Question regarding IT Management in North America

[Nitrik]

Hello everyone,

A friend of mine is finishing his Masters in IT management in Iran. He wants to continue to his PhD in North America (US or Canada) and later start his career. I hardly know anything about management and business so I am reaching out to you guys.

So which country is a suitable candidate? Surely, there are more IT companies in the US; however job security and long term stability (immigration) are difficult in the US. So how are the programs and job market in comparison? Thanks for any help.

 

[Fat_Ali2006]

Dont know about Canada, but in US he would be all set. He does not need a PHD, experiance is the key. Tell him/her to get work experiance as much as possible thats all. Sure havibg a degree helps, but bottom line is what you can do and have done that counts.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

He will not be getting a job as an IT manager anywhere in North America unless he's willing to start as a techie (support engineer, software developer, or IT administrator) and continue for at least 4-5 years.

Management jobs are never given to people without experience and education rarely matters.

BTW, IT management in North America is hardly a desirable job. I can't even count the number of times I've been asked to apply for management. I have always declined.

Technical expertise and deep-level specialty is still a big deal when it comes to IT.

 

[Behrang(ISP)]

I have to agree with Soroush here... He will not get a position as an Director of IT or IT manager etc. when he comes here. He might even have a hard time finding a job. Having the degree is great but without experiance who will want to pay him what he wants so he can gain experiance? At my last job I placed a few people in contract positions and as sad as it sounds I actually looked for people who did not have a BS or MD for certian positions because I could give them less money even though they may have more experiance than others.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

I have to agree with Soroush here... He will not get a position as an Director of IT or IT manager etc. when he comes here. He might even have a hard time finding a job. Having the degree is great but without experiance who will want to pay him what he wants so he can gain experiance? At my last job I placed a few people in contract positions and as sad as it sounds I actually looked for people who did not have a BS or MD for certian positions because I could give them less money even though they may have more experiance than others.

Behrang, it's not even just to avoid paying them more. Sometimes you end up paying the guy with no degree more money simply because they know their shit. What they teach at universities is far different than the real world. IT has this problem and they don't seem to be able to fix it. People who don't waste their time going to university for IT stuff always have an edge over those who do.

I once recommended a 17 year old high-school kid over a 40 year old PHD applicant because the kid really impressed me during the interview. Our company didn't hire him because he didn't even have his high-school diploma, but later on he got a contract position and is now working here full time. He'll be some big shot one day.

 

[meyti]

Are you sure he can get a PhD with that Masters?
Because I went to a seminar lately here in USA to see about this State University and found out they have 2 kinds of Masters degree one is MED and another is MS, if MED then you take IT or Management (Industrial etc.) ,Teach etc but you cannot get a PhD with an MED degree.

As far as the job is concerned I think he'll be better off in Europe.
I worked in the UK for couple of years and I know that the market there is not as saturated (ppl seeking jobs) and they do not take their IT jobs to India (for cheap labor) as much as the Americans do (I donno about Canada?)!
my 2 cents worth.

 

[Behrang(ISP)]

Behrang, it's not even just to avoid paying them more. Sometimes you end up paying the guy with no degree more money simply because they know their shit. What they teach at universities is far different than the real world. IT has this problem and they don't seem to be able to fix it. People who don't waste their time going to university for IT stuff always have an edge over those who do.

I once recommended a 17 year old high-school kid over a 40 year old PHD applicant because the kid really impressed me during the interview. Our company didn't hire him because he didn't even have his high-school diploma, but later on he got a contract position and is now working here full time. He'll be some big shot one day.

I guess I did not convey my point which is what you said above. With that said, you have to know your stuff and that's what it comes down to.

 

[Chief]

Hello everyone,

A friend of mine is finishing his Masters in IT management in Iran. He wants to continue to his PhD in North America (US or Canada) and later start his career. I hardly know anything about management and business so I am reaching out to you guys.

So which country is a suitable candidate? Surely, there are more IT companies in the US; however job security and long term stability (immigration) are difficult in the US. So how are the programs and job market in comparison? Thanks for any help.

I guess some of the folks responding to you did not understand your question. First of all forget Canada, the USA is where it is happening. There are not may IT PH.D programs around, the good ones are mostly in the East. I give him 3 names

RPI(an old tech poly in upstate NY, very cold)
George Mason in VA(OK area)
FSU(in sunny Florida)

If he wants to have fun, I recommend FSU

 

[Niloufar]

Hello everyone,

A friend of mine is finishing his Masters in IT management in Iran. He wants to continue to his PhD in North America (US or Canada) and later start his career. I hardly know anything about management and business so I am reaching out to you guys.

So which country is a suitable candidate? Surely, there are more IT companies in the US; however job security and long term stability (immigration) are difficult in the US. So how are the programs and job market in comparison? Thanks for any help.

Nitrik jan, as BT and FatAli said it well, ur friend doesnt have to get his Masters in IT in order to become a manager. in fact that will guarantee he WONT become a manager in a company!

Its all about hands on experience than education when it comes to IT and IT management. my boss(who was VP of CRM marketing at Bell), had only a Diploma!!! but bc of his 20 yrs of experience in IT-Marketing, he was at that position.

As BT said, u only get crappy programming/technical support jobs if u graduate from IT or want to pursue ur degree in IT. best way is to actually switch it to more E-Commerce, Online marketing, Marketing management, Business Analysis and stuff like that, and sky is the limit for ur progress and job opportunities.

just my 2 cents as an IT grad who was doing Online marketing in a top company, until few hrs ago before I quit!

 

[Nitrik]

Thanks a lot guys for the feedback. He is already in the process of finishing his Masters. One thing to consider is if he is not going to apply for his PhD in North America or Europe, then he will certainly not be able to move out of Iran. No company will hire a person who is not already in the country of employment. While I can understand that pursuing a PhD may not be beneficial, that would probably be his only possible way of finding a career outside Iran.

 

[deerouz]

For PhD studies Canadian universities are decent, but you don't get tuition waiver even if you hold TA and RA. Not many programs in IT management though. try York University.

In terms of job prospects, the whole Canadian market is about the size of a US state. So US is definitely a better choice. The only advantage of Canada is the relative ease of immigration/citizenship process. especially the new canadian experience class that allows foreign students to apply for immigration after they finish a 2 year program.

Another thing to keep in mind: in most cases iranian work experience means nothing in North america. I once interviewed a guy with a masters degree who had run an important engineering project under UN supervision in Bangeladesh. He was applying for a low level technician degree in our company.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

Nitrik jan, as BT and FatAli said it well, ur friend doesnt have to get his Masters in IT in order to become a manager. in fact that will guarantee he WONT become a manager in a company!

Its all about hands on experience than education when it comes to IT and IT management. my boss(who was VP of CRM marketing at Bell), had only a Diploma!!! but bc of his 20 yrs of experience in IT-Marketing, he was at that position.

As BT said, u only get crappy programming/technical support jobs if u graduate from IT or want to pursue ur degree in IT. best way is to actually switch it to more E-Commerce, Online marketing, Marketing management, Business Analysis and stuff like that, and sky is the limit for ur progress and job opportunities.

just my 2 cents as an IT grad who was doing Online marketing in a top company, until few hrs ago before I quit!

Nilu,

Those "crappy" programming/technical support jobs you're talking about are among the highest paying jobs in North America. It's very common for a developer or Level 2-3 support engineer to make more than their manager here. Just gotta know your stuff more than the average Indian dude who arrived from Banglore yesterday.

e-commerce, marketing and Business Analyst jobs are usually nothing but a more glorified secretary position and every new grad and their mom can apply for them.

At this very moment, a fresh IT grad with decent programming knowledge (not theory) and a Unix certificate can easily start at $70K/year which is very decent compared to other fields.

hala why did you quit?

 

[ChaharMahal]

BT jan I would say the starting salary is about 50 K and that is in normal times.

folks get 100 K when they start in Goldman sachs and those are the best of best.

 

[Niloufar]

Nilu,

Those "crappy" programming/technical support jobs you're talking about are among the highest paying jobs in North America. It's very common for a developer or Level 2-3 support engineer to make more than their manager here. Just gotta know your stuff more than the average Indian dude who arrived from Banglore yesterday.

e-commerce, marketing and Business Analyst jobs are usually nothing but a more glorified secretary position and every new grad and their mom can apply for them.

At this very moment, a fresh IT grad with decent programming knowledge (not theory) and a Unix certificate can easily start at $70K/year which is very decent compared to other fields.

hala why did you quit?

well u got a point there Soroush, but u tell me how many percentage of those IT programmers ACTUALLY are Full-timers with benefits? Almost none. they r all 2-3months contractors only, and if u consider the amount of programming they have to do(and I eye-witnessed that) on daily-basis in huge companies with huge adhoc campaigns, really what they earn isnt all that much..

I mean com'n, I was a full-time Online marketing specialist(not Manager) at this big company and was warning $65k a year! so $70k for a programmer that works 10x as much as us, online marketing managers, other managers,etc, is quite LOW actually. + pretty much all of them have to stay longer hours than indicated in their contract(and as u know they dont pay overtime in contract), so crappy long days, and not getting extra penny for ur 2-3 hrs extra they have to stay every day to code/launch a campaign..
+ most big companies now have their IT deparment outsourced to India-China already, so fewer and fewer IT Grads would be in demand here.. bc simply those IT programmers are much more skilled than us, IT programmers graduated in Canada-US and they ask for much less $ too!

+ I think ur actually underestimating the skill level that Online Marketing managers should possess in order to be qualified/hired in the first place, so dont even mention it as "even a fresh graduate/mom" can do it!!lol

You have to think in terms of Marketing Revenue, Product Pricing, basically ways to improve Revenue for the company u work for, Add to that the vast tools available to Advertise your product Online(and trust me, advertising it just on facebook/twitter isnt called Online marketing!lol) , and u should have vast knowledge of Google Paid Search, Tracking Cookies, Webtrends analysis, Google Analytics and all that, use it everyday to analyse the "constant changes in customer behaviour" when they visit ur website and change ur budget/target/product even based on online customr behaviour..not to mention using SnagIt, alikes and having knowledge of User interface to make a website look soooo appealing and user-friendly that they be able to purchase online instantly, with no technical problem, and the site design and content be so appealing that they actually pick up the phone or fill out the order form, and order that product u want to sell to them.

why I quit?! bc the company I was working for, being Microsoft's partner, had soooo many campaigns(which is normal in big companies Im used to it), but when got to office, realized they tricked me, so not only i had to commute 60km everyday for a 6 months contract, in place of one employee's maternity-leave but also when I started, bastards laid off the only other online marketing manager, bc I was hired to do her job too! so basically I had to do two ppl's jobs, learn all new stuff in 10 days only until she officially leaves the company, and frankly the $ wasnt all that great either..so Im not a slave anymore and I dont care how big the company was..I literally lost my sleep, appetite and got so stressed out in first 4 days that just couldnt take it for another 6 months!

+ I dont wanna miss out on my chance of writing great articles for Goal.com, thats my true passion, and I'd quit anything just to prove myself there to everyone globally..

 

[deerouz]

I think it is an established fact that software engineers are generally among the best paid (even with the outsourcing and stuff). I recall a survey to that effect from a few years ago; will try to dig it. But you are right about the fact that most people in this industry start as contractors.
Another thing to keep in mind is the number of applicants and the issue of supply and demand: A typical BA or commerce program in a Business school typically takes in hundreds of students every year, while your typical engineering or computer science program does not admit more than a few dozens (in most universities). A much larger number of business graduates end up in crappy jobs comparing to technical programs.

 

[InDaMoneyz]

Nilu,

Those "crappy" programming/technical support jobs you're talking about are among the highest paying jobs in North America. It's very common for a developer or Level 2-3 support engineer to make more than their manager here. Just gotta know your stuff more than the average Indian dude who arrived from Banglore yesterday.

e-commerce, marketing and Business Analyst jobs are usually nothing but a more glorified secretary position and every new grad and their mom can apply for them.

At this very moment, a fresh IT grad with decent programming knowledge (not theory) and a Unix certificate can easily start at $70K/year which is very decent compared to other fields.

hala why did you quit?

sorry dude but that was quite a horrible statement ! I dont think you know much about e-commerce or CRM. nilu actually had a great point.

I have been working in these fields for the biggest of companies at all levels for ever and I can testify that distancing yourself from technical roles, IT specific roles, any programming/development or similar roles is key to progress.

IT folks and professionals as a whole are not highly regarded with top management or with the business as a whole. Perception is that business simply can get a van and go down by the shore and pickup any immigrant from india, china, iran, russia,....who can do the job. It is almost regarded as a blue color job

You want to distance yourself from such roles and get closer to business decision makers, financial, marketing and product folks. Any marketing management, product management, CRM management, or e-commerce roles are way higher paying, more highly regarded and respected and have by far better prospect of climbing the ladder than any IT or technical jobs.

However most CRM, product or e-commerce roles require both techincal and business skills a simple IT guy may not have

BT is a good guy but he has no idea what he is talking about. CRM, e-commerce, marketing analytics including predictive modeling, product management, data analysis, databse marketing fields all require fairely high degree of business and It knowledge - focus on these. experienced Product and marketing managers make easily in excess of 100k + great bonouses, e-commerce, marketing analytics and predictive modelers make even more than that

 

[Bache Tehroon]

Nilu, I'm not sure where you worked but software developers (the ones that actually write code instead of having to read others' code) are rarely in clear visibility of other employees at a company.

Due to protective measures and also the nature of the job, programmers are usually separated from the rest of the crowd and are rarely expected to work on a set schedule. I'm saying this because I'm a regular visitor to development sites.

You rarely see a programmer go to work at 9:00AM like other people. Most of them start their workday somewhere around noon and don't usually get fully cranking until 5-6PM when the brain is most productive at coding. Yes it's true sometimes they pull all-nighters to finish projects or meet deadlines, but that's because they haven't done jack-shit all quarter (that's usually me at the end of the quarter btw)

All I'm saying is, there's a big difference between IT graduates who think they know programming and those who are actually programmers. Real developers are hard to come by and that's why there's no real limit to the amount of money they can demand. I'm still trying to find that limit myself

 

[Bache Tehroon]

BT is a good guy but he has no idea what he is talking about.

Evidence why I'm absolutely right :--biggrin

 

[Niloufar]

Nilu, I'm not sure where you worked but software developers (the ones that actually write code instead of having to read others' code) are rarely in clear visibility of other employees at a company.

Due to protective measures and also the nature of the job, programmers are usually separated from the rest of the crowd and are rarely expected to work on a set schedule. I'm saying this because I'm a regular visitor to development sites.

You rarely see a programmer go to work at 9:00AM like other people. Most of them start their workday somewhere around noon and don't usually get fully cranking until 5-6PM when the brain is most productive at coding. Yes it's true sometimes they pull all-nighters to finish projects or meet deadlines, but that's because they haven't done jack-shit all quarter (that's usually me at the end of the quarter btw)

All I'm saying is, there's a big difference between IT graduates who think they know programming and those who are actually programmers. Real developers are hard to come by and that's why there's no real limit to the amount of money they can demand. I'm still trying to find that limit myself

i understand that Soroush, they have time-flexibility and all that, but IT developers that I had to work with(bc they had to design a site I was requesting them to do, and with the design-user-friendliness I wanted them to code/create), they had to be available to be contacted by us, in another building/location atleast since 9am until 5pm, but almost all of them had to stay longer. bc i wasnt the only one giving them campaign stuff to design, there were primes contacting/requesting them from BC, Alberta, Quebec,etc..

+ later on, bc our team got small, but our online marketing offers/profits grew(thanks to me and my manager , bc literally this big company, Direct Energy, which is sister-company of British Gas, and USA's Centrica, so pretty global, had non-existing online marketing in canada before we were hired as online marketing specialists/managers!! ), we actually requested and waited in line for our Resource manager to send one DEDICATED IT PROGRAMMER to our office only, so he only does our campaigns and not get distracted with other primes' requests from other provinces, to delay our marketing campaigns(which was always delayed until we got a dedicated IT Resource).

but ur sooo right about IT programmers wasting so much time.. I had such a hard time working with this dedicated programmer, cuz jackass was chatting, checking facebook, while he had to finish the page coding changes I asked him to, by end of the day and he wasnt doing it(and as an IT graduate myself, I knew how EASY those changes were, literally just changing 2 lines of codes only!lol). so at some point, I went to him, sat behind him in his desk, surprised him while he was checking facebook, and told him to go to this line of code, change this function, test it, publish it and send it to me now!!loool and thats when the idiot realized I know IT programming myself too, so after that he wasnt wasting time or messing around with my tasks anymore!lol

 

[Fat_Ali2006]

Make sure u see part one also. An oldy but still funny as hell...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SNxaJlicEU"]YouTube- The Website is Down #2: Excel Hell[/ame]