Don E. Sears

The following question-and-answer interview seeks to get a better understanding of the findings and implications of the recently published report, “Are Foreign IT Workers Cheaper? U.S. Visa Policies and Compensation of Information Technology Professionals,” from the University of Maryland’s Department of Decision, Operations and Information Technologies at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. A […]

April was one of the best months for full-time job opportunities for technology professionals in a long time, according to a monthly report on job vacancies and trends from technology job board Dice.com. Full-time tech jobs were up 20 percent from March and outnumbering contract positions posted on the site by over 13,000. Contract positions […]

The U.S. Department of Labor has launched a Website that seeks to educate companies about the laws, regulations and policies that apply to H-1B visa holders. The Elaws H-1B Advisor was designed to “help employees and employers understand their rights and responsibilities under numerous federal employment laws” and provides a glossary of frequently used terms […]

Top 10 Tech Jobs in Demand Right Now by Don E. Sears Title: Systems AdministratorClicks: 25,799 Title: Network EngineerClicks: 29,399 Title: Data AnalystClicks: 32,494 Title: Electrical EngineerClicks: 39,105 Title: Manufacturing EngineerClicks: 43,428 Title: Program ManagerClicks: 51,789 Title: Business AnalystClicks: 54,320 Title: Software EngineerClicks: 56,520 Title: Technical WriterClicks: 58,210 Title: Web/Graphic DesignerClicks: 88,804 No Title

You may not have noticed, but systems engineering is a promising career choice. In 2009, it was rated No. 1 out of the Top 50 careers in terms of salary and growth prospects over the next 10 years by CNNMoney.com and Payscale.com. Right now in May 2010, the average wage for a systems engineer is […]

Accounting firm Grant Thornton recently surveyed 496 chief financial officers on a number of economic and business topics. Of the nearly 500 financial executives, 53 of them worked for technology companies. Tech CFOs were more positive across the board. The 53 in that group were feeling pretty decent about their budgets and hiring, but don’t […]

Payroll services company Automatic Data Processing has released its monthly figures on employment based on private-sector payroll information. This is the monthly report that Wall Street and many news organizations look to every month on the eve of the governmental release of employment figures for the previous month.The news from ADP is that 32,000 new […]

Is IT management at the top of the corporate ladder losing its luster? Not completely, but was it ever really there?Call it business alignment or bottom-line buffering, a good lot of CIOs do not have the direct ears of CEOs. A chunk of technology leaders in enterprise companies report to CFOs (42 percent), according to […]

Just over a third of nearly 4,000 workers believe the economy is improving and just over 40 percent are confident they can find a new job, according to a study conducted by staffing firm Technisource. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company tracks IT worker confidence and reported last week that it is slightly up at an […]

The technology job market is rife with enigmas in 2010. The recession had most companies cost-cutting last year and no department in corporate America was spared. It was unavoidable. Yet, as the dust settled on budgets for 2010, companies were shifting the way they hired technology workers away from permanent placement to hiring skills on-demand, […]

How many H-1B visa holders are in the U.S. workforce? In fiscal year 2009, 0.06 percent of the national labor force was made up of H-1B visa holders, according to analysis of U.S. immigration data by the nonprofit public policy group the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). In that same fiscal year, the United […]

28 Hot Tech Skills That Will Bump Up Your Salary in 2010 by Donald E. Sears Skill: Adobe Flex & Tomcat Skill: Apple Mac OS X Skill: CGI Skill: CSS Skill: HTML/DHTML/XHTML Skill: JavaScript Skill: JavaServer Pages Skill: Perl Skill: SAP Web App Server Skill: SAP Basis Components Skill: SAP Financial Supply Chain Management (FS-FSCM) […]