It appears to me that the finance/trading industry is still going fairly strong, i.e. still has a lot of job opportunities. I'm not actively looking for a job, but I have my resume out there, as well as a LinkedIn page (I figure it's always good to at least be "passively" looking for a better opportunity). I receive emails from recruiters/head hunters about once a week on average. Most of the opportunities are basically doing exactly what I'm doing now: connectivity/infrastructure development for a trading company.
Granted, the topic starter was asking about system administrator-type jobs, but presumably, the companies that need developers probably also need good admins.
Now, bad news. At least with my employer, we are basically only looking for people with previous experience. "Training" is not in our vocabulary. Effectively, we are only willing to consider people who can come in and start delivering excellent work with a minimum of support and direction.
My previous job was at a huge corporation, where they hired more on personality "type" and believed training would solve any knowledge or skill deficiencies.
Obviously, the ideal employee has experience that is a perfect match with job requirements and has the right personality. But realistically, these people are incredibly hard to find. And how long is a firm willing to wait to find these magical people?
So my question is: do companies still offer training programs? I've seen this attitude here on Slashdot that it's lazy to expect training from an employer, that one should be willing to put in the extra effort to come up to speed on whatever knowledge or skill the job demands on one's own time.
And another, related question is: even if companies aren't taking the time to explicitly train new hires, are they at least allowing time to "grow" and/or mentor employees? Looking only at the firm where I now work, I'm afraid that answer is a hard "no". That not only do you need exceptional experience to even get in the door, but once in, you're almost entirely on your own: someone will tell you what needs to be done and expect you to get it done.
I don't like the "sink or swim" mentality; frankly, it's kind of scary. But I think that huge training programs and hand-holding are probably low on the value scale. For me, there's a happy medium: I'm willing to put in extra hours to learn the technology and develop the skills I need, if the employer is willing to spend some time coaching me in the nature of the business, helping me learn the whys behind the things they do, the business models, the firm's culture and values, etc. I think that's a fair trade. But my experience at my current firm, and based at least on what I've heard of similar companies, they don't even take the time to properly introduce the company, i.e. the go by the "trial by fire" method of employee indoctrination. Is this unique to the trading industry, or is this just the way it is now?