Don E. Sears

What is the most popular area of IT outsourcing? According to one study, it is and has been application development for the past three years, but it is declining. In 2009, 33 percent of 200 companies surveyed by Irvine, Calif.-based research firm Computer Economics outsourced application development. Those numbers are down roughly 20 percentage points […]

As part of its Jan. 26 earnings announcement, Verizon said it expects to lay off 13,000 more employees to help alleviate diminishing revenues. While revenues are better in its wireless division, legacy land-line revenues continue to decline as more and more customers are dropping land lines, going solely wireless or finding Internet-based telephone services such […]

In December, the Computing Technology Industry Association decided lifetime A+, Network+ and Security+ certifications were going to retroactively require renewal every three years. The response from the IT community was particularly thorny, and rightfully so. Why the changes? According to Ars Technica, CompTIA was getting its accreditation process evaluated by several larger accreditation organizations, including […]

Human resources … we have a problem. Behavior in the workplace varies widely, but it can make some individuals believe they don’t fit in with the culture of their organization. When almost four in 10 (39 percent) of nearly 5,000 survey respondents of a November CareerBuilder survey say they do not feel they fit in […]

Job cuts in technology were fierce in 2009. Last year saw 174,629 jobs lost in the sector, catapulting up 12.3 percent from the 2008 cuts of 155,570 jobs, according to outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks industry numbers on announced layoffs. Technology-still considered by the Department of Labor to be one of the […]

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 […]

What will be the hot technology careers in 2010? To answer that question, you have to look at the technologies companies are expected to adopt or expand upon this year. The rapid expansion of mobile, Internet-enabled devices coupled with mobile applications, along with the full spectrum of cloud computing are areas primed for growth, according […]

The second half of 2009 saw stronger stabilization of technology jobs compared with the first half, according to industry group TechServe Alliance in a report released Jan. 8. IT employment increased by 6,400 jobs in December for a total of 3,821,000-an improvement of 0.2 percent, according to TechServe. TechServe Alliance, formerly known as the National […]

The December shutdown by a New Jersey court of three H-1B protest sites accused of libel-ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com and Guestworkerfraud.com-has legal technology advocates up in arms. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said the court is doing damage to the constitutional right of anonymous free speech. New Jersey had previously backed this right in the precedent-setting 2005 […]

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-a nonprofit business organization. Overall, the annual average for job openings in 2009 is down compared with the previous two years with 3,357,000, which […]

AOL is pursuing its transition to being a more content- and media-driven company by restructuring its work force, something that has openly been in the works since the company asked for volunteers to take job elimination packages in December 2009. On Jan. 11, AOL began laying employees off in small numbers, but layoffs will steadily […]

Based on the research of the National Research Council, the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Education, the Computing Research Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the RAND Corporation and a host of other university research sources, the AFL-CIO labor organization published a report in December refuting the claim that […]