Changing your job? Chances are good if you know me

I was stunned to learn that 87 people I know changed their jobs last year, according to my LinkedIn account.

At first I thought this was because of the poor economy, but that’s a two year old story these days and most of the people that changed jobs were based in Canada where the economy did much better than say the U.S. But 87 seemed to be a very high number to me so I investigated further and this is what I found.

People today are not staying at one spot for their entire careers. The IBM no-firing policy certainly died a long and painful death back in 1993 and I don’t see it ever coming back. Many of my colleagues and friends made the career jump for lots of reasons.

One of the more interesting career choices was Real Estate. It seems to be a popular career choice as former IBMer Ken Jackson is in that trade; so is former Lenovo executive Susan Taylor and I’ve just learned that Mark Steiman of Tech Data Canada and many other places is now working for Remax.

Some people got amazing opportunities in 2010 such as Martin Hofmann, who became a director at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment; Patti Smith who was appointed channel chief for Panda Security; Haroon Mirza who is in charge of business development at AVA at Intel Corp.; Satoshi Takano who left Bell Canada for a great job at Cisco; Rebecca Cohen who became the spokesperson for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Canada; Evelyn Mason jumped from Four Seasons to the Home Depot; Tom Acorn left a PR job for a sales role at SAP Canada; Bruno Pupo landed at LG Canada as National Sales Manager; Cortney Anderson went to KPMG; Nicole Flippance went to Bruce Power; Raj Atwal became a VP at Tenzing Managed IT Services; Mahboob Jaffer now plies his trade at RIM; and Chantelle Bernard nabbed a job at Microsoft Canada.

Those are all great opportunities and I congratulate them and wish them the very best.

But, some had to move purely out of necessity. I’m not going to name any but it’s safe to say that reasons such as poor working conditions, company went out of business or ran out of resources, new managed permeated changes, butting heads with a co-worker or simply was let go all contributed to some of the 87 leaving for hopefully greener pastures.

There was even one person who just left her position to get out of the rat race she told me. She is basically going to take some time off to regroup. In 2009 Chris Stoate, founder and CEO of Laser Networks sort of did the same thing. He left his company to live a whole year in the French Alps with his family, but in that time he looked for acquisition targets and tried to learn some best practices from managed print services resellers in France.

For the most part in my list of 87; these people got a promotion with their current employer. There are way too many to name here, but it tells me that the general IT industry economy is moving a bit faster than in previous years. Maybe there was more business in 2010 than employers expected which led to more hires and more promotions.

Further proof to this is a recent study conducted by Sapphire and sponsored by IBM that found more than half of companies in Canada are planning to expand their IT departments in 2011. Companies will be looking to snap up IT pros and those with skills in collaboration, security and cloud computing will be the most in demand.

This is a good thing!

A lot of quick hits before I go. Nine in fact. Conrad Mandala, the channel chief of SAP Canada has been promoted to National SME director. He will be replaced as channel chief by Rene Giguere.

Jody Zedor has left BlueRange Technology of Oakville, Ont.

Allison Beresford has left Tech Data Canada for a position at Dell Canada.

William “BJ” Jenkins, a long time EMC executive has been appointed president of EMC’s Backup Recovery Systems division. Jenkins was the division’s Chief of Staff. He will replace Frank Slootman who just got that role in 2009. Slootman will remain in a formal advisory capacity to EMC. Jenkins will report into Pat Gelsinger, president and COO.

Nirvanix announced the appointment of Steve Zivanic as vice president of marketing, effective immediately. Zivanic will report to Scott Genereux, President and CEO of Nirvanix.

Dirk Meyer, CEO and president of AMD, has resigned. AMD's Board of Directors has announced that Senior Vice President and CFO Thomas Seifert will replace him as interim CEO.

And, finally Bob Muglia, Microsoft's president of tools and servers, is stepping down after an incredible long run at the software giant. CDN wishes Bob the very best in his future endeavours.