Technology – Where The Jobs Are

At least that’s what Business Week is saying. Their advice, “Study computer science or engineering, and plan to move to a big city. ”  The article lists a number of metropolitan areas as leading in job growth and salary strength.  After Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Oakland, all in CA, Austin came in fourth in terms of salaries.

Now, I know many of you might not think this applies to communication majors. BUT IT DOES.  I’ve said this before, but communication is all about technology, and technology is all about communication.  And, you don’t really need to be a super Web design guru or hot-shot programmer to participate in this tech surge.

Here’s a quote from a recent email from a former student that works at Convio, here in Austin:

“I’ve been talking with some other folks in the internet software world that also do hiring and we all have the same problem which I thought you might find useful to pass on to your students. We are all looking for really good HTML and CSS people for front-end work. However, the people who are good at CSS and HTML are usually not looking for that kind of work and are really wanting to do PHP, javascript, AJAX etc. So there is a gap between the unqualified and the overly qualified if people just focus on getting really good at front-end languages.”

Lots of companies need the basics. They need people who understand the environment. They need people who are flexible and enthusiastic and willing to learn.  And, they need people who can communicate!

So, it’s not all gloom and doom out there.  Seize the day!