With the recent comments in response to the recent blog post concerning the H-1B visas, I began to wonder what the System i job market really looks like. Many shared that it’s hard to get a good-paying job in this market.

For comparison, as an editor, the market I compete in is more broad in some ways than the IT market, but the pressures on my field include the proliferation of the blogosphere and the dwindling magazine and newspaper market. Also, because I am not located in a major metropolitan area, the actual availability of jobs in my field is more limited than if I was in New York, Boston, or Los Angeles. So, a few years ago, all of these factors led me to be interested in a web site that tells you how you stack up against others in your job field, PayScale.com. I filled out the form and the site produced a nifty graphic, showing where my salary ranked compared to others with similar experience, similar education, and similar job title.

So a few days ago, PayScale.com sent an automated message to my Inbox, asking me to check in. I did, and found I was above the average for my field, in the 60th percentile even. So, if you want to know how you stack up, start with the Salary Calculator.

According to their blog post The Nine Fastest Growing Careers for 2008, IT and Healthcare are the hot markets. And “demand is especially high for IT professionals with both management and technology skills.”

Check it out and share your results (no actual salary numbers needed): What percentile do you fall in? Did that surprise you? Does information like this affect your career planning (e.g., looking for a new job that pays more, staying happy in your current position)? Are you more likely to seek more training or certification if you think it will improve your salary?

I received a few emails last week in the editor@search400.com inbox concerning jobs. One was an inquiry looking to post a job to a “job board” or similar feature on our web site (we do not have such a feature, and instead partner with Monster and Dice). Another was from an iSeries worker who was currently between jobs in Atlanta, GA., looking for a new position. At the end of the week, I received an email from another 400 head-hunter passing along a press release regarding the H1-B visa program.

I am sure we have all seen headlines regarding the H-1B visas, with lobbyists testifying at Congressional hearings about the need to expand the number of H-1B visas and thus the number of qualified workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One of the leading proponents of expanding the program is Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, who testified to Congress about the need for more “innovation” in the United States.

“While America’s innovation heritage is unparalleled, the evidence is mounting that we are failing to make the investments in our young people, our workers, our scientific research infrastructure, and our economy that will enable us to retain our global innovation leadership,” said Gates. “If the United States truly wants to secure its global leadership in technology innovation, we must, as a nation, commit to a strategy for innovation excellence – a set of initiatives and policies that will provide the foundation for American competitive strength in the years ahead.”

Top on his list was strengthening educational opportunities for US school children. But next was “Revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, so that U.S. companies can attract and retain the world’s best scientific talent.”

The press release that was forwarded from the head-hunter regarded a study by Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at University of California – Davis, who disagrees with the notion that foreign workers provide “innovation” to the United States. His recent study, H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest, argues that foreign workers are “are people of just ordinary talent, doing ordinary work. They are not the innovators the industry lobbyists portray them to be.”

Other controversies surrounding the H-1B issue include fraud assessment of the H1-B visa program, which has been spearheaded by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In 2007, Grassley partnered with Senator Dick Durbin (R-Ill.) on a bill to overhaul the HB-1 visa program.

This controversy has been in the news for the past year, but what does this mean to you? Are you like the reader I heard from: an IT professional who is having a hard time finding a good paying job? Or are you a recruiter having difficulty filling positions? Do you think this is just anti-immigrant hype? Please share your thoughts.

As most first days go, my first day at Search400.com was a whirlwind of activity. In the mix was my discovery of the passing of AS/400 guru Al Barsa. I perused the Common website for information on what products had been released at the recent event and came across a press release from Common. My naïveté about the meaning of this news quickly passed as I read remembrances left by friends and colleagues on www.mr400.com and other AS/400-related blogs.

Quickly realizing what Al meant to this close-knit community, I contacted the folks at Common and asked whether anyone could share thoughts about Al. Understandably, Common members’ emotions were still quite fresh, as I’m sure they are for some of you. So while this post arrives two weeks after the fact, we wanted to address Al’s passing with respect and sensitivity.

Bob Krzeczowski, a Common board of director member, shared these thoughts:

I did not know Al Barsa extremely well. Al and I spoke at conferences, and I had several conversations with him at the conference in Nashville and shared a few jokes. I first heard Al speak at a Common conference, what seems like a very long time ago, and learned a tremendous amount at every session of his that I attended. He was an excellent speaker and communicator about this system platform, for which he had so much passion. I also learned a great deal from him in conversation at social events, where I also got to know about his sense of humor and his ability to listen to what you had to say. Al could certainly do that, and was more than willing to tell you what he thought about any subject.

On Monday morning at this past conference I did a small errand for the education office – I took some additional evaluation forms down to one of Al’s sessions about midday. Imagine that – one of Al’s sessions had blown out the handout count. I stuck around and handed out the additional session evaluation forms, and when almost everyone was gone, I walked up to the front of the session room to let Al know that they had gotten distributed and left a few up front in case we had missed someone. Al was in deep conversation with a group of the session attendees but looked over at me and, with that very matter of fact voice of his, said, “I think I gave my worst presentation at Common ever, this morning.” I looked at Al, and responded pretty quickly and simply said, “Well Al, you at your worst is still pretty darn good.” I meant every word of it. Al looked me right in the eye for a moment, stopped, and just said, “Why thank you Bob Krzeczowski,” and went back to his conversation.

I was very glad I ran that little errand. Al Barsa will be missed.

Clearly, Al will be missed. But his contribution to the 400 community will not end any time soon. If you would like to help carry on his spirit and enthusiasm for educating 400 users, you can donate to the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship.

On Friday, I saw an unanswered iSeries-related question posted to IT Knowledge Exchange, and thought I’d shoot the question straight to one of our experts at Search400 to see if they could help.

Ljjk122 posted this question on ITKE: I want to add data from a DB2 file to an Excel template that has a header row and totals certain columns without overwriting the header row or the totals.

I sent the question to Kent Milligan at IBM, who said:
It’s not clear what mechanism you’re using to get the DB2 data into the Excel spreadsheet. If you’ve purchased the iSeries Access Data Transfer, there is a solution. The iSeries Access Data Transfer Excel Add-in has the ability to download data to a user-specified range of cells of a spreadsheet, overwriting only the data within the selected range.

If you don’t have a license for the iSeries Access Data Transfer solution, then you may also want to consider evaluating DB2 Web Query, which offers excellent integration with Excel.

We encourage anyone with an iSeries question to submit it to Search400’s Ask the Experts, where all of our experts are available to answer your questions.

IBM has a distinct problem with the System i: Getting the younger crowd excited about developing on the platform. You can call it by any name you want — the AS/400, iSeries or System i, but it is the reputation of the platform as an ancient one that scares away kids who have been corn-fed Linux and Java for most of their young lives. Developing a program to write payroll checks in RPG doesn’t always satisfy their short-attention-span minds.

South Central College in Mankato, Minn. is trying to change that. The college offers System i and RPG classes by first sticking the right students with the programming bug, and then sucking them into RPG and System i with promises of a good-paying job in the future.

The program, called TechNow, is outlined in a recent post on iDeveloper, the System i blog on the IBM Systems Magazine Web site.

Yes, there are still plenty of one-man System i shops out there. Some of the challenges: small budgets, no time for training, and lack of programming resources. Solutions: free software, local user groups, and cheap interns.

Who else is a one-man System i shop out there?

IBM Tivoli Technical
User Conference
May 7-10, San Francisco, CA

IBM Impact 2007
May 20-25, Orlando, FL

IBM System i Spring
Technical Conference
June 18-22, Scottsdale, AZ

IBM Rational Software
Development Conference
June 10-14, Orlando, FL

IBM System x
Technical Conference
July 16-20, Las Vegas, NV

IBM System Storage and Storage Networking Symposium
August 20-24, Las Vegas, NV

IBM System z Expo Featuring z/OS, z/VM®, z/VSE and Linux on
System z
September 17-21,
San Antonio, TX

IBM Information On Demand 2007 Global Conference
October 15-19, Las Vegas, NV

IBM System p™, AIX and Linux Technical University
October 1-5, San Antonio, TX

IBM WebSphere Portal Technical Conference
Fall 2007, TBD

IBM System i Fall
Technical Conference
November 5-9, Orlando, FL