Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> You are mistaken. The shortage was present before the dot-coms and has
> not disappeared when the dot-coms went away or when firms started laying
> off staff.
IT is hard, it requires both skills which can only be acquired in a long
training process, culmitating in a few years of professional experience,
plus (effectively) innate mental capabilities (which I unfortunately don't
quite have), the demand is going up monotonously whereas the demographics
in core demand areas are worsening continously as does the attitude and
initial state of knowledge of young people, as the education structure
is largely in shambles (all this relates to postindustrial cultures,
the post-threshold developing countries are of course exempt from that trend).
So, I think *good* IT people will always have good market value, associated
with according salary (and ridiculously long hours, another major off-putter).
It's sad, because science really suffers from the brain drain, but you can
hardly blame young researchers facing an outlook of a ratty pay, and
contracts which are renewed (or not renewed) in 2 year increments, while
even your research is effectively dictated by your PI. I haven't yet seen
the industrial R&D elite yet, so I don't know how the personal situation
is up there.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:43 MDT