Study: IT jobs will drop in 2009

[OhioChick]

Sharp reductions likely in contract staff, professional services and hardware, and almost no investment in cloud computing

July 18, 2008 (InfoWorld) IT staff jobs are at increasing risk -- both for contractors and in-house workers -- according to a survey of top CIOs by Goldman Sachs & Co. released last week. Global services companies will also feel the pinch because of the slowing economy.

A second survey showed that basic PC and network hardware, as well as professional services providers, would bear the largest proportion of spending cuts. It also showed that CIOs planned to emphasize economizing measures over investments in new technologies, with cloud computing emerging as the last item on their priority lists, despite the hype around it.

IT contractors to bear the brunt of cuts

"Demand for discretionary IT projects dropped to its lowest point" in the 41-study history of the Goldman Sachs staffing survey, which asked 100 managers with strategic decision-making authority (mainly CIOs at multinational Fortune 1,000 companies) about their IT staffing plans for 2009.

The Sachs report states that "in a cost-constrained IT budget scenario, CIOs will most likely look to cut their resources first from lower-value augmented IT staff." The company also describes its survey as "an early warning flag" for service providers' 2009 bookings of new projects.

These intended cutbacks are a change from last fall. When the managers were asked in October which area of IT service delivery resources they would cut for application-related development or maintenance work, the answer was 0% for in-house employees. However, with a declining economy, 8% of respondents in a February survey said in-house IT programming staffers would be cut. In April, 15% of respondents said in-house staffers would be cut. That dropped to 11% in the June survey (the most recent).

But contract employees fare much worse. In the survey, 48% of the respondents said that those staffers would be cut. And 30% of the responders said on-site third-party service provider staffers would also be cut for application-related development or maintenance work. Twelve percent of the managers said they would cut employees from offshore third-party service providers.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9110329&intsrc=hm_list

[ihavenobias]

1. Sad, but not surprising n/t

[unblock]

2. i saw the writing on the wall and got out of straight programming 7 years ago.

i had a nice run, programming since the mid eighties, back when it was fun.

now programming is a lost art. instead, there are architects, spec-writers and coders. mostly these are dull jobs nowadays. the excitement and thrill have long left the industry.

i'm still doing plenty of sql programming, but only in support of the financial analysis i do. vastly more interesting, and not likely to be outsourced to india any time soon.

[Anywho6]

3. I'm living this right now. I was laid off on Thursday

I worked for just over a year at a mortgage servicing company as a Systems and QA Analyst. On Thursday, the company eliminated ALL analyst positions, a programmer, a director, a PC tech and a procurement admin--one third of the IT department.

ON EDIT: Spelling

[OhioChick]

6. I'm sorry to hear that

and hope you find something else soon. I'll bet all of those positions show up in India.

[Anywho6]

8. No, actually...

...I think the company is "winding down"--the credit market, default and foreclosure rates and lack of investors has put a death grip on the company. It's privately owned and has way under 200 employees now, so there will be no outsourcing--they will just go without and deal with a lower service level.

[blue cat]

11. sorry to hear

what state do you live in?

[Anywho6]

13. Thank you, Ohio Chick and Blue Cat

I'm in Northern CA near Sac.

[DavidMS]

14. Good luck with finhding a new job...

Thankfully we are so understaffed that its unlikely that any of us will loose our jobs. However that doesn't mean that we will get much new equipment to play with. Who knows what will happen.

I am surprised that Open source isn't more positively mentioned. Open source software reduces ownership costs because no one has to pay for licensing fees (at worst a support contract) but no per whatever licensing and no need to track licenses. I have been able to help get some open source software adopted for this reason.

[Anywho6]

15. Amen on the open source!

The shop I just got laid off from was a Microsoft shop. Talk about overhead! Holy cow! The shop before was open source (LAMP) and I loved it. Far fewer problems and bugs with open source and, yes, I'm amazed that open source is not more widely used.

Thanks, David!

Peace to all...

[JPettus]

17. It's why I will probably stay in Afghanistan another year or two

Hate being away from my wife, but the job is solid right now.

Best wishes to you in your job hunt

[Anywho6]

25. Thank you, J! And safe travels and God speed to you! n/t

[Duke Newcombe]

4. Nice...

now I can work on my appreciation of gardening and Top Ramen. Damn.

Duke

[comtec]

5. I think we're going to see more cases like the one in SF shortly

people in the IT industry are already being cut to the bone, they will just cut deeper to the marrow.
They are looking at IT workers rebelling, in a very serious way.
We hold all the passwords, we know where all the back doors are.
MORE importantly... we know what's in your email corporate masters...

[MadrasT]

9. Hell, yes.

comtec said: "We hold all the passwords, we know where all the back doors are.
MORE importantly... we know what's in your email corporate masters..."

Damn straight we do. Corporations need to think long and hard before they fuck with their I.T. people. I've been in the industry for 20 years. I don't know anyone in I.T. who would ever take advantage of that "we control everything and see everything" power... unless they really got screwed over. Then all bets would be off.

[JPettus]

18. And as they've shown

When the IT guys rebel against the corporate masters, the IT guys go to jail and then are sued for any damages they can claim.

Like it or not, we still live in Republican Times. Hopefully not much longer and then we can start turning that around.

[PatGund]

10. Which is why IT unionization is looking more likely

Yeah, the IT market is heading south unless you're really specialized.

[JPettus]

19. Hear! Hear!

Though you will really hear screaming all up and down the halls of power if they have to start giving power back to the employees. The Rethugs worked long and hard to break the powers of the labor unions, and the graft exposed in some union leadership went a long way to cause people not to care about keeping the unions going.

[marmar]

7. The wheels are coming off......

Decades of conservative economic policies have ruined this country.

[sourmilk]

12. CEO of one of the largest IT services firms in the USA:

"Any job that can be outsourced, should and will be outsourced."

If you know somebody getting a Comp. Sci or Electrical Engineering degree, tell them to either change majors or move to Bangalore or Guangzou - there are fewer good jobs left on this continent every day.

[MonteLukast]

16. I'd like to outsource him.

Take his mansions and his yachts and his fancy baubles and use them to pay for, oh, 1,000 health insurance policies for those who need it. Then make him work for minimum wage as a Wal-Mart greeter and have to report to some 19 year old who rags on him all the time for not being a "people person".

:evilgrin:

[JPettus]

21. Welcome to Wal-mart

Here's your fuckin' cart!

[sourmilk]

22. He made $19 million in 2006.

Bigger ashole than Carly Fiorina, but rates a sit down in commitee with * for 15 minutes a week...

[JPettus]

20. Go into IT security, forensics, network admin

Anything that requires someone actually on the ground, on-site to handle, hook up, troubleshoot and maintain systems rather than a coding job that can be outsourced.

[sourmilk]

23. Starting school for Heritage Masonry in 2 months.

Had more than my share (15 years) of IT. The jobs I have been offered in the past two years have been just plain miserable. I actually got one offer from Dell starting at less than I was making on Unemployment Insurance. I just laughed - what else can you do?

Besides - I love masonry work and have been doing it in one form or another all my life (it's in the blood, I'm told!).

[JPettus]

26. If it makes you happy

And you can make a living at it, why not?

I wish you well!

[flashl]

24. Perhaps a reason for the 'virtual' buzz/push? i.e. Virtual Data Centers, Virtual IT. etc. nt

[JPettus]

27. Well, cost cutting is one primary reason

Though I would be surprised if most of the managers I've known (the majority NON-Technical) are thinking that far in advance.

And for virtual to work, you still have to have servers, clients and networks, and if those are connected to the internet or another large WAN there is a need for additional networking and security skills. And as long as people are people there will be a need for people with security/forensic skills.

Plus, while you *could* conceivably run such products from off-shore countries like India, all it takes is for something to interfere with the WAN and you have an entire company (and perhaps multiple sites of the same company) unable to work. Loss of productivity (paying entire companies not to work) hurts corporations even more in the long run than paying people on site to maintain the LAN, servers and clients.

I don't foresee those needs going away anytime soon, regardless of what corporate businesses do.