OT: dead computer

Oh thats a whole nother topic altogether. IT is not as glorified a job as ppl make it out to be or assume it is, nor unfortunately is it invulnerable to economic issues. In the last 4 yrs, I went from av. of $50K ann. to a measly $12. hr thanks to outsourcing and shipping American jobs overseas to India. I personally have been outsourced 3x in the past 2 yrs while working for GE and staying in the IT field meant I had to settle for less each time I had to start over in a new position. Bullisht on that, I say. Here in FL it is especially a miserable career to be in for the most part. Most of my co-workers in the past 2 yrs have lost thier jobs also. So if I have other skills, wouldnt it be stupid to stay on a sinking ship?

I know Saturns, I got my 1st one a few yrs ago and fell in love with my SL2. My last supervisor at GE was contemplating a job at Saturn as he was about to be outsourced and suggested it to me, so I checked it out. So far, despite some adversity, it has been more lucrative and a much more rewarding job than IT. I like what I do and I believe in the cars, so I am happy with my decision. I only regret that I didnt do this 4 years earlier.

marx404

...my outside opinion - I keep looking at a way into IT, however where I work they outsourced all the entry level and helpdesk type of stuff. There are some positions that pay decent if you have the skills and experience (not me). Or in the case of some specialty programming needs they had some imported east Indian help (rumored at 6 figure incomes).

The whole IT scene seems like a pain. I think it's more fun to hack around on your home computer and read Computer Shopper mag than do it for a living.

It's all about finding the right job.....

The outsourcing sucks. I know all about the instability(that's why I changed my major in school). IT positions in school districts/colleges are usually pretty stable if you are a jack of all trades. Good pay, good benefits, good hours, working conditions, etc. But you usually have to be able to do a broad range of duties......

Jonnie Santos sez: "Or in the case of some specialty programming needs they had some imported east Indian help (rumored at 6 figure incomes)."

Um the main reason that corporations outsource jobs is "the bottom line', ie: money. In the eye of corporate minds, IT positions are very very expendable and considered just a maintenance job to them.

As far as the 6 figure incomes, well that may have been the figures that Americans "were" making. Overseas, they are accustomed to 1/4 our pay and that is alot of money to them. SO maybe 6 figures if you put the first two digits before the decimal :-)

There was a great article on the truth of this on CNN.com recently saying that over 200,000 tech jobs have been lost recently due to outsourcing. The smart money to me said that any job that requires actual physical contact, ex: retail sales cannot be outsourced. So, I says to my self "self! que es mas macho, working retail at the mall or selling cars?" and my self replied "duh!, the answer is sitting right in your driveway!"

Went by CompUSA on Friday and got a new drive. They had a special on 120G drives for $70 so I sprang for it. Found out later that they also had a 80G for $40 but too late... Formatted capacity comes out to 114G and after I installed the bulk of my programs, I still have 113G free space :-)

Now comes the fun of trying to recover my data from the old drive. My wife lost a dear friend last year and the emails she kept from her were very sentimental.

I bought the Norton Internet Security 2005 since the price was only $10 more than a renewal of a product that they no longer support. Sort of strained my dial-up connection when I loaded the program and found that it needed to download over 30M of updates. The good news is that if the connection is dropped, the update will resume from where it left off. Not so with the earlier version I had.

I'm hoping that my hints of a digital camera for the holidays are heeded ata home. Large drive is going to be a big help there. I usually burn a copy of my documents and my pictures to a CDR and keep off-line anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving, Oppie

I hear that. My son does IT with Credit Suisse. A story very similar to yours where he went from making as much as I do (with my 30+ years of design engineering experience) to being outsourced to HP and contracted back at a pittance. He just did a conference in Arizona for Credit Suisse. Now as a contractor, he had all his permissions greatly curtailed and had to get very 'creative' in order to set up the remote servers needed for the conference. Meanwhile, his employer, HP, was no help and when he called into Credit Suisse's support, they just said that they weren't authorized to assist a contractor...

Worth mentioning was that previously, he had access to everybody's computer in the entire company from the managing directors ($20mil/year guys) on down. Does anybody really consider the costs of outsourcing?

Oppie

Oppie, did you check out my links on my earlier post?

marx404

Yes, thank-you. All good again with new drive in the computer and rebuilt system.