Fewer Jobs, Less Pay In The IT Industry 577
dipfan writes "At last an explanation why you can't find a job: a report in the Washington Post says there were more than 500,000 tech jobs shed in the US during the last year, and (for the first time in several years) average IT workers pay is down by 11 percent - down from $71,000 to $63,000. There is some good news on the horizon - the survey of employers by the Information Technology Association of America says that more than a million IT jobs are going to be created in the coming year, taking employment back to pre-2001 levels."
To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll believe it when I see it.
Hoopla and losers (Score:2, Insightful)
I dont think it has been that hard for those who belong in the positions, just for those who held positions they had no right, education, experience or mindset for.
IT Jobs Farmed out Overseas (Score:4, Insightful)
Of COURSE.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I really wish I could run into a good NT guy, just to change my perception.
The last guy would reboot the NT server, because the mmc was crashing (He was installing a new Server App), and he didn't know how to kill it or something... "Umm that's the MMC crashing, why don't we just kill it instead of rebooting the server in the middle of the day?"
The 2nd to last guy I worked with spent who-knows-how-long screwing with 3Com diags on an NT box, before I plugged the network cable in for him.
Really fucking pitiful... And I don't even like NT. (I'm fucking cheap, but NT makes me want to run out and buy Netware)
Re:Sure, (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that it's all crap. There's still a skills shortage, but now it's less pronounced salaries are beginning to get closer to decent levels, as a smaller choice means technical people are willing to take on jobs they weren't before.
With the exception of certain areas of the country where the dot-com boom and bust hit hard leaving a localised clump of highly skilled people, it's not difficult to get a job in programming, and you'll still earn a tremendous amount of money. Compare these "dreadful" $63,000 salaries to those of your non technical friends and family - unless you're living amongst lawyers and executives you're not likely to meet that many people on that kind of money.
bling bling (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IT Jobs Farmed out Overseas (Score:3, Insightful)
All this, and now they are getting rid of most of their overseas contractors and staffing up a bit. They have found that the work is just not up to par. You spend more time cleaning up after these people than you save.
And some of these people are better than others, but you have to pay more to get more. After you pay for better contractors, as it turns out, you can hire americans for not much more and get better software.
This type of thing might happen a bit, but I don't forsee a large turn to overseas IT work.
From the field . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
First, even with the job cuts, IT is a huge and unavoidable part of the economy. It will inevitably recover because IT is too important. It will expand because IT has definitely not met the limits of what it can do.
Second, some of the cuts done were extremely unwise and are backfiring on companies already. I hear stories of patches not being released, remaining staff members working on maintenance instead of improvement or expansion, etc.
Third, one of the biggest barriers to hiring now is the HR department. Consulting companies, recruiters, and potential employees are confronted with slow processes, poor interviews, and HR departments that do not know what they're talking about technology-wise. Nothing like having someone ask you if you have two years of Windows 2000 or
Fourth, as the article notes, many companies have largely screwed themselves in their approach to IT. IT, in my experience, has a high turnover rate, and these recent activities only encourage people to leave IT and avoid IT. Without training, their employees won't have skills (while some of us hardcores will practice our code while we flip burgers or cash our unemployment checks). They'll have to break down and hire knowledgeable people.
In my experience, the market has already started opening up, especially for people with 3+ years of experience. Give it another year and IT will be back to where it was and then some - because, even if people don't like it, they need us.
Re:To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:4, Insightful)
sPh
Re:Hoopla and losers (Score:5, Insightful)
And anyone with the right skills knows that they can get hired, because the managers who make hiring decisions are just utterly brilliant in their jobs, and know so much about IT that they can instantly tell who knows what they're doing. And if you can't find a job, that just means you're not as incredibly smart as the person who wrote the parent post.
Re:Hoopla and losers (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are complaining?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope those in this situation have enough decency to shut up. 63K US is kind of just a dream to me, I'm making 42K CAN and I think I am making good money. Hey, I'm making more then both my parents together! I have a little car, a digicam, my good ol' computer, what can I ask more?!? Yeah, I used to dream of making 1K US a week, driving an Audi TT and living in a big house. And I was mad that I was not earning enough, fast enough. Then, recently, things went bad around the world, I kept reading about unemployement. One of my cousin lost it's job last year and he is still searching a new one. He got nothing more then a few little contract of 2-3 weeks. It change my mind, that is the only good thing about all this (for me). Now I'm placing some money, I enjoy what I actually have because tomorrow it could all change. Honestly, I would accept 63K US any day, but I really don't need it...
Hmmm, My Certification Mill is Promising Me $90K (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a real problem -- too many unskilled entry-level folks are flooding the job pool. And most certifications are as useless as used Kleenex.
Re:Hoopla and losers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that is where a lot of the problem is coming from - there is a blur between programming and engineering now in IT, and that's allowing a lot of people who have no clue to sneak through bad interview processes and get jobs where they don't perform.
A poster above commented they should have gone to medical school. I'm thanking the gods I did an EE degree instead of a CS degree, it was brutal getting through, but my options are much more diverse than some of my friends who have CS or BA backgrounds working in IT. There's a big market right now for people who can work with embedded systems and do RTOS development, and I can't see that going away anytime soon. There's a barrier to entry though, as most embedded/FPGA jobs require a BSEE as a bare minimum.
One hard truth in the job market (Score:2, Insightful)
ITAA has been telling lies for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the same people who said that 450,000 jobs went >unfilled [itaa.org] last year because there were not enough qualified technical people. Let's get some truth on the scene [ucdavis.edu] here (previously linked from slashdot here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], and here [slashdot.org]). The ITAA is an industry spokes-puppet which is trying to spread a misconception that there is no jobs shortage, and that there is no unemployment, so that the industry can beg Congress for more slave labor force called H-1B. And I'm not referring to merely having more people than there are jobs. The real danger of the H-1B program the ITAA is constantly promoting is the fact that employees under this program:
That last one is especially sinister because it means that the usual market forces, supply and demand, and competition for skills, is NOT allowed to function for H-1B workers, giving employers a windfall of what is essentially cheap slave labor. They are hired into jobs the employers claim require extended skills, and paid only the average programmer salary (not the near double amounts such skills would normally draw) because the H-1B law only requires the average to be paid based on all programmers (not specifically those with the required skills).
In other words, what the ITAA is spouting is a bunch of crock.
Re:Hoopla and losers (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't want to be so insensitive as to refer to those who can't find a job as "underbrush", but really, can we expect the job market to be as good for IT people since the Internet bubble burst?
One of the vital processes in market economies that keeps them working is something called clearance. Inefficient methods of operating, like spending venture capital for operating funds for years waiting for a bad business plan to turn a profit, are cleared from the market eventually, leaving room for things that make sense.
This does lead to people being jobless. But, this also encourages everyone to keep their skills current and their pay expectations realistic.
Clearance is something we have to attempt to apply to large Government bureaucracies constantly as market forces don't apply here. The fact that there's not regular market clearance to Government bureaucracies is what helps lead to all the gross inefficiencies there, IMO.
It's business cycles. I don't think they've been abolished, contrary to what some were saying a few years ago. I liken it to winter. Winter does make it hard on a lot of life for awhile, but it sets the stage for Spring.
It does seem unfortunate that those on top in market economies (CEOs and Board Members) are the most insulated from business cycles, with their golden parachutes and other benefits. But, this is like how mankind is more insulated from winter when compared to most of the animal kingdom. It's good to be on top of any food chain, I guess.
Until They Ship Development to India, That Is (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the IT lifecycle for you (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IT Jobs Farmed out Overseas (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the pay cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the ITAA report which said IT jobs will grow - bullshit! The ITAA is the *enemy* folks, they're the ones who lobbied to bring in hundreds of thousands of H1B's, they're the ones that did away with overtime laws for "computer operators", they're the one fighting to keep section 1706 in tax code (which drives independent consultants into body shops) and so forth. The ITAA is lying - the ITAA is who was talking about shortages for years before the current glut. Don't you people see the commercials on TV talking about a technical career while everyone is being laid off or getting pay cuts? Don't you all realize there is a massive deception going on - wonderful careers in IT are being advertised for while things for the profession get worse and worse?
I can't believe that the same BULLSHIT that that the ITAA has been saying for the past several years has made it to the front page of Slashdot. I know it is on dice.com's front page and other places - they made their bullshit report recently to counter things like Representative Tancredo's legislation that would tie H1B caps to the unemployment rate (which is the highest in 8 years).
So you morons who think you're some kind of programming super-genius who is a "hard worker" and is some kind of socially retarted dork who puts all his self-value in how much computer skills he has - can you please explain why not only jobs are being cut but why salaries are being cut? It's called supply and demand, folks, and the ITAA has been at the forefront of raising the supply of workers, hours worked by them, and their mobility (especially that of H1Bs or those who would like to be independent consultants).
Now, most IT professionals I talk to don't want to form a union (collective bargaining association) which leaves us with one solution - a professional association, just like the doctors (AMA) and lawyers (ABA) have. No, not the IEEE, they've sold out to corporate sponsors when they had efforts to lower the H1-B cap killed. The Programmers Guild is the best organization I've seen of this type. Joining together and fighting for our profession against the ITAA is the only solution.
My web page, the Oncall Guild [geocities.com], has more information about all of this, mostly links to good sources of information about non-technically related things to our profession. If you want to be part of a million individual super-genius hard-working dork programmer lemmings headed off a cliff, be my guest, if you want to join together with other engineers and fight the employer-financed ITAA in a non-union association, join the Programmers Guild and read the information on my web site.
Paycut city (Score:1, Insightful)
But back to the money thing: I've heard of contracts for *SENIOR SYSTEMS ARCHITECT* (no junior role for sure) that was being paid 150$CDN a day. And some more junior positions I've seen are paid barely more than *minimum wage*. And the client/body-shop have the gall to demand *at least* a college degree *and* quite a few certs, all of this for a low-pay job. No wonder the "plumber" who just changed the faucet taps in my apparment left IT, he said he's now better paid and doesn't have to deal with the stress and as many PHBs as he did before!
(This begs the question: how many left the IT market for "low-tech" work and are not regretting (sp?) for now?)
This is truly a "buyer's market", except that many are abusing it a lot right now. Especially up here in "silicon valley north"...
Re:To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:2, Insightful)
This despite the fact that doctors and lawyers have their own unions (AMA and ABA respectively).
Unionize! (Score:1, Insightful)
So if you and your co-workers want to unionize, there is a resource for you. If you don't want to collectively bargain, feel free to ignore this. Of course, unionization empowers workers and is considered a threat to the employers and their sycophants. Union organizers used to be accused of being communistic atheists, and these sycophants for the bosses will probably crawl out from whatever rock they're under and start attacking your right to join a union, just like a fundamentalist wackadoo attacks atheists. Despite the fact that your ultimate bosses, the people collecting dividends and interest from corporate stocks and bonds, are mostly heirs who have never worked a day in their life and have no skills whatsoever, unions will be attacked as hurting the hard-working and the skilled (even though guilds were originally formed to protect skilled workers). They will also call unions corrupt although they will neglect to mention the Ken Lays and the Enrons you work for being corrupt
Frankly, I'm sick of the little Farscape-watching socially retarted reactionary dorks I am often forced to work side-by-side with, who have no need for free time since they spend their free time in front of the computer for the boss instead of socializing with other human beings. Well - let them loose with their sycophantic rantings, just remember there are a lot of us, like you and me, who are on our side, and can and will do something about what's going on.
Re:To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:2, Insightful)
90% of the "work ten times as hard" effort is self or system imposed to no good end. Having a resident (making around $20K/year mind you) work 36 hours straight (12 + 12 hours on call overnight + another 12 their normal shift) is not only dangerous but stupid.
How much of a drone a doc is really depends on their specialty, talk to an ER doc after they treat their 4000th runny nose/sore throat during the winter or a dermatologist after they've removed their 1 millionth wart. Pretty much like IT work. Setting up your 50th server is a lot like your 4th.
Working in IT matters too, someone has to program the pacemakers, heart monitors, etc... Heck, just think about having a bug in the source of a blood analyzing machine. Read about some "bugs" in this [slashdot.org] story too.
Programmers of Asian origin (Score:3, Insightful)
As a programmer of Indian origin, I feel somewhat qualified to comment. Before I get to my main point, I need to provide a bit of a preface. Programmers from India that come with an engineering degree typically are much better at the problem solving and analysis that are required in IT than are folks from a sciences and the arts. The reason for this is that engineering and medicine are typically the higher (far higher in the case of compute related stuff) paying professions and the competition for admissions to these courses are fierce. In a process of evolutionary selection, typically the candidates better suited to problem solving and analysis are the ones that make it through to even getting admission to the professional schools.
Granted, as in every other field, a percentage of those admitted to egineering are duds. But statistically speaking, the odds are really good that someone from an engineering background in India is Good at IT. Conversely, the people who dont get into engineering and medicine are typically less suited to IT.
And now onto my point....
Coming from an enginering background myself, and having worked for one of the companies that do offshore development, I noticed a curious phenomenon amongst my (then) colleagues. The vast majority of them had scorn for the skills and capabilities of the average IT worker. I didnt understand this until I came to the US myself. Then I realized that the average IT worker in the US is more likely to be a former third grade teacher who sought a better paying profession than a graduate of engineering. My (then) colleagues were falling into the trap of comparing apples to oranges. They were comparing themselves and their colleagues (who were mainly with engineering backgrounds) to people who werent, and of course, in that comparison, the US worker came out short.
The correct way of comparing things would have been to look at where the people with engineering backgrounds (and in the US, this is only a rough indicator of problem solving and analytical skills, I know) went, and then, comparing themselves to the skill and efficiency of those workers. When I did that comparison myself, I found that there really was no inequity between the US and the Indian worker.
You (and many others) seem to have fallen into a similar trap : you are equating all Indian offshore companies without recognizing quality differences. This would be something like comparing IBM to Poppa and Momma IT Inc. The company that I had worked for hired really good people. There are companies from India in the same field that hire predominantly from the Arts and Sciences fields and because of the competition I mentioned before, the people that they get arent (statistically speaking) as good as the really good ones. So, the conclusion is, you can get really good work done at really cheap prices, provided you pick the right company!
Re:I just need one job, the rest don't count. (Score:2, Insightful)
Much of the problem over the last 8 months was a kneejerk lockup on IT spending due to Sept. 11th and the associated hit on the economy. So there is a TON of money just waiting to be spent on IT again. A certain degree of "you're lucky you have a job" was to be expected in an economic slump, but now employers are starting to push things a little too far.
I see the IT economy really starting to pick up and soon employers will find that bullying their employees will result in their not having any good people left. I suggest you take a look at what's out there now. Don't just take your boss's word for it.
How it works (Score:3, Insightful)
They came after the web developers, but I was not a web developer, and I did not object.
They came after the Java enthusiasts, but I was not a Java enthusiast, and I did not object.
They came after the open source developers, but I was not an open source developer, and I did not object.
Then they came after the ordinary, decent programmer, and there was no-one left to object for me.
It Works Both Ways (Score:5, Insightful)
While you bemoan the growing dominance of foreign programmers, note that foreigners bemoan the dominance of American IT. "All these American computers when we could build our own, slap restrictions on their import!" America makes a lot of money exporting IT products abroad.
So if we make money selling products and services abroad, is it so terrible that other countries do the same? That's the way the global free market works. If we try to restrict foreign programmers, you can be sure they will slap tarrifs back on our products.
In general, I find most people have a very naive idea of the way things work: they assume America is God's Country (TM) and so we will always make tons of money and all the other nations will always be reduced to begging for scraps. The reality is that the rise of America coincided with a very strange period for others: colonization and WWII. As countries have rebuilt after the devastation of colonization and WWII, expect more competition for America and a more even distribution of capabilities and wealth.
Re:To vocalize what's on everyone's mind... (Score:1, Insightful)
Bullshit. The system is still in place because of the "I had to go through it, so you should too" mentality. There are a lot of hospitals which are pushing to get rid of the longer-than-24-hour shifts, because people make too many mistakes towards the end of them. Even the good doctors. I don't want someone who's been up for 30 hours caring for me, because I KNOW they're not performing at my peak. Patients deserve better. The system does not forge better doctors through trial-by-fire. It causes divorce, illness, and kids who never see their parent, and prevents many potentially excellent doctors from finishing (or even starting) their training.
Re:What about the pay cuts? (Score:1, Insightful)
You aren't an immigrant if you aren't going to stay. It is harder to stay if you aren't legally allowed to stay. The Irish immigrants are still here, they didn't stay for six years and then get sent home by the government. The experience of the current sojourners in the body shops is more similar to the Chinese, who were brought over here by moneyed interests so they could be exploited, not out of any concern for their welfare. Harsh laws were created to prevent them from permanently emigrating, but when they were useful to the big railroads they were brought over as sojourners.
The best compromise on H-1Bs is a compromise which decreases (or eliminates) the H-1B program while increasing the amount of employer sponsored green cards. It is perfectly ok to increase the number of real legal permanent residents in this country. It is not OK to create a program which the evidence proves is designed to create a new class of indentured servant.
Re:It Works Both Ways (Score:3, Insightful)
There is so much wrong with this statement that it is hard to know where to begin. The whole arguement is appallingly bad economics. Maybe it is a troll, but I doubt it, so I'll respond to it. This is a big myth that it is going to be bad for the United States (or whatever other country is dominant) if countries that are currently mired in all kinds of third world problems manage to pull themselves out of that mire and join the "first world." This is completely wrong, in fact, if we look at the objections to the H-1B program, we see that what is causing the problem is that people are exploiting the disparity of wages between the United States and the third world. The reality is that the temporary immigrant labor situation is caused by this disparity of wages. If India becomes an economic powerhouse it will be good for everyone in the world, including the United States.
This goes back to the old myth that the Japanese auto industry was harming Americans. In fact it was the corrupt and inneficient American auto industry that was harming Americans, the rise of the Japanese auto industry was good for Americans in general. (The same can be said of the video game industry, where would that industry be today if not for Nintendo. How many Americans does that industry employ? I don't think the Nintendo of America headquaters in Washington state is empty, now is it?)
In fact, the best way to end the H-1B program would be for wages in India to improve enough that people there decided that the expense and hardship of coming to the US was not worth it when they could get a well paying job locally. (I'd prefer to see the H-1B program reformed before then, but it makes me fairly happy to know that eventually it will become economically unviable.)
I agree IT doesn't equal engineering/programming (Score:4, Insightful)
to me IT isn't even programing, its the guys who do server/pc support maintenance, upgrades etc. Skills like that are more of a commodity, being a good programmer/engineer is not. For every design engineer you have several test/systems engineers who test their work(design engineers get paid more in general).
When did IT equate engineering and programing? They are not the same! Repeat again! They are not the same!
Re:From the field . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
I understand that the HR departments must get huge loads of email, but they are actually hurting the companies more than helping them. If you want to get a job, figure out what departments are hiring and then the contact information for the appropriate manager.
Re:Compare IT workers to other technical fields (Score:3, Insightful)
The $15,000 chemical engineer. *sigh*