Larry -- you seem very concerned with the loss of jobs. I have worked my way out of 1 position and down sized once. New technology I installed took another position I held so I do understand. With the loss of each of those something better was waiting in the wings with just a little effort looking for it. All in all it seems some of those effected at NN will not be in such terrible shape either with todays news article... as always education, experience, and past performance make a difference.....
"Come January, things are just going to explode," Gough agreed.
Shawn Mountain, director of recruiting at Ottawa's Procom, said the
slowdown in IT hiring thanks to Y2K worries is compounded by one of
Canada's less attractive qualities: the relatively weak financial
packages companies there tend to offer. "I've had a lot of our
consultants go down to the States and make double," Mountain said. The
typical programmer right out of a university can expect to make between
$35,000 and $40,000 a year, Mountain said. But those are Canadian
dollars, which fetch roughly two-thirds of a U.S. buck. "It's a tough
sell sometimes," Mountain admitted.
Even so, he said, telecommunications jobs are there for the taking,
particularly at the bigger companies like Nortel Networks and Newbridge
Networks. "We have about 75 open requirements for people, and we
probably won't find applicants for half of them," Mountain said.
Procom might not get a lot of traffic from parts south, but it does
draw clients from Europe and Asia. In addition to its office in Ottawa,
which acts chiefly as a funnel for Nortel candidates, Procom also has
outfits in Toronto, Calgary and Montreal, where business isn't so
bustling, according to Mountain.
Nortel Networks is the 800-pound gorilla of Canada's high-tech
industry. The international telecom company has plenty of openings for
engineers and programmers, mostly in Ontario. Nortel's Wireless
Development unit has more than a half-dozen postings in Ottawa,
including for software designers, hardware architects, modem systems
designers and network designers.
Newbridge Networks, too, has positions to fill in Kanata, Ontario,
including slots for hardware access systems architects, ASIC designers
and wireless RF designers. Newbridge is also looking for "world-class
hardware designers" with at least four years of research and
development experience in high-speed design, ATM, Mentor CAD tools,
VHDL and Power PC technology.
In Montreal, try SR Telecom. The company has a few positions
available for double Es and their ilk, including one for a quality
software engineer and another for an analyst programmer. SR Telecom is
also looking for a new-product introduction engineer with a BSEE and at
least five years of experience in RF or digital electronics.
Finally, Montreal-based Vertigo Multimedia has several openings for
software engineers.
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