The best of times, the worst of times

[Mladen Gogala]

Even a brief overview of DBA job postings on Dice and Monster will show
that the demand for skilled Oracle DBA people has gone down dramatically,
at least in New York City area.
I expected seeing a demand in people with MySQL or PostgreSQL going up
accordingly, but that isn't happening, either. This started to happen in
January and February. What is going on? Does anybody have an explanation?
Articles like this are also alarming:

http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/not-your-fathers-ibm/#comment-206300

Is that caused by US elections and corporations trying to escape the
increased taxes that some people foresaw or is that a global ocurrence?



--
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

[ddf]

Labor costs are higher here in the U.S. for several reasons:

* The income tax rates are high primarily due, I suspect, to our
penchant for deficit spendng (the national debt is staggering)
* The cost of living is higher here than in many other countries
(countries where outsourcing resources are plentiful)
* SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) (due do the Enron mess a few years back and the
gross fiscal irresponsibility of the housing and banking industries)

There are other factors as well, probably too many to list here, but
it boils down to a weak economy (no surprise there). Note also that
overseas a Senior Oracle DBA can have as little as 5 years experience
(and that doesn't need to be progressive experience). As such a
senior-level database administration resource can earn less than a
senior-level database administration resource here in the States (most
companies here won't consider a 5-year DBA as senior).

Of course with fewer years of experience these 'senior-level' DBAs
overseas don't have the knowledge or confidence to reliably handle
emergency situations (I doubt that many, if any, have encountered
corrupted datafiles or similar events); yes they are cheaper by the
hour but in many cases the company gets less than they're paying for,
in my opinion. The upper management is mostly concerned with shoring
up the bottom line, regardless of the quality of service, over finding
quality people who can perform reliable work. If one outsourced DBA
doesn't work out there are hundreds more, all cheaper than those in
the U.S. but lacking the skills and experience most of the U.S.
resources possess. This doesn't seem to matter to the CEOs, as
dividends and profits are more important than quality service and any
way to get the profits up is acceptable. In many cases everyone
suffers from this mentality -- invcluding the CEOs who choose quantity
(money) over quality (reliable and respected employees) as the gravy
train soon comes to a halt when their clisnts soon make exodus to a
competetor who provides better service even though it may be at a
higher financial cost.

I, too, was hoping that corporate America would have learned its
lesson some time ago with respect to wholesale outsourcing but that
hasn't happened. It may take a devastating event, such as many of
these outsourcing giants closing their doors because their former
clients are fed up with the cost-saving but service-robbing measures
these companies chose to take.


David Fitzjarrell

[Gerard H. Pille]

Surely you know that our job is delivering a service?

With the western economy gowing down the drain, the demand for our services diminishes.

Soon we will be able to prove that we are better than the indian ITers, when the companies over
there are looking to outsource their IT.

[John Hurley]

Mladen:

# Even a brief overview of DBA job postings on Dice and Monster will

show that the demand for skilled Oracle DBA people has gone down
dramatically, at least in New York City area.

Well obviously the Oracle marketplace in northeast Ohio ( including
Cleveland and surrounding counties Akron etc ) differs from NYC.

Seems like local demand is fairly strong at least based on how many
cold calls and email drive bys that we are getting here.

Compared to the overall last 10 years "fairly strong" local demand is
much better than almost no openings anywhere.

[joel garry]

On Apr 19, 10:25 am, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Even a brief overview of DBA job postings on Dice and Monster will show
> that the demand for skilled Oracle DBA people has gone down dramatically,
> at least in New York City area.
> I expected seeing a demand in people with MySQL or PostgreSQL going up
> accordingly, but that isn't happening, either. This started to happen in
> January and February. What is going on? Does anybody have an explanation?

No, but I think postings on those sites tend to overstate demand,
especially when so many of them are for the same stupid job or are
just farming. Corporations in general use "it's the economy" to
justify many things, often illogically or capriciously.

> Articles like this are also alarming:
>
> http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/not-your-fathers-ibm/#comment-206300

That article misses out on an important point by focusing on global
services. Services are great for short term cash flow, but for mid
term profitability (which is what a three-to-five year share price
target is all about) you count on intellectual property. Patents, in
other words. Why? Because IP is the kind of thing where you can
replicate profits cheaply. Services require a mostly linear increase
of costs and expenses, and I only say mostly because of the
outsourcing and the ability to partition out some problems to cheaper
less experienced labor, as stupid as those of us actually doing the
work can see that that is.

I suggest checking how many new patents are going to IBM and Oracle.
In addition, note that the US has brought patent rules more in line
with the rest of the world, highly favoring large corporations over
iconoclastic inventors.

>
> Is that caused by US elections and corporations trying to escape the
> increased taxes that some people foresaw or is that a global ocurrence?

What increased taxes? I don't see no increased taxes. The Buffett
rule would have only the most minor effect, and many or most of the
rich people targeted can simply move their investments around to avoid
taxable income, perfectly legal. Many others such as investment
bankers and VC's hardly even worry about the taxes - if you can get
pre-IPO stock at pennies on the dollar, you may grumble about having
to pay 30% rather than 15% of your $150M, poor baby, but would that
stop you? Some rich people might just move away.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/16/obamas-buffett-rule-impact-on-taxes-jobs/?ap
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46663704/HK_Tycoon_May_Reap_800_Million_From_Facebook_IPO
among others.

Besides that, the Dems are throwing out increased tax proposals that
the Repos will vote down, just so they can say "see!? They coddle
rich people!"

I've been saying it since the Jarvis people started their "tax
revolution" in the late '70's, when they greedily vultured Jerry
Brown's huge surplus: You need to collect taxes to pay for stuff, you
can't just fertilize the business environment to stimulate growth and
complain government is too big. That's just fertilizer, a polite term
for bullshit. It works for a while until the farmland gets burned out
and you have to let it lay fallow.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/53118

[Noons]

On Apr 20, 6:55 am, joel garry <joel-ga...@home.com> wrote:


> I've been saying it since the Jarvis people started their "tax
> revolution" in the late '70's, when they greedily vultured Jerry
> Brown's huge surplus:  You need to collect taxes to pay for stuff, you
> can't just fertilize the business environment to stimulate growth and
> complain government is too big.  That's just fertilizer, a polite term
> for bullshit.  It works for a while until the farmland gets burned out
> and you have to let it lay fallow.

You mean "growth is infinitely sustainable" as an economic model is
after all an imbecile strategy that can only exist in the minds of an
economist?
Wonders will never cease!

What we are all seeing now is the logical evolution and conclusion of
a demented business and economic model that could not possibly be
sustainable in the long run. Let's hope there is a way out - for
those better than me to find it, I can't...

[onedbguru]

I have not seen any decreased from head-hunters on LinkedIn (Sr Oracle DBA group) or on my email. I still get 20-50 requests/week. Some are looking for skills not reflected in my resume/CV, but still, the number is quite high.

[joel garry]

On Apr 19, 5:15 pm, Noons <wizofo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 20, 6:55 am, joel garry <joel-ga...@home.com> wrote:
>
> > I've been saying it since the Jarvis people started their "tax
> > revolution" in the late '70's, when they greedily vultured Jerry
> > Brown's huge surplus:  You need to collect taxes to pay for stuff, you
> > can't just fertilize the business environment to stimulate growth and
> > complain government is too big.  That's just fertilizer, a polite term
> > for bullshit.  It works for a while until the farmland gets burned out
> > and you have to let it lay fallow.
>
> You mean "growth is infinitely sustainable" as an economic model  is
> after all an imbecile strategy that can only exist in the minds of an
> economist?
> Wonders will never cease!

I don't blame the economists (well, maybe Laffer and some U of Chicago
clowns, and some Objectivists), this particular fail is a political
problem.

>
> What we are all seeing now is the logical evolution and conclusion of
> a demented business and economic model that could not possibly be
> sustainable in the long run.  Let's hope there is a way out - for
> those better than me to find it, I can't...

There's a way out for a small subset. For most, it's not pretty.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.

Happy birthday, George Takei!
"April 19th is National High Five Day. It's also Holocaust
Remembrance Day. Wow. Couldn't they have checked if there wasn't
already a day then? April 20th is Weed Day, aka National Don't
Remember day. April 17th tax day. Only in America." - heard on radio.