PSA: Big Career Fair for tech jobs at BRCC this weekend for IBM, Rural Sourcing, DXE, etc.

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if you have kids or friends that want to work for Big Blue

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Talk them out of it. They are crap to work for.

IBM has a very pretty office building. Most of the consulting service centers aren't nearly that nice.

Never heard of Rural Sourcing, but IBM and DXE's local operations are big by Louisiana tech standards.

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analytics, enterprise applications, interactive experience and mobile, application development, Python, Java, SAP, SQL, Oracle and big data.

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I hope they are posting this on the career development websites at LSU, ULL, La-Tech, ULM, etc. They'll hook some solid fish there.

You can build a damn good, highly lucrative career with enterprise application like Oracle or SAP. They aren't sexy, but learning how to implement them will keep you busy for decades.

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you have kids or friends that want to work for Big Blue

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Talk them out of it. They are crap to work for.

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Depends on if you are in the right team or not. There are a ton of crappy managers there, assets suck and their cloud is not as robust an offering as Google, Amazon and Microsoft offer.

That said, they generally pay well and keep travel to a minimum.

My comment is on watching IBM routinely fire 20% of the workerforce in order to make a certain stock price point.
I work in IT and when IBM opened up their shop in Baton Rouge several of the people I work with interviewed there. IBM offered them less money and fewer benefits and then was surprised when people didn't want to join them.

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My comment is on watching IBM routinely fire 20% of the workerforce in order to make a certain stock price point

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30%-35% of the workforce is also stupid and unqualified. Cream rises to the top.

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My comment is on watching IBM routinely fire 20% of the workerforce in order to make a certain stock price point.

I work in IT and when IBM opened up their shop in Baton Rouge several of the people I work with interviewed there. IBM offered them less money and fewer benefits and then was surprised when people didn't want to join them.

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My company RIF’s “low performers” as well. They axed a bunch in 2020, then regretted it later. And “low performer” doesn’t mean someone who is bad at their job. It could mean someone that didn’t meet utilization targets. Eventually that’s how they get rid of older people without being blatant about age discrimination. I figure I have 10 years left before they do this to me.

Sorry to hear about the lower than expected salaries at IBM. The Baton Rouge office is a service center, and those typically have lower salaries, less travel opportunities, less client facing roles, and are located in LCOL areas. We have some in towns similar to Baton Rouge. The higher paid employees are more travel centric and are in client facing roles. DXC has a similar office in New Orleans. Most of the big 4 consulting firms + Accenture have offices just like it in LCOL places like Omaha, Orlando, Harrisburg, or OKC. Louisiana could probably attract another one to the north shore or Baton Rouge if they tried.

I maintain that IBM is a great place to get started and get experience. I’ve hired a few good team members from IBM. But in this market they will have to be competitive with salaries to get those experienced hires. Salaries for what they are looking for are damn high nationwide - even in those service centers.

Who tf is DXE?

My neighbor got his first entry level job with LHC, not a bad place to start but not really a good long term gig.

IBM's Baton Rouge outfit has never had layoffs. Turnover is mainly from entry level folks skilling up for a couple years and moving on to more lucrative options in Texas or elsewhere. It's a great start and a solid option to move to if the money's right.