Of the 6 monster.com nationwide listings using “SPM” as the job title, 2, the job requirements are “Project Lead” “Project Manager”.

Imagine the embarassment of the 2 listers who dropped their pants to the world with this off-the-wall job title!! IT managers are laughing loudly at these goofups! The next words our of their mouths is going to be, “There ain’t no job title like that. They just want a manager. What were they thinking.”

Trust me, these managers who’ve seaerch job sites are experienced and know better.

The author doesn’t know how few SPM’s there actually are inside the US. … Well, except for my gold nuggets posted here.

Mooo.

Also, those who do IT salary surveys, never list a position called “Software Program Manager”. These people know the standard IT positions well. They always list several distinct IT Managers -Project Manager, IT Manager, IS Manager, IT Dept Manager.

Author, get it right and check the salary, too. The salary is not that high in many states.

Some doctors do have potential to make more money with less risk of being sued – e.g. dermatologists. If they do things like Botox, Restylane, laser hair removal, etc. they get paid in cash.

What about lawyers? Shouldn’t they be on the list?

Sunderware – in my company when they transfer a project to China/India, they may lay off the whole group including first line manager. But, we are a Fortune 500 technology company with divisions all over the world, so they don’t need to manage the project from the US. I do make over 100K without being a manager (although my band qualifies me to be one in other divisions, but not in research where I work as I don’t have a PhD), but my job isn’t secure. That of my manager is not either: if one person of the group is laid off, then the manager is safe. If the project is canceled, the manager isn’t safe. Since during past layoffs people were given one or two months time to find another position with the company, it is sometimes easier for a developer to find another position than for a manager, depending on manager’s actual skills in software R&D. I don’t know how it is in other companies, I’ve worked for this one forever.

I must take issue with the assumption that because people NEED medical care, there MUST be enough people to provide it. This is like saying you think family farms must be a recession-proof growth industry because people need to eat. Medical professionals (especially general practitioners) are being run out of business at an astonishing rate both by low insurance payments and skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums, and the fact that the need for medical care is rising in no way implies that we are actually producing and sustaining the necessary amount of health care professionals.

The Great Desert University expects the legislature to pass a $5.4 million budget cut today. Meanwhile, my college alone is already $2.8 million in the hole, an all-time record.

Across the Valley, GDU’s campus in a working-class neighborhood recently canned all part-time faculty and canceled all the courses they taught, courses — many of them required for various programs — that had already begun to fill. At the end of last semester, the same campus dismissed EVERY DEPARTMENTAL CHAIR in the oddly named school that is a de facto college of liberal arts and sciences. They canceled all these people’s courses and gave every one of them a five-month leave of absence, on the taxpayer dime. Next fall, they all come back to work as ordinary faculty, at pay cuts upwards of ten grand.

This is not a field I would go into today. If I knew when I was a kid what I know now — not a chance!

I’d get an MBA, and if I were still pigheadedly dreaming of a career in the sylvan groves of academe, I’d get a Ph.D. in business management: not all THAT much math, but better pay. Because universities and legislators believe people with advanced degrees in management can get better real-world jobs than people with advanced degrees in academic fields, faculty in business are paid very well, indeed. Much, much better than the rest of us.

And when your university falls so deep in the hole it has to cut your program, an MBA will always get you a real-world job.

I think it is considered a “safe” position because while we can and do outsource software development, it’s not that reasonable to outsource the leadership on those projects. We need to have someone onshore to interface with clients, business partners, senior level management, etc.

And becoming a doctor is so difficult and really is a test in endurance and mental preparedness than anything else. You have to love what you do and really want to help people to get through the grueling years of medical school and residency. Not to mention the incredible school debts many people accumulate. The money isn’t that great, either. The medical profession will lose a lot of bright people to careers in finance where they can make boatloads of money. Medicine will give you a comfortable living, but you won’t get wealthy.

I think growth in the physician’s assistant area is due a lot to these store clinics you see popping up in Wal-mart and other retail outlets. There simply aren’t enough medical professionals around to service the need – particularily now that preventative medicine isn’t practiced by many due to lapsing helath insurance coverage. Really just about any field in medicine is going to continue to be in demand.