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Subject:Re: Is the economy improving? From:"Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 7 Jan 2003 11:10:44 -0800 (PST)
Diane Evans wrote:
> I have received two unsolicited job interview offers
> in the last 24 hours,
If these were actual offers, I'm impressed. I've been doing this
for a while, and I've never had a totally unsolicited offer from
a stranger. On the other hand, I never stopped receiving
unsolicited inquiries from recruiters, and especially their spam
engines. But the quality of these inquiries has dropped to
almost zero in the last year or so.
The economy is trying to improve. But it was also trying to
improve before 9/11, too, so keep watching the headlines.
Online retailers sold $11 billion worth of merchandise last
year, all of which was shipped by plane and truck. How much was
gas this morning in your town? If online retailing slips by 10%,
a lot of tech workers could get pink slips in a hurry. So go buy
something online :-).
As a software tech writer my work depends on the existence of IT
projects. Projects are financed by either VC financing, or
companies financing IT from revenue.
I don't know what the actual data is, but my impression is that
VC funding is picking up. I read a few VC news sources, and
they seem to be dropping a few million here and there on a lot
of different startups, mainly either data security or web
services. This is a good sign.
The late 90s were a perfect storm, a confluence of three
different economic phenomena that launched lots of IT projects:
(1) Y2K, (2) the Internet gold rush, and (3)companies still
building out IT required for their reengineered processes. None
of these things is happening or is likely to happen, except #3
to some extent.
Traditional demand for IT comes from companies seeking to
improve efficiency and lower costs. Oddly enough, companies
start thinking about efficiencies when profits are down (like
now!) so that engine is starting to rev up again. Also in most
service industries (which are expanding) there is an existential
imperative to keep IT up to date, or die. This will also
generate some demand for tech writers, eventually.
Tech jobs are fungible, which means if one sector start hiring,
that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be working in that sector.
It means that sector will start soaking up demand for tech
employees, so maybe you will have less competition for that cool
little startup company you wanted to work for.
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