Lisa Vaas

Care to live in Columbus, Ohio? How about Chicago? If so, Bank One Corp.s hiring—and its hiring big. Flying in the face of current economic conditions, the bank recently announced that it will hire 600 IT professionals over the next three months to work in those cities. It may sound counterintuitive to staff up in […]

When the tamale seller sets up his cart on the sidewalk in front of Pacific International Marketing Inc., MIS Director Bryan Searcy—and most employees at the Salinas, Calif., produce broker—usually gets an instant message about it from somebody in the office. And thats OK. Yes, it would be nice if employees used all company-supplied technology […]

Copaxone was not the first multiple sclerosis drug on the market in North America, nor was it the second. When Teva Neuroscience Inc. introduced it in early 1997, it was third to market. That timing shouldnt matter to the MS patients who inject Copaxone to treat the effects of this chronic, often-debilitating degenerative disease of […]

Despite the sour economy, bonuses tied to certain IT certifications and skills are still on the rise, according to a new report from Foote Partners LLC, an IT salary research company in New Canaan, Conn. Bonuses linked to certifications in security, databases, application development and programming languages, and Webmaster and internetworking skills have increased in […]

Jack Welch may be gone, retired as CEO, but the hard-charging management style that earned him the title Neutron Jack lives on at General Electric Co. Only now, rather than just focusing on improving the employee gene pool by lopping off the 10 percent of workers with the lowest performance appraisals—Welchs success formula—the management mantra […]

Richard Pietruszka was a steelworker for a long time: 20 years as electrician at the Cleveland site of LTV Steel Corp., then seven years as repairman of steel fabrication instruments. But as of June 16, he got a new position. The title of his new post is laid off. His new duties are simple: Attend […]

Now is the time when the U.S. Air Force should be ready to fly at a moments notice—not mired in outdated legacy code. Unfortunately, like many government agencies, the Air Force has found itself hampered by 30-year-old legacy systems that make it difficult and time-consuming for its people to track down important supplies such as […]

To the relief of many IT professionals, Microsoft Corp. has reversed an earlier decision to retire Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certifications for Windows NT 4.0 at the end of this year. Based on customer feedback, the Redmond, Wash., company last week announced a plan to simultaneously recognize multiple, distinct versions of all MCP (Microsoft Certified […]

Life was so much simpler for e-learning pioneers like Patricia McCormick before the non-IT people showed up. It used to be that the Internal Revenue Service School of Information Technology Austin campus—where McCormick is project leader—delivered training only to the IRS Unix administrators and C programmers—a subset of the IRS 10,000-person IT department. That bunch […]

The good news: U.S. IT workers are, on average, putting in fewer hours. The bad news: Whoever doesnt get laid off is churning out more work than ever and, in the long run, that will lead to burnout among many IT workers. In its 2002 World Wide Benchmark Report, Meta Group found that of 1,100 […]

In spite of the sour economy and the highest unemployment rate in four years, the average number of open IT service and support positions in American companies has more than tripled since 1999, according to new research from the Computing Technology Industry Association, a non-profit trade association. The study, “The Ongoing Crisis in IT Management,” […]

Quarterly taxes, social security payments, invoice preparation and settlement, health care and dental program payments, 401(k) payments. Hey, nobody said being an IT contractor was all fun and games, now did they? “Its a pain in the butt,” said Gary McKay, a contractor used by Electronic Data Systems Corp. to keep the Navy and Marine […]