I’ve been on this ride before. More than once. Usually I only realize it when I start recognizing pieces of the landscape: jobs dissolving by the millions, genuine fear in people’s eyes, lots of phony money dematerialized.

On this particular circuit through the theme park, though, some things are different. Usually a few things are, every time around the track. It’s nice to see the changes are positive.

I’m talking about the economy in general and working in IT in particular. To be fair, it’s true I group a lot of things under the heading of IT. As I see it, IT involves a particular skill set that can be applied across a lot of endeavors. I’ve helped track nuclear waste, built traffic-counting GIS applications and supported brain research, just to name a few. Code and computers and data make them all “IT” to me.

IT in general was a whipping boy in the last recession. As if they were taking revenge, companies large and small laid off their IT staffs, and took a couple of years realizing that they’d made a mistake.

By then enrollment in computer-related studies had tanked. American kids, not clueless in the least, stayed away in droves from the jobs they’d seen fleeing to India. As I write in July of 2009, that trend is showing signs of reversing – some seven-plus years after the 2001 recession.

That’s a hell of a hole, folks.

I for one plan to jump in and fill it: by building networks, developing software, administering servers and workstations, and particularly by helping to educate the smart, motivated people who are entering the field, or rising within it.

If you’re one of them, welcome to IT work in New Mexico. It’ll be nice working with you.