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IT Professionals are satisfied in their jobs but are looking
03/04/2010
The vast majority of IT professionals are satisfied at work with 40 percent are satisfied with their jobs. Indeed, Janco finds that there is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and the salary. Since more money equals greater job satisfaction, one could infer that for some, money does buy happiness.
However, more than 60% of IT Professionals feel they should be making more money.
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Though the majority of IT professionals seem to be satisfied with their current jobs, it is not preventing almost 40% of them to start looking for new opportunities. Nearly 1 in 5 are either actively looking or will be looking within the next three months.
Could proposed fed policy help IT Hiring
03/01/2010
Several Republican senators and procurement experts have voiced their disagreement with a policy Obama administration officials are considering that would give a leg up to contractors who pay their employees more, according to a letter and comments at a hearing.
"We are concerned that the imposition of these requirements, during a time of significant economic turmoil in the private sector and tight federal budgets, could have serious, negative consequences, especially for our nation's small businesses," five senators wrote in a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Today, an Obama administration official said the president hasn't issued any policy regarding a contracting preference. Nevertheless, experts inside and outside of government have offered suggestions to the administration on improving contracting, as the president pledged to do in his reform memo.
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Army to reduce outsourcing
02/24/2010
(Washington Technology) Army Secretary John McHugh told a Senate committee today that the Army plans to give outsourced jobs that are associated with inherently governmental functions to its civilian employees.
The Army intends to insource 7,162 positions this fiscal year, McHugh said in testimony before the Armed Services Committee. From fiscal 2011 to 2015, the service aims to take back 11,084 positions and give them to civilian employees. Of those, nearly 3,988 are for acquisition-related work, he said.
"Civilians are assuming increased responsibilities within the Army," he said.
In fiscal 2009, the Army saved significant resources by bringing back in house more than 900 "core governmental functions," McHugh added.
Core governmental functions, sometimes called critical functions, are jobs that are very close to inherently governmental functions, or work that only a government employee can do. Outsourcing core jobs can force the government to rely on the private sector's knowledge, and contractors potentially can unduly influence the government, officials say.
"The Army is recouping intellectual capital by insourcing former contracted positions,"McHugh said.
The Army identified these positions to insource in its ongoing contractor inventory review process.
Like McHugh, other military officers and Defense Department officials have announced plans in their fiscal 2011 budget proposals to take away numerous jobs from contractors, in areas such as acquisition and procurement.
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Baby boomers face new challenges in the job market
02/20/2010
According to the Congressional Budget OfficeOver the past 15 months, the stock market has wiped out $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings . With the downturn in the stock market and the laying off of so many IT professionals, there now is a situation where "baby boomer" are competing for the same jobs as the "millennials" are just getting out of college.
CIOs now have to decide whom to hire by sorting through a maze of competing technical expertise, business acumen, cultural preferences, and career expectations.
That is not always easy. Millennials have a tendency to eat, sleep and breathe Web 2.0 technologies, and the value of that may not be immediately clear to a traditional CIO.
Boomers have expertise in more traditional technologies such as IT infrastructure and operating systems. That's good news for large enterprises, which are always on the lookout for IT professionals with the skills needed to support its largely mainframe-based package-tracking system. That type of expertise can limit boomers' prospects elsewhere.
This eagerness to learn gives many millennials a leg up on the competition. There is a managerial flip side to consider. Young IT workers who are bold enough to take on new technologies are also more likely to be impatient with the constraints of traditional workplaces.
Businesses that expect all employees to march to the beat of the same drummer, however, may have a tough time reining in millennials' more spirited work ethic and thirst for experimentation.
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Recession impacts IT entry positions the hardest
02/17/2010
Take a look at the numbers defining the scope of the recession. When you break down the unemployment rate by age group, here's how it pans out: 16.7 percent for everyone aged 15 to 24, 8.2 percent for everyone aged 25 to 44, and 6.3 percent for everyone aged 45 and older. So, the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed.
Federal records show that the older you are, the more money you're likely to be making: The median weekly salary for workers in the 16-to-24 age bracket is about 41 percent less than what someone aged 25 to 44 makes -- and they're making 6 percent less than the folks in the 55-and-up group.
When you look at the numbers in the Janco 2010 salary survey, staff-level salaries start at a median of $40,671 and climb higher as the jobs proceed up the (very short) ladder.
And, unfair as this seems, the more you're making, the less likely you are to be unemployed. According to a new study at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, the unemployment rate for people making between $39,000 and $50,000 is 9 percent, and it only drops more as your income climbs: If you're making $79,100 or more, only 3.2 percent to 5 percent of the people in your income bracket have lost their jobs.
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Raises too be meager for IT according to study
02/16/2010
At less than 2 percent, raises in technology salaries will be small in 2010, according to a report by Computer Economics. Developers are at the top of both the raise list and the salary list, especially for highly complex application development work. Managers and senior executives will have to get to the back of the line.
IT workers are due to receive a median 1.8 percent bump in salary in 2010 - below the 2.7 percent rate of inflation and the lowest rate in the last five years - according to data from a 2010 salary report from Computer Economics. A similar report from technology job board Dice, in January, showed that in 2009 tech salaries rose a measly 1 percent.
"By historical standards, the 1.8 percent median pay raise is meager," CE wrote on its Website. "But in light of still-high unemployment rates, the finding indicates IT executives are responding to the need to retain their best workers and boost damaged morale."
By comparison, salary raises for tech workers in 2007 were 3.8 percent, CE data showed. The effects of the recession on technology salaries will continue to be felt for some time.
"With persistent unemployment, organizations will be able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the recession. This should place downward pressure on U.S. national median salary levels over the coming months," CE said.
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High tech jobs continue to suffer according to government report
02/09/2010
Silicon Valley's decline has been charted over an eight-year period between 2000 and 2008 in which venture capital investment meant big gains for technology workers' wages in the beginning, but those IT wages have since diminished. The recovery will be slow and gradual, according to government economists. On the whole, high-tech industries in Silicon Valley declined sharply in employment and wages from 2000 to 2004 but increased gradually in both respects from 2004 to 2008.
From 2000, when high-tech employment and wages peaked, to 2008, Silicon Valley's hightech industries lost more than 108,400 jobs, or 19.9 percent of their employment.8 High-tech industries in the rest of the Nation lost 6.2 percent of employment. In addition, real wages fell by 13.5 percent among Silicon Valley's high-tech industries, while high-tech wages grew by 1.3 percent in the rest of the Nation.
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Cyber criminals are hiring
02/03/2010
The people who brought the world malicious software that steals credit card numbers from your personal computer and empties bank ATMs of their cash are hiring, and they're advertising online.
What they are seeking is people who are willing to take malicious code they provide and link it to something that people will click on -- like a picture of Britney Spears getting out of her car. These people then collect a fee for each 1,000 times that the malware is downloaded.
One site pays $180 for each 1,000 times that malware is downloaded onto a U.S. computer but less for computers elsewhere. It refuses to pay for any downloads to Russian computers, causing Stevens and others to strongly suspect that it, like other similar sites, are based in Russia.
"We pay your wages via the following systems: Fethard, WebMoney, Wire, e-gold, Western Union (WU), MoneyGram, Anelik and ePassporte, and PayPal," according to the website.
It is impossible to know how many computers were infected via these companies but put the number in the millions.
It's hard to separate theft arising from these web sites from other sorts of Internet crime but the FBI tallied $264 million in losses from Internet crime reported by individuals in 2008. The report for 2009 has yet to be released.
The cybercrime problem has become worse over the past three years as consumers and companies alike increasingly expose valuable data such as business plans, credit card numbers, banking information and Social Security numbers on the Internet.
"There are hundreds of billions of dollars that traverse the Internet," the assistant director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, told Reuters late last year. "It's (the problem) absolutely gotten bigger, yes, absolutely."
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Outsourcing impacts on certain IT jobs
02/01/2010
A survey by a buisess shcool shows that 40% of high-technology firms offshore work, and about 30% of all firms that offshore send IT work overseas. Among the IT workers surveyed, about 8% report ever having experienced offshoring-related job displacement, double the average offshoring-related displacement rate across all other worker types, but still implying an annual offshoring-related displacement rate of only about 1-2% per year.
The study also showed that workers in jobs that require face-to-face contact or physical presence are at smaller risk of offshoring-related job displacement, implying that interpersonal skills are becoming relatively more valuable among IT workers. Other findings imply that IT workers in functions that involve cross-divisional communication or hands-on support are less likely to be affected by offshoring.
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Leadership drives success and hiring
01/31/2010
Leadership is an important element of organizational success. So, it is not surprising that many companies look for ways to extend the benefits of leadership development to more employees. Technology-based learning approaches such as online courses, books and video programs can be used effectively to develop employees at all levels.
Internet Position Descriptions HandiGuide®
231 Job Descriptions and Organization Charts
The job descriptions contained within the Internet and Information Technology Position Descriptions HandiGuide® are all in a standard format and are available as in PDF, WORD 2003, and WORD 2007 formats. All of the job descriptions were reviewed and updated to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and the ISO 27000 security standard. The latest version of the HandiGuide was completed in 2010 and is over 650 pages in length. The Internet and IT Position Descriptions HandiGuide includes sample organization charts, a job progression matrix, and the 231 job descriptions.
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