This article in e-week.com says it all.Â
Storage has always been good to me. In 2001 I got laid off while working for MTI (right before they imploded and were “reborn” as an EMC reseller – with a huge influx of capital from EMC) but was back in business almost immediately. (Read the article in ComputerWorld)
Storage has always given me the flexibility to a> pick my jobs, and b> stay employed despite the market.
While EMC can be a bit of a “fair-weather friend” when it comes to employment, there has always been, and will always be a strong demand for people who understand storage and SAN concepts. Someone who knows the internals of EMC, HDS, or any of the big players in the Tier-1 storage world will always have a place to go, and will always have a big advantage in the negotiations.
Once your name is out there, it’s usually not hard to keep it out there.  Not quite a year later, I’m still getting calls from ex-employers and old co-workers asking if I’d like to go back to it.
Most of the engineers I’ve known who have been laid off by EMC get hired by the service partners who have built up a whole industry around supplying EMC with the labor and expertise they need. Most of them are, like me, ex-EMC’ers, some are just naturally bright and quick to pick up. The partners pay well because of their lower overhead, and raise the bar for EMC when the almost systematic reaction to the lay-offs occurs. The “re-hire” usually proves too expensive for EMC and they end up with either a more expensive or lower-quality brand of employee, sometimes forcing even more business to the partner, etc.
Anyway, like I said, it’s a good time to be us. Just make sure you keep up the knowledge. Read all you can, try new things, etc. The hardest part about going back to EMC after being away from their hardware for a year was playing “catch-up” on the technology improvements.
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