For Americans interested to work in the Australian IT Industry - here is a

Link

The following article can be found;

here

It's raining jobs in the IT sector

There are an estimated 30,000 unfilled positions in the Australian IT industry, but that figure pales next to the US deficit which will exceed 850,000 by next January, according to one of the largest computer-related workforce studies ever.

American employers will need roughly 1.6 million additional information-technology workers by next January but won't come close to filling that many jobs, the Information Technology Association of America predicted in a study to be released this week.

The US IT workforce now numbers 10 million, excluding jobs in government or non-profit groups, the study said. "Information-technology workers represent a much bigger slice of the total workforce than previously imagined," said Mr Harris Miller, president of the ITAA.

There are far more job openings in IT than workers to fill them because "the economy transforms itself a lot faster than the educational and training system does," Mr Miller said. "It's not as if you can pull someone off the sales floor at a department store and instantaneously turn that person into a network administrator or into a computer programmer."

Technical-support representatives, database developers and programmers are the three positions needed the most, the study found.

By January, employers will seek to fill more than 600,000 new jobs for technical-support personnel alone. The Internet, especially e-commerce, is quickly changing the job market. Workers with Web-related skills are expected to make up 13 per cent of IT hiring.

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Comment:
Friends in the industry say lots of international types are coming to work here, especially on the east coast. Good luck.

Regards from OZ

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), April 11, 2000

Answers

That's why the US bigbusiness wants to import min-wage drones!

-- Porky (Porky@in.cellblockD), April 11, 2000.

What I'd like to know is what these workers are actually going to be doing. Seems like there are an awful lot of grunt work positions opening up -- high burnout and low pay with little chance for advancement. I'm not putting down entry-level work, but after one has debugged simple accounting programs for 18 months, one should be allowed to stretch mentally. Instead, too many coders aren't challenged, which causes them to either become troublesome or to move on, sometimes to other professions (seems like some of the basket cases are ending up in junior colleges).

I dunno, Pieter. I'd love the chance to live in your area for a year or two, but I suspect that I'd see little more than the inside of a cubby. (I'd consider it if I were promised, in writing, a desk by a window... but I'm not that good).

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), April 11, 2000.

kb8,
You've hit the nail on the head. IT is boredom personified mostly.

At the moment I'm doing some work to get an ecommerce site into discussion phase so that a committee can see the storyboard. What appears to be a days work is indeed a full week. Then they turn around and request changes that mean you might well begin again at intro raising my stress levels. I've hardly been in the best of moods this past few weeks...

Since I hardly make anything then, and have another career as well, I find it is best to be rudely blunt. I now get customers to think along a checklist line. Surprisingly they all find it difficult to relate their ideas and I invite them to return later if and when they get inspired in the lucidity department. I tell'em to buggeroff. Not good style but good for survival in my sane hobbit hole.

I cannot for the life of me see why you'd come into the IT databasing hackscene just to have a bunch of daft management types keep you away from the surfing beach. Life's too short for idiocy.

Regards from OZ

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), April 11, 2000.

>I cannot for the life of me see why you'd come into the IT databasing hackscene just to have a bunch of daft management types keep you away from the surfing beach. Life's too short for idiocy.

Yep. I have to wonder if a lot of the junior college grads (two-year programs) are going to fill a fair number of these openings. I'm not putting down those programs, but many institutions hype the amount of money that a beginning codeslinger is going to make, then hire burnt out programmers as part-time faculty to teach them things I've never seen in the workplace (textbooks, yes, but not in an actual environment.

That's all a lot of these grads will be able to do -- grunt work -- and the scary thing is that some of them will even be promoted to management because they have a degree, and in some shops, that's the ticket to the top, rather than actual problem-solving skills.

I'm sorry, Pieter, I didn't mean to go on a rant, but I'm tired of listening to some of the 19-year-olds in my area talking on about the billions they're going to make in IT and how their present stint at McDonald's is just helping them pay the rent. These guys are too lazy to learn anything substantial -- they think that ten weeks of HTML and a few seminars in VB will make them the next Bill Gates Clone. Where's that *sigh*?

Best to you, Dude. Good luck with the clients -- you have the right idea. Fuzzy plans beget fuzzy projects.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), April 11, 2000.

I can attest to the fact that "qualified" IT personnel are hard to find. We have been actively looking to hire web developers and programmers for the last 8 months and it is no easy task. Lotsa folks looking for work, but none of them with any "in the trenches" experience. Most have classroom training only. Well, in my book, OJT and real-world hands on is eons above any college degree.

We have one of Genie's first sysops and a programmer that worked on MSN working for us writing code....happy as a lark and a window with a view of a mother nature to boot!

-- LZach (lisa@texasnetworks.com), April 12, 2000.