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I recently talked to an IT engineer at a mid-size financial services company downtown, and he complained that his budget is being slashed every year, as he's ex

I recently talked to an IT engineer at a mid-size financial services company downtown, and he complained that his budget is being slashed every year, as he's expected to do more with less. He's over 40 and sees no chance of getting hired at one of these sexy startups run by 20-somethings and funded by VCs who are younger than him. That seems like an odd "complaint," since, if you go work for one of those startups, you're going to be expected to do even more with even less. And that will probably be the case whether it's a sexy or boring startup, run by 20-somethings or 40-somethings.

Jach 15y ago
Besides the weird age comment, I also thought it odd how an "IT engineer" (is that what guys in the IT support business are calling themselves these days?) is trotted out as a member of the "tech industry" whose life isn't joy and might identify with the OWS people. (Personally I consider the "tech industry" to be tech companies and their most important employees, aka smart CEOs, programmers, good designers, engineers, and inventors (sure I'm leaving some out). (Sometimes all being one person.)) The startup I'm at doesn't need "IT engineers", it needs "designgineers" just like almost everyone else. Cisco laid off some thousands of people, but who were those people? Turns out mostly management. And according to the linked article about a third of them still got an early retirement. So in general I agree with the article's main point that it's a profession bubble, not a geographical bubble, but I thought the attempts at saying "but you don't even really have a bubble from these complaints, because of layoff counts and this guy I talked to!" pretty weak.
- oelewapperke 15y ago
  The point they allude to is that the bubble is only accessible for a narrow subculture even inside IT. Specifically, it's not accessible to the biggest cohort of the IT workforce : the people who keep things running at huge companies call center employees/admins/weak programmers. There's a huge lot of those. I agree in the valley they've become kind of rare, most of them moved out. But that did not happen voluntarily.

Jach 15y ago

Besides the weird age comment, I also thought it odd how an "IT engineer" (is that what guys in the IT support business are calling themselves these days?) is trotted out as a member of the "tech industry" whose life isn't joy and might identify with the OWS people. (Personally I consider the "tech industry" to be tech companies and their most important employees, aka smart CEOs, programmers, good designers, engineers, and inventors (sure I'm leaving some out). (Sometimes all being one person.)) The startup I'm at doesn't need "IT engineers", it needs "designgineers" just like almost everyone else. Cisco laid off some thousands of people, but who were those people? Turns out mostly management. And according to the linked article about a third of them still got an early retirement. So in general I agree with the article's main point that it's a profession bubble, not a geographical bubble, but I thought the attempts at saying "but you don't even really have a bubble from these complaints, because of layoff counts and this guy I talked to!" pretty weak.

oelewapperke 15y ago
The point they allude to is that the bubble is only accessible for a narrow subculture even inside IT. Specifically, it's not accessible to the biggest cohort of the IT workforce : the people who keep things running at huge companies call center employees/admins/weak programmers. There's a huge lot of those. I agree in the valley they've become kind of rare, most of them moved out. But that did not happen voluntarily.