Trends in IT careers

[Bearded Man]

I'm seeing a lot of cloud solutions architect positions that pay way more than your typical programming or sys admin job. I have been seeing a lot of companies in the Seattle area move systems to the cloud, particularly AWS and Office365. This is music to my ears as I've done a few cloud projects and am focuing development skills on front end technologies that seem to be widely supported vs back end solutions. As an added bonus, with cloud systems, someone else is managing the infrastructure! Hooray! Plus there is a blend of management vs technical responsebilities which suits my personality well.

I've also noticed a huge uptick in Information Security, but from what I've read, it's one of the most stressful IT jobs, and really, no matter how much you STIG something and do input validation, there will be a zero day attack on someones network at some point, given the attacker has the advantage. And then what? How are you going to get a job if you were the Info Sec guy at Target when they got hacked?

Mobile development. This seems to be another trend. But I see that cross platform is winning this battle and most devs expect front end developed cross platform apps to win the battle against native apps. Not that it will do away with native apps, just that the advantages of the cross platform app are many and most surveys indicate the vast majority of the industry expects cross platform to win.

What trends are you seeing? These are the "new" careers in IT, or the ones that are really picking up steam.

[AZDude]

I would never want to work in IT security. Sure, there is money to be made... but damn. When TFHTF, everyone is going to pointing at you.

[Bearded Man]

I would never want to work in IT security. Sure, there is money to be made... but damn. When TFHTF, everyone is going to pointing at you.

Agreed. It's a relatively skate job where they set policies and do audits, but please, no company closes every attack vector. Sooner or later, if you are a major target, someone is going to get in. When they do, kiss your job goodbye. And good luck getting another job somewhere else after the media blasts the intrusion everywhere online. I suppose if you work for a small name company that get's hacked it's not as public, but anything big where the $$ is...

[Dartwa]

Mobile development. This seems to be another trend. But I see that cross platform is winning this battle and most devs expect front end developed cross platform apps to win the battle against native apps. Not that it will do away with native apps, just that the advantages of the cross platform app are many and most surveys indicate the vast majority of the industry expects cross platform to win.

I was the mobile app developer at my old company, and can attest to the popularity of cross-platform apps. Most of the apps we got hired to do were fairly simplistic (no complex UI elements, animations, or 3D graphics), so it was hard to argue against having a single code base deploy to multiple platforms for their money. I think there will always be a market for native apps, but the performance hits you take by going cross-platform are becoming increasingly less of a factor as hardware continues to improve.

[Uturn]

I have a CISSP, am a forensic examiner, and have done something with InfoSec for 15 years.  Here is what I can tell you

* it pays great
* be ready to give the same speech to the same clueless C level's for the rest of your career; regardless of the company, they are the same
* it is far less stressful when you realize that you are the sacrificial lamb
* your brains and your work ethic are your job security, not the place you work
* it's fun
* believe it or not, people who have lived through a breech are in demand.  There's only one way to get that type of experience
* much like your house, the goal isn't to make your place unbreechable, your goal is more secure than your neighbors
* smarter security makes smarter criminals, which creates the need for smarter security.  It's like recurring revenue

[TheAnonOne]

Being a programming consultant/contractor pays 150-250 a year...

[Rubic]

One trend I'm seeing is that DevOps is eroding traditional systems administrators' job security.  Our emphasis is on incorporating Configuration Management and Continuous Integration testing into the development/production cycles.

On AWS, it takes me about 2 minutes to spin up a new instance from a snapshot, maybe 30 minutes to completely rebuild a server from scratch (i.e. from a vanilla distro).  This makes it easy to test new versions of key service components.  Downtime is very low.

[JLee]

One trend I'm seeing is that DevOps is eroding traditional systems administrators' job security.  Our emphasis is on incorporating Configuration Management and Continuous Integration testing into the development/production cycles.

On AWS, it takes me about 2 minutes to spin up a new instance from a snapshot, maybe 30 minutes to completely rebuild a server from scratch (i.e. from a vanilla distro).  This make it easy to test new versions of key service components.  Downtime is very low.

Yep. We're built with Cisco UCS/VMware (in our own datacenter space since we require an absurd amount of bandwidth) and a new server 'build' takes a matter of minutes.

[big_slacker]

I just transitioned out of network security back into traditional network engineering. I was a consultant and have my CCIE security. I was going to do the CISSP this year as I was doing more traditional CISSP type stuff (assessments, policy and so on) along with my regular firewall, access control systems and so on.

My biggest gripe with infosec is still the people. I saw time and time again despite having easy to follow blueprints (like the SANS top 20, NIST infosec handbook and so on) most places had poor infosec management, half implemented policy, poor security culture, poorly trained and lazy IT staff and half assed systems. Like everyone else is saying you can do your best and still have a breach due to someone clicking the wrong link or opening a file. But most orgs I saw were not close to doing their best. So you're in charge of security for an org, but the management doesn't want to spend money to fix things and the org doesn't want to adopt changes to make things more secure so you have to fight, fight, fight all the time just to do your job halfway decently.

I think being a consultant is nice because you can get in and get out, not dealing with the politics. However given that you're dealing with a potential lawsuit timebomb it's good to do consulting under the umbrella of a larger shop who can take the hit if something like that happens.

I agree with bearded man that there is a big push towards the cloud and cross platform development. People expect and rightly so that they should be able to open an app on their work laptop, then be able to open and review the same doc on their tablet a few hours later from home.

In terms of jobs that means there will be a lot of infrastructure work. Systems side, data center, networking. Because of the massive scale of some of these providers it's important even if you're systems or networking to get yourself some coding chops so you can script and automate. My employer has THOUSANDS of routers in play and keeping everything pinging manually just cannot happen. Let alone constantly moving, adding and so on.

Wireless. This is nothing new, but on the corporation side more and more offices are ditching wires and going mobile. So anyone who can learn RF, wireless lan controllers, access control, voice over wireless and troubleshooting will not have a problem with a job for a while.

Virtualization. Again, nothing new here, we've been moving everything to virtual platforms on the server side for years. But these days we're even seeing network appliances go virtual. Load balancers, firewalls, security devices, even data center switch platforms. Everyone needs to understand the concepts and the details that pertain to their specialty.

Very exciting stuff, and if you're playing in the deep end of the pool you get to see some very cool implementations!

[sol]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

[2Birds1Stone]

We are living in an application economy that is disrupting business in every single industry vertical.

Companies that are embracing it, the "disruptors" are quick to adapt to agile development methodology, DevOps, and have an API strategy in place. The are developing innovative applications and using mobile, social, wearable, etc technology to get ahead of their competitors.

Companies that are lagging in their digital transformation are going to quickly have to adapt or get crushed by the competition.

In the business world today EVERY successful company has to see itself as a software company. The jobs in this field will be plenty, as long as you have a skill set that allows you to be part of this digital transformation of business, you will have a job and a fat paycheck.

[JLee]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

Auto mechanics are paying 6 figures these days!?

[sol]

Auto mechanics are paying 6 figures these days!?

The specialized ones do. 

Apparently there is a particular type off transmission used in a bunch of expensive German cars that has some known design flaws.  They all need a particular kind of service at known intervals to fix it.  Only a handful of shops do this service, so the entire country sends transmissions to them.  The cars are common enough to ensure a steady supply of work, the customers are wealthy enough to pay a premium for it, and you can't outsource the job to India.  It's still manual labor, but it's well paid manual labor.  I doubt the guy at your local garage does as well.

[squeakywheel]

I agree with much/most of what has been said. Replying to follow

[big_slacker]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

Your location says PacNW. Microsoft is up here, they employ like 43,000 people in the puget sound area. Amazon 24,000. Facebook is here, Google. After top tier tech companies there is stuff like REI, F5, Costco, Expedia. Premera, Group health and a bunch of hospitals in the healthcare side of things. Bunch of hardware and software resellers like Cisco, WWT, Dimension data, CDW, Denali, etc. Plus the cities, utilities and state government jobs.

All of this to say there are a *LOT* of tech jobs in the pacnw and a lot of those involve coding and aren't outsourced. I know a lot personally. I think that respectfully, someone bitching about not being able to get a job due to outsourcing should take a brutally honest internal reckoning of why they aren't valuable in the market.

I'm not saying there is a problem with taking that internal reckoning and deciding they want to work on transmissions instead of moving to being a python specialist for network automation, or a DBA instead of a front end dev and so on. But an intelligent techie crying "They took ar jawbs" is pretty weaksauce.

[sol]

But an intelligent techie crying "They took ar jawbs" is pretty weaksauce.

To be fair, it's not a complaint I ever hear from people living in this corner of the country.

[Bearded Man]

Agree that as a result of the cloud transformation/trend, sys admin work will be less in demand unless you are working at one of these data centers doing devops.

What was said about InfoSec being the sacrificial lamb and most places being half assed, with clueless executives, is spot on. Yes, you are the sacrificial lamb, but that's a lot of fighting to try to make the environment secure, then when your recommendations are ignored, you get let go if there is a breach. I prefer having a little more stability. Plus again, surveys show this is one of the most stressful IT specialties.

While software will replace many jobs and is becoming more and more in demand, I do see dev outsourced on an increasing level. Either by importing cheap labor or sending the work overseas. Oh, and what about the rapid application development tools on the market these days? A lot of business users can do non coded development that meets the needs of their business processes using these tools, reducing the need for staff software developers.

I've always held that IT management is the place to ultimately be. You are usually an FTE, not a contractor, and if there is outsourcing to be done, you are the one doing it. So you are secure while you manage the vendor. Vendor is an easy scape goat, and easy to replace.

[FIPurpose]

I also work in the tech field, but I just don't see the loss of jobs to India or China. If companies push programming work to them, it is the code monkey style work that is simple and will be done after throwing enough man hours at it. But I have yet to see any tech company trust Asian countries to develop their RnD or creative work. the creative and innovative workers in Asian countries seem to immigrate rather than stay for lower pay.

At my work our field office in Beijing and Bangalore seem to regularly make architectural programming oddities. My experience is obviously limited to this company, but the scope of work that is being trusted to these countries is somewhat limited. Work that cannot be streamlined (and is ultimately the more profitable side) will not be shipped over.

[AZDude]

I think it was more of an issue earlier in the century during the Bush years and when outsourcing programming work to India was en vogue. I've personally seen much less of that sort of thing in the last 5-10 years or so.

[Dartwa]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

Here's an interesting flipside to that coin:

I recently had a meeting with a mobile app company who acquired a development team in India because they couldn't find enough local talent to fill their increasing demand. They felt that the most qualified candidates had to be sniped from other, bigger local companies. Of course it's possible that they did it because they were able to find cheaper labor overseas and not because of a shortage of talent, but maybe those lamenting the outsourcing of programming jobs somehow aren't visible enough to the employers who could use their skills.

This is purely speculative of course.

[Bearded Man]

Forgot to mention that I know a few guys who have bounced back and forth between body shops and IT. A guy I worked with years ago said he was making 200K a year from his two body shops. Not sure if it was accurate or not, asked him why he left, he said it was tough physical labor.

Plus a guy I worked with in LA did auto body work on the side and apparently made more from his side business doing that part time than he did from his full time IT job. As such, I didn't find the first story I mentioned above implausible.

IT isn't the only high paying industry...

Seems like no industry that pays high is that spectacular on the happy scale. I've heard Pharmacists complain about regretting their career choice, Oil and Gas Workers get burned out, etc.

Anyways, super glad I majored in business administration so I have a way out. Targeting Technical Program Management or Recruiting.

[ssfw]

To the OP, "Cloud Solutions Architect" at least at Amazon (which it sounds like you're referring to) is more of a sales job than an IT / development job. Afaik, they tend to be focused more on rote memorization of short definitions than actual architecture / problem solving skills. That's just from my experience, your mileage may vary.

[JLee]

Forgot to mention that I know a few guys who have bounced back and forth between body shops and IT. A guy I worked with years ago said he was making 200K a year from his two body shops. Not sure if it was accurate or not, asked him why he left, he said it was tough physical labor.

Plus a guy I worked with in LA did auto body work on the side and apparently made more from his side business doing that part time than he did from his full time IT job. As such, I didn't find the first story I mentioned above implausible.

IT isn't the only high paying industry...

Seems like no industry that pays high is that spectacular on the happy scale. I've heard Pharmacists complain about regretting their career choice, Oil and Gas Workers get burned out, etc.

Anyways, super glad I majored in business administration so I have a way out. Targeting Technical Program Management or Recruiting.

I'd believe that if he's essentially running two body shops. That's a lot different than just getting a job as a mechanic, though.  I have a buddy who ran his own body shop for a while and he made bank. He worked a LOT, though.

[RangerOne]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

CS degrees lead to Software Development jobs which is totally different than IT or general infrastructure programming jobs. A CS degree is incredibly valuable today. Its value can depend on what sector you specialize in, but almost all pay very well and many are growing rapidly as more things require more complex software.

Well off Indian's send there kids over here in droves to get CS degrees, then they get green cards and snatch up 6 figure jobs at all the major companies. Companies like green card employees because they can't job hop as much as citizens since they can lose their card even with a short lapse in work. The Indians I work with are US college educated and are top notch developers. There are no $8 per hr software developers, and you should fear any company willing to use cheaply developed software.

Outsourcing a software project is usually the equivalent of the company shelving the software. It means they need to support it but are not interested in really improving it or increasing its quality. I have yet to see a growing lucrative piece of software get outsourced. It is always the old crappy projects the company wants to partially disown and stop wasting their resources on.

[Vilgan]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

Its hard to really know what its like for those over 40 in non tech areas, at least for me. In Seattle there are like 23048923402942 jobs available from a bajillion companies and very few companies are trying to outsource the interesting work. Instead the manual testing or repetitive tasks get outsourced. However, I've flown to a few other places to consult and it isn't like this everywhere. I've seen situations where every developer was clearly from India, most work was done in India, and the developers were in a roped off "unsecure" area and essentially segregated away from the rest of the company. The only people who were treated with any respect were the manager types that didn't actually write code.

I think the answer is to get away from companies like that. There are tons of opportunities, and if you are working for a company that marginalizes developers and actually thinks outsourcing is a good idea then its time to move on. I've seen older guys who don't really care that much still make 150k-200k working remotely from LCOL areas. Hopefully if someone is over 40 they have a lot of experience and not just the same experience repeated over and over for years.

[seattlecyclone]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

There are different levels of talent within the software engineering field. Talented engineers who can do design and implementation are in extremely short supply and are very well compensated. US schools aren't producing enough of these folks to keep up with demand. We're importing as many from India, China, and elsewhere as the government will let us (through the H1-B and other work visa programs), but it still isn't enough. Salaries keep growing as a result of this imbalance.

The key is to always keep learning. If you paint yourself into a box and say "I'm a Windows C++ developer," your job prospects will be more limited in a future where most development is on web and mobile platforms in different languages. If you keep picking up new skills and creating value for your employer, the risk of having your job replaced by a lower-paid person overseas is not that high.

[Bearded Man]

Interesting opinions and views on outsourcing. A lot of the companies I've seen in the area, including MS and other multinational companies have a surprising amount of their heads down development done overseas. I know a few that have their core product development for some of the largest and most complex software platforms in existence all done overseas. These aren't web sites done in Drupal using templates...These are large enterprise applications working with SAP, etc.

[patrickza]

I work in the developing world, the number of governments running major operations on access databases astounds me every day. When they realise what they're doing they're only too happy to throw money at a first world company to develop a decent system.

[reader2580]

The specialized ones do. 

Apparently there is a particular type off transmission used in a bunch of expensive German cars that has some known design flaws.  They all need a particular kind of service at known intervals to fix it.  Only a handful of shops do this service, so the entire country sends transmissions to them.  The cars are common enough to ensure a steady supply of work, the customers are wealthy enough to pay a premium for it, and you can't outsource the job to India.  It's still manual labor, but it's well paid manual labor.  I doubt the guy at your local garage does as well.

If a transmission has to be shipped why couldn't it be shipped to a third world country like India for cheaper repairs?  Heck, health insurance companies are sending some people on planes to India for things like routine knee replacements.  Two or three day shipping a transmission to India probably wouldn't be cheap, but it might be offset by labor costs.

[reader2580]

I work as systems engineer doing storage, VMWare, Citrix, and Windows/Linux sysadmin along with a little bit of networking.  I'm worried about these types of jobs at the corporate level going away as everyone goes to cloud or hosted solutions.  My employer has already gone to hosted solutions for three major systems and at least one more will go in the next few years.  One system sounds like it is coming back in house.  We may be going to Office 365 so there goes our email servers too.

My India story:

A friend of mine was doing contract work on a system for a major cellphone carrier.  Someone thought he was too expensive so they hired an Indian company to take over.  The Indian company hired five Indians to do the same work.  The company also moved the five Indians to the USA.  The Indians couldn't do the work so my friend was kept on and had his hours cut somewhat.  My friend never got replaced by the Indians for the two or three years until the cellphone carrier merged with another and the system was made obsolete.  My friend ended up getting a regular non-contract job and who knows what happened to the Indians.

[Dartwa]

All of my IT friends are lamenting the outsourcing of programming gigs to guys in India who work for $8/hour even though they have 15 years of project management experience.  They are discouraging people from pursuing CS degrees unless you also do a business/management degree at the same time, because basic programming skills aren't very valuable anymore.

Some of those guys are actually moving back into trades like auto mechanics, who have better job security, comparable pay, and can't be outsourced.  If you're a 40 year old programmer and have stopped moving up the corporate ladder, you're an expensive and expendable asset.

There are different levels of talent within the software engineering field. Talented engineers who can do design and implementation are in extremely short supply and are very well compensated. US schools aren't producing enough of these folks to keep up with demand. We're importing as many from India, China, and elsewhere as the government will let us (through the H1-B and other work visa programs), but it still isn't enough. Salaries keep growing as a result of this imbalance.

The key is to always keep learning. If you paint yourself into a box and say "I'm a Windows C++ developer," your job prospects will be more limited in a future where most development is on web and mobile platforms in different languages. If you keep picking up new skills and creating value for your employer, the risk of having your job replaced by a lower-paid person overseas is not that high.

The annoying part is that so many companies WANT someone with one skillset. The nature of my last 2 jobs was me bouncing around between technologies and languages: some native Windows apps in C#, websites with a PHP backend, websites with a C# backend, native Android, native iOS, random APIs, cross-platform mobile apps with various SDKs, etc. But when I needed to find a new job, they'd say "Nope, we want someone who has 3 years of experience with specifically ASP.NET. It doesn't matter that you've worked with it before and do 10 other things." I would never code myself into a box like that.

Luckily I was able to spin it into "I've worked with so many different technologies that I can work my way through any problem that comes at me. Coding is a mindset, regardless of the particular language or SDK being used." Good thing, too. I got hired at my current company as an app developer, but have spent more time doing websites, databases, and consulting.

[Bearded Man]

I work as systems engineer doing storage, VMWare, Citrix, and Windows/Linux sysadmin along with a little bit of networking.  I'm worried about these types of jobs at the corporate level going away as everyone goes to cloud or hosted solutions.  My employer has already gone to hosted solutions for three major systems and at least one more will go in the next few years.  One system sounds like it is coming back in house.  We may be going to Office 365 so there goes our email servers too.

My India story:

A friend of mine was doing contract work on a system for a major cellphone carrier.  Someone thought he was too expensive so they hired an Indian company to take over.  The Indian company hired five Indians to do the same work.  The company also moved the five Indians to the USA.  The Indians couldn't do the work so my friend was kept on and had his hours cut somewhat.  My friend never got replaced by the Indians for the two or three years until the cellphone carrier merged with another and the system was made obsolete.  My friend ended up getting a regular non-contract job and who knows what happened to the Indians.

I hear you on the cloud stuff. I've seen A LOT of major companies and government agencies go to the cloud in recent years. Heck, I moved a couple of companies to the cloud years ago (Exchange, etc.) in Office365. I too see this back end work decreasing. And it makes sense. For most organizations, it's cheaper to host in the cloud than to buy your own infrastructure, software and expensive personnel to manage it, when those personnel are really only busy 10% of the time or whatever.

I think I'm going to transition into a cloud role if I stay technical. Otherwise management. The cloud stuff is awesome. When the system is down, it's someone else's problem to get it back up. I just report status from the dashboard.


And management is the ultimate. The managers aint getting outsourced like the technical positions are. They are the ones suggesting the out sourcing as a way to add value.

[NaturallyHappier]

My old company hired a contract firm from India.  The name of the company was Penny Wise.  What were they thinking naming the company that?  I can't hear that and not automatically add "and pound foolish" to it.

It came to epitomize the problem with Indian contract firms.  They hear what you say, but they rarely understand.

[Rubic]

The cloud stuff is awesome. When the system is down, it's someone else's problem to get it back up. I just report status from the dashboard.

Keep in mind that cloud instances -- esp. AWS -- are volatile and can die or become inaccessible without a moment's notice.  Our users don't care that it's Amazon's fault they can't access their servers. They expect maximum uptime, as it costs thousands of $$$/hour if their systems are down.

A couple years ago, an entire eastern region of AWS went down.  Fortunately we had redundancy on the west coast (Oregon) and could keep things floating until the situation was resolved.  You must expend a lot of effort to build a cloud system infrastructure that is resilient and can easily recover from lost servers.  You must have monitoring services (independent of the target cloud servers) that can detect outages and start recovery procedures automatically. 

Just this week I received notification from two different cloud providers that 4 of our instances would be down as they relocated the VMs to new hardware.  I'm grateful for the notification, but you must be prepared that the worst problems will occur without notification -- when nobody is around to fix them.

I was an early adopter of cloud technology and I love it (I've contributed to 3 cloud-related open source projects), but it requires an investment of time and attention to make it reliable for your users.

[Bearded Man]

The cloud stuff is awesome. When the system is down, it's someone else's problem to get it back up. I just report status from the dashboard.

Keep in mind that cloud instances -- esp. AWS -- are volatile and can die or become inaccessible without a moment's notice.  Our users don't care that it's Amazon's fault they can't access their servers. They expect maximum uptime, as it costs thousands of $$$/hour if their systems are down.

A couple years ago, an entire eastern region of AWS went down.  Fortunately we had redundancy on the west coast (Oregon) and could keep things floating until the situation was resolved.  You must expend a lot of effort to build a cloud system infrastructure that is resilient and can easily recover from lost servers.  You must have monitoring services (independent of the target cloud servers) that can detect outages and start recovery procedures automatically. 

Just this week I received notification from two different cloud providers that 4 of our instances would be down as they relocated the VMs to new hardware.  I'm grateful for the notification, but you must be prepared that the worst problems will occur without notification -- when nobody is around to fix them.

I was an early adopter of cloud technology and I love it (I've contributed to 3 cloud-related open source projects), but it requires an investment of time and attention to make it reliable for your users.

I hear ya. But these things happen with enterprise systems in major corporations as well. I've lived through WAN outages and all kids of things. I had the same thing happen with Office365 and other cloud providers as well. The key difference is, THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. I merely report status. I'm not the one working through the night to fix it. They can piss and moan all they want. Someone standing at my desk demanding that I get it back up (ha ha) NOW isn't magically going to make the system come up. Same thing with me pestering the provider every 2 minutes. In these situations, frequent email updates work wonders. To really look like you care, send some demanding emails to the vendor with your boss copied. I'd rather do that then be the guy who has to fix the crap again.

[reader2580]

If a cloud or hosted service goes down there may be financial penalties due to the user.  Not so much if you run the application in house.

I think one reason companies are bring in outsourcing companies for IT is because they can assess financial penalties against the outsourcing company for downtime, or simply refuse to pay the bill if a project goes bad.

[bigstack]

the jobs that can be outsourced have been outsourced.... that is just logical business sense.
some were outsourced and came back because of utter failure.

now companies are pushing for more visas. why? is there actually a lack of talent? no. there is a lack of talent willing to work for suppressed wages.(but they will be forced into it or choose a diff major/career path)

some above say things like I am still a developer that gets paid well i make 100k.... well what do you think would happen if all the h1b visa holders and green cards etc etc were gone tomorrow... do you think your wages would go up or down? instead of 100k you would be making 120 or 150. your wages are suppressed. there is no denying this.

increase the supply of labor and it without a doubt it drives the cost of labor(wages) down. there is no way around this fact. any politician or business man that tells you different is lying.

I dont blame the indian/foreign workers for wanting to come here and make a better life for themselves.
I dont blame the companies for wanting to make more money by importing cheap labor.(i do blame companies for skirting or outright violating the law)
I do blame the politicians/government for not only letting it happen but encouraging it, so they can get their precious campaign contributions.

it kills the middle class in this country.

[WerKater]

The annoying part is that so many companies WANT someone with one skillset. The nature of my last 2 jobs was me bouncing around between technologies and languages: some native Windows apps in C#, websites with a PHP backend, websites with a C# backend, native Android, native iOS, random APIs, cross-platform mobile apps with various SDKs, etc. But when I needed to find a new job, they'd say "Nope, we want someone who has 3 years of experience with specifically ASP.NET. It doesn't matter that you've worked with it before and do 10 other things." I would never code myself into a box like that.

Exactly that is a problem that I am having. I see a job posting for a "Language X" programmer in an interesting field and I think, "well, OK, "Language X". I've learned Fortran, C and a bunch of script languages including Python. I can learn "Language X" quickly, too. I apply and the employer doesn't care. He wants a "Language X" developer (that became clear in the interview). It's like the joke about the company that looks for a painter with 10 years of experience with red houses.
Fortunately, I do currently have an employer who did not care about what specifically I had experience with.

[seattlecyclone]

some above say things like I am still a developer that gets paid well i make 100k.... well what do you think would happen if all the h1b visa holders and green cards etc etc were gone tomorrow... do you think your wages would go up or down? instead of 100k you would be making 120 or 150. your wages are suppressed. there is no denying this.

I will happily deny it. Most of the software work that is being done in the US could just as easily be done elsewhere if that's where the talented developers happen to be. The shortage of talent is not just a US phenomenon, it exists worldwide. US-based companies try to bring the best and brightest over here so that they can grow the US economy, but our own government is actively thwarting that by placing low limits on the number of workers who are allowed to come over here. This past year there were only about 25-30% as many H1-B visas as there were applicants.

What do big companies do with the rest? They hire them on somewhere else. Microsoft has opened an office in Vancouver BC specifically for the purpose of parking new foreign employees for a year or two (it's apparently easier to bring someone into the US as a transfer from a foreign office than it is to hire them directly into the US). Other companies have similar arrangements, and many have built offices in India and China to hire talented people who aren't given US visas, or who just don't want to move in the first place. Reduce the visa limit and you'll get more of this. Wages won't change much, if at all.

Bringing smart people into the US is unquestionably good for the country. Why would we want to make smart people stay home and grow their own local economy if they would rather come here and grow ours? I just don't get it.

[reader2580]

Exactly that is a problem that I am having. I see a job posting for a "Language X" programmer in an interesting field and I think, "well, OK, "Language X". I've learned Fortran, C and a bunch of script languages including Python. I can learn "Language X" quickly, too. I apply and the employer doesn't care. He wants a "Language X" developer (that became clear in the interview). It's like the joke about the company that looks for a painter with 10 years of experience with red houses.
Fortunately, I do currently have an employer who did not care about what specifically I had experience with.

I remember when Java started to be big.  Companies had requirements for programmers who had five years experience specifically with Java.  The problem was Java hadn't been in existence for five years yet!

I'm worried that I might have a really hard time getting another job if I ever lose my current one.  Companies all want people who are experts in specific things, but I am very much a generalist.  I know enough about everything I do to get by, but I am an expert on nothing.  I was really good with Solaris in the 90s and early 2000s, but my employer dumped Solaris.  I have never even seen Solaris 10 or 11.  My employer has been on a downhill slide for years.  They laid off half the staff during the recession.  They did okay for a while, but the slide is back.  If things don't level out the company could be gone inside of ten years.

[bigstack]

some above say things like I am still a developer that gets paid well i make 100k.... well what do you think would happen if all the h1b visa holders and green cards etc etc were gone tomorrow... do you think your wages would go up or down? instead of 100k you would be making 120 or 150. your wages are suppressed. there is no denying this.

I will happily deny it. Most of the software work that is being done in the US could just as easily be done elsewhere if that's where the talented developers happen to be. The shortage of talent is not just a US phenomenon, it exists worldwide. US-based companies try to bring the best and brightest over here so that they can grow the US economy, but our own government is actively thwarting that by placing low limits on the number of workers who are allowed to come over here. This past year there were only about 25-30% as many H1-B visas as there were applicants.

What do big companies do with the rest? They hire them on somewhere else. Microsoft has opened an office in Vancouver BC specifically for the purpose of parking new foreign employees for a year or two (it's apparently easier to bring someone into the US as a transfer from a foreign office than it is to hire them directly into the US). Other companies have similar arrangements, and many have built offices in India and China to hire talented people who aren't given US visas, or who just don't want to move in the first place. Reduce the visa limit and you'll get more of this. Wages won't change much, if at all.

Bringing smart people into the US is unquestionably good for the country. Why would we want to make smart people stay home and grow their own local economy if they would rather come here and grow ours? I just don't get it.

lol
i am not just talking about software work.
like i said if it can be outsourced overseas companies will do that everyday to save a buck.
if you believe that it workers in india are getting paid 100k+ a year (usd) i got some ocean front property to sell you in nebraska.

i have personally seen h1b average at best employees come here and take jobs from us citizens for non software/development work. I have seen them do it with software work as well.
I have a friend that works at disney.this got some mediocre news attention.... was that a legit use of the h1b? for infosys to claim no us citizens can do the work all the while the us citizen is training his replacement?

do you think companies like infosys and wipro exist to bring the best and brightest over? lol.
the best and brightest come over on O-1.

there are not 85k geniuses of extraordinary talent trying to come over here and work in IT every single year. equalling 750k-2 million+ total.(lets face it many end up staying past the 7 years)

the policies of the government and the way companies have used/exploited them have taught our STEM grads and kids in highschool not to go into STEM, because an immigrant will do it for less. want to get more kids graduating with STEM? get the companies to pay more.

when i was in highschool/college(late 90's) kids were excited about IT and the job security it brang. now they are apprehensive and look elsewhere. we saw the largest boom of it employment and wage increases the sector has ever seen... because there truly was a shortage. hell the shortage was so severe that people with no experience and english degrees were getting jobs in IT.... you are telling me that is happening now? really? IT wages are going up 10+% a tear? man I must be in the wrong segment ... doing consulting for large scale data center migrations....where oh by the way I hire these people.... not because americans cant be found... but because we are told to use h1b and companies like infosys because it is cheaper.

but yet you claim that hiring some mediocre person to do a job cheaper results in a boom for the us economy? what exactly is detrimental about paying a us worker more money to do that same job to the same level if not above? oh that is right the stock price of the company doesnt go up... and you have been taught that the stock market is the soul indicator of the health of the economy.

your denial of the fact that wages will rise when workforce supply decreases is laughable.
you contention that they can outsource every single job is laughable.... they have already done this as much as they can. do you really think that a company says man i can get the job done here for 100k of the exact same job done in india for 35k and they choose the 100k option? lol ... they have already done it... they even in some cases went to far and are undoing what they started. now they see the h1b as a method of getting cheaper labor over here.

you probably also believe that the 10-15 million illegal immigrants dont suppress the lower end workers wages also.

does gravity exist in your world?

[reader2580]

I read of some folks getting $12.50 an hour to do IT work in India and living like kings.  Some of them support an entire extended family on that $12.50 an hour.

[seattlecyclone]

All I can say is that I am paid quite well. I have coworkers from all over the US and the outside world. We always have job openings that we will gladly fill with anyone who meets our hiring standards, regardless of nationality. Anyone telling our students not to study computer science because there aren't enough jobs, or that they'll be passed over for a foreigner, is seriously misguided.

[BlueMR2]

I read of some folks getting $12.50 an hour to do IT work in India and living like kings.  Some of them support an entire extended family on that $12.50 an hour.

I worked, here in the USA, with a programmer from India for a year or so.  He came over here for his education and had planned to stay.  However, after doing the math, it was in best interest to go back to India.  His job there supports his entire family very comfortably vs. staying here where he found the pay to be low (and high risk of his job being outsourced back to his home country!).

[big_slacker]

Few points about the outsourcing thing. Agree that if a company can get the exact same job done for 35k instead of 100k they should in most cases. What a lot of companies have discovered is that you get a *LOT* less value out of the cut rate Indian shops. They tend towards average to bad ability and organization. Yes in some positions for some workers they must lower rates to be competitive. Has IT earning power or stability in general nosedived since the late 90's? That hasn't been my experience at all, or what I've seen in the industry. I would not try to talk my kids out of an IT career because I see a lot of growth and opportunity.

Stability and success in IT is not traditional. It's not about learning one skill and locking in a position at one company. It's pure surf philosophy. Paddle hard ahead of the wave, then let it do the work and enjoy the ride! Paddle back out to catch the next one. Do that until you're ready to head back to the beach. :D

[JLee]

Few points about the outsourcing thing. Agree that if a company can get the exact same job done for 35k instead of 100k they should in most cases. What a lot of companies have discovered is that you get a *LOT* less value out of the cut rate Indian shops. They tend towards average to bad ability and organization. Yes in some positions for some workers they must lower rates to be competitive. Has IT earning power or stability in general nosedived since the late 90's? That hasn't been my experience at all, or what I've seen in the industry. I would not try to talk my kids out of an IT career because I see a lot of growth and opportunity.

Stability and success in IT is not traditional. It's not about learning one skill and locking in a position at one company. It's pure surf philosophy. Paddle hard ahead of the wave, then let it do the work and enjoy the ride! Paddle back out to catch the next one. Do that until you're ready to head back to the beach. :D

That's a fantastic analogy.

[Bearded Man]

I read of some folks getting $12.50 an hour to do IT work in India and living like kings.  Some of them support an entire extended family on that $12.50 an hour.

Are they living in slums?

[Dartwa]

I read of some folks getting $12.50 an hour to do IT work in India and living like kings.  Some of them support an entire extended family on that $12.50 an hour.

Are they living in slums?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, the average monthly wage in India (after adjusting for purchasing power and the relative wealth of the country) is about $295. Compare that with 4 weeks of working full time for $12.50/hr, and you have $2,000, 6.78x the average. Compare that with the US average of $3,263/month, and it'd be like making $22,122/month by working for a foreign company.

I could be totally off base here, but that seems enough to support an extended family to me.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

Edit: I am a bit off base, because I didn't translate $12.50/hr USD into its PPP equivalent, which I believe to be more like $27.56, so my calculations might actually be a bit higher. I'll leave it up there as a conservative estimate and if anyone wants to chime in with a more accurate picture, feel free.

[ender]

Few points about the outsourcing thing. Agree that if a company can get the exact same job done for 35k instead of 100k they should in most cases. What a lot of companies have discovered is that you get a *LOT* less value out of the cut rate Indian shops. They tend towards average to bad ability and organization. Yes in some positions for some workers they must lower rates to be competitive. Has IT earning power or stability in general nosedived since the late 90's? That hasn't been my experience at all, or what I've seen in the industry. I would not try to talk my kids out of an IT career because I see a lot of growth and opportunity.

Stability and success in IT is not traditional. It's not about learning one skill and locking in a position at one company. It's pure surf philosophy. Paddle hard ahead of the wave, then let it do the work and enjoy the ride! Paddle back out to catch the next one. Do that until you're ready to head back to the beach. :D

Somedays I think we'd be better off just getting rid of our entire India team (4 people).

Then instead of spending 1/2 my day babysitting them I can do the work they were doing and save tons of money.....

[FloridaDad]

I would never want to work in IT security. Sure, there is money to be made... but damn. When TFHTF, everyone is going to pointing at you.

Agreed. It's a relatively skate job where they set policies and do audits, but please, no company closes every attack vector. Sooner or later, if you are a major target, someone is going to get in. When they do, kiss your job goodbye. And good luck getting another job somewhere else after the media blasts the intrusion everywhere online. I suppose if you work for a small name company that get's hacked it's not as public, but anything big where the $$ is...

I was a CISO for 7 years at a F500 company. The stress from playing defense from the outside while supporting countless investigations of employees and producing e-discovery deliverables for litigation will drive most people to either drink or the looney bin. I went through 1 minor data breach, but that was enough to signal myself to change my IT career path. I ended up taking early retirement and a stash supplement at age 49 and have not looked back.  Info Sec is a thankless job, and the investigative portion of the job can really cause you to lose faith in humanity. People can just be awful.....

FloridaDad