JobTrends

2010, 1995 redux

2010-01-02T10:24:00.001-08:00

2010 will be roughly equivalent to the 1995 job market. Emerging. Not dead, not hot. A year of emergence.

Formalization

2009-01-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

An informal question: Has your dress code become more formal as the economy has declined? Hmmm....

Luckily I own an orange tuxedo which I can and do where to work as needed.

Ruby on Rails Upgrade and Management Potential

2008-12-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

Finally got the comsui.com site upgraded from Ruby on Rails .9.x to 2.0.2. Way to many little deprecations and a few big defecations. Next, getting the spiders and robots working properly. With the huge loss of jobs it will be interesting to see how the number of available jobs fluctuates.

And for those with management potential...

James

Is it that bad?

2008-11-19T21:25:00.000-08:00

I have to ask, is it that bad out there? The 2001 techbubble pop was so horrible for the IT market that I don't see this in the same light. We had a tech depression from 2001 - 2005. Will we see a market that bad this time around, or is it that it hits everyone else, and us by default?

Thanks,

James Warfield

Job data

2008-06-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

I have been collecting data about the job market since 2000. I watched the peak of the .com mania and the crash. Now seems to be a time of normalcy. This fascination with the data resulted in comsui.com, so that I can continually watch the market.

Over the last couple of years I have let it slip. I have been focused on my current job at InsureMe and working to get it sold/acquired. That finally happened in February when Bankrate purchased us. Hopefully now I will have some time to make sure the data is up to snuff in the jobs database. I am also looking into ways of presenting graphically trends and interesting statistics.

I look forward to a new time of growth and investigation of new technologies.

Long live comsui!

James

Jedi Needed...

2008-01-06T22:53:00.001-08:00

Found a job that requires Jedi skills:

http://www.comsui.com/jobs/list_job/3179648?key_words=jedi

Das Google?

2007-12-27T21:29:00.000-08:00

Ja!

Ok,so here is a Java/MySql job at Google:

Java job

Happy New Year,

James

When I grow up I want to be a ...

2007-10-11T21:10:00.001-07:00

Geologist!!!. G. Warfield with the Steamboat Geyser in the background.

Through the Stargate

2007-10-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

I have a Friday night tradition with my kids. We watch the SciFi channel all night, they get sodas and a choice of what to eat for dinner. Together we watch shows like Dr. Who and Stargate (SG1, now Atlantis). What does this have to do with jobs? I ran a search on comsui.com and found that there was actually a job that has "Stargate" in the description.

Enjoy your kids! See you on the other side of the Stargate,

James

Video Game Jobs

2007-10-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

It is estimated that video games are a 7 billion dollar a year industry. Currently there are 170 jobs listed by Blizzard Entertainment and 335 jobs posted by Electronic Arts. Are these fun jobs or does the industry live up to its reputation as a sweatshop? Post a comment with your experience.

Ruby on Rails Jobs

2007-09-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

The application framework "Ruby on Rails" (ROR) has received a lot of developer and press buzz over the last two years. Are there actually companies out there using ROR in production? And, more importantly, are there jobs?

Comsui.com has been keeping track of the number of jobs posted on Monster.com which list Ruby as a required skill for over two years now. On July 2, 2005 there were 32 job listings. As of yesterday, September 29, 2007, there were 512 jobs listed. This is a fairly significant gain in the number of open positions.

Perhaps there is more to Ruby on Rails than just hype. A quick search for "Ruby on Rails" yielded 371 jobs asking for Rails experience.

Silicon Valley Jobs - Part II

2007-09-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Stanford University has stirred the Silicon Valley pot for many years. Many companies have sprung forth since Fred Terman encouraged two of his graduate students to form a company around some of their engineering ideas, Hewlett Packard.

Stanford currently has over 400 open jobs.

Silicon Valley Jobs, Part I

2007-09-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

And in the beginning there was Xerox Parc, and it was good. The Palo Alto Research Center is where many of things that we take for granted today in computing were born. It opened in 1970 and gave us innovations like Ethernet, Smalltalk, laser printers, Windowing Graphical User Interfaces (GUI), and probably play dough. It was one of the many drivers of innovation that gave Silicon Valley its high tech reputation

They are still there today and have several job openings.

Jobs Abroad - Iraq

2007-09-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

Currently the comsui.com database has 454 job openings that require at least some travel to Iraq. For many these jobs would seem risky at best and highly dangerous at the worst. Although I have neither served there nor worked there as a civilian contractor I do have several friends who have done both.

As a civilian contractor you can expect to be stationed either in the Green Zone, or on one of the many smaller bases located throughout the country. In general these are safe areas, probably safer than where I grew up. The problem is getting there. You have to run the gauntlet of road side bombs, random militia attacks and other dangers. If you are there full time then you will probably get a two week break in the middle of your twelve month contract. One last note, as you probably have guessed, the night life if non-existent. For a break you can catch a ride to the nearest British base or the Green Zone if you want to hit a pub (from what I here the Brits are the only force that maintains pubs for their soldiers and are generally hospitable).

The rewards of working in such a hostile place can be two-fold. First, the jobs pay very well and the first $80,000 is tax free (consult your tax advisor). Second, whether you agree with the war or not, you are generally helping make the area a better place for your fellow man. Pretty altruistic, but almost everyone I know who has been there has that feeling.

If you are still interested here is a list of currently open positions.

The influence of small companies on the job market

2007-09-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

I have often seen in the news that "small business" drives the economic engine of the United States. I took a look at the current open jobs listed on Comsui.com to see what influence small businesses have on the job market. First, my assumptions: A small business is any company that has less than 25 job openings and a large business has 25 or more job openings.

Currently there are 2651 different small companies with open jobs (this is not nationwide as the Comsui.com database has some strong regional tendancies).

There are 228 large companies with open positions.

Comsui's job of the week is Voting Test Specialist at a small company in Denver named, Systest Labs Inc. The importance of such a job seems high as its purpose is to verify voting machines.

Take Care,

James

Approaching Three Million Jobs Indexed

2007-09-15T16:12:00.000-07:00

My site, comsui.com, is now approaching 3 million jobs in its database. I have been writing spiders to gather jobs from corporations and governments around the world for years now. It is now approaching a pretty cool milestone. Like a father watching a child grow I am pretty proud of the growth in the number of job postings that comsui.com has indexed. Take a look and hopefully you find it usefull.

Every kid's dream job!

2006-04-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

I found the job that every kid that has been to Disneyland wants to have. They have a position open for a "Locamotive Firer" aka train engineer. I've got a head start applying, but if you are interested here is the link.

Looking for developers with integrity and passion!

2006-04-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

This job is not captured on my comsui.com site, but I want to make sure that people know about it. InsureMe is looking for a very passionate junior programmer with high integrity (yeah, don't lie on your resume!!!!). If you are a recent graduate, or have a bit of experience, here is what we are looking for:

http://www.insureme.com/content/about-us/jobs-insureme/#software

James

Fun and games

2006-04-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

This is not directly related to information about the job market, but it could make your current, dull, and boring job a little more fun:

Meeting Bingo

Cheers!

James

Job of the week

2006-03-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

Well, work on the comsui site has been infrequent over the last few weeks as I have taken a new position with InsureMe. As is the case 90% of the time the new job is the result of having friends there, not doing an anonymous job search. So, if that is the case, why do I continue to work on and support comsui when it caters to the other 10% of the job market?

Because I like to see what the market trends are. Comsui now has over 1.1 million jobs indexed and that is a lot of information that can be mined. I make it available on the web so that hopefully others can find the information usefull.

I am looking forward to adding new research tools in the near future. I will post here as soon as I have new "Cool Stuff".

Here is a link to the new Job of the Week, a Meterologist position in Monterey, California.

Cheers!

New Job of the Week

2006-02-26T07:08:00.000-08:00

Each week I search the jobs on comsui.com to find a unique and interesting job. I post the link to that job on the homepage of the site. This week's choice is a Web Designer/ Visual Designer for National Geographic.

Past job of the week entries have included airplane pilot, archeologist, and Antarctic underwater diver positions. I strive to vary the type of job from week to week.

Hopefully in the next week I will be adding a new research tool to comsui. I want to let you enter a keyword, and then comsui will show you a graph over time of how many jobs included that word in their description. This should be useful in spotting trends.

Cheers for now,

James

Hiring trends for the Big Beer Brewers

2006-02-22T20:47:00.000-08:00

The first industry that I am going to cover is the brewing industry. The top three U.S. beer brewers have shown a healthy upward trend in the number of open jobs that they have posted.

Here are links to graphs and raw data showing each brewer's hiring trends over the last six to eight months:

Coors
Anheuser-Busch
Miller

As you can see they have all increased the number of job postings since mid-last year. This will be an interesting trend to watch, as each has seen sales flatten over the last three years.

Cheers for now.

By the way, for the microbrew lovers out there, here is a link to Rock Bottom Brewery and Restaurants Management job postings , and their trend graph .

Welcome

2006-02-18T06:27:00.000-08:00

Hello!

I have been using web bots to gather information about the job market since November of 2000. I captured the dot com bubble burst in data (Comsui graphs) and decided not to move to the Bay Area in early 2001 based on the extreme drop in job postings. This data was valuable to me and, now, I hope that it can be valuable to you.

James