The job market continues to go gangbusters

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

U.S. labor market powers ahead; unemployment rate drops to 3.6%

WWW.REUTERS.COM

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U.S. employers maintained a brisk pace of hiring in March, driving the unemployment rate to a new two-year low of 3.6% while also boosting wages, resulting in a further tightening of labor market conditions...

Quote

Nonfarm payrolls increase 431,000 in March

February payrolls gain revised up to 750,000 from 678,000

Unemployment rate falls to 3.6% from 3.8%

Average hourly earnings rise 0.4%; up 5.6% year-on-year

Employment in some sectors now above pre-pandemic levels

 

[Brian]

Can confirm. my wife got a new job. She picked between three offers. 

[Chris-]

I just accepted a new offer as well; taking a modest pay cut but I get to leave an impossibly fucked situation so it feels pretty good. 

[Fizzzzle]

I also refused two job offers before accepting my current job

 

Question I have, though... Is now the time to jump into a more sustainable career choice? Remember how vitalasign got into IT in the late 90s by basically hitting the last burst of the .com boom and being like "yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with how to use the windows control panel"? What if that time is now? ... Again?

[GeneticBlueprint]

It's always that time.

[CitizenVectron]

I've been impostering my way through my current job for the last few years. "I know some SQL commands, so yes of course I can run the servers!"

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

I also refused two job offers before accepting my current job

 

Question I have, though... Is now the time to jump into a more sustainable career choice? Remember how vitalasign got into IT in the late 90s by basically hitting the last burst of the .com boom and being like "yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with how to use the windows control panel"? What if that time is now? ... Again?

Businesses are all “fake it til you make it”, why not labor my man?

[Ghost_MH]

11 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

I also refused two job offers before accepting my current job

 

Question I have, though... Is now the time to jump into a more sustainable career choice? Remember how vitalasign got into IT in the late 90s by basically hitting the last burst of the .com boom and being like "yeah, I'm vaguely familiar with how to use the windows control panel"? What if that time is now? ... Again?

 

It is always that time.

 

Let me say this. Like 90% of IT work can get by just being organized, knowing how to use Google, knowing when to admit you don't know what you're doing, and fucking listening. This applies to all levels from desktop support to server support.

 

I've been happier with interns that know little more than how to use Windows Control Panel over Computer Science majors that "totally know this" or the dude that's been a systems engineer for the last decade.

[GeneticBlueprint]

29 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Businesses are all “fake it til you make it”, why not labor my man?

 

I am like five years behind where I could be in my career because I learned this too late.

[GeneticBlueprint]

48 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I've been impostering my way through my current job for the last few years. "I know some SQL commands, so yes of course I can run the servers!"

 

Same. "I know what a loop is. I can program."

[CitizenVectron]

1 minute ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

Same. "I know what a loop is. I can program."

 

I have an associate degree in comp sci so I've built a few front/backends for very simple stuff in C#, Java, and Javascript...but I've lost almost all my skills. I've created a few powershell scripts and complicated SQL queries though, lol. But mostly it's been managing some MDM stuff like Jamf to manage lots of our student desktops/devices. Even then, half of what I do is go into the Jamf/macadmin Slack server and ask questions and hope someone can answer. But that's most of being in IT.

[Brian]

I should add her new job is 35% bump in base pay. The bump is partly high due to her pay being criminally low in her last job. New male hires are being paid close to her salary even though she was there for six years. 

[Dodger]

I should probably look around and see what I can get. I do have a nice set up though, where I work from home and can basically do what I want. So I'd need a pretty good pay bump to leave this level of fuckery behind. 

[Chris-]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

I've been impostering my way through my current job for the last few years. "I know some SQL commands, so yes of course I can run the servers!"

VP of Analytics at my current agency once asked if I would be interested in joining his team and when I told him I don’t know SQL he was like, ‘That’s ok, neither did I before this place hired me’ and said that anything I’d need to know could be picked up through LinkedIn learning. 

[Ghost_MH]

53 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I have an associate degree in comp sci so I've built a few front/backends for very simple stuff in C#, Java, and Javascript...but I've lost almost all my skills. I've created a few powershell scripts and complicated SQL queries though, lol. But mostly it's been managing some MDM stuff like Jamf to manage lots of our student desktops/devices. Even then, half of what I do is go into the Jamf/macadmin Slack server and ask questions and hope someone can answer. But that's most of being in IT.

 

Understanding your limits is the key to a successful IT career. Every enterprise is so different from one another, you're going to spend the first chunk of your time at any company just learning new systems. As long as you're a good study, anyone can succeed anywhere.

 

This is also the scary part of IT. Looking at resumes and seeing a decade at one company is commendable, but I'm more interested in knowing that person can actually learn our environment because I can be fairly certain that 80% of their prior experience is going to be useless here.

[CitizenVectron]

10 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Understanding your limits is the key to a successful IT career. Every enterprise is so different from one another, you're going to spend the first chunk of your time at any company just learning new systems. As long as you're a good study, anyone can succeed anywhere.

 

This is also the scary part of IT. Looking at resumes and seeing a decade at one company is commendable, but I'm more interested in knowing that person can actually learn our environment because I can be fairly certain that 80% of their prior experience is going to be useless here.

 

Yeah. I've been at my current workplace for almost four years (two in one role, now almost two in a higher role). I like the work and love the pay, and the benefits are fantastic (being a government-funded school division). I really have no desire to leave, this is a place I could see myself working at for many years. At the same time, I know that if/when I do leave in the mid-future, I know that I will have a harder time finding a new place of work because of it.

[Ghost_MH]

8 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Yeah. I've been at my current workplace for almost four years (two in one role, now almost two in a higher role). I like the work and love the pay, and the benefits are fantastic (being a government-funded school division). I really have no desire to leave, this is a place I could see myself working at for many years. At the same time, I know that if/when I do leave in the mid-future, I know that I will have a harder time finding a new place of work because of it.

 

I've been in the industry for like two decades now, not including the couple of years in the middle I thought I'd like to become a writer. Moving is always scary, but it becomes less so when you realize everyone is bullshitting their way through their career and the ones that claim they aren't are the most useless bullshitters of all. I said 80% of experience is useless from one company to the next, but I've paid a premium for that 20%. All anyone has to do is figure out what that 20% can be for them.

 

My 20% is boring as shit. I'm a policy wonk with a fairly good grasp on industry trends and standards and a good eye for the kind of historical mistakes that'll fail an IT org. That basically means I will spend my first year/s at a new company shitting on all the old decisions made by previous versions of me. Why is your backup data center on the same electrical grid? Why don't you have a local mirror of common public repos and save yourself the bandwidth/latency? Why is there only one Internet connection at this site? Why does the server room have fucking WATER in the sprinklers? It's not glamorous, but it's a career.

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Politico is full of 🤡
 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

15 hours ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Politico is full of 🤡
 

 

As always, remember that Politico is now owned by a right-leaning German media firm.

[marioandsonic]

I'm thankful that I'm being made full-time starting next week.  It's not a huge pay raise, but I do get a small one, plus a lot more benefits (including PTO)

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

38 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

I'm thankful that I'm being made full-time starting next week.  It's not a huge pay raise, but I do get a small one, plus a lot more benefits (including PTO)

PTO is the single best reason to be able to move from contractor to full time. Congrats!

[Anathema-]

8 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

I'm thankful that I'm being made full-time starting next week.  It's not a huge pay raise, but I do get a small one, plus a lot more benefits (including PTO)

 

Take your PTO too, they'll respect you more. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

 

[ThreePi]

Huh, I didn't know Nothing Bundt Cakes was a franchise chain. There's one like 2 minutes from my house. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

 

[Anathema-]

Political polling has become useless. 

[Kal-El814]

If unemployment is so low why do I see so many help wanted signs? Checkmate, libs.