IT Industry Culture? (Madison, Dane, Ruby: job market, school districts, universities)

[maxx233]

I'm posting this same question to several different cities that we're considering relocating to. I'm trying to gauge the local culture specifically within the IT-industry in the following points (feel free to skip my personal details below each question)...

Experience, or Education?
Basically, can one get a decent job without a degree? I have 10+ years experience in IT, and some certs and trainings, but have no formal degree. This has never caused so much as a hiccup in my career before, but I imagine some places it may be very difficult to secure a job without a degree based on the local culture - and being the college town it is I'm afraid that might be the case with Madison? My most recent position was about 3 years as a programmer and DB analyst - I loved that work and would like to continue on that track if possible, I don't want to be blocked by a cultural requirement for the degree.

What's the job market like?
When your company posts an IT job, are you getting huge stacks of over-qualified workers desperate for a job, are you getting a handful of qualified workers looking for opportunity, or are you getting a sea of underqualified applicants desperate for any sort of work? If you've recently been job hunting - care to share any experience? How long were you looking? The job market is bad everywhere, and everywhere people love to complain about how bad it is where they live - is there some very real tangible reason it's bad where you are? Perhaps a large company has left, failed, or outsourced, for instance?

Social Networking - how important is it?
It's important everywhere, but there are definitely some areas where it's darn near impossible to get a job unless you know someone who knows someone. Other places it's helpful but not overly so.

In deciding to leave our jobs in California and sell most of our stuff to pursue a dream of moving to NYC (at least for a while), my wife and I decided we should take the opportunity to see everything on the way. But that decision to do some traveling turned out to be quite rewarding and actually surprisingly sustainable - thus we've been 'on the way' to NYC for almost 2 years now. Unfortunately, as a result of our experiences and other life-changing happenstance I don't think we'd enjoy living in NYC quite as much as we probably would have when we first set off. So considerations are being tossed around based on places we've been and liked, places we have family/friends, and places we think we'd like that will be visited before concluding our travels. Any input you may be able to offer on the above questions (which aren't so obvious upon simply visiting) would be greatly appreciated!

[Megan1967]

I almost completed and associates degree in web programming (.asp) and I know that tons of kids in that program got jobs before they graduated and never did actually finish the degree. This leads me to believe that your background would not be unique and therefore not a stumbling block.

I also got the impression that there were a lot of IT jobs out there, but that was 4-5 years ago.

The big languages here are Ruby and this new language, the name of which I can't quite place right now, but I'm sure you would be familiar with it.

[7G9C4J2]

There are IT and programming jobs in Madison, definitely, probably more than there are in a lot of cities of similar size, but that doesn't necessarily translate to an easy time getting your foot in the door. There are several factors at work here:

Multiple colleges and universities are producing graduates at many different levels of expertise and in many areas. This includes but is not limited to: UW-Madison, Madison College (formerly MATC), Lakeland College, Herzing University, Upper Iowa University, and more. A fairly significant number of the graduates want to stay right here in town, so they look for jobs in the area. My elder kid graduated with a Bachelor's in Networking/Security, and the best she could get straight out of school was a call-center job. She did wind up getting a position with a software firm after about a year and a half, but it was not easy.

There is one 800-pound gorilla in the IT field here in town, and they have both extremely high standards for applicants and a well-deserved reputation for wearing out their people in very short order. So you have a regular exodus of brilliant programmers with exemplary credentials (the company won't even look at a resume if the applicant has less than a 3.0 GPA) leaving this company for a slightly less demanding position - which creates something of a surplus in certain categories of IT professionals looking for work.

The recession has not hit Madison as hard as it has some parts of the country, but it has still had a significant impact. There have been a lot of layoffs in a number of industries; the company where I worked up until ten months ago slashed their programming department from a dozen people to four, their network support department from about twenty to a dozen, and the last I heard from a former colleague there, the rumor mills were churning about another impending round of layoffs. That company is by no means alone in deciding on such cuts.

What you describe as social networking is definitely a factor here. It isn't the only thing by any means, but it's significant. Most hiring managers when faced with a choice between a local applicant whose experience is with local companies or an out-of-state applicant whose experience is all with employers hundreds or thousands of miles away will be more inclined to lean toward the local person. They're nearby and likely to be able to start sooner, and chances are excellent that the hiring manager will know at least one and possibly several of the applicant's professional references as friends.

Now, that should not by any means be taken as a flat-out "don't even bother to try" kind of message! There are IT jobs here, and it is possible for a non-degreed out-of-state applicant to land one of them. You just need to broaden your focus to be ready to consider anything available, at least for the first job. If you and your wife like Madison enough to stay, once you have some local work history and know some folks in town, you'd probably have an easier time making a switch to something else in a year or so.

One possibility that you may wish to consider is working for the State of Wisconsin. There are drawbacks, certainly, but particularly for someone who isn't local, it can be easier to get a foot in the door with the state than it is in private industry. Frankly, most IT professionals would far rather work for a private company than for the state, which can make state jobs at least a little easier to land. If you go to this site: State of Wisconsin Government Jobs - Job Search, select "Information Technology" for job category, accept the default of "all agencies," select "Dane County" for county and "full-time" for hours, then do a search, you'll see what is available. When I did that just now, the search engine came back with 29 possibilities, ranging from pretty basic positions to supervisory and/or administrator jobs.

I will caution you, as I have many others on this forum, that with the possible exception of the state, many or most employers are reluctant to interview out-of-town candidates. It certainly doesn't hurt to try, but don't be too surprised if you don't get many calls as long as you have an address that is not in Dane County. The reason the state is an exception is that they are obligated to decide who to interview based on Civil Service exam scores rather than on a resume.

Good luck, and let us know if you have more questions.

[maxx233]

Great info, thanks to you both! It looks like with some of the abundant time I have over the next month or two before we settle down I'm going to be learning Ruby for sure.

The government job desirability is sort of an interesting contrast from what we've known thus far. Personally, I worked 5 years at a high school district and it soured my taste for government efficiency and workers more than a trip to the DMV! It's painful at times and definitely not an experience I wish to repeat, I too would definitely prefer to work for private industry simply for the stimulation. But the town in california that we left, a government job was considered the grand prize. The stability, benefits, and pay were unmatched. I suppose that's a fine example of why we needed to get out of that place though lol Coincidentally the only reason I was able to break into programming full time was because I had passively applied at the local community college because the pay was so much more than I was making at my company (not to mention benefits,) but when I let my boss know of it he offered to create a programming position for me to keep me there. As much as the benefits of the college were alluring after a 5 year hiatus from government work, I definitely remembered it enough to know I'd be miserably bored with the job after a month or two and was glad to take the programming offer!

[7G9C4J2]

Yeah, government work in some regions is a plum job that everyone vies for, but that's not true everywhere. State workers in Wisconsin haven't gotten raises for at least four or five years, and the benefits keep getting cut back in size and increased in cost, so this is certainly not California-style government work. Private-sector salaries, especially for IT, are nearly always higher than what Wisconsin pays its workers.

I hear you on school districts; my spouse spent ten years teaching and four as an IT administrator for a district in another state, and it was fairly awful. State-level government is likely to be a bit different from an entity the size of a school district, but it'll still be elephantine in pace and frustrating in bureaucracy.

But as mentioned, if you want to get some local experience and references, the state can be a good choice. You probably wouldn't want to make a career out of it, but it's a way to get your foot in the door in the industry here. And you would likely have an easier time getting hired despite the lack of a degree with the state.