Re: shattered record

Marty Landman wrote:
> At 09:51 AM 3/26/2004, Uri Guttman wrote:
> 
>> i would like to know if this is the general
>> economy getting better (doesn't feel like it) or the site is just
>> getting better known to more hiring types.
> 
> 
> IMHO since our sector was hit first and it took a full year before most 
> folks were complaining about the economy while my business was 
> floundering all that time, things are likely to come back up the same 
> way where we see the improvements before many others do.
> 

Well TMTOWTDI,

I guess this depends on which camp you fall in, do you believe,

1. That innovation drives profit and that there is a causal relationship 
with IT, or

2. That IT is a value add, but not a core business feature.

If you are in the first camp then you would probably be correct, 
assuming you had peaked in your innovation output and your marginal 
profit began to drop (or you started to see diminished marginal return 
of using IT to cost cut) then you would cut IT first, then having 
survived the doldrums would bring back IT first to jumpstart innovation 
and accelerate your profit curve.  However, if you are in the second, 
then you will believe reducing IT will minimally affect your marginal 
profit but maximally reduce your marginal cost, so you drop it first 
*and* believe that adding IT back in is something you hold off doing 
until you have maximized your profit and maximally reduced your cost, so 
that the *only* way to increase profit or reduce cost is to add IT back in.

For now I think a majority of sectors are still in the second camp, with 
a few industries living on the first, which is why you are seeing the 
first to go, last to return relationship.

Of course the Z factor in all of this is exports, and again two camps, 
do you believe that offshoring only decreases potential work in your 
locality, or does it increase it based on some sort of trickle down 
effect (and assuming you are stateside).

Either way the market is definitely at work, there was an interesting 
article a couple of days ago on one of the wires about the enrollment 
rates in IT based degrees at major universities being off some 30-70%. 
That means in 4 years graduation rates for IT degreed students will be 
off roughly the same, which hopefully will remove the glut in the market 
that the late nineties caused *and* should also provide a quality 
improvement too, because not everyone and their sister will "Become a 
Web Developer in 4 easy steps", the "tech sector" will revert to what it 
was before people actually interested in innovation rather than just a 
pay check bigger than what they can get doing some other work....

But that's just my couple of cents, ....

http://danconia.org