IT jobs pay well

Information Week

IT Salaries 2012: $90,000, 1% raise typical

By: Chris Murphy

Ever since I can remember I have been told that IT jobs reel in the big bucks. After reading over this article, I definitely believe that is in fact true. IT remains a well-paying field, with median total compensation of $90,000 for staffers and $116,000 for managers. A few niche job functions, such as wireless infrastructure ($115,000) and cloud computing ($110,000), reach even higher, but the sample size for those specialties is quite small. With the addition of new management systems, I think there will be more jobs just like those and many talented computer technician.

Median total pay for business analytics managers has climbed 11% since 2010, and 8% for staffers. Companies are drowning in data and looking for business-savvy technologists to help them make sense of it. Among our 23 IT job categories, BI managers rank fourth in total compensation, earning $135,000. BI staffers are more middle of the pack, tied for 13th (with telephony and unified communications staff), earning $95,000. Data integration and data warehousing managers rank sixth in total compensation, at $131,000, while staffers are eighth, at $101,000. Each of the compensations are higher than most other “Average” compensations of other business jobs.

IT pros are reasonably satisfied and secure in their jobs. Sixty-two percent of staff and two-thirds of managers are satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, nearly identical to the levels of the past five years. There's been a slight rise in job security, with 40% of staffers feeling highly secure, up from 34% in 2010. Just 12% feel insecure in their jobs. Job security is a huge factor in choosing a career. You want to make sure that you won’t be used for 3 years and ditched to the side because the company you work for decided to down-size. Usually most IT jobs aren’t something a company wants to let go because of how technologically inclined many of them are. There aren’t many great computer people out there so for the ones that are, they have job security as long as they stay with their job and don’t give any reason to get fired.

homework #9

The article that I decided to use this week was Five New Tech Jobs and What They Pay from the IT Jobs tab. The article caught my eye because I don’t know anyone who has a job in IT, but more importantly I wanted to see what some people might be getting paid in the field. For a lot of people, what they could potential make at their job or in their field is a big deal breaker in their decision making.

The first job that the article talks about is Virtual Concierge, and how new current technology is assisting a profession and taking to something that it could never have been before. Now someone can work from home and be someone’s personal assistant as a part-time job and make around $30,000.

The second job that is talked about is a mobile application developer. The article says that this is another job that can be done from home or could be a position at a company. To be successful you need to knew how to program for the iPhone and Android phones. But if you can then you can make between $61,000 to $67,000 a year

            The third job is an Online Reputation Manager, their sole job is to search the internet for stuff that is posted about their client online and decide if it is going to stay up or not. I think that this is going to be a big job in the future because of the popularity of the Internet, but people want their privacy. This can bring you $50,000 to $65,000.

            The fourth job is an online store owner. This now allows people to start a company with less money and to also reach more people. It can be used for just about any company to help them in their business and has an unlimited amount of earning potential.

            The final job that is talked about is Multimedia content production or in other words, as newspapers are making their way to the internet they are using all forms of  technology like video’s and blogs and everything else. This job can bring you from $35,000 to $54,000.

5 New Tech Jobs and What They Pay

I am writing about the article “5 New Tech Jobs and What They Pay.”  The five jobs listed are Virtual Concierge, Mobile Application Developer, Online Reputation Management, Online Store Manager, and Multimedia Content Producer.

            Virtual Concierge is about taking care of clients that are visiting a specific website.  Customers are given a section where they can ask a question and get a response instantly from a real person on another commuter who is overlooking the comment section.  This also includes people who take care of other people’s lives through scheduling, including managing schedules, setting up meetings, and even managing someone’s shopping list by purchasing groceries online.  I don’t think this would be a job for me.

            Mobile Application Developer sounds like it would be most favorite out of all the job options listed here.  It is all about being creative and using interactive software to develop new ideas that appeal to consumers.  This would be a pretty cool job, especially if you were able to say that you worked on something as popular as “Angry Birds.”  This is a job that you would easily be able to do from home, or even as a side job, which I am sure is what some people do. 

            Online Reputation Management is all about making sure your client’s online reputation.  You essentially make sure that when someone is googled only the good things come up, or at least the good things come up first.  Plus, you have to try to sway the negative comments and turn them into more favorable opinions.  This is probably a job I could manage because I can be persuasive, but I don’t see myself ever doing this.

            Online Store Manager is exactly what it sounds like, its sites like eBay and Quibids where you create exchanges between people and sometimes you don’t even have to touch the product.  Actually with sites like eBay and Quibids, they probably never touch the product. If I didn’t have to deal with mailing and receiving any packages, I could do this job, just monitoring sales and collecting commissions?  Sounds too easy.

            Multimedia Content Producer is essentially new age journalism.  This is old school journalism + technology.  Essentially these jobs are just blogging experts.  Not for me.

The article I chose to read was from CNN and it was titled “Where social networking is headed next.” This article describes how social networking can be implemented into companies and the workplace to make them more productive and efficient. LinkedIn, Facebook, and twitter have already been installed in some business places but they are not reaching their full potential. On the other hand these social networking sites are reaching their full potential outside of the workplace and are very successful. Some of the reasons why these social networking sites are not reaching their full potential is because of the cost that comes along with implementing them into the company. It cast a large amount of money for many companies to do this and many companies do not think it is worth the money. Some companies believe that the current operations are running smoothly without these websites, but they are missing out on a great opportunity if they do not take advantage of this resource. If implemented in day to day business these social networking sites can make any company more efficient and productive. These websites will do what email and internet have done for business but on a grander scale. Using facebook and twitter would allow for information to be transferred faster than ever. You could let employees know what times meeting are and you could send information from co-worker to co-worker in an instant. Also many employees are already used to these social networking websites and use them in their social life. This would allow for companies to not have to train employees on how to use these websites therefore saving money on training seminars. Due to the fact that these social networking websites are so successful outside of the workplace I can only imagine what it would do for the working world. I believe that because this is so successful outside of the workplace it can only help the workplace and businesses need to take advantage of this and make it their own. Also I believe that just about every company will eventually be implementing this in their day to day operations in the near future.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/03/05/where-social-networking-is-headed-next/

Homework 9

Have you ever wondered how much companies like Apple, Amazon or even Face book are worth? What if I told you those companies are worth more then places like Sears and Wal-Mart and they don’t even have a place where you can physically shop at?  What I am saying is true. In a recent showing or just in this article it says Recently Apple’s value peaked at $600B.  Yes, that is an astounding number; for it reflects not only 50% greater value than the oil giant Exxon/Mobil (~$390B), but more than the entire value of the stock markets in Spain, Greece and Portugal combined! Think about it apple a computer company is worth more than three countries combined. How mind blowing is that? In the world we live in times have drastically changed, maybe for the better because think about it over three hundred years ago people who were rich earned land. Now its how big your computer company is.  Think about the incredible shift that has happened in retail.  America’s largest and most successful retailer from the 1900 turn of the century well into the 1960s was Sears.  In an industry that long equated success with “location, location, location” Sears has had, and continues to control, enormous amounts of land and buildings.  But the value of Sears has declined like a stone pitched off a bridge, now worth only $6B (1% the Apple value) despite all that real estate! What surprised me the most is that Wal-mart one of the world’s biggest stores doesn’t have more income than Amazon a internet site. By becoming a tech company, Amazon is clearly well on the way to dominating retail, as Sears falls into irrelevancy and almost surely bankruptcy, and Wal-Mart stalls under the overhead of all that land, buildings, inventory and vast number of minimum-wage, uninsured employees. We now must realize that value is not created by what accountants have long called “hard assets” – land, buildings and equipment.  You have to ask yourself is this how the world is going? The fact that face book bought instagram shows this because everyone wants pictures an market price for just instagram shows how much money Facebook will make.  To be honest at the rate things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if stores that sell food soon will be like this. But ask yourself is this just making society lazy, losing interactions with others, or does it benefit it?

 

homeWORK #8#

Isiah Prosper

The Even Spookier Side of Data Analytics

Government intelligence agencies are some of the biggest buyers of low-cost technology to track users' moves on the Internet

Businesses today need to have an aggressive edge with their strategies regarding products and services, but they also need to be competitive in hiring the finest personnel. A growing number of well-known businesses, such as Amazon.com, Capital One, Proctor & Gamble and Best Buy, are using analytics for increasing the speed of product improvement, classify customers that are the most lucrative, reach the greatest pricing for supplies, and using the best employees for the business to reach its goals.

Data storage became easier as the availability of large amounts of computing power at low cost is the cost of processing power and storage is falling, made data cheap. More businesses are using analytics to make this happen. Over the past two decades companies have been using complex databases causing remarkable increases in the amount of information/ data being stored in electronic format. It has been estimated that the amount of information in the world doubles every couple of months, in size, and number of databases are increasing even faster. The number of businesses increasing their usage of analytics for decision-making continues to grow. All the improvements in statistical marketing strategies are pretty amazing, but unfortunately have a slew of ethical issues. Do I think they have been doing a great job with all of these technological advances? Yes, but they seriously need to consider certain personal information as private to stay private.

MasterCard, Visa Moving U.S. Credit Cards to 'Chip-and-PIN' by 2013

  Author: Mark Hachman 2/2/12

The addition of the “chip-and-pin” system by MasterCard as caused visa to enable there own advanced system, EMV which is meant to ensure the security of individuals as well as the global interoperability, the ability for different organizations to be able to work together to come to a single agreement.  With this new technology being spread throughout a multitude of countries, there is numerous beneficial outcomes that can come from this agreement that is being made. 

According to the article by Laurie DePrete, “Chip-and-PIN Credit Card Technology Introduced In the US”, this new technology that the US has now accepted will allow individuals to be able to use there cards outside of the country.  This technology has been used in outside countries for the last several years, and the US is finally catching up to date.  

With this new technology applied to there cards, US individuals will be able to use there cards in any countries that accepts this new technologies, including most European countries.  Although this new technology may seem minute, it does cause an enormous impact on many nations.  With the ability to use the cards within many different countries and thus many different currencies, we are allowing for the bondage between locations.  In a way, the ability to be able to communicate and agree on a system in order to ‘unify’ the countries, we are in some ways coming together and creating allies.  

In addition to the agreements being made between these countries, it also allows individuals to be able to travel without the concerns of having to convert American dollars to other currencies and vise versa.  With tourists almost being forced to carry large quantities of money with them while they travel, there is also an increase in crime factor.   Most individuals that are traveling to another country are usually there for business or for pleasure, but regardless of the purpose of their stay they do plan on purchasing items specific to the location that they are in.  The ability to be able to use a credit card as opposed to having to carry around large sums of cash is an advantage in more ways that one.