When I was outsourced to CSC I didn't have the patience to what until CSC figured up from down, so I split. I keep in touch with the wonderful friends I've made at the company which outsourced, and it breaks my heart hearing how tough things have gotten over the last year.
Both IT software and hardware sales are going up and the IT industry as a whole is growing. If you are willing to invest in yourself and keep your spirits up, IT is still the place to be. I know people are miserable under CSC, much like myself, and it's frustrating that CSC management couldn't care less. But the sword cuts both ways and you are still the person who ultimately decides your fate.
Here are some recommendations for those who enjoy, or enjoyed, IT and would like to start enjoying it again:
1) Join a top notch forum such as www.asp.net. The energy there is awesome. Why? People are doing what they enjoy, and "YES" getting paid for it.
2) Take a look at www.dotnetnuke.com and the "free" portal software for website development - they have one of the most active forums on asp.net and are all about helping others (Canadians, Indians, it doesn't matter and this is how it should be ...). This open source effort is an ASP.NET application written in VB.NET/SQL 2K and has tons of free and premium modules that you can add. You can make your own and your decision to give your module away or to sell it is up to you. There is also an open source project called rainbow (DotNetNuke uses VB.NET for its base code while Rainbow uses C# - either can be extended using any .NET language, though.)
4)Get your certification. Transcender exams are good, but can be pricey (don't expect CSC to reimburse you for the tests, and you may want to keep such personal development to yourself ...). There are sites such as mcsebraindumps.com that have support for people looking for help.
5) Take a look at http://msdn.safaribookshelf.com. You can try it out for 15 days for free. If you like to purchase books take a look at http://www.bookpool.com. They only carry the latest IT books, but have the best prices on the net that I have seen.
6) Dump any and all CSC stock - I'm only kidding, but I don't think that a company which generates so much negative energy and pits employee against employee or Country against Country (Canada vs. India vs. Australia vs. United States - Ugh!) will be around for long.
7) Stay a step against the competition by looking into Visual Studio 2005 and SQL 2005 (beta 2). You can get a free copy from http://msdn.microsoft.com. Crystal Tech (www.crystaltech.com), and ISP Hosting company has a program that let's you develop and host ASP.NET 2/SQL 2005 for free. The green light has been given for businesses to begin to deploy this beta code, so you can expect there won't be much, if any code forking. The public release is scheduled for November 7th.
8) Remember that the success of IT Outsourcing is based on the false premise that all IT programmers do is program. The actual amount of time a programmer spends programming is estimated to be around 20%. What does this mean? It means that the other 80% is spent collaborating, planning, designing, spending time with the customer, and mindless internet searching (just kidding ...). How could CSC have missed this? Perhaps they didn't ask the question.
Since CSC doesn't believe in educating their employee's in anything other than the CSC way of doing things, you might find technical videos and webcasts as a possible replacement for classes. I have some very good ones and references to some great sites. Some cost but others are free.
If you are interested in any of the above, or simply networking, feel free to contact me at itfriend@dls.net. I would be happy to share and help out in any way I can!
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