More about why technical professionals can't find employment

You have only one good choice: Figure out what you need to do. Spending time and energy complaining about what someone else is doing wrong is a waste of time and energy.

Follow @ITCatalysts I received the following post as a Comment to my recent post, "Why technical professionals can't find employment," Advice Line, 11/24/2008. Rather than add to the back-and-forth in the comments, I thought it would make sense to reply here. - Bob

Bob,  
 
The sad truth is, is that many a business person in the larger companies, can only see the dollar signs and nothing else ... not whether someone does or doesn't have skills, or whether someone does or doesn't improve them. In many cases even knowingly know that it may damage the business in the long run because they assume they will be long gone when the $%^& hits the fan. You can see this at several points in the corporate business world, not just in offshoring, but in training dollars, manpower, infrastructure investment etc...... as many a technical conference that I have attended recently, have 1/3 the attendance from the 90s. 
 
It is impossible to develop a workable marketing, packaging or quality job plan if the pricing expectation is that you have to work for $20K/year or less... which is pretty much impossible to support a family on, in America nowadays.  
 
According to a senior VP at a major outsourcer(and one-time CEO of the year winner)... "Every IT job except management can be offshored" 
With modern tools, location is no longer a factor in IT and with cost trumping skills and experience... he may be justified in his opinion. 
 
Anyone who thinks they can 'reskill' or 'market' or not 'grouse' themselves out of a layoff or into a job are just whistling in the dark ... layoffs can hit anyone in almost any position, now, and most IT budgets are just too tight, nowadays to really expect people to come knocking on your door right away, should a layoff happen to you. Most business objectives demand that no ONE person be indispensable and most IT budget demands require a shrinkage, not added staff. 
 
All you have to do is look in the newspaper nowadays to see that IT careers are very limited in scope now in the US ... In the 90s almost every major newspaper had 2 or 3 PAGES of IT jobs in the Sunday paper. Nowadays they have 2-3 IT JOBS.  
 
Your claim that if a seller(job hunter) can't market, promote, price, it must be his/her fault, not the marketplace ... Whose fault is it when there aren't any BUYERS (employers) of a service, in a marketplace? The lack of advertised positions in the newspapers is a strong indication that demand has pretty much disappeared, relative to the supply in the IT employment industry, which would indicate it's more of a BUYER shortage, not a SELLER's marketing problem, right now.  
 
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that SOME people, would have difficulty finding a new job, no matter HOW hard they try or HOW skilled they are.