Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1078362
74 SMT007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2019 $120,000 working in an engineering product- related opportunity. The second one works for Intel—a great company—for $85,000 in their R&D design for their chips. And then the third one went to an IT department at a very large, successful corporation for $65,000. A couple things of that I teach and coach on is you don't want to get into a job that's going to be a commodity or is already a commodity, and a lot of people don't know what that means. What it means in the tech field is if that skill is pervasive. For example, Microsoft skills for SQL Server is a commodity skill. Those skills exist in India and China, so those can be all offshore. If they get a job working in IT for SQL Server, what they don't realize is six months from now, they could lose that job to a resource making one-tenth of their salary overseas. So, yes, there are jobs, but it's about getting the right job. Think about what can be off - shored. For example, there are trends in IT of offshored jobs such as the procurement of serv- ers (or any type of procurement), which used to be IT jobs but are now turning into AI solutions. Those jobs are going away. Meanwhile, cyber- security, AI, and anything related to big data and driving business decisions are three big ar- eas where jobs are hot, highly paid, and not going to be offshored anytime soon. Then, you won't lose your job in six months, and you'll start at a high salary that will only go up over time. Again, you have a plan to get the right job from the start, and they're more competitive. Johnson: You need to be smart about that. Lavoie: Absolutely. Johnson: The whole shotgun approach of send- ing out 100 résumés to companies whose name you happen to know isn't very productive. Lavoie: And I see that on two spectrums. Many of my friends and colleagues who have been in the industry for 20–25 years get laid off. They become so desperate to get the next job that they will take literally anything that they can get without really realizing the implications of not choosing the right one. Yesterday, I heard some similar points that they have to spend a lot of time considering their values and the company culture. I stayed at HP for 29 years because the HP values completely aligned with mine. It was all about customer satisfaction. They treated employees very well. It wasn't about years of service; 25-year veterans didn't automatically get more than a two-year employee. If you were a top performer at the age of 22 and had the highest rank, you'd get the biggest salary increase. Again, a key part is having a plan, so you don't just take any job, and there's data out there to help such as reviews on Glassdoor. If they're going to accept a job at a certain com- pany and the reviews say, "The managers treat employees poorly. We haven't gotten a raise in five years, and they don't value our work," don't go work for them. Do your research. Johnson: What kind of background do you spe- cialize in? Lavoie: I work with two ends of the spectrum. I was a senior leader at HP, so I coach a lot of senior IT leaders that want to be chief in- formation officers on the C level. I also coach the other end—the resources coming into the workforce. I have a passion for both, so I have the credibility, background, and the value proposition to help both audiences. I won't make nearly the money with entry-level posi- tions like the people here, but I love to help the younger generation. I really enjoy doing it. It's less about the money. To help somebody and have them come back and thank me for help- ing them get a job is a reward for me. Johnson: Some people might joke that to coach a senior-level person with a lot of years of ex- perience, you're going to need to charge more money because your client needs to unlearn some things to move forward. Lavoie: There's a lot more work to do for some- body like that because there's the unlearning part, and then there's a to do, especially on the soft skills side. That's where most C-levels fall short. They've been very technical in their