June 26, 2008

The need for domestic IT
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 10:11 AM

When talking about the trend of outsourcing jobs in America to other countries (also known as offshoring), one of the first industries that usually seems to come up is IT (information technology, for those of you with an aversion to widely known acronyms).

Because of this trend, it would seem logical then that domestic IT jobs would become more scarce as more companies send IT work overseas.

But is that really the case?

A few recent reports show that demand for IT positions in the near future will continue to grow at a fast rate, making domestic IT work an in-demand industry. In fact, there seems to actually be a shortage of qualified IT workers in the US right now. The AP reports:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 854,000 professional IT jobs will be added between 2006 and 2016, an increase of about 24 percent. When replacement jobs are added in, total IT job openings in the 10-year period is estimated at 1.6 million.

The bureau estimates that one in 19 new jobs created in the 10-year period will be professional IT positions.

"The fact remains that technology permeates all businesses now," said Lou Gellos, a spokesman for Microsoft Corp. "All companies have that person down the hall to help with computer issues."

Amid the growing demand, the number of students entering computer sciences and computer engineering fields at major universities is dropping.

So, there will be a marked increase in the number of available IT jobs in the next 8 years, with a lot less people coming into the field from US universities. Seems like it will be a good time to be an experienced IT worker in the near future.

A report by Boston-based staffing firm Veritude enforces that. Their survey of HR and IT professionals shows that skilled IT workers in the US will indeed be in demand.

Among the human resources and IT professionals surveyed, more than half (53 percent) expect to increase the number of information technology staffers in 2008, while 43 percent anticipate their IT staffing will hold steady. In addition, very few respondents – only 4 percent – expect their IT staffing requirements to decrease. The research also reveals that among the expected new hires, 77 percent are "permanent" positions, indicating future stable, long-term growth of IT departments.

"Despite recent economic woes across many industries, we are finding that IT jobs are still in high demand with employers continuing to forecast steady growth of IT staffing levels," said Kate Donovan, senior vice president, Veritude. "Many earlier advances in IT were in automating tasks and basic programming. Now employers need on-site IT professionals who can contribute at a strategic level in using IT to achieve and sustain competitive advantages."

Of course, the keyword to all this is "skilled." The Veritude survey shows that companies will have a hard time finding "qualified" IT workers, and workers with specialized skill sets. And with less students honing their specializations in college, where will these workers come from?

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June 19, 2008

Texting on your work phone
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 3:36 PM

Do you use your company cellphone to send out personal text messages? Are you worried that those communications can be easily accessed and used against by your employer?

Well, thanks to a new ruling by a US federal appeals court, it is now harder for employers to legally gain access to text messages that are sent by employees on company phones, the Associated Press reports:

Under Wednesday's ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, employers that contract an outside business to transmit text messages can't read them unless the worker agrees.

Users of text-messaging services "have a reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding messages stored on the service provider's network, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in the three-judge panel's unanimous opinion.

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The judges had few precedents, Wardlaw acknowledged in the ruling.

"The extent to which the Fourth Amendment provides protection for the contents of electronic communications in the Internet Age is an open question," she wrote.

A civil liberties advocacy group called the ruling a "tremendous victory" for online privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a posting online that the ruling helps ensure the Fourth Amendment "applies to your communications online just as strongly as it does to packages and letters."

Unfortunately for cellphone-using teens, the ruling does nothing to stop your mom from snooping through your text messages when you leave your phone in your laundry-bound jeans pocket.

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June 17, 2008

Basketball, late nights, and work
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 11:11 AM

OK, admit it, you missed the Celtics' Game 4 comeback last Thursday against the Lakers ... it was getting late, the Celtics looked like toast, and you needed to work the next day. It's understandable.

But then you woke up the next morning, heard the news of the comeback, and wished you hadn't gone to bed so early. You don't plan to let it happen again ... in fact you're terrified you'll miss a chance to witness Boston sports history.

So you stay up late. Really late. After Sunday night's Game 5 loss, your sleep schedule is in shambles and your work day is nonproductive.

And now you have to get ready to do it all again.

With the Celtics and Lakers tipping off Game 6 Tuesday night, and a potential Game 7 on Thursday night, the 9 p.m. start will make for many late nights around Boston. And when a championship is on the line, it's much tougher to turn the game off and catch the highlights in the morning.

So, how do deal with these late nights of basktetball? Do you call in sick to work the following day? Do you go in late? Do you just forego the normal amount of sleep and go to work in a zombie-like state?
Share your thoughts on our forums.

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June 10, 2008

Work, technology, and information overload
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 10:07 AM

Between emails, text message, IMs, phone calls, etc., our attention is always divided, and we are constantly jumping from one project to the next, with little time to sit and focus on a single task, says Maggie Jackson.

The Balancing Acts columnist and author of the new book, 'Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age,' chatted with Boston.com readers on Monday about dealing with the non-stop flow of information and myriad ways to communicate in the digital age. Here's an excerpt from the chat:

Qudrcps: Recently, a person in our office was handed a Blackberry with eseentially no instructions, was told that she was to forward all her her mail to it, and, no surprise, has ended up with 90+ messages a day. I've talked to her about setting some ground rules for filtering this, but she's afraid to talk to our boss about the information overload.

Maggie Jackson: This is such a tricky question. The boss does set a tone in an office culture; if they're sending emails at 2 a.m. on Saturday, then they send a real message about working long and hard. So bosses need to role-model having boundaries between home and work, plus "giving the gift of attention." Paul Levy, the hospital chief, told me this a while ago. Still, workers too need to take responsibility for drawing boundaries. It's a two-way street.

Maggie Jackson: I think that our culture of efficiency and productivity overall also affects these questions. Frederick Taylor, the great time management guru of the 19th century, believed in chopping up work in order to streamline it. Now, we still chop up work, although we don't make widgets. We fragment our knowledge work in tiny pieces - giving ourselves no time to think!

Maggie also wrote a '10 tips to help quell distaction' article for Boston.com that provides some advice on dealing with information overload and the frenzied pace of working in a office in this technologically advanced society. One thing that gets lost in all the technology is – yes – actual human interaction. From Maggie's 10 tips:

4) Focus on one another

We're so used to splitting our focus between PDAs and TVs, and people and tasks that it's hard to truly attend to any one thing. But continuous partial attention undermines the depth and quality of our relationships and our interactions. When we give each other half-focus in conversations, on conference calls or at meals, we are effectively saying, "you aren't worth my time."

As well, the "creative energy and critical thinking" that occurs in a good work meeting is lost when everyone's madly checking e-mail, writes Intel principal engineer Nathan Zeldes in an article on the costs of "infomania" in the e-journal First Monday. Focusing in full on one another can help people better connect in a fast-paced, overloaded world.

How do you deal with distractions at work, and in your life in general? Share your thoughts on our forums.

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June 2, 2008

Common job search mistakes
Posted by Jesse Nunes at 10:56 AM

The Globe Magazine's Careers Issue came out this past Sunday, and included a bunch of useful stuff for the job seeker. One feature they had was titled "7 deadly sins of the job search." It contained a number of common pitfalls that job seekers fall into when looking for a job. Among them were:

Discussing money too early in the interview process. When asked for your salary expectations, say, "Well, it really depends on the specific scope and responsibilities of the position, which I'm still getting my arms around. Perhaps we could discuss this later on in the process when I have more information."

- Lauren Mackler, Lauren Mackler & Associates LLC, Newton

Talking too much during an interview. When you find yourself talking, talking, talking, take a deep breath. The more you talk, the less your interviewer is likely to listen. Give every answer a beginning, middle, and end, and then stop talking.

- D.A. Hayden, Hayden-Wilder, Boston

What are some mistakes that you've made during a job search? Share your thoughts on our new message boards.

And check out more career advice and articles in The Globe Magazine's Careers Issue.

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