Since I moved to the DC area three years ago, I've paid my bills as a consultant. Recently, the market has been quite tight. So tight that I started seriously looking for a full-time gig last September.
The tech job market here is quite weird. Lots of jobs are driven by the federal budget -- when it wasn't approved last fall, new federal hirings slowed down as did contracts with outside firms. Of course DHS related positions were still hiring, and mostly looking for people with the right tech skills and active clearance.
In terms of non-defense jobs, openings were all over the map, but generally hyperspecialized. There are a decent number of entry level positions, but only if you already had experience with this or that stack of software - usually J2EE/WebSphere/WebLogic, .Net/ASP/C#/etc., and Oracle -- always Oracle. Experienced positions were few and far between -- and just as hyperspecialized. As an example how hyperspecialized some of these positions are, many openings I saw listed and relisted over a period of weeks and months, either to collect resumes, or to find the one perfect candidate (at the right price). And then there are the jobs that look great, but locked at the end of a long commute.
Most of the Perl job openings mention Perl as an ancilliary skill -- don't bother applying for the network admin/sysadmin/traffic engineer unless you can load a Perl module and write a one-liner. Oh, and if you're looking for a layoff-proof job, look into Configuration Management. There are lots of openings in CM, mostly using ClearCase, and virtually all of them needing the odd Perl script to keep things moving.
But things are looking up in this region. Starting in late October, I started getting callbacks and interviews. There was one job at the Office of the Secretary of the Senate that sounded interesting (Perl + XML), but turned out to be more of a desktop development postition (using PerlScript of all things). And I've seen some interesting postings at some other agencies, like BLS, GPO, NASA, NCIS, Census and so on.
But getting a rank-and-file job in the Federal Government can take a long time. When I sent my application into BLS, the autoresponse said to wait 4-8 weeks for a response. That was mid-February. Hmm....
In any case, I applied to a local publishing company about a month ago. About two weeks after my first interview, I accepted an offer. I started last week.
Now the fun begins.
On my first day at the new job, I got two calls out of the blue to do XML training.
Later that week, I got a message from a manager at GPO who found my resume and wants to hire me. They have an open position and extended the call for applications because they haven't found anyone qualified, and are now seeking out people to apply. Today, the CIO emailed me directly, asking me if I'd like to apply for this position.
That's not all. Back in January, I sent my resume in for a short term contract for a government client. They are just now ready to receive bids. One local IT contractor, who I started speaking to back in August, finally has the funds to hire someone fulltime. And there were a few interesting DC-based postings to come across the Perl Jobs list in the last week.
Things are looking up. Let's just hope it stays this way for a while longer.
Things were looking pretty grim for me between December of last year and February of this year: No callbacks, and ridiculously low rate expectations.
At the end of February I found an employee position that I'm very happy with, and just now it seems like the market has heated up. I've been getting return calls from contacts I tried to make a month or more ago. Friends who are consultants themselves, or have consulting companies, are saying the same thing. Let's hope it continues.
Except...
That is exactly what I do.... yet somehow I don't feel my job is layoff-proof!if you're looking for a layoff-proof job, look into Configuration Management. There are lots of openings in CM, mostly using ClearCase, and virtually all of them needing the odd Perl script to keep things moving.
The hard realization I'm coming to is that D.C. is highly anomalous wrt the IT job market. I'm currently trying to find a job in another metro area (Chicago) and it's nigh impossible, because all of my skills -- which, let's face it, have been "optimized" for the Beltway environment -- are not in demand anywhere else. In particular, the fact that the big push for software engineering/process improvement is coming from the Gummint is quite clear, when you read the want ads in cities where the Gummint isn't a major employer.
