Hunting For a Tech Job In 2015 174
Nerval's Lobster writes It's a brand new year, and by at least some indications the economy's doing pretty well, which means that a lot of people will begin looking for a new, possibly better job. If you're looking to trade up, here are some tips, some of which are pretty standard-issue ("Update resume," etc.), and others that could actually stand you in good stead, including using the Bureau of Labor Statistics to judge the median salary for a position before negotiating with HR. According to Glassdoor, Dice, and other sources, the average salary for many kinds of tech workers will only rise over the next year, so it really could be a good time to see what's out there. Good luck.
economy doing well? (Score:5, Funny)
Which indications are those? Forgive me, but I don't watch CNBC.
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Re:economy doing well? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where do you live? Here in the Seattle area, the economy is booming. From fast food to construction right through to dev jobs, everyone is hiring like crazy. There are about 20 new buildings (mostly highrises) going up in downtown Seattle, and apartments are going up everywhere in the suburbs. No question things are doing well here. Where's the suck?
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The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?
Have you seen the valuations for Snapchat and WhatsApp - or Facebook for that matter? We're well into Dot Com Boom 2.0.
Just remember to get out before it all evaporates...
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Have you seen the valuations for Snapchat and WhatsApp - or Facebook for that matter? We're well into Dot Com Boom 2.0.
Yes, but now there is not a startup around every corner. This is a much, much smaller boom. That should mean a smaller bust, but it also means less benefit for us while it happens.
Re:economy doing well? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an important difference between the dot-com boom of the 90s and now. In the 90s you needed lots of capital and the smartest minds available to get online. Now you don't. Anybody with a little bit of programming skill can write an app in weeks and make it available to everyone. Anyone who needs a server can get an AWS instance and expect it to scale up when they need it to. Anyone who needs revenue can get a Google AdSense account. And anyone who actually needs substantial capital can point to Facebook's success. Not that Facebook or any other capital-driven businesses are immune. There may well be a bust. But the industry is more mature, the rewards are easier to define, and nobody wants to see their kids' faces when their investment decisions contribute to Facebook's demise.
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Re:economy doing well? (Score:4, Informative)
All of them. The company couldn't exist if we had to code up a unique app for every customer. My point is that the fact of there being "lots of apps in the store" doesn't mean the number of app "producers" is correspondingly large. I thought I made that clear when I said, "it's not quite a 1-1 from app to company".
Re:economy doing well? (Score:4, Interesting)
Couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of industry in your raving about how wonderful things are for you. I mean, having lots of commerce and residential is great, but how is anybody supposed to pay for it? The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?
Complaining about a lack of manufacturing jobs in today's economy is little different than complaining about the lack of agricultural jobs. Yes these have historically been sectors of the economy where the majority of people worked, but that is no longer the case. The lack of agricultural and manufacturing jobs are not a sign of a weak economy, they are the sign of a strong one.
Manufacturing and agricultural output are still good metrics for measuring an economy, and the United States is certainly strong there.
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The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?
Yes it does. The Fed can easily expand or shrink the M1/M2 money supply [wikipedia.org] to meet the needs of growing economy. Saying money can't appear out of thin air is as silly as saying the earth is flat.
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"The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?"
Funny you should mention that... take a look at http://www.opednews.com/articl... [opednews.com]
Apparently there is no real need for taxation any more. All the government has to do is run the printing presses and print up as many dollars as it needs - plus a few trillion for its good buddies, of course. Because the rest of the world owes the unique, exceptional, indispensable nation a generous living. The economics of Oz is here to stay!
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Funny that you talk about Oz because it is all an allegory about the different kinds of currency. You have the greenback Emerald City where the Wizard of Oz lives, the golden Yellow Brick Road, and the silver Magic Slippers. Which somehow got turned into ruby in the movie.
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Also- Atlanta is "blacker" than Detroit and has markedly lower crime.
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And which Indian or Chinese province are u from? 2015 is projected to be a year of stalled growth in China. So we'll be ransacked by cheap competitive labor from there. We will also continue to be ransacked by cheaper eastern European labor
Cheaper than robots? The 21st century will see the end of unskilled labor from the mainstream economy, much as the 20th saw the end of agricultural labor from the mainstream. It's good to learn a skill.
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Cheaper than robots? The 21st century will see the end of unskilled labor from the mainstream economy
Let's have a thought experiment. Say that every year, machines replace 40,000 unskilled hours per week with 4,000 skilled hours per week maintaining the machines. The machines are equivalent to the human workers in economic output, so the revenue stays the same. Where does the money go? Should there be 1/10 as many workers working full time or the same number of workers working 1/10 of the hours? Should the skilled hours be worth 10x as much as the unskilled hours? Or should the skilled workers be paid the
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Where did all the farmer jobs go? Where did all the jobs go that were replaced by manufacturing lines? You're asking the wrong questions.
Being able to produce food easier and cheaper than ever meant more people could afford food than ever before. Being able to produce shoes, tableware, and chairs cheaper than ever meant that for the first time everyone could afford these - even shoes for children. Making stuff more efficiently always means more stuff for everyone. The money is just a handy intermediary
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Exactly. Check out, for example, this: http://www.paulcraigroberts.or... [paulcraigroberts.org]
Or this: http://www.paulcraigroberts.or... [paulcraigroberts.org]
If Roberts' in-your-face tone doesn't suit you, try the soberly factual John Williams at http://www.shadowstats.com/ [shadowstats.com]
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Really? Booming like crazy in Boston, NYC, Seattle, Austin (mostly tech), SF, etc.
I live in San Jose, and I get several calls or emails every week asking if I am available, or if I know anyone who is. The tech job market is booming here. If there aren't enough jobs where you live, then stop whining and get on the bus Gus.
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If there aren't enough jobs where you live, then stop whining and get on the bus Gus.
When I was out of work in Silicon Valley over the last few years, commentators told me to get on a bus to get a natural gas job in North Dakota. I pointed out that North Dakota was in the boom cycle. What would happen when it goes bust? We will find out soon enough with cheap gas..
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Then you move back to Silicon Valley. (Or wherever the local conditions are brightest for your particular field.)
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That's why you budget money for a future move and/or rent instead of buy. A 20ft U-Haul truck from Austin to SanFran is $850, plus gas. Loaded it gets 8mpg, and the trip is 1750 miles. So figure $450 for gas, for a total of $1300. Say your buddy gets an offer for $100k/year back in California. He could counter with "$95k/year + $1500 to relocat
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1. Moving cross-country to take a $16/hr job when you have no savings is somewhat risky, as your friend found out. How much could he have made in CA if he hadn't moved? How much did the initial move from California to Texas cost? If it cost $1000 to move one-way and he was able to earn $3/hr more (after taxes) than in CA then he would have recouped the cost of his move (round-trip) in 4 months time.
2. If he was able to earn more in Texas tha
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The Dow gained 64.73 points to 18,024.17 That's up 0.4 percent from its previous high, on Monday. The latest close is the Dow's second 1,000-point milestone this year after closing above 17,000 for the first time in July. The S.&P. 500 rose 3.63 points to 2,082.17. That's a gain of 0.2 percent from its previous high, a day earlier. The Nasdaq composite fell 16 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,765.42.
Wall Street is NOT the economy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wall Street has been doing well because of all that Fed money that has been printed in the last few years. It has absolutely nothing to do with economic or business fundamentals. It was all bullshit money.
1. Hedge funds/billionaires being able to borrow at the Fed rate and at much higher margins than us peons (95% vs 50% for the rest of us) pumped the money into the stock markets.
2. All the money floating around was used by corporations to do stock buybacks - not because their businesses were worth investing in (contrary to the myth taught in Finance classes and spewed by corporate PR departments) but because it allowed the CEOs and billionaires to get even richer.
3. 1 & 2 were all done at our expense because it weakened the dollar - making consumer goods more expensive; while our wages haven't gone up. In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.
A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.
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In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.
As an I.T. contractor, my contracts over the last six years has explicitly forbidden me from working overtime. I can only work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, during normal business hours. Which is fine with me. The contract for my current job included paid holidays and 20 paid time off (PTO) days. The perks are getting better on my end.
A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.
This isn't a normal economy. If current job growth is maintained, it would still take two years to recover [epi.org] to 2007.
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Which I'm not sad about, since my savings is mainly in U.S. equities.
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Which indications are those?
GDP, Public Sector Job Openings, Employment Rate, Stock Market, Consumer Spending, Consumer Confidence, Housing Prices...
What are you looking for?
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That should say PRIVATE sector job openings....
Yet Another Off-Topic Reply To A Signature (Score:2)
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
I see what you did there.
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When job hunts for you, then economy doing well!
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Wow, no (Score:4, Insightful)
others that could actually stand you in good stead, including using the Bureau of Labor Statistics to judge the median salary for a position before negotiating with HR.
Wow, no, do not do that, the BLS statistics are LOW for huge sections of the United States. Remember, these are the numbers used to pay H1 visas, and they include jobs that aren't necessarily what you would think of when you think of a programmer (like the guy at my brother's company who gets paid $40k to write SQL queries, and not necessarily efficient ones. That's all he can do).
Secondly, when you are negotiating salary, always ask above the median (and that's assuming the median is correct). You can go lower later, but it's hard to negotiate higher than what you initially ask for.
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For web developer it's worse [bls.gov], $62,000 per year.
Compare that one to this data [wealthfront.com], which puts software engineer at $130,000 median.
If you've been a programmer for a while, you should be making a lot more than that. Every recruiter that contacts me, I tell them first thing (after hello) that I'm not interested in anything under $170k. A lot of them go away immediately, but that's ok, I'm not interested in them.
Re: Wow, no (Score:4, Informative)
That's nothing. I won't get out of bed for less than $250K. Just not worth it.
Yeah. That's the right attitude. Let the recruiters know what we are worth.
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Work history:
2003 - Present
Didn't get out of bed because nobody would pay me enough.
Ya... I'd hire 'em... </sarcasm>
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That's nothing. I won't get out of bed for less than $250K. Just not worth it.
Yeah. That's the right attitude. Let the recruiters know what we are worth.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but I do the same thing, ESPECIALLY for recruiters - they do NOT have your best interests in mind. IMHO, when I talk to a recruiter, it's only because it's a position of interest. It seems to me recruiters tend to treat the prospect like they're applying to anything that passes in front of them.
Of course, you have to be PC about it: "I just want you to know, I'd prefer not to waste anyone's time - and while this job sounds like something that's right up my alley, i
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It's kind of like a union action, but without paying union dues.
And without supporting any of the supposed evil for which a lot of people seem to think unions are responsible. Unless you think being paid more for your work is evil.
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Use a salary site instead (Score:2)
There are several sites out there I use to research salaries such as glassdoor, salary.com, and payscale.com. They can give you a salary range for the company and job you are looking at. Are there any others out there you consider to be good?
Also, personally, I do not 'jump' unless there is at least a 10 pct pay increase. The stress of a new job does not make it worth it for me.
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As a sanity check you can go to salary
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Interestingly, my current employer is the first one I've ever had that gave me significant raises.
Nice. I've heard of such companies. Everywhere I've worked, I've either had to quit or threaten to quit to get a raise.
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Getter by better if you have skills... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people we hire now have relevant experience and skills in our very specific field, and experience commensurate for the position we are posting. We have sadly given up on new graduates; they are too flakey, having never held an actual job before, and needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave. Now is a great time for people that graduated around 2010, found a job in their field at terrible pay, and are now ready for an actual career.
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The only people we hire now have relevant experience and skills in our very specific field, and experience commensurate for the position we are posting. We have sadly given up on new graduates; they are too flakey, having never held an actual job before, and needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave. Now is a great time for people that graduated around 2010, found a job in their field at terrible pay, and are now ready for an actual career.
This is not true.
I know recruiters and they love hiring new graduates. New graduates need jobs, experienced engineers already have jobs.
Training does not take long at all. Revenue generation isn't a factor since there is not even a way to measure how someone directly generated revenue when hundreds of people work on a single product.
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Doctors earn good pay but you delude yourself if you think they don't work insane hours to get their pay.
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The Truth about CV's from India (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because you worked on a project that used [insert product here] it does not make you an expert in that product OR even qualified to put it down on your CV
Over the past 3-4 years I have seen hundreds if not thousands of CV's coming out of India that contain huge amount of Bullshit if not downright lies.
Now we filter them out by asking them not overly difficult questions relating to the products they are supposed to be skilled in.
Even then some seem to slip through the net.
Many may be good on paper but t
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It depends on the field though. The issue with new grads as devs, is that in big tech hubs, the average developer stays at a company around 1 (SF, Seattle) to 2 (Boston, not sure where NYC stands, haven't seen statistics on it) years.
So you get your new grad, you train them....and then they're gone. Offering more benefits or money doesn't help, because they're often leaving for some startup with their friends and aren't even going to get paid because they're "founders" (heck, if you paid them more they'd fi
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Re:Getter by better if you have skills... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I don't see anything specifically wrong here.
There's a reason experience costs more: it's valuable. If a company can afford to exclusively hire experienced people it's probably not a terrible idea.
Hiring new grads is a cost savings measure, and as was said, it usually comes with the expected downsides of hiring someone who's never held an actual dev job before. Employers weight the pros and cons and proceed accordingly.
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whatever the hell that means, and that is a huge stretch for a fucking 4 year BS university graduate
I for one have met plenty of graduates with not just a lack technical skills but a general absence of common sense and work ethic which made it baffling how they ever graduated.
He's asserting that if your a new grad, you're without experience
There are tons of new grads that have experience.
Some people go back to school, sure, but when people refer to "new grads" they arn't usually talking someone in their 40s with several years experience in some other career. Not many grads have actual paid experience. Some might have co-op experience of experience contributing to open source projects or their own pet projects, and wh
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There's no great conspiracy to suppress knowledge. Old grey beards arn't sitting around saying "better not hire any of them kids outa university, they'll start throwing executable UML and agile around and I'll be out of work!"
It's just basic economics and risk / cost management at work. More experience is less risk but more money. Employers decide where in that spectrum they want to fall. Works this way in just about every industry from construction to prostitution.
Did you recently graduate and couldn't fin
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The attitudes toward fresh graduates are a larger social issue, and I think that the OP gets right to the heart of it:
needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave.
This is not just a statement about new CS grads. This is a statement about everybody in every industry. And it's not the employee's fault. There has been a huge cultural shift in the last 100 years. Our grandparents could take well-paying factory jobs and work them for 40 years without ever jumping ship, then rest on a pension. That option simply is not available anymore; the closest we can
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It could be, but part of what experience brings is knowing how to deal with people in this environment. I don't know you, and can't say anything regarding what you know or don't know, but it's easy to try too hard and to come across as being a prima donna even if that wasn't the intent. Intervie
tldr: if you have to use dice to get a job (Score:4, Insightful)
tldr: if you have to use dice to get a job you're already f***ed
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Indeed.
If any of the advice in this for lack of better word "article" was a big surprise, you haven't got a chance. This is the kind of advice people looking for a McJob need. I'm surprised they didn't mention wearing a suit if you have one and not being too obvious about your mom giving you a ride there.
CMPID (Score:2)
I'd love to know what that CMPID at the end of the URL is.
Bad enough Dice shitposts their articles here, but are they seriously throwing stuff in the links to track the success of their self posting?
Dice = Contract Jobs (Score:5, Informative)
I've always been disappointed in Dice.com since it's so full of slimy recruiting firms and even slimier head-hungers offering low-paying contracts. It's so full of Indian firms that it resembles a tech call-center from India and I don't bother anymore to list my resume there since I'll be flooded with worthless contracts in cities that I have no interest in working with. These worthless recruiters don't bother reading your profile or requirements (Perm-Only, Local Area Only) and just spam e-mail and call you with keyword matching crap short-term and low-paying contracts from cities across the nation that you have no interest in working in or moving to. Half the time I can't understand their thick Indian accents either and I wouldn't bother working with them if they can't even communicate well enough with them.
Dice.com is the slums of Tech Recruiting.
Re:Dice = Contract Jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
So, what are good web sites that are not like Dice.com these days then? I used to use it back in early 2000s.
Re:Dice = Contract Jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
To be honest, I don't think any really exist.
Employers who hire new grads tend to go straight to the universities. Past that, I suspect most decent jobs are found either through networking or by going to places and asking if they are hiring (this can be surprisingly effective, and a lot of places appreciate the initiative).
It has been awhile since I've heard about someone getting a good job by sending a resume in to some random job they saw posted somewhere. It's always "I have a friend who is working there" or "I heard they won contract X so I went down and talked to them".
Places like dice.com are, as said, shitty short term contract work. Most companies worth working for do their own HR and have enough contacts through their own employees to find good people.
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I've been using the job sites, because they do work however the general tendency to offer contract roles is true. Some will be contract-to-hire. Lately I get contacted by phone directly by 20+ different recruiters, mostly not with jobs that are the right fit. By the end of the process I get 2 or 3 serious prospects that I'll actually try to land. I'm pretty much done with this model. I'm not working for anyone else that doesn't have work that's worth doing. Work has to have some meaning or you have to be so
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going to places and asking if they are hiring
In my experience you get an answer 1 out of every 3 times. Of those who answer 1 out of 3 will ask you for an interview. Just do not expect it to happen anytime soon. It may take months. The company may not be hiring at the time you asked for a job its as simple as that.
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Companies are noticing this, and have begun hiring only the educated, credentialed and experienced.
Which is exactly why they are pushing to hire more of those "exceptional" foreigners on H-1B visas, right?
Re:Dice = Contract Jobs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dice = Contract Jobs (Score:5, Informative)
http://careers.stackoverflow.c... [stackoverflow.com] I found my current job there and it's the only place we advertise
Painted into a corner (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the tech industry has painted itself into a corner. I had the misfortune to lose my job early in 2013 and spent almost the whole year looking before I found something; during that whole period I actually saw the same, relatively few jobs being readvertised over and over, with very little new showing up. The sector I was looking at was what you'd call 'devops', and it seemed like the companies were trying to get people with long experience in both development and system administration, but they weren't willing to pay more than what you'd pay for a middle ranking call-center operator. I can't quite imagine how anybody can imagine that being an attractive proposition to anybody with the qualifications.
So, it looks to me like a number of companies - almost all of them internet businesses - have painted themselves into a corner, where they deperately need highly qualified employees that they are never going to be able or willing to pay for.
Re:Painted into a corner (Score:4, Informative)
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I'm in London. There seems to be a reasonable number of genuine jobs, but they simply don't have realistic expectations about what they can get for what they are willing to pay. It is grotesque, really, since they are unwilling to pay, say, more than £40K per year, but on the other hand, they have to pay significantly more for contractors - a very rough calculation says that each £10 per day you pay corresponds to £18000 per year (40 hours per week, 45 weeks per year), an
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"There seems to be a reasonable number of genuine jobs, but they simply don't have realistic expectations about what they can get for what they are willing to pay."
Yet another indication - if any were needed - that the "market mechanism" doesn't work, and is nothing more than a convenient excuse for paying less and demanding more. (Which, let's face it, is the essence of business).
I have never understood why managers, who really don't understand what programmers and other software experts do, nevertheless
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Well it is true in a way. Without sales you cannot pay for anyone in the business. Having helped run a family business for some time I kind of get the point. The quality of the work is important but you would be surprised how many clients don't know any better and in fact how many are dumb enough to believe whatever they're told if the salesperson is impressive enough. Even if they get stiffed by that vendor they may still believe they made a good choice because, let's face it, no one likes admitting they m
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Well, in 2013 I managed to get called to interviews and then subsequently being contacted about the same jobs for months afterwards by other agents, after I had been rejected. I think the interview part of it rules out the job being fake, but you're right about the fake adverts.
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What's coming out in 2016? (Score:2)
There's plenty of jobs out there for people with 3+ years of experience in things coming out in 2016.
Re:Best advice I heard, and followed (Score:5, Insightful)
Get the hell out of the tech industry. I went back to school, got my PharmD and couldn't be happier.
Won't you be surprised when the pharmacy robots displace you. Better to learn to program those robots, if you can!
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Re:Best advice I heard, and followed (Score:5, Interesting)
Robots might replace pharmacy technicians someday, but we'll always need pharmacists, let alone PharmDs.
I worked as a software developer in the pharmaceutical industry, and I assure you that PharmDs are just as in danger of being automated as pharmacy techs. Perhaps even more so because of their higher pay. Every seminar I sat through where our customers talked about their successes with our software measured success in number of jobs reduced (usually through attrition, not firing, but the net result is the same). One key metric of success was being able to get the same amount of work done with more pharmacy techs instead of PharmDs, thus reducing overall wages.
PharmD jobs are almost the poster child for a high wage career that can be more easily replaced by automation than most low wage work. It is a career that requires very highly skilled workers because of the vast amount of knowledge they need to have. That is exactly the type of work that the new wave of AI is being designed to do. Like another poster already mentioned, Watson really is going to displace a good percentage of your industry's jobs.
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We definitely have some interesting times ahead. Many people believe that all this labor automation will produce a world in which all of everybody's needs can be met by the labors of a very small few, and because of this nobody will be able to find work, and the whole economy will come tumbling down.
Capitalists have been holding firm on the position that this sort of change produces new kinds of work. We shall see if that holds true or not.
When people wrote this in 1884, it was valid speculation, since we hadn't see tech revolutions play out. Now we have. Now we know it's full of shit. Over and over we see that making stuff easier and cheaper means that more people have that stuff, and meanwhile we're all at work making stuff only the rich could previously buy (but now everyone can, because the other stuff is so cheap now).
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I have been asked. Having a job profile in LinkedIn is a good idea. If you have code you want to distribute for free I guess GitHub is as good as a place as any other to put it in. As for something like Facebook it is actually a net drag in job terms. Especially if you spend your time there putting pictures of you getting plastered.