September, 2009

Po Bronson Strikes Again with “What Should I Do…” Redux

Back in the last downturn — you know, the dot com bomb that followed the dot com boom in 2001 — Po Bronson, one of my favorite writers came out with a terrific book entitled What Should I Do with My Life?  that explored how best to take advantage of the many, often involuntary opportunities to change jobs that the dot bomb bestowed on workers. Given our current economic situation, with a technical end to the recession in sight, but with unemployment at its highest point in 26 years, and with worse still to come, it came as no surprise to me that he’s returned to this subject matter in a story for Fast Company entitled “What Should I Do with My Life, Now?” You’ll definitely want to give this a read, whether you’re out of work, thinking about making changes to your working life, or simply trying to keep up with ever-shifting employment landscape.

The story itself seeks to debunk a list of misconception or perhaps misguided ideas about what it means to ponder one’s fate, and consider one’s working life. You’ll want to turn to Bronson’s own inimitable prose for the biggest impact, but he manages to unearth some ideas and discuss them in a way that’s simultaneously interesting, amusing, realistic, and occasionally pathetic. The notions he seeks to debunk what he perceives as “the top fallacies that I think people project onto this dilemma” (where the dilemma is the title of the story):

1. People are not the architects of their own changes.
2. Responsibilities are not outside your circle of purpose.
3. Following your passion, or pursuing your fantasies, is no ticket to happiness, success, or job satisfaction.
4. No job is perfect, and all of them have yucky parts. But if you feel like you’re working toward something, that’s probably good enough.
5. It’s not necessary to have some kind of higher calling to have a sense of purpose at work.
6. There is no one perfect thing for each person to find and pursue. Any career that provides growth and fulfills a sense of purpose will do.
7. Don’t say you have no idea what you want from life: everybody knows what they want; the difficulty comes in satisfying them. It’s about learning, discovery, and being willing to start over.

All I can say is that I was glad to find and read this story. I hope you’ll do likewise and feel the same when you’re done. Enjoy!

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on Windows 7 Reliability

Anybody who reads this blog for any length of time will quickly observe that I’m a nut about Windows reliability, and very interested in how the OS measure same. Starting with Vista, and continuing in Windows 7, there’s even a reliability monitor that keeps track of how systems do over time. Here’s a snapshot of the woeful state of my current Windows 7 production machine, which likewise gave me reliability fits before I upgraded to Windows 7 RTM on August 8.

Bad-boy P35 Quad Core PC has rotten reliability

On the other hand, here’s a snap from another machine I work on regularly, my Dell D620 notebook PC, which is a solid as a rock and shows it like a champ in this display:

The D620 earns perfect 10 on reliability

Great Cert Prep Advice From CertMag

As somebody who’s dispensed a great deal of advice on how to prepare for IT certification — including three or four editions of a book called IT Certification Success — I’d like to think that I can recognize good examples of the genre from other writers as well. In that spirit that I call your attention to Luis Carselle’s recent story for Certification Magazine. Entitled “Learn Smarter: Preparing for a Certification Exam,” it appeared on the Web site on 9/25/2009 and will also appear in print in its October issue.

One of the sections in the story I like best is called “Years Before the Exam,” which digs into the kinds of jobs that actually require certification before individuals can practice or perform them. Aside from the kinds of positions we all know require such vetting — commercial pilots, physicians, therapists, and so forth — a growing number of technical positions in and around IT are starting to fall under this kind of umbrella. I also know of lots of companies that require their field engineers, system engineers, and senior technical support staff to earn and maintain certs in the areas, platforms, or products with which they work.

Carselle goes on to lay out tasks and objectives on a timeline basis, to describe what candidates should be doing to prepare for an exam six months out, three months out, and so on, all the way up to the day before an exam. I can’t say this story is complete or even comprehensive. But the advice it proffers is generally good, and definitely worth reading. If you need some information and inspiration to help you gear up for your next cert exam, give it a once-over. You may even decide to return back to it as you march down the timeline to exam day.

The MS Cert Exam Beta Invite Process Explained

Hooray! Liberty Munson of MS Learning has posted a peachy explanation of how the invitation process works for some of the many Microsoft certification exams that get introduced and updated all the time. Here’s the banner for this latest posting on the Born To Learn blog, posted 9/25/09, and entitled “Understanding the Beta Invite Process.”

If you’re interested in finding out about beta exams, it’s a good idea to stay tuned to the “Born to Learn” blog anyway, and you’ll also want to check in on the certifications postings there as well. In fact, a quick jump over there right now shows a recent (9/17/09) posting on the Windows 7 Professional exams (685 and 686) that explains how people find out about open betas so they can sign up and particpate, primarily by filling out an SME (subject matter expert) profile and indicating interest before the beta exam sign-up period begins. There’s even a Beta Exam Announcements blog where you can find out about all the ongoing and upcoming beta exams at Microsoft at any particular point in time.

Now that you know how to find out about exams, how to get considered, and where to look for information, all you need to do is get lucky enough to check about one week in advance so you can indicate interest, and snag an invite or get a beta registration code. Good luck!

MS Plays Contrarian for “Careers of the Future”

In a recent MS PressPass posting entitled “Message to Students and IT Pros: Prepare Today for ‘Careers of the Future‘” Microsoft appears to be taking an interesting and contrarian slant on IT jobs as it attempts to stimulate interest and investment in Microsoft Learning offerings. MS interprets the results of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics July Household Survey to indicate that “computer systems design and services” jobs have increased vis-a-vis those for 2008. They also cite a July Fortune story “Where the tech jobs are now” to indicate that “unemployment among tech workers [is]…less than half the overall U.S. jobless rate” with further mention of that story’s subtitle — “At least 400,000 jobs are going begging, even in this economy.” Then comes the kicker: this situation reflects “the ever-changing nature of the tech industry,” where “even during lean times companies have a hard time finding the right candidates to fill certain technical positions.”

And of course, MS wants to help with this. They’re launching a new campaign called “Chart YOUR Career” where you can pick among a list of job roles to see what kinds of training and career development information is available for each one:

Chart Your Career job roles

Not only does Microsoft want to get you involved in related training and certifications, it is also offering exam discounts of up to 25% ($37.50 on a $150 exam in the US), and touting free software with classroom training (this has been Microsoft’s practice for those who take authorized classroom training for as long as I can remember, at least as far back as 1995). For each role, you’ll find a job description, skill sets, and various learning plans to help pursue that path into demonstrations of competence. Careful reading of the recitations from the various Microsoft executives involved in the press release indicate this information is aimed primarily at students at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

This makes sense because those already in the workforce usually have to keep earning a paycheck and can only pursue new job roles part-time. Students looking for career choices could conceivably use this information to target specific job roles — and related certifications — as they work through their degree plans. Though Microsoft points readres to its programs for job seekers, as well as for IT pros and developers, this information is likely to have the biggest impact on those in the process of figuring out what to do with their professional lives. It should be interesting to see what kind of fruit it bears, and to see whether or not the roles that the company targets here translate into real opportunities for those who seek to fill such shoes.

10 Best Places for Tech Jobs

On September 15, US News and World Report published a story whose title matches that for this blog: 10 Best Places for Tech Jobs. While some of them match cities I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs on this topic myself–including Washington, DC and Houston, TX–others may come as something of a surprise to many readers (as some of them did to me). In their order of appearance in the story, here goes this list:

1. Atlanta, GA: offers higher than typical tech openings for computer programming, software engineering, and systems analyst positions, thanks in part to corporate growth and expansion.
2. Boston, MA: long a hotbed of high-tech innovation and opportunity thanks to a plethora of quality universities and R&D organizations, jobs for programmers and software engineers garner some of the highest pay rates in the country.
3. Houston, TX: thanks to a still-strong economy, a large population, many services firms, and lots of high-tech activity, Houston also still boasts a high number of tech job openings for various occupations.
4. Hunstville, AL: Home of the NASA Marshall Space Center and the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville has long been a hotbed of aerospace and defense-related high-tech activity. The local Chamber of Commerce reports that over 300 companies in this area focus on high-tech, with job openings and opportunities to match.
5. NYC, NY: This huge metro area may be expensive but it also beats the national norm for the ratio of job openings to employment in various technical jobs, with the chance that healthcare changes might open even more opportunities, thanks to a large number of healthcare providers and health technology companies in its immediate vicinity.
6. Phoenix, AZ: With over 4,000 companies in high-tech and more than 80,000 related jobs, Phoenix is home to most major high-tech players as well as LOTS of second- and third-tier employers. This probably explains why Phoenix gets high ratings for tech jobs open overall, and for ratios of job openings to employment for numerous IT specialties.
7. San Diego, CA: City officials often observe that this area has one of the highest concentrations of high-tech companies (and jobs) anywhere in the US. San Diego also ranks higher than Washington, NYC, and Boston when it comes to IT salaries.
8. San Francisco, CA: Home to Silicon Valley in the south Bay area (San Jose), SF also enjoys a lower-than-average unemployment rate of 9.3 percent (2.5 percent lower than San Jose’s, in fact) thanks to a higher number of startups and a lower number of manufacturing firms than in the south Bay area.
9. Seattle, WA: With a sizable roster of big-name, well-known tech companies, Seattle is also experiencing a bit of a boom in tech startups, especially for software engineers. This probably explains why Seattle ranks third in average pay, bettter than DC and NYC.
10. Washington, DC: As I’ve already explained in an earlier blog of my own, the DC area includes a concentration of high-tech companies and is benefiting from the influx of federal stimulus dollars. It leads in terms of overall IT job openings, and in their range and diversity.

To compile this list, US News started with a database of 2,000 cities to dig more deeply into metro areas of sufficient size to offer numerous different kinds of IT openings, and also looked for areas with high numbers of graduate degrees relative to population. They cross-matched this with job search hits at an unidentified “tech-specific job site,” then looked at local supply-demand rations for various technical occuptations from a company named Wanted Analytics. Their analysis also included salary data and considered the cost of living. All of this combined to identify the preceding list of cities, at least two of which I’ve mentioned in other blogs of my own.

Now, all I want to know is why so many of these cities suffer from high traffic congestion (only Huntsville is not completely swamped with cars, but even this city does experience jams on its high traffic corridors from time to time)? Is there some correlation between longer commute times and IT employment? It’s probably just a function of population density in these mostly-large metro areas, but that sure seems to be the case.

Sigh. It’s always something!

More on Bernanke: It’s No Pleasure to Be Right

In following up from my preceding post “Bernanke at Brookings,” I’ve noticed that my reaction to his news about the technical end of the recession mirrors lots of other reactions. I saw a great political cartoon on the editorial page in my morning paper today that showed somebody holding an umemployment sign responding to the remark by Bernanke that the “recession is likely over” by saying “No, it’s not!”

I have to agree that while technical measure may be important to economists, and that while leading indicators may signal the end of a recession, it’s only when trailing indicators — most notably, employment and consumer confidence — participate in an upswing that the “person on the street” starts to put some credibility into claims that the situation is improving.

My understanding is that we have anywhere from six to twelve months still ahead where other signs of improvement will begin to appear here and there, leading ultimately to a general sense of better times and conditions. But until the IT employment situation turns around and actual job growth begins to show itself, I don’t think most people (including myself) will be feeling too sanguine about the state of the economy and the technical status of the recession or any subsequent (technical) expansion.

Bernanke at Brookings: “Technically, it may very likely be over, but…”

The “it” in the title for this blog is the recession, and the but is a big one — namely, that unemployment will probably continue to rise into 2010, and will still probably exceed 10% overall. Brooking has graciously made a video of Bernanke’s keynote, entitled “A Year in Turmoil” from Bernanke’s 9/15/2009 keynote one the one-year anniversary when the financial situation turned into a recognizable crisis when the government decided to allow Lehman Brothers to fail.

What does all this mean? I think it means that the ongoing mantra “Sit Tight” still applies to IT Professionals who remain employed, and that “Look Harder” does likewise for those of us in IT who are looking for work. As we already know, but will be forced to experience, the end of a recession occurs when various economic indicators (growth/shrinkage in inventories, changes in business postures, bank lending activity, and so forth) flip from negative to positive, even though this doesn’t translate directly or immediately into more tangible signs of recovery.

For ordinary IT professionals, real recovery occurs when the number of jobs being created finally exceeds the number being lost, so that demand for our services actually goes up. In the meantime, those mantras I cited in the previous paragraph remain in full force. Economists call employment a “lagging indicator” because it trails behind other market trends and activities, including those that generally mark the end of a recession.

As to when a noticeable recovery might get underway, look at the timing this way: if Bernanke is right, and unemployment continues to rise into 2010, we have to hope that a net gain in jobs shows up as early as Q2 of that year. That means at least six more months of keeping on keeping on before we can tell if things are improving in any way, instead of not getting too much worse. No wonder consumer confidence is depressed. Why shouldn’t it be?

Retrospective on 2009 IT Jobs

In trying to understand current conditions, it’s sometimes interesting to turn back the clock to see what was forecast for the period we’re currently occupying. To that end, I found this 14-month old set of predictions from ComputerWorld (7/18/2008) pretty interesting “Study: IT jobs will drop in 2009.” Conducted by Goldman Sachs — itself on a bit of a roller-coaster ride in the last year as well — the study makes some interesting observations and predictions. Let’s take a look at how these have withstood the moderate test of time in the interim:

• IT jobs, in particular jobs for IT contractors, were projected to experience a pinch/reduction. Careful attention to the Employment Situation summaries for each month in 2009 shows this to be both true and painful, especially to those caught in that very pinch, which has indeed affected contractors, service companies, and in-house IT staff across the board.
• Hardware outlays were projected to drop significantly. This one gets a mixed result, thanks to real and definite cutbacks in new hardware outlays for desktop PCs, servers, and all kinds of infrastructure gear. But Windows 7 seems to be stimulating interest, and may still bring some modest relief to the hardware sector before the year is out. That said, I don’t see any big corporate adoptions occurring until late 2010 or perhaps even into 2011. We’ll see!
• Cloud computing generates lots of interest, but not much traction or deployments. Here again, I see mixed results in that although adoptions and implementations haven’t been as aggressive or pervasive as they probably would have been in better economic times, they haven’t been exactly moribund either, contrary to the Goldman Sachs prediction that uptake would be very slow in 2009, mostly because CIOs and execs don’t “get” the value of cloud computing. Not so, says this sector, which is one of the few relatively bright technology spots shining on the IT landscape right now.

What kinds of trends did you expect to see for 2009 and IT employment/activity? What turned out as you expected, and what didn’t? Post here to share your observations of what remains a dicey situation, where “stay put” remains the mantra for those still lucky enough to have jobs in IT.

In Memoriam: Cecilia Katherine Kociolek Tittel, RN 1919-2009

I got back from a business trip this morning to learn that my Mom, aged 90, passed away peacefully in her sleep last night. She spent the last year and a half of her life in an assisted living facility in Fairfax County, VA, after living with me and my family for just over two years in the home (with “mother-in-law wing”) we had built to care for her in her declining years.

I’d like to take this opportunity to remember her to all of you. She was a ferociously intelligent woman who did her best to take care of her family, and I’ll always be grateful to her for ensuring that I got such a good education. She graduated first in her high school class, and also at the top of her class in nursing school. She served in WWII with distinction, and attained the rank of Major in a mobile army surgical hospital, following the Army through Northern Africa, into Sicily, and then on to France. When I was a boy, she took a job as the school nurse in the Heidelberg American School system in Germany, in part to keep a closer eye on me and my  sister. She always encouraged my love of learning and language, and I owe much of what I am today to her care and attention. I will miss her terribly.

Mom was also a multiple cancer survivor: after being diagnosed with colon cancer in 1987 and learning to live with a colostomy (at which point she quit smoking), she was then diagnosed with lung cancer in 1989 (at which point she had the upper lobe of her left lung removed). She managed to survive for 20 years after those medical misadventures, and remained cancer free until her dying day. If anybody wants to remember her, I’d ask them to make a donation to the American Cancer Society in her name.

Cecilia K Tittel, 1919-2009