C'mon Corpus, Help a Brotha Out

Yes, it is time for a change, but nothing TOO drastic.

As it is common knowledge for everyone that knows me, I am looking for employment. It's nutty that every time someone says, "yeah, I'm looking for a job", it always means that it's elsewhere. Euphorically, I didn't think that was going to be the case of me. Too bad my vocation is way too esoteric for the Coastal Bend.

Absolute sadness.

As of Monday afternoon in queuing the caller.com Jobs section (called hotjobs - what an absolute asinine name) searching the "technology" section, there were seven listings. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Two of the listings had nothing to do with "technology" (why would "Models Needed- All Ages, Looks and Types" be in the "technology" search field?). Two other listings have to do with the military, however you have to be in the Naval Reserve or the National Guard...yikes. Nothing like searching for a job in Corpus to find out you are shipped to Afghanistan two weeks later patching top-secret Windows "boxes" while a Taliban surge in raining rounds of AK-47 caliber bullets to the tech bunker. In essence, only three of the seven listed jobs are actually a tech job in the Corpus area. One, two, three.

If I type in "healthcare", there are 134 listings - mostly legitimate leads running the whole gamut of the medical field, from billing to nursing.

So, a city with a population of 266,000 (estimated) only needs three people to work on networks, applications and systems. Granted, this is shorthanded listings from caller.com, but seriously, WTF?

Even the bastion on Internet salvation, craigslist did not have any Corpus IT leads either. But in "security", there was a bodyguard listing available. I don't think I can grow from a CISSP when trotting sidecar to the Jonas Brothers. The tech support listing had six leads with one lead labeled "Chrysler Service Writer". How the hell is writing service contract for cars a tech support job? That's a "writer" position by any stretch of the imagination. And why do I need "reliable transportation" for Tech support? Cheeky bastards want me to burn miles on my vehicle for $10 an hour? I don't think so.

For a laugh, I checked the austin.craigslist.org site for Systems/networking jobs...yeah, 34 leads since 30 June.

I just don't get it. As far as this town is considered, I think there are a handful of severe shortcomings that inhibit any sort of new or existing IT talent to be fostered or imported.

• What company (large or small) would have the intestinal fortitude to build a NOC, data or IT center in a city that is 17ft above sea level? I know one does...but beyond that, there are very few.
• Okay, okay, economic downturn blah-blah-blah. But when there was an economic uptick in the nineties, with the dot com splash, where was the Sparkling City By The Sea? So the cheap bastards hire some guy that six months away from retiring that "knows computing machines", runs the IT shop and is now the CIO. That is crazy scary.
• Give credit where credit is due - the small IT shops that are supporting bigger companies and agencies did their homework to corner the market. Richline, Identity Theft Solutions and RSSS have done very well for themselves raising their hand and saying out loud "I know computers".
• All the IT professionals hired for IT professionals are probably doing something else, like running a school district, teaching Health class of being the middle management of an off-shoot department...and I'm not even going to mention the deficit of security departments with this staff paradigm.
  

It's sad how marginalized how IT is down here. And I'm not bitching about my position. We are talking about ALL of IT.

That's cool. If this town has settled with losing corporate headquarters and building pollutants for the future, then let's not get the largest growing sector of business to get in the way of negative growth.

Lessons Learned, my three things.
1) Never invest in an investment plan than you can't break away from at a moment's notice. It's your money. Don't let The Man tell you how to run it.
2) Looking for a new jobs is it's own full time job.
3) The stress is literally making me nauseous.

Looks like I am going to be bitching about employment opportunities until I find a solid job. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with contract jobs. It's just that there is no love here locally with contract jobs. Until Corpus turns into the next Ft. Sam, a proliferation of contracts are not going to mosey down the pipe until CCAD multiplies tenfold. Crap. Relocation is sounding better and better. Talk later.