Where's Your Job Headed?

[Jim Boyd]

My job is one I would consider secure. I kill bugs, specializing in termites. They were here long before us and will be here long after we are gone. So in the meantime I have a job

[twistsol]

My job is completely insecure and, in fact, the better I do my job the sooner I'm unemployed. My typical employment is 9-15 months. I'm a consultant and work on technology integration of finance and accounting systems specializing in mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Neither computer science nor accounting was quite nerdy enough for me on their own so I do both.

soapbox on
Offshore programming rarely if ever saves the money IT departments believe it will. What doesn't get taken into account is the lower quality, rework, and increased risk caused by business and technical people working remotely. A half hour meeting with a whiteboard lets you communicate requirements and nuances that would take weeks to document in a formal specification. It requires exceptionally highly skilled people to overcome these obstacles, and most offshore development programs just aren't staffed that way.

There is also the overhead of site managers that are supposed do the communication between the developers and the business. More often than not, they misinterpret or miscommunicate instructions and cause more problems than they solve. Another issue is the additional time taken from the business users providing the requirements. These are generally highly paid people and their time never hits the IT budget. Through diligent tracking of these invisible costs, a number of my clients have eliminated or reduced offshore development.
Soapbox off

[Scottydont]

I am in IT and my company went through a buyout last year. A bit odd being bought out by a company 1/5 the size of my company. The new owner is a friken' genius. In one year he's managed to layoff, fire or otherwise "persuade" about 1000 employees out of 4500 to leave. Sales has tanked and my workload has dropped at least 70%. It's just a matter of time. I think he's part of a Texas Mafia.

[skipwill]

Believe it or not, I wonder what the future holds for general pediatrics like I do now - office only, no hospital, etc. Vaccines have wiped out a lot of the truly serious infections I used to see every day. Most of the kids that come in have simple viral infections that can only be "healed" by time.

And the in-store clinics like CVS pharmacy will probably take a lot of that business.

I can see most of pediatrics evolving into hospital based service, with general office practice relegated to family practice and alternate providers (nurse practitioners, etc).

Maybe a good thing. But I'll be retired by then anyway.

Paul,

Say it isnt so! My daughter and her husband are in their last year of residency. Both are going into pediatrics!

I tried and tried to talk them into going into geriatrics[sp] but to no avail<g>

[vaking]

Job in danger - transition time.

I am also in the IT field, specifically security. Been there for the best part of 20 years. How it plays out with the current company is unclear but for the moment it pays the bills and I am traveling all over the world. Going forward, it is one of the few growth fields in IT with a deficit of qualified practitioners, plenty of 'certified' players but not many with depth of experience. I get 2-3 calls a month from companies wanting to talk to me.

One of the more interesting points is working with foreign law enforcement and seeing tyranny in action.

I also was in this field (I prefer to call it Information Security) and I am not optimistic about future prospects. I believe that managerial role in information security (In fact in IT altogether) is becomimg IT Governance and requires skill set that is somewhere between business major and law, not technology. Technical roles will also be shrinking as infromation security becomes more integrated with technology itself and security practitioners will be less needed (like desktop support and other IT jobs are shrinking). I might even go a little further and say that it looks like a general rule - we live in a dynamic world where no job is safe. If you have been in the same field for few years - your job is in danger.
Throughout my life I worked in several fields/positions ranging from elevator mechanic to a bank vice-president. The only part these jobs had in common was that they were all technology-related. Technology varied - from mechanical engineering to EE/computers to information security. All of my career changes were slow transitions and they were happening because I thought it was time to move. When I was elevator mechanic I noticed that elevators were getting computerized and new systems had built-in computer diagnostic - like in cars. I realized that meant that mechanic's job would be reduced to cleaning and greasing - time to move. I became an engineer designing computerized controls for those elevators - in other words I went exactly into the field that was killing my previous job.
Few years later we designed computer control system for elevators that was able to detect when elevator got broken and place a phone call to the elevator maintenance company requesting mechanic to bring specific part. Mechanic would then show up before building new elevator had been broken. Computers got to the point that every coffee-maker had a chip with enough computing ability to do anything you wanted - there wasn't much room for improvement. Time to move.
Not long ago I was information security manager in a large multinational financial company. I was fairly high in the rank (vice-president in charge of IT Security of a company line of business), had over a dozen professionals working for me mostly in India. When I realized that in the previous year I spent 80% of my time making sure that we comply with myriad of laws and debating with audits - I knew I was in the land of "IT Governance" and it was time to move.
The next logical question was where to? For IT I believe the next big thing is "network or technology convergence". Somebody here mentioned that moving jobs to India is not working because "Half an hour with white board is better than 2 weeks of creating documents and procedures." It is mostly a correct observation with only one mistake. Who said that it is an "either-or" choice? Why can't I have 30 minutes white board meeting with people in India? I believe I can and my current project is to make it happen. It is with the same financial company I have been for the past 10 years.
Making transitions is better in the same company you are - people there know what you are capable of. I prefer changing companies only when there is a need. The elevator company I worked before is no longer in business. They failed to transition.