent to India or China.

I do not see C-level (CEO, CFO, SVP) executive level jobs being sent overseas anytime soon.

CEO, CFO and COO look out below:

The IT guys should get together and come up with software to replace these greater fools. It is so easy to perfrom the measurements they use and actually do it much better and faster looking at much more data. Based on my MBA company evaluation class alone, I could whip pretty much any CEO with an excel spreadsheet, good floor managers and a Walmart styled distribution/logistics system. With the proper feedback from the market and internal sources, eliminating the CEO's and improving stock price (which is the CEO target)would be pretty easy.

Sincerely,
Steveno

Just had a Buddy get a Job at QCOM , he is leaving North L.A. Area and moving to S.D.,

Anyway, just saw a thing on Yahoo news about Tech jobs being plentiful and ranking the top cities for Tech Job’s, S.D. came in 11th, L.A. was not even on the list
Ventura did however come in 15th.

Also O.C. was behind S.D. in both Job's per Population and wages (S.D. was about 10K higher believe it or not).

Oop's this is the same article that started this thread,
sorry for the redundant info ...

I am an IT veteran and was on H1B working for a long time.

Let me share my experience with H1B atleast w.r.t big companies like MSoft/CSCO/Intel as I worked for few of these big MNCs.

Usually, I know companies do not like to hire H1Bs because of additonal baggage like H1B processing/GreenCard processing etc etc. So, whenever I get an offer from these companies, I am in a better position to negotiate as I know that they have come to offer me as last resort. So, I am always able to negotiate for more. Simple supply and demand right ?

But, if you talk about people working for bodyshop companies like TCS/WIPRO/Indian-Consultancies they are definitely not paid that much. Saying it a modern day slavery would be a bit exaggeration though.
Usually, big consultancy companies like TCS/WiPro they pay you less but small companies pay on hourly basis..
Most of my friends are on H1B working for american companies ( not for bodyshoppers ) and their salaries are definitely a lot ($100Ks).
But few of my companies doing independent projects through small bodyshopper companies are getting at an average of $60/hr. Not bad huh..

I am not sure if the modern day slaves can earn this much!
Mind it, these words are coming straight from the horse's mouth.

Honestly, for big american companies, hiring H1Bs is a very costly proposition but they have to do it. I am a living example as I have been hired few times at a premium or I just got lucky all the times??

If you talk about L1 visa and offshoring, its a different story.....

Got yet another call today from a recruiter.

Re: Offshoring.

This is why I've focused on systems architecture, engineering and security vs. development. You really need to be in the states.

Additionally, with the dollar tanking and emerging markets surging, I think salaries are going to achieve parity surprisingly quickly.

I believe the notion that there are not enough qualified US Citizens to fill these IT jobs is pure BS.

I think most of us know exactly what this is about: saving $$$.

These H1B policies encourage companies to NOT employ US Citizens!

I've been in the technology industry for 20+ years. I've worked for the major companies that SELL into IT.

I agree that when you are in IT that when the s**t hits the fan then you are expected to work through the night and on weekends when your area is down: the network, the servers, the storage, the applications, the database engines, whatever. When one of those goes down they tend to bring everything else down with it. The hard part is bringing everything back up in the right sequence to a known point in time. Downtime is lost revenue.

What has worked for me is being the technical half of a sales team. As a technical pre-sale person you get to continue to challenge yourself and learn new technologies before they hit the commercial market. And, you also get to share in the commissions without taking the huge risk that the pure sales reps take - though they do get the bigger rewards.

My advice to someone starting new in the technology field is plain and simple: never stop learning.

Many of my colleaques are looking for jobs today because their skills and knowledge are not as fresh as they once were 10 years ago, even 5 years ago. Continue to learn new technologies.

Do whatever it takes to get the job done. Be driven. Be obsessed with your work.

I agree cent percent with HarryBosch.

IT jobs now a days are very very competitive and usually favors the young people.

Unless you have the motivation/ability to keep updating your knowledge , you are out...

In my company, we outsource the java development job to India as we can hire 3 engineers rather than having one in states. But again, hiring H1B is usually more costly than hiring a US Citizen.

dd123 the reason why IT jobs favor the young people is because of a couple reasons:
1. Younger people can be paid less than the older more experienced work force.
2. Younger people fresh out of college have just spent the last couple years learning new technologies.
3. They bring that creative "I can do anything, conquer the world" attitude into the workplace.

A lot of companies are simply setting up an office in Bangalore. So that rather than use WiPro/Tata, they simply hire locals in Bangalore.

This can be difficult to manage given the extra holidays, and cultural festivals, etc.

There are certain niche technologies that require US based skills. For instance many of the current workflow based tools lend themselves more to a really technical business analyst/pm than they do a heads down java developer (weblogic, tibco, etc.). However a lot of shops using these tools still employ indian/russian (whatever) developers to write adapters or services (API).

Outsourcing, along with ridiculous stress levels, is the reason I switched from IT to technical writing. Very few people born to another language ever become top-notch English writers, so that's one job in software which is never outsourced.

As I read this, I see more of the admin/development IT jobs discussed but not the other side of the coin.

Why not get into a tried and tested ERP platform, be it as a developer, tester, or even implementation consultant (ie Functional/ Technical Resource)? This would require you to work for a company that can win the business but Oracle, SAP, Salesforce are in demand, as well as APO from a supply chain perspective.

I have been doing SAP functional/technical work for 4 years and have learned CRM, MM, CM, CD, FI so that Im not silo'd into one skillset. This plan has helped me strategically keep my options open with my current employer. Offshoring isnt really possible with this line of work, bc of the constant interaction with the business sponsors.

for the help desk type of guy, yeah.. watch out.

For admins that work with higher end solutions, blades, sans, virtualization, larger complex environments.. it's not going anywhere.

I too admit that it's a cut throat profession though, when doing interviews, my wife who is in finance would talk about how they went. I would explain that I didn't know a few of the technical questions, she would go on about how that's not a big deal etc, they'll probably train you, etc..

I would just look at her and shake my head.. in IT, the odds of you getting trained into your position is small. She got a job, knew a lot of the basics but would be required to get a decent amount of training, and she got it. In IT, yeah.. put your resume elsewhere.

Plus.. in IT you can't make mistakes. If you are in finance and screw up a formula, data, etc.. you can change it. IT usually isn't given those luxuries..

If I was to do it again, I would have become a pharmacist, talk about an enjoyable secure job

Experienced MIT Grad For Hire

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...