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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.

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"

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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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