CIO, CTO, CSO, IT Service Management, IT Job Description, Sarbanes Oxley, and IT Salary News
CIO - CTO - CSO News
IT Professionals are satisfied in their jobs but are looking
The vast majority of IT professionals are satisfied at work with 40 percent are satisfied with their jobs. Indeed, Janco finds that there is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and the salary. Since more money equals greater job satisfaction, one could infer that for some, money does buy happiness.
However, more than 60% of IT Professionals feel they should be making more money.
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Though the majority of IT professionals seem to be satisfied with their current jobs, it is not preventing almost 40% of them to start looking for new opportunities. Nearly 1 in 5 are either actively looking or will be looking within the next three months.
Could proposed fed policy help IT Hiring
Several Republican senators and procurement experts have voiced their disagreement with a policy Obama administration officials are considering that would give a leg up to contractors who pay their employees more, according to a letter and comments at a hearing.
"We are concerned that the imposition of these requirements, during a time of significant economic turmoil in the private sector and tight federal budgets, could have serious, negative consequences, especially for our nation's small businesses," five senators wrote in a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Today, an Obama administration official said the president hasn't issued any policy regarding a contracting preference. Nevertheless, experts inside and outside of government have offered suggestions to the administration on improving contracting, as the president pledged to do in his reform memo.
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Army to reduce outsourcing
(Washington Technology) Army Secretary John McHugh told a Senate committee today that the Army plans to give outsourced jobs that are associated with inherently governmental functions to its civilian employees.
The Army intends to insource 7,162 positions this fiscal year, McHugh said in testimony before the Armed Services Committee. From fiscal 2011 to 2015, the service aims to take back 11,084 positions and give them to civilian employees. Of those, nearly 3,988 are for acquisition-related work, he said.
"Civilians are assuming increased responsibilities within the Army," he said.
In fiscal 2009, the Army saved significant resources by bringing back in house more than 900 "core governmental functions," McHugh added.
Core governmental functions, sometimes called critical functions, are jobs that are very close to inherently governmental functions, or work that only a government employee can do. Outsourcing core jobs can force the government to rely on the private sector's knowledge, and contractors potentially can unduly influence the government, officials say.
"The Army is recouping intellectual capital by insourcing former contracted positions,"McHugh said.
The Army identified these positions to insource in its ongoing contractor inventory review process.
Like McHugh, other military officers and Defense Department officials have announced plans in their fiscal 2011 budget proposals to take away numerous jobs from contractors, in areas such as acquisition and procurement.
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Baby boomers face new challenges in the job market
According to the Congressional Budget OfficeOver the past 15 months, the stock market has wiped out $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings . With the downturn in the stock market and the laying off of so many IT professionals, there now is a situation where "baby boomer" are competing for the same jobs as the "millennials" are just getting out of college.
CIOs now have to decide whom to hire by sorting through a maze of competing technical expertise, business acumen, cultural preferences, and career expectations.
That is not always easy. Millennials have a tendency to eat, sleep and breathe Web 2.0 technologies, and the value of that may not be immediately clear to a traditional CIO.
Boomers have expertise in more traditional technologies such as IT infrastructure and operating systems. That's good news for large enterprises, which are always on the lookout for IT professionals with the skills needed to support its largely mainframe-based package-tracking system. That type of expertise can limit boomers' prospects elsewhere.
This eagerness to learn gives many millennials a leg up on the competition. There is a managerial flip side to consider. Young IT workers who are bold enough to take on new technologies are also more likely to be impatient with the constraints of traditional workplaces.
Businesses that expect all employees to march to the beat of the same drummer, however, may have a tough time reining in millennials' more spirited work ethic and thirst for experimentation.
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Recession impacts IT entry positions the hardest
Take a look at the numbers defining the scope of the recession. When you break down the unemployment rate by age group, here's how it pans out: 16.7 percent for everyone aged 15 to 24, 8.2 percent for everyone aged 25 to 44, and 6.3 percent for everyone aged 45 and older. So, the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed.
Federal records show that the older you are, the more money you're likely to be making: The median weekly salary for workers in the 16-to-24 age bracket is about 41 percent less than what someone aged 25 to 44 makes -- and they're making 6 percent less than the folks in the 55-and-up group.
When you look at the numbers in the Janco 2010 salary survey, staff-level salaries start at a median of $40,671 and climb higher as the jobs proceed up the (very short) ladder.
And, unfair as this seems, the more you're making, the less likely you are to be unemployed. According to a new study at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, the unemployment rate for people making between $39,000 and $50,000 is 9 percent, and it only drops more as your income climbs: If you're making $79,100 or more, only 3.2 percent to 5 percent of the people in your income bracket have lost their jobs.
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Raises too be meager for IT according to study
At less than 2 percent, raises in technology salaries will be small in 2010, according to a report by Computer Economics. Developers are at the top of both the raise list and the salary list, especially for highly complex application development work. Managers and senior executives will have to get to the back of the line.
IT workers are due to receive a median 1.8 percent bump in salary in 2010 - below the 2.7 percent rate of inflation and the lowest rate in the last five years - according to data from a 2010 salary report from Computer Economics. A similar report from technology job board Dice, in January, showed that in 2009 tech salaries rose a measly 1 percent.
"By historical standards, the 1.8 percent median pay raise is meager," CE wrote on its Website. "But in light of still-high unemployment rates, the finding indicates IT executives are responding to the need to retain their best workers and boost damaged morale."
By comparison, salary raises for tech workers in 2007 were 3.8 percent, CE data showed. The effects of the recession on technology salaries will continue to be felt for some time.
"With persistent unemployment, organizations will be able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the recession. This should place downward pressure on U.S. national median salary levels over the coming months," CE said.
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High tech jobs continue to suffer according to government report
Silicon Valley's decline has been charted over an eight-year period between 2000 and 2008 in which venture capital investment meant big gains for technology workers' wages in the beginning, but those IT wages have since diminished. The recovery will be slow and gradual, according to government economists. On the whole, high-tech industries in Silicon Valley declined sharply in employment and wages from 2000 to 2004 but increased gradually in both respects from 2004 to 2008.
From 2000, when high-tech employment and wages peaked, to 2008, Silicon Valley's hightech industries lost more than 108,400 jobs, or 19.9 percent of their employment.8 High-tech industries in the rest of the Nation lost 6.2 percent of employment. In addition, real wages fell by 13.5 percent among Silicon Valley's high-tech industries, while high-tech wages grew by 1.3 percent in the rest of the Nation.
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Cyber criminals are hiring
The people who brought the world malicious software that steals credit card numbers from your personal computer and empties bank ATMs of their cash are hiring, and they're advertising online.
What they are seeking is people who are willing to take malicious code they provide and link it to something that people will click on -- like a picture of Britney Spears getting out of her car. These people then collect a fee for each 1,000 times that the malware is downloaded.
One site pays $180 for each 1,000 times that malware is downloaded onto a U.S. computer but less for computers elsewhere. It refuses to pay for any downloads to Russian computers, causing Stevens and others to strongly suspect that it, like other similar sites, are based in Russia.
"We pay your wages via the following systems: Fethard, WebMoney, Wire, e-gold, Western Union (WU), MoneyGram, Anelik and ePassporte, and PayPal," according to the website.
It is impossible to know how many computers were infected via these companies but put the number in the millions.
It's hard to separate theft arising from these web sites from other sorts of Internet crime but the FBI tallied $264 million in losses from Internet crime reported by individuals in 2008. The report for 2009 has yet to be released.
The cybercrime problem has become worse over the past three years as consumers and companies alike increasingly expose valuable data such as business plans, credit card numbers, banking information and Social Security numbers on the Internet.
"There are hundreds of billions of dollars that traverse the Internet," the assistant director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, told Reuters late last year. "It's (the problem) absolutely gotten bigger, yes, absolutely."
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Outsourcing impacts on certain IT jobs
A survey by a buisess shcool shows that 40% of high-technology firms offshore work, and about 30% of all firms that offshore send IT work overseas. Among the IT workers surveyed, about 8% report ever having experienced offshoring-related job displacement, double the average offshoring-related displacement rate across all other worker types, but still implying an annual offshoring-related displacement rate of only about 1-2% per year.
The study also showed that workers in jobs that require face-to-face contact or physical presence are at smaller risk of offshoring-related job displacement, implying that interpersonal skills are becoming relatively more valuable among IT workers. Other findings imply that IT workers in functions that involve cross-divisional communication or hands-on support are less likely to be affected by offshoring.
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Leadership drives success and hiring
Leadership is an important element of organizational success. So, it is not surprising that many companies look for ways to extend the benefits of leadership development to more employees. Technology-based learning approaches such as online courses, books and video programs can be used effectively to develop employees at all levels.
Internet Position Descriptions HandiGuide®
231 Job Descriptions and Organization Charts
The job descriptions contained within the Internet and Information Technology Position Descriptions HandiGuide® are all in a standard format and are available as in PDF, WORD 2003, and WORD 2007 formats. All of the job descriptions were reviewed and updated to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and the ISO 27000 security standard. The latest version of the HandiGuide was completed in 2010 and is over 650 pages in length. The Internet and IT Position Descriptions HandiGuide includes sample organization charts, a job progression matrix, and the 231 job descriptions.
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Many IT Professional Unhappy with Compensation
National averages for technology salaries are pretty stagnant, a recent Dice report shows, and there are high levels of job dissatisfaction. However, there is more growth in wages regionally, with high technology demand in Washington, New York, Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.
Salaries for U.S. technology professionals rose a measly 1 percent in 2009 to an average of $78,845, well below the annual inflation rate of 2.7 percent for the year, according to a recent survey by technology job board Dice. Furthermore, the lack of wage growth fills technology professionals with a high level of job dissatisfaction.
Nearly half (47 percent) of the 16,908 online participants polled between August and December said their current employers are doing "nothing to keep them motivated," while only 19 percent were being offered challenging work. Responses about bonuses for 2009 were uninspiring too: Only 24 percent of technology professionals polled received bonuses last year.
With job and salary dissatisfaction at its highest levels in years, technology professionals should be willing to go fight for career advancement. HR and technology managers can win by identifying new motivators to keep staff on board, including compensation, training and career growth.
Of those tech workers who did not receive bonuses, 42 percent responded that they were displeased with their compensation. Of those who did receive bonuses in 2009, only 27 percent were displeased.
The new war for technology talent is coming and the battle is retention.
When you look at salary averages regionally in the Dice survey, you begin to see some ripples of growth. Washington had an average salary of $89,014, up 4 percent from the previous year, with technology jobs in defense and for the federal government. Silicon Valley, despite a tough year of layoffs, is still showing an average salary of $96,299 while New York showed a 1.5 percent increase with an average of $86,710. Texas was faring better too, with Dallas seeing a 2 percent gain and Austin having higher average paychecks.
So who is drawing the best salaries in IT right now? Think application developers and SOA (service-oriented architecture) specialists.
Continuing to lead the pack in top paid skills is ABAP - Advanced Business Application Programming ($115,916), followed by SOA - Service Oriented Architecture ($107,827), and ETL - Extract Transform and Load ($105,844)," the survey said. These frontrunners were followed by a few newcomers and some solid technology job stalwarts:
Applications server skills JBoss and WebLogic joined the $100,000 salary ranks with annual salaries topping $101,869 and $100,313, respectively. Individuals with Solaris ($96,672) and AIX ($95,464) skills were the highest-paid [of those with] operating system skills. The [areas with the] highest paid titles include IT Management ($114,874), Information Architecture ($105,247), Project Manager ($103,437), Software Engineer ($91,342) and Database Administrator ($91,283).
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Job cuts continue - Ericsson trims 1,500 jobs
Ericsson, a wireless equipment maker, is cutting 1,500 jobs from among its 80,000 global employees. The company reported on Friday a huge downturn in fourth quarter and full-year 2009 earnings. For the quarter ended December, Ericsson saw its net earnings plummet 92 percent to 314 million million kronor ($43.4 million dollars), compared with the year-ago quarter. Sales dropped 13 percent to 58.3 billion kronor from the year-ago quarter.
For all of 2009, Ericsson's earnings were down 67 percent to 3.7 billion kronor ($512 million). Annual sales survived, though, falling only 1 percent to 206.5 billion kronor over the previous year.
The 1,500 job cuts are in addition to 5,000 layoffs Ericsson announced about a year ago after a 31 percent drop in 2008 fourth-quarter earnings, bringing the total to 6,500. After layoffs and budget cuts are completed around the second quarter of this year, the company is looking to save around 15 billion to 16 billion kronor ($2.1 billion to $2.2 billion) annually.
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Work at home option improves productivity
Work at home is a boon to employee productivity. Some of the factors driving this are:
- Reducing support costs - if an employee is not in the office then administrative costs and expenses are reduced.
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- Increasing workforce productivity - if an employee does not have to commute to the office and can work at home or go directly to a customer location they are more productive.
- Attracting and retaining talent - working at home is a benefit that does not cost much but has a very high perceived value
- Increasing organizational agility - the organization is more flexible and adaptive to market needs
- Reducing the business risk of disruption from terrorism and natural disasters - with diverse locations work at home provides an infrastructure that can survive most disasters
- Reducing traffic congestion, air pollution and environmental impact more generally - it is environmentally friendly and more "green"
Is Job Demand Increasing
The second half of 2009 saw growth in online job vacancies. Health care and technology jobs led the pack in job opportunities, but the opportunity numbers for 2009 are still down significantly from 2008 and 2007.
Recent job vacancy data for the month of December pegs computer and math openings up 23,000 from November for a total of 467,000 nationally, according to a report from The Conference Board.
Overall, the annual average for job openings in 2009 is down compared with the previous two years with 3,357,000, which is 1.1 million below 4,481,000 for 2008 and 1.3 million below the 2007 average.
For all occupations, job vacancies were up 255,000 in December. The good news is the averages of job openings in the second half of 2009 were positive. Job demand was up on average by 58,000, compared with negative 91,000 in the first half of the year.
"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year, said a senior economist at The Conference Board, in a report. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."
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Lay-offs Loom for IT Organization according to Janco
Janco has just released it January 2010 IT Salary Survey. One of the major findings were that a number of large IT organizations had focued on cutting cost without laying off any staff. However as the recession continues, in order to meet their enterprise's 2010 budgets these organization will need to cut staff.
Layoffs should start to occur sometime late in the first quarter and early second quarter of this year.
Other findings include:
- Layers of middle management have been eliminated and the number of direct reports has increased for many IT Directors, Managers, and Supervisors.
- Enterprises that have cut costs in lieu of laying staff off are now planning to institute a round of layoffs in order to meet their numbers for 2010.
- Companies are continuing to reduce the benefits provided to IT professionals.
- Personal and company bonuses have been reduced if not eliminated altogether.
- Raises have be eliminated by many. For example in a survey conducted by Redmondmag.com it was reported that 36.5% of Microsoft employees saw no raise in 2009.
- Hiring is limited to a few selected positions as enterprise continue to cut costs
- There now is a surplus of seasoned IT professionals available. For the second time in less than ten years, retirements are being put off because of the downturn in the stock market and the resultant reduction in savings available to support IT professionals as they retire. Added to this is an influx of retirees who are looking to get back into the job market due to of the massive reduction in their investment portfolio
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Staffing levels will not increase according to Janco
Enterprise IT leaders planning for 2010 might find themselves coming up short on staff and the necessary high-tech skills needed to help their companies rebuild and drive business growth during the economic recovery, according to recent research.
Research from multiple sources is starting to reveal that high-tech executives might be worried about how they can tackle the coming year and the challenges it presents with lean staffs comprised of over-worked IT professionals. According to Robert Half Technology, 43 percent of some 1,400 CIOs polled feel their IT departments are either somewhat or very understaffed in relation to current workload.
"Many companies have cut technology staff levels too deeply, making it challenging for IT departments to keep pace with demands," said an executive director of Robert Half Technology. "Although businesses may be able to operate with stretched teams in the short term, being perpetually understaffed isn't sustainable and can detract from the overall productivity and morale of the organization."
Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis forcasts that IT staff could remain lean well into 2010 and that economic recovery will not also indicate a return of IT jobs to pre-recession numbers.
"IT departments during the downturn were very cautious about where they reduced, and more organizations plan to keep staffing levels flat for a period of time. As the recovery continues, they might not even add too much, so I don't think we will ever go back to the big IT departments of 2000 or 2001," Janulaitis said.
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36.5% of Microsoft employees saw no increases in 2009
Redmond's annual survey of Microsoft IT compensation shows that, despite a global recession, respondents reported higher average salaries-but lost some ground with raises and bonuses.
We're in the midst of a massive recession that's approaching the two-year mark. In 2008, when we reported that salaries in the Microsoft IT community went up, the recession had respondents wondering if IT salaries had finally hit a high mark. A year later, the recession has gone global, but amazingly it hasn't had the impact on base compensation that we expected. The overall base salary this year? $83,113. While 36.5 percent of survey participants said they saw no change in salary from last year, nearly half claimed their salary was higher in 2009.
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Common CIO and IT Manager Mistakes
There are some ways that many CIOs and IT managers have failed to succeed. Most common mistakes were:
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- There is a magic bullet for success: Many execs, and companies as well, are constantly looking for a big win. When they find these "awesome opportunities" they throw resources at them in the hope that this success will fix a lot of existing mistakes and problems.
However, while going after the magic bullet, they often starve many of the smaller initiatives or operations which have been plodding along successfully for a long time. As a result of lost resources, these little successes consequently founder. They may fail. When the big win doesn't materialize - and they usually don't - the organization is left with less-effective pieces that can no longer provide enough juice to continue. Adding to the loss: Ultimately this approach of always going for the brass ring can demoralize even the best performers.
- Failing to learn and grow: When it comes to sports or new hobbies, nearly everyone understands the importance of repeated practice to improve performance. But for some reason, leaders often fail to practice on the job. They apply new techniques, style changes, or business approaches without the necessary testing. For some reason, many CIO and IT Managers think that all they have to do is read or hear these new approaches and they can they go out and put them into action. Consequently, they blow it. At that point they may decide this new way is no good and abandon it too soon.
New approaches - physical or mental - require training and learning. Accept the idea that during your first few times of trying something new, you're likely to stub your toe. Learn from your flub: What could you have done differently for a successful outcome? Then try it again. It'll come. Soon it will become a part of your management style repertoire and your game will improve.- Avoid the hard personnel decisions: Intellectually, everyone knows that having the right person in the right job is critical. And yet.
Many CIOs and IT Managers will leave a weakling in a role for too long. They often attempt to justify their lack of action ("Chuck's been with us for years. Sarah's still learning," etc.), but regardless of their reasons, this mistake can cause a lot of problems. Good people will leave, or at the least, simply become less engaged. The wrong person in the role may miss opportunities that another may have seen, he / she may create more problems because they are in over their head. Being soft isn't generous, or thoughtful, or kind hearted. It's just dumb. I'm often told by the recently terminated that they kind of knew, in their heart of hearts, that they should have been more proactive.- Working hard is all that takes to succeed: Like most winners, in any game, a CIO or IT Manager are successful because they did more of the right things than they did of the dumb things. But they did do wrong things. Almost everybody does at certain times.
CIOs and IT Managers delusion regarding their success keep them from constantly upgrading themselves, fixing their mistakes, and building on the really good things they did do.- Being a constant fixer: Some people are naturally predisposed toward helping people fix their problems. If you're in trouble, you may welcome his or her stepping-in to help correct your issue. But many times, you don't need that person to come and tell you what to do. Then, their help is seen as interference. And it can make you pretty cranky.
If someone is thinking aloud with you, resist the urge to jump in. Don't interrupt them to provide "the answer." Let them process it on their own - it will make them better and more self-sufficient. And, as a bonus, you may actually learn something.
On the other hand, when another individual comes to you with a great idea, just tell them it is. That's all. Don't add anything. Because by adding, "that's good, why don't you add this to it," you devalue both their idea and their thinking. That's demoralizing and frustrating. So, keep this in mind - for the most part people don't like fixers. Just shut up, let them own it, and tell them they're doing good stuff.
Networking Tips for IT Professionals
Before anyone starts to look for a job they need to see that their professional network is in order and that they have game plan of steps that they will follow. Included are:
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Is the IT job market stabalizing?
Over the last three months, the tech job market has been stabilizing and may even be improving in some areas -- particularly in management and consulting services, according to two separate reports analyzing the government's most recent labor data.
The big picture for all jobs is shaped by the U.S. Department of Labor in its monthly jobs reports, and y it delivered the best news yet in this downturn: a loss of 11,000 jobs in November. That compared to 597,000 lost jobs in November 2008 and 741,000 that were lost in January.
Two Labor Department job categories were responsible for a net gain of 11,200 IT jobs over the last three months. They are management and technical consulting services, which added 13,300 jobs, and computer systems design and related services, which gained 5,200 jobs. Over this period, the data processing, hosting and related services fields lost 2,700 jobs; the computer and peripheral equipment category fell by 3,200 jobs; and the communications equipment area lost 1,400 jobs.
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