% fortune -ae paul murphy

Managing IT in desperate times

It's hard to get your head around this, but lots of people are doing the impossible right now: revising bet-your-job IT budgets for fiscal 2009/10.

Unemployment in Michigan hit 15.2% last month, in California it's 11.5%, across the US it's 9.5%, and New York is set to try out for a new world record job loss rate by raising some tax rates to 58% of income - the only safe jobs in the United States right now are in government, and those have false floors because the tax revenues needed to sustain them once the stimulus monies run out simply won't be there.

So, some unhappy advice for my American friends in IT management: