A certifiable way for older workers to (re)enter IT

Here's a laugh.

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=1874

Fuck the propaganda (oops, 'article'). Here's the best damn response of the bunch:

I've got both a technical undergrad, an MBA, and over 25 years experience in support, development, planning, you name it...but the auto industry is still replacing older workers with younger "import" workers of H1B status...primarily because they are very inexpensive compared to someone with real experience & background. Even agreeing to lower ones rate doesn't help. It's pretty awkward when your interviewing with someone who could be your kid (or even younger) and clearly has less experience / education / etc.

I started my own company to get around that, but for many, that may not be an option...

And he is correct. For companies are out for profit. Not infrastructure.

pay pennies on the dollar in India or get their Slave Labor in China is because We with our degrees and decades of experience
1 do not want the jobs,
2 Do not have the skills
3 are somehow deficient.


BULLSHIT it is because we want to get PAID.

Not to the parasitic Corporations IF YOU don't want to hire and pay US citizens living wages sell your shit in India or China not here in the USA.

for those with the interest, is that there are going to be teaching jobs all over the place. Math and science, especially, but not limited to that. Many if not most states now let you take certification tests rather than the two or three semesters of ed classes it would usually take.

There's a lot of job security after three years and good benefits and good hours.

to bring in exponentially-cheaper foreign folks to do the work?

By, of, and for the corporation.

Also, if there's no way to utilize the skills, why bother learning them? I mean, I know how to do lots of things - can't seem to get a job in any of them. Not even organizing soup cans in a fuckin' grocery store, even though unlike 90% of those who do get hired, I actually would align them in proper order, not that it makes a difference to those smart enough to go rummaging for the highest datestamped containers anyway...

in my observation, pay rates in the 90s were in some cases truly like the commercial where the chickee bounces into the boardroom and says "I want options and privileges on the company jet" - she got it. Only in some cases. My personal experience was that pay rates were exorbitant for a few years around the end of the decade and then became average again. Nevertheless, the IT workforce (labor) really stuck it to employers (management) in a way more massive at least than ever before - it was a supplier's labor market, and the workforce said "you wanna play in the knowledge industry, you're gonna pay". Sometimes appropriately, sometimes ridiculously (a lot of the same slop-troughing that rumors had some of the youngsters in the Clinton White House engaging in at first - the gravy train's in the station, woo hoo, who's up for looting it). I have this suspicion that outsourcing et al is capital's response to getting fucked heartily by the workforce (for once), and experiencing firsthand the receiving end of no loyalty in the employer-employee relationship. Capital experienced a whole generation that wasn't interested in hurrying up and waiting to be found pretty enough to be fast-tracked, and be given responsibility oh, 5 years down the road, but prepared to stick around for 30 years to claim their pension and other rewards for getting old doing the same thing over and over. The new workforce was defining the market the oldsters were operating in, and therefore able to set terms for applying their skills in return for pay. Capital's response was to throw money and rewards (as in "reward system" - pay, options, perks) at them in an attempt to keep them around long enough to get product out the door. Resulting in some seriously overpaid IT workers. Capitalism at its best, but not economically viable for the survival of businesses in the long run.

Capital however, not being as foresightful as your correspondent, didn't come up with such a cogent analysis, but instead pouted that these young louts were insufficiently grateful (ever notice how conservatives always want you to be humble and grateful ? Must have something to do with the power exchanges they fixate on) and bided their time waiting for the economy to change and it to become a supplier's market for employers rather than workers. Note that capital did not quietly announce, hey guys, we need to keep the raises down or we're all gonna be unemployed (although some of the more capable employers requested pay freezes or pay cuts from their workforce, and whaddya know, the workforce actually did just that.) Rather, they saw power struggle and conflict offered by that old adversary, the workforce, and engaged, and waited for their opportunity for revenge, for the tables to turn and those who deserve respect because of worldy rank to get it again. Harrumph.

And lo, BANG, the internet bubble burst, and the giddy days of stock options and a $50K poverty line in the Bay Area became a thing of the past (well, not the $50K poverty line, but the supplier's market for labor, yeah). And capital rubbed its palms and thought, "he he he, we'll show the little ingrates". "Hey guys, there are people who'll work for 1/10th of what we pay you in India, we're shipping your jobs there. Here, you can work in the mailroom, we can't outsource that." And so capital and its lackeys and wannabes in management thought they had their chance to fuck the IT worker back and show who really controlled the employer-employee relationship.

The good news, aside from the fact visible on most helplines that the US worker is not replaceable overnight, is that workers in India for example are no more loyal than workers in the US, and that the best ones are staying 12-18 months at a company and then taking the money and running. (To other companies there.) It makes my day to see that there are constants in economic relations, in this case that a workforce for which there is demand because of irreplaceable skill still gets to write its own ticket, and that IT is fostering the growth of yet another middle class which is to a large extent free of the traditional indenture to job suppliers. Patronage and the desire to be able to influence and exploit others dies hard, but the old bastard is getting a little loose and sloppy, and long in the tooth. Irrelevance is here, why not take early retirement - bwahahahaha.