Techies are Tools
I was inspired to write Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career in 1999, at the peak of the tech stock boom and a corresponding boom in IT employment. Experienced techies routinely jumped to jobs with higher pay every six months. Computer schools were charging $5000 and up for MCSE classes.

Great timing. Three months after I put the book on the market, came the first tech stock crash and the official (per the government) start of the recession. It took a few months for techies to feel the impact, but by the end of the year, many techies were being laid off en mass. Many went from six figures a year to a $30 grand Help Desk job or unemployment. New computer science graduates went from $40,000 a year to finding no job openings.

That difficult situation has continued until the present. So what about the economic recovery which you may have heard about in the conventional media?

Item:

The Conference Board's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators gained 0.2% in December 2003 to its highest level ever, and was the ninth consecuritive monthly increase.

The Labor Department recently reported that for the second week in a row, fewer unemployment claims were filed.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 8.2% in the 3rd quarter of 2003.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,453 on December 31, 2003, up 25.32% for the year. It is up to over 10,600 as I write.

According to this document --

report on the economic recovery

-- "The recovery is real."

However, you also read in the conventional media -- which is desperate to portray the economy in as bad a light as possible, because they don't want to give any political credit to President Bush -- that this is a "jobless" recovery.

However, this is meaningless. Employment is always a "lagging" indicator, and that is only logical.

Look, if you ran a major company, would you go out and hired 10,000 people just because your stock price rose by 25%? Would you do it just because your sales increased by 25% in one month?

No, because hiring people means adding additional costs. Searching people out, sorting through resumes, interviewing people and debating which people are both competent and reliable and which ones are liable to sue at the drop of a hat. Then training costs. Then the costs of them doing their jobs. Maybe you'd have to re-start a second shift, meaning more utility and material costs.

You don't want to add all these costs for what may be a temporary spike in sales. You must wait a while to make sure that the increase in your business will be sustained, before justifying the increased costs.

Let's get some perspective here. The last recession in the U.S. happened in 1991 and lasted until about early 1993. However, the stock market in general and the tech stock bubble did not begin until 1995 with the IPO of Netscape. The great boom in IT employment that we remember from 1998-99 did not jump into place immediately in 1993, it took time, a momentum buildup of the general economy, the rise in networking throughout business and the availability of the Internet to the general public.

I believe that with his two tax cuts, President Bush has laid the foundation for a great economic recovery. It will be even bigger and longer if he is allowed to implement his complete plan of making the cuts permanent and eliminating the capital gains and death taxes.

Along with keeping America safe from further terrorist attacks by taking the war on terror (and make no mistake about it, the U.S. IS at war!) to the terrorists instead of passively waiting for their attacks and then blowing lots of hot air in reaction and maybe sending a cruise missile or two into the desert but not aggressively going on the offensive.

But it won't happen overnight. I suggest that this is a good time for wannabe techies to start studying for their certification tests. If you're starting now, there's a good chance that by the time you complete your program, the employment market will be much improved.

Also, everybody should follow the advice of Monster's Tech Job Expert, Allan Hoffman, and be "more" than a techie.

Are You More Than a Techie?

I've written similar advice in my book -- so many techies are young and arrogant and have terrible communication skills because they are either unwilling or unable to see the point of view of non-techies.

Ever called or emailed a computer Help Desk and been infuriated by how their answers to your questions were so smug and so off the mark that they obviously had not bothered to understand what you said or wrote?

I have, and I've learned to demand to talk directly to a supervisor, since they usually understand plain English.

And I've put it more bluntly than Mr. Hoffman -- techies are tools. Period. They only reason they're not depreciated the same as punch press machines and forklift trucks is because generally accepted accounting principles don't allow it.

But they're nearly as disposable. Insist on remaining just a techie and you make yourself expendable.

Another source of information on how to succeed in business even if you are a techie is a new book that will start shipping from Amazon next week:

How to Become a Highly Paid Corporate Programmer by Paul Harkins
- posted by RickStooker @ 7:51 PM