This is going to sound fairly cutthroat and antisocial, but one of the best ways to judge whether a particular career has staying power is to see just how easy it is to become qualified. Was it easy for you to learn the skill - i.e. did it require little financial investment or not much study time, or whatever? If it was easy for you, then it's probably easy for other people also, and inevitably the forces of commoditization will hit you hard.
On the other hand, if a particular position requires endless years of schooling (like a medical doctor), requires that you have a degree from an Ivy League college, or requires experience with extremely expensive and rare pieces of equipment, then that job stands a much better chance of maintaining its worth, because the simple fact is that if you happen to have those particular qualities in question, then it is difficult to find somebody to replace you with. You have to look at the barriers to entry, because that's what allows you to maintain your value. Companies, under the profit motive, love to replace expensive people with cheap people, and ideally would love to pay everybody minimum wage, or even less by just moving the job offshore where the labor is cheap. So if you want to maintain a decent wage, you will constantly have to show that you cannot be easily replaced. You have to show that you have a set of skills that few others (ideally nobody else) have. ""s vermill"" wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > When I was in high school (vocational) studying to be an electronic repair > technician, I thought I would retire from that job a very wealthy man. Two > realities caught up with me and the rest of that career field pretty > quickly. First, the throw away revolution. Second, a bloated job market > (DeVry was as common as McDonalds for a while there). I'm glad I didn't > mortgage the farm on a degree in that field. The Navy was kind enough to > give me a "free" education instead. I guess if you have a perfect job, you > had better start looking for the next one. > > > AMR wrote: > > > > Something I have noticed with clients is that they have laid > > off too deep > > and then end up having to use jr. staff or rehire staff with > > the same > > constrained budget to manage their systems and network. As a > > result these > > companies are still running their networks but with less > > qualified staff at > > much lower wages. It seems great at first but these companies > > will come to > > their senses when their network falls apart. But I hear your > > frustration. > > > > You also have to understand that MASSIVE number of people > > rushing into the > > networking/IT job market. It's simple economics. The more > > people that come > > into the sector, the fewer the jobs, and the lower the wages. > > If you are > > old enough to recall or study historical data this has happened > > to several > > job sectors in the past. The last I recall reading about was > > the jet > > mechanics in the commercial airline industry. Not a lot of > > highly skilled > > people available so those that were qualified were writing > > their own > > tickets. Eventually more people were lured into that skillset > > with the > > amount of money they saw. The jobs became fewer and the > > salaries lowered as > > a result and then the airlines hit a few down periods and that > > killed the > > massive interest in being an airline mechanic. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=35692&t=35611 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
