It's August 2001. The economy is waivering and (arguably) flirting with recession. At the very least, in the technical fields, this is not a good time to be looking for a job. At this time last year, July 2000, I was looking for a job. After posting my resume in the early afternoon on a Friday, I had over a dozen calls by the end of Monday. This year, I've looked briefly to take stock on the state of the economy. In three weeks of looking, I've had four contacts, only one of which was even possible.
For a person who has ten years of experience in my field, with a good track record of work (I've worked for 4 companies in ten years), I was surprised to see such little response. I'm not the highest paid DBA in the US, but I am probably in the 75th percentile. I also live in Denver, which has been written about in numerous publications as a hotbed of technology. Yet there very few jobs.
In one of my articles at SQL Server Central, I had updated the article with the state of the job market based on Monster, Dice, etc. However, in responding to ads on these sites, one thing that I learned is that many of these jobs are filled or cancelled by the companies, yet the ad is still running. Often these firms are recruiting firms, but this is a dubious practice in my mind.
While I keep hearing about the growth in IT jobs this year and that the economy is not is bad shapes, it appears that even consulting companies, many of whom (theoretically) have clients in various industries are not hiring as much as they used to. In fact, searching the sites of the major consulting companies, I see few jobs, most of which are in very specific areas of the country or specific fields.
This is indeed a sobering situation for those of us who were receiving signing bonuses and other perks less than a year ago.
Still in DraftTraining Horses
Blog Maverick
Jonathan Schwartz's Blog
SQL Server Central
ESPN
Slashdot
37 Signals
A Mile a Day
Joel on Software
Rockler
My Brother
Woodcraft
Weather at the Ranch
Books
