Lisa Vaas

When even a talented student like Huei Shuan Liu finds it tough to get an internship, you know things are bad. Liu, a senior at Simmons College, in Boston, has a double major in computer science and biochemistry, a minor in mathematics, a GPA of 3.58, experience doing computer engineering at Motorola Inc., and a […]

All the undergraduate computer science and computer engineering majors and recent graduates who are having a grueling time getting full-time, internship and cooperative education positions should take a lesson from Huei Shuan Liu: Whether youre at a conference, attending presentations at school or going to industry association meetings, youve got to work it, baby. Thanks […]

In 1933, with the country in the grip of an economic depression and millions of Americans unemployed, President Franklin D. Roosevelts administration pushed through Congress the National Labor Relations Act, which, among other things, gave workers the right to organize and negotiate with employers. Union membership soared. Whats going on today in the IT industry […]

Although online job boards can be cost-effective, CIOs vastly prefer the low-tech method of relying on employee referrals to recruit IT professionals, according to a recent poll conducted by IT staffing firm RHI Consulting, in Menlo Park, Calif. Thirty-one percent of the 1,400 CIOs surveyed rated word-of-mouth referrals as the most effective means of finding […]

Rates keep slumping. The IT labor market is stuffed to the gills with talent. And third party agents have the market for large companies IT contracting business tied up as tight as sausage. If contractors cant–or dont want–to escape this unpleasantness by finding a permanent gig, here are some tips on how to get the […]

Thinking of chucking corporate life for the independent, ever-varied and richly remunerated life of an IT contractor? First, get out a marker, map out and label your skills on your body parts, and imagine being carved up like a roast pig. It will give you an idea of how IT contractors feel right now. “Its […]

CovinAs the American Legion Bridge crosses the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., sometimes traffic flows smoothly. But sometimes it flows like glue. There came one very gluey day when Carol Covins 30-minute commute over that bridge turned into a three-hour odyssey. It involved a broken-down truck, a call to her system integration employers client canceling […]

You sit in job interview after job interview, chirping away about your mastery of C++ or Java or Cisco routers or whatever, but what you really want to do is blurt out, “Just how many layoffs have you guys had in the past year?” Thankfully, Carol Covin has asked those questions–and many more, all of […]

The collapse of the dot-com bubble has finally had an impact on salary increases for information security jobs–a job family that was long considered a safe harbor for IT professionals. The percent of annual increases of salary declined from 11.6 percent in December 2000 to just 7 percent last year, according to a salary report […]

Two years ago, IT vendors and other proponents of the controversial H-1B visa program were generating about as much sound and fury as a raging storm on the high seas. Lobbying groups such as TechNet insisted the chronic IT skills shortage would sink the industry unless the annual numbers of H-1B visas—allowing foreign workers to […]

Claiming that the H-1B visa program has “proven to be abusive of domestic workers in several ways,” the Communications Workers of America union has passed a resolution condemning program abuses and called for the programs immediate repeal. The CWA has had reservations about the visa program in past years, union officials said, but the straw […]

It may sound like blatant sucking up, but it must be said: Most eWeek print subscribers are simply light years ahead of the “security? Huh? Whats that?” technology sophistication reflected in “Safety Net.” Just scanning the illustrations should warn off most (serious, experienced) IT people. Take Figure 7.1, in Chapter 7, titled Reducing Denial of […]