Hello everyone. I have returned to the US after being in the UK for 8 years. While there, I was able to successfully join the world of IT and progress my career quite nicely. I was fortunate to get started in 1999, the year Y2K mania struck fear into most corporations everywhere. As such, I was able to work for several consultancies as we prepared major corporations for the “devastating” effects of January 1st 2000. Because of this I was able to obtain invaluable experience as I worked with and upgraded computer systems.
We all know what happened AFTER the cities of the world welcomed the new millennium so I won’t talk about that. Fortunately for me, I was still able to obtain consulting work for other IT projects with some of these companies because I actually ended up saving them a LOT of money. I would take directors aside, go to the time and date settings of their PC, change them to a date in the year 2000 and ask them to work as they normally do. When asked why I did this, I commented that this is all you need to know about how your systems will be affected when January 1st rolls around. Because of this, I was called back to do legitimate projects. And I did this until last year when I finally decided it was time to return home.
Now, that I am home I have come to realize that IT work has all but dried up in my part of the country (Arizona) and the prospects don’t look any better in other parts of the US. So, here I am providing phone tech support for a shipping company. Hmmmm. This can’t be right. I keep hearing horror stories about how recent college graduates with a degree in IT can’t even find a job! I’m sure a lot of you out there can remember the days when there were actually more jobs available than there were people to fill them. Not any more!
So, here I stand, (well sit actually) with 5 years of job related experience in everything from front end software and hardware support to running things and administrating from the back end. I can configure and troubleshoot just about anything out there and I can’t even find a job in my field of expertise. The market is saturated with guys like me. Granted I don’t have any letters after my name and have not actually taken the time to pursue such things as MCSE, CNA, etc. because I have the hands on experience. Now I am beginning to wonder where I go from here.
I am not asking for advice or anything. I would however be interested to know how many of you (and I am sure there are a lot of you) who have similar stories to tell and what you are doing about it. Supposedly with all the outsourcing that is happening, there “SHOULD” be more opportunities opening up for more technical jobs. Yeah, right! I’m thinking that if one of my friends who is an awesome software developer can’t find a job, what chance in hell do I have?
I look forward to any and all posts to this discussion. Thanks for reading and all the best to all of you!
Ben
