Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years 1339
Juzzam writes "The Herald Sun reports that IBM and university officals are worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals and the decreasing supply of computer science students. From the article:
'The slope shows an unbelievable decline in computer science majors,' Astrachan said. 'There are smart people no longer even signing up to take our introductory courses. We need to fix it, or there's not going to be a U.S. work force in computer sciences.'"
I agree (Score:5, Funny)
This article brought to you by ITT Technical Institute.
Pig cycle (Score:3, Insightful)
If they really care about the sector as a whole, they should point at the cycles of supply and demand and how they cause the peaks in demand(high salaries, growing bubble) and supply(low salaries).
Re:Pig cycle (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pig cycle (Score:4, Funny)
"It would be nice to have that kind of job security."
- Samir from Office Space
Re:Pig cycle (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's kind of surprising how many fewer CS students there are, though. I just got my BCS last year, and there were over 120 CS students who started at the same time as me (not sure how many graduated). Do you know how many students applied to CS at my school this year? 12.
Huh. That's going to cut down on their course options.
Re:Pig cycle (Score:4, Insightful)
Bright people can do the math.
It's not just about "the engineering cycle".
Uh... whu? (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt this. "Job Security" is something the Boomers had, and that puppy is dead in the basket. It doesn't matter how much you think you're in demand, if the bean counters decide that one department is spending too much, they'll cut the tech budget and you'll be gone. This very thing happened at Shell, and BP just two years ago, despite the increased profits that Oil & Gas are now experiencing.
I don't think you're paying attention. The *old way* was for someone to start on help desk, then the good ones would work up to desktop grunt, etc. That pipe is broken, because most (large) businesses outsource their helpdesks to Bangladesh/Malaysia.
Finally, just because you have a CS, it doesn't make you a good tech/programmer/whatever. I've known many good techs who didn't have a degree at all, just as I've known techs who had a CS degree and who couldn't tech their way out of a wet paper bag.
Re:Uh... whu? (Score:4, Interesting)
The dirty little secret is: You don't need a degree in CS or anything like it to be able to do 99% of the jobs in the IT industry, and most large companies are brimming over with techies who hold degrees in completely different fields.
My degree is in Music Education. Sure, I have a certification in C and C++, but zero college credits in the computer sciences, other than a single FORTRAN class I took as an incoming freshman.
I work as a support programmer alongside somebody who sweated through the CS degree while I was having fun at college.
It's not like this stuff is brain surgery. There's a perception that computer science is hard to learn because so few people are interested in learning it, but the truth is that most IT jobs are so pathetically simple that even a humanities graduate like me can learn them.
One could argue that "Business Administration degree + computer skills" often results in a much brighter future in the corporate IT world than "Computer Science degree + business sense."
Re:Uh... whu? (Score:5, Insightful)
- Network Administration. Doing well at these jobs really seems to be a matter of aptitude and not education. If you have the right mindset, you'll teach yourself your environment, automate your own job, and it will seem easy. While there's no degree that really helps or matters with this, surprisingly few people are actually good at it. I guess it's the learning curve you have to deal with by yourself.
- Business programming. Used to be mostly Cobol, now mostly Java. The difficulty in these jobs is in business and customer skills more than programming skills, as the underlying programming problems were all solved 40 years ago. There are only so may ways to manage an inventory or a payroll, though the emergence of web-based apps has added at least a little interest. A lack of CS majors does no real harm here - a business major can do just as well if he has any programming aptitude - as long as you learn some project management skills along the way.
- Technical Programming. These days this is mostly storage-related software and game development, with some embedded systems, though there are still a few jobs in OS development. This is the only sort of "IT job" where a CS background really makes a big difference; though many people manange to do well without one, it's only because they are strongly self-taught in more than just programming.
It's only really in the last category that people will have to solve a problem that's not well-solved. Most programming in "IT jobs" is applying the same well-understood solution to a new customer, environment, or problem, and a CS degree isn't really that important for that. Even the more technical programming consists mostly of well-solved problems, but it's handly to learn things like proper task and memory management and inter-process communication in multi-threaded, multi-process, and distributed environments in a formal setting. While all those things can be self-taught, that's a slow process full of painful memory leaks and security problems for most people.Re:Pig cycle (Score:5, Funny)
As someone probably wrote. In 1738, with a feather.
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
(BTW, you're absolutely right about "good" tech jobs being hard to find - as long as supply exceeds demand, there will be a downward trend towards the lower end of the wage scale.)
Re:Economics (Score:5, Informative)
from the link...
Re:We are the priests -1,troll (Score:4, Insightful)
High wages are good for the economy. The more people get paid, the more they spend. A single dollar spent increases GDP by $7. Competing on low wages is a race to poverty, and no first world country should be trying to do this.
I think trade has always led to stronger economies, and will do so- but rampant, unregulated free trade is wrecking the planet, and the uncertain nature of the beast is causing serious pain to many, in both first and third world countries.
I am sorry that you think your unions and government are so corrupt- but libertarian free trade is not the solution, reform of government is.
And regarding your comment about unions driving up wages, well its no coincidence that non-unionised fields like IT get savaged, if workers don't stand up for themselves no one else will...
Re:We are the priests (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We are the priests (Score:4, Insightful)
Insects make great drones. Humans should be able to aspire to something beyond the status of a workerbee.
That's ok, there's plenty in India (Score:5, Insightful)
For better or worse, that's where it's headed too.
Re:That's ok, there's plenty in India (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, no joke. No one wants to drop $30,000 on an education only to have their job outsourced to some guy who won't see $30,000 in his lifetime.
~Will
IP and copyright laws are the future of the US (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why they're pushing so hard for these laws, it's the very basis of the new economy.
Re:IP and copyright laws are the future of the US (Score:5, Insightful)
For a few years. Then some of the more resourceful grunt workers will set up shop for themselves, hire away the best of the rest, and start producing, and patenting, their own IO, and licensing it back to you. Or more likely, licensing it to the manufacturers in East Asia. In 20 years the US's IP exports will be sitcoms and action movies, though these are being offshored too. The 20th Century was the American Cnetury, it's over.
Re:IP and copyright laws are the future of the US (Score:5, Funny)
Music
Movies
Microcode (software)
High-speed Pizza delivery"
Looks like we're down to three.
Re:IP and copyright laws are the future of the US (Score:5, Interesting)
The nasty thing with the software patent laws that the US is pushing is how it puts the foundations of so much in their control. Unless you have something radically new (which may happen) then you'll be building on previous work "owned" by some US corporation which will take its cut.
It's like one of those pyramid schemes and like a pyramid scheme it will eventually collapse. No-one will be happy with a situation where the US sits on its arse and takes its IP tax off all the working people. Not even the US people will benefit as the ones making money off this IP racket are just the wealthy elite who are becoming more and more nation-indpendent.
The US will rely on its economic and military right to enforce international IP laws to the benefit of these people but this will simply postpone the inevitable and make the fall all that much harder. The reason being that with all the work and development transported to other nations, the balance of power, the capability of doing something, has shifted. US dominance in that circumstance is an unstable state.
It's blindingly obvious to anyone who thinks about it for themself, and like many blindingly obvious things, many haven't thought about it at all. The US is happily selling the rope to the hangman right now for a handsome short term windfall.
Re:IP and copyright laws are the future of the US (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why, but this strikes me as a move similar to funding Bin Laden to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, or being friendly with Saddam. They probably seemed a good idea, but turned round to bite the US on the ass later.
Re:IP and copyright laws are the future of the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree with you in the short term.
How can one develop IP if one doesn't have educated people around to develop it? What I really enjoy are companies that try to "keep the software architecture and design in the US and farm out the grunt work to India." Ummm... how do people become architects and designers without ever having done the grunt work themselves? Works for now... but weep for the future.
HA! (Score:3, Funny)
Whew, good thing we have India!
Supply and demand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Interesting)
The market is very ripe in my opinion for US developers. The only thing the offshoring option has done is hold wages down a bit for the last three years, but prices in India are going up too.
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Interesting)
I have worked on a number of projects that management dictated large numbers of people. A couple turned out to be super stars, a few were very good, some were capable to do grunt work and 40% drained a lot of time from the other 60%. This has caused many projects I have worked on to be over budget and long delayed. Often missing marketing windows. Yes even as an engineer I think this is important.
Where I work now they are constantly trying to hire only "principle level engineers" for the good of the company. This is crap. Every project needs varying levels of experience for a cost / performance trade off of the engineering and busy work that needs to be done. They also cause projects to be over budget and often late because none of the experienced engineers want to do the crap work.
Now add this to out sourcing. I do believe in the time it takes to write a design document that very carefully outlines every little detail that needs to go into project it could have been coded here anyway. My experience with out sourcing, and this includes India, China and Russia is that every detail is required. That is also my experience with outsourcing in the US. These companies make money by doing the least amount of work for the defined contact. You can not leave even one detail up to a good engineers imagination in these contracts.
Out sourceing has its place but cannot be the answer for everything. Much of it is the mananement solution "du jour". Much of managment is patting itself on the back at the moment but I still think this will change at some point in time.
One thing I hate is the business people in america who state catagorically that outsourcing manufacturing is good for america. As I implied above engineering takes ability and interest. The 40% I mentioned above lacked one or both of the two. Just because engineering was paying well did not mean they could perform. Not all members of our society are capable of high tech and require jobs in manufacturing to provide for their families.
Without projects based in the US there will be no way to screen new graduates for moving up the chain. Trying to entice students in comp sci should be targeted at convincing them there is a future and screening out this who have a chance of creating value for a company.
Re:Supply and demand (Score:3)
Talking about generalizations...
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Insightful)
The fears you highlight are not uncommon, but they are unfounded. Companies from India are not developing very good software.
Setting the Wayback machine for 1960...
<GM executive>The fears you highlight are not uncommon, but they are unfounded. Companies from Japan are not making very good cars.</GM executive>
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? Is an ambition to live a "normal, quiet life" something to be derided now? Many people want nothing more than to be comfortable, be secure financially, and raise a family. They do that by developing their skills and experience in such a way as to make that possible, just like people who have different ambitions; the motivation is irrelevant. Sure, lots of people want to be CEOs and millionaires, and lots of people want to drop off the grid and live whatever lifestyle they choose. None of these choices are any less "correct" than the other.
What's your problem, anyway?
Re:Supply and demand (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly why IBM doesn't want IT employee shortage to happen.
Re:Supply and demand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Supply and demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. A friend who works in my company's custom programming division (the finance portion, not the tech/IT part) told me that they're always interviewing for C++ programmers but never find candidates.
That office is full of H1Bs and also has a satellite office in Hyderbad. What he didn't realize until I told him was that those interviews were windowdressing; I'd bet the farm that no one is going to be hired out of those interviews.
It only serves as justification that "we can't find qualified^H^H^H^H^cheap enough labor, so we have to bring in these guest workers that work for a fraction of their US counterparts".
The only shortage, in the corporate eye, is in those who work for cheap and can be threatened with deportation like a filapino housemaid if they don't perform up to snuff.
Load of crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I have needs come up all the time, and I have a hell of a time filling them. I can tell you right know I don't give a fuck how old you are, and 99% of the open needs pay 6 figures, so if that's being a cheapskate, I'm not sure what to tell you. As far as the skillsets, well if you don't have the skills then why are you applying for the job? My clients know what they want, they are willing to pay for it, but the folks just aren't out there! They're all taken!
Oh, sure, I'll post a need and get 100 resumes in a day. But all of them turn out to be what I like to call "fucking morons".
I love when I ask for an expert J2EE architect and I ask, "What's your favorite J2EE design pattern?" The answer is always MVC (if they can even come up with one at all), which I guess could pass as J2EE, so I ask them to describe it for me.
Or, here's my personal favorite. A guy said he was an expert in Java and an expert in C/C++ (it always makes me nervous when people group C/C++ like that, since while C and C++ share some syntax, they are very fucking different animals!): HELLO! Where do these people come from and why are they interviewing with me for 6 figures instead of the local McDonalds for $6/hr?Frustrating!
Re:Load of crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Like myself, I would say they come from the C world, have learned Java involuntarily, and hold it at roughly the level of disdain it deserves.
"A dumbed-down vesion of C++" makes a pretty damned good description of Java, in general - Take a good, clear, flexible, generally-powerful language, C, extend it to allow better abstraction and data encapsulation, C++, then strip away all the underlying features that make it "powerful" in the name of "safety": Java. That nicely sums it up.
And even with that increased "safety", you can still shoot yourself in the foot (though you might need to wait for garbage collection to finish before the bullet actually leaves the barrel). Bugs result from programmer errors, not from the language used. Whether you add machine words, dereferenced pointers, or abstract objects that represent integers at some ambiguous level, if you expect 2 plus 2 to equal 3, your program won't work.
As for design patterns - Some of us can actually design and implement an idea. Some of us can recite textbooks to you. In my experience, those two categories very rarely overlap. If you want the latter rather than the former, your loss.
Re:Load of crap (Score:5, Interesting)
You say that your clients know what they want, and are willing to pay for it.... Maybe your clients THINK they know what they want, and are willing to pay for it.
Perhaps what they really want is two guys that are not as good for $50k. Or maybe one guy that is pretty good, but not an expert for $70k, and someone who isn't very good at all for $30k.
For the last 5 years I have been working for a client that has figured this out. I am part of a two person development team. I am very good at coding, and the woman that I work with is not (and never will be). Our team is fantastic.
I work on the difficult stuff, and build the framework of our applications, and she handles the grunt work. I am three times more productive because I don't have to worry about getting in and making changes to button labels and display views. She will also take in the bug reports, and more often than not will track down exactly where the error occurse. She might not know how to fix it, but by presenting me with exactly where the error occurse, I can fix it quickly.
The net result is that the client gets the equivelent of my skill at the price of hers, since someone has to do the work she is doing, and if the client insisted on "experts", they would need someone that makes 3 times as much to do her job with no increase in productivity.
Re:Supply and demand (Score:3, Insightful)
I was going to go in IT (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I was going to go in IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was going to go in IT (Score:5, Insightful)
From an Australian point of view
I was considering a career in computers when I finished school in 1990. I decided to become an auto electrician instead. So now what do I do?
- I now work on heavy mining equipment.
- It's not a physically demanding job, but it keeps me relatively fit.
- I work a roster of 4 12-hour days on and 4 days off.
- I get paid 85KAUD (more than twice the average
- I get six weeks annual leave and a heap of misc perks.
- I have a strong (not quite "aggressive" these days) union behind me keeping things safe and sane.
- I work on equipment that has computers and electronics out the wazoo, and is (relatively) clean
- I get the satisfaction of changing about 20 million dollars worth of equipment from "broken" to "fixed!" status every day.
- I get roughly the equivalent of an senior-level IT wage, from a four year apprenticeship that , frankly, any monkey can struggle through.
- I can also fix my car at home
Maybe in 10 years time IT will be the big earner again, but by then I'll be a million bucks ahead of that poor post-grad flipping burgers at McD's.
My advice to kids? Stick with the hands on work, keep computers as a sideline.
Re:I was going to go in IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, this is why I'm doing Desktop support and Network Administration.
You may laugh and say I'm the bottom of the barrel in the IT world, but - regardless of how many programming jobs are being outsourced, there are not less end user computers being purchased, and they will always need someone to clean spyware. And there are always more small businesses who need a simple file server or an exchange calendar, and they'll need someone to consult, sell, implement, and support that.
And that has to all be hands on. You want job security? Lower your standards and do a job where it is impossible for someone from india to do it.
~Will
Of course not ... (Score:5, Insightful)
No Problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No Problem (Score:4, Funny)
Hell, it worked for Accenture!
Normal ebb and flow (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that there were too few people for the jobs was why I was able to break in to the sysadmin / programming world without any credentials back in 1990.
Re:Normal ebb and flow (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading between the lines (Score:5, Interesting)
What does that mean? The real worry is not the lack of IT professionals, but rather the lack of keen, young, fresh and still clueless recently graduated computer science graduates to hire for peanuts and milk for all they're worth.
Nobody wants someone with 10 years of experience and a family to support, those people expect benefits and regular working hours! The nerve!
Re:Reading between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
And in the same time they fire lots of people to boost there shares.
http://forbes.com/markets/2005/05/05/0505automark
FTA : Yeah I sooo want to work in that business, they have so much respect for there workers.
Re:Reading between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
When the sauce is on the other gander (Score:4, Insightful)
Universities could cut their costs drastically if allowed to fire expensive tenured professors (like Prof Owen Astrachan), and bring in excellent but far cheaper educators on H1B visas from India and other countries. This would allow them to remain competitive and thrive in todays global education market.
Prof Owen Astrachan and his ilk might selfishly object to this proposal, but they have to understand that the world doesn't owe them an overpaid living, and after lifestyle adjustments, I'm sure he'll be able to pick up work teaching at the local Ace TechTrain! franchise.
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
For those who remain (Score:3, Informative)
I may then move to the USA , As one thing a shortage of workers means is a nice hefty salary.
So for those who remain in the field could very likely expect a rather nice pay rise, for those remaining jobs that don't get offshored that is (mainly tech , Services , administration etc things that can't yet be offshored easily )
misrep (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my major gripes about 'the industry' as it stands is the lack of distinction between what is considered 'IT' work and what is programming 'and ecetera and ecetera'.
Saying 'well, we need more CS grads' is straight depressing. What they should be saying is 'we need more software developers (computer science grads) or we need more System administrators (computer information system grads)'.
When I was in school it seemed that people wanting to do CIS work were getting CS degrees and visa versa. This discredits to both areas of work.
All too often I've noticed jobs that require a computer science degree when that should be slated under computer system information management. Or a requirement for a computer engineer when in fact, the work is computer science related.
Come on folks - let's get our terminology right! I work a job that required a computer science degree and any CIS major could work this job in a heart beat.
I guess getting the point across regarding what is IT would probably require a weekend feel good seminar for the clinically lost.
Not just IT (Score:5, Interesting)
H1B visas are a real option (Score:4, Insightful)
To be honest, most skilled American IT employees are gainfully employed now (with some exceptions in some areas). Some will look at H1Bs as just a way to hire cheap overseas labor to replace current "living wage" American jobs, but in reality there is a real need despite the coincidental labor cost differences.
Americans should realize that they need to compete in this new world economy by either working for fewer wages and benefits, or by offering much higher skills and capabilities. Or both. Congress realizes this, and should take action to support American business, the economy, and people.
Re:H1B visas are a real option (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is very nearly a fine definition of the word "extortion".
Saying that we need to cut our own throats to statisfy THEIR needs -- or they'll simply be "forced" to turn to third-world dirt-hut coders -- amounts to the same thing. And before anyone gives me a lecture on "global economies" and other politically correct bullshit, I'll remind you that I'm only responding to their supposed concern about a lack of US talent.
If they're so fucking worried about losing in-country talent, then they'd better simply buckle down and pay what it costs to get it. That position is NO DIFFERENT than the position they take when they claim we're too expensive. I counter-claim THEY are too cheap. I further counter-claim that any hand-wringing a US company does about losing US talent is simply a campaign to improve their image, and to suck up to Congress before joining the corporate outcry to allow more H1Bs and to avoid offshoring penalties.
So ["Insert Corporation Entity Here"] needs to shave a few million to keep stockholders happy? I'd say CEO salaries are a fine place to start, rather than whacking hard-working, often highly skilled people with house and car payments and a family to feed.
Yeah, same old story.
Re:H1B visas are a real option (Score:4, Insightful)
Easily as stupid as paying an athlete 90 million dollars to wear sneakers.
Re:H1B visas are a real option (Score:3, Interesting)
Also in europe, note that most employees can get 6 weeks of vacation and a lot of other benefits. It's a tangent, I know, but I'm on a project right now in England, and I'm amazed at the work/life balance here.
I believe it's directly due to the lack of corruption at the top rungs of the companies. And yes, I consider the multi-million dollar salaries of NA. execs corrupt. The payoff to Carly was a fine example of this. Legal? yes
The H1B visa myth (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, for a dose of reality, check out this opinion piece [arstechnica.com] over at Ars Technica. It points to a study by a UC Davis professor (who wrote this op-ed piece over at News.com [com.com]) found out that there was, in fact, no studies showing a shortage of IT workers. Why would both academics and indistry go off on such a chicken-little hissy fit? Money, of course.
What IBM and other tech companies really want is dirt cheap labor, not just sufficient labor. Hence their push to get H1B visas while there is still a fairly high unemployment rate among computer professionals (personally, I know of a *lot* of former colleagues who have left the industry because they couldn't find work). H1B workers have their hands tied, since the second they are no longer employed in the US, they get kicked out. That is a huge stick for a company to be able to use against an employee.
And how does academia benefit from the doom and gloom? Easy. More research grants. More money pumped into computer science departments to "attract new stidents." More territory for people who are more bureacratic empire builders than they are actual educators.
Re:H1B visas are a real option (Score:3, Informative)
Until that time, I've got to pay my bills and feed my family. So I'll stick with my "high" Amercian salary and benefits package, thank you.
To be honest? (Score:3, Informative)
As for your unqualified statements...my sister does training in India and while there ae some highly qualified workers there is also a hidden management structure. Typically she see's a the sharp guy or gal with an entourage of less capable employees who pay tribute in exchange for 'management' in the area of decision making. Not to say thes
Re:H1B visas are a real option (Score:3, Insightful)
We're still waiting for American CEOs to lead the way on this one...
hire the unemployed IT professionals? (Score:4, Informative)
A couple of weeks ago, I logged in Siemens worldwide jobs site, and, in my field, 321 out of 322 open positions were in China.
Most employers could see the benefits of offering job security and paying decent salaries as an effective means of retaining the talent (and all those hours spent in training...). Instead, they hire temps, pay huge fees to temp agencies and recruiters, they "outsource", etc. Without a knowledge base, there is no future in any company.
It is more a problem of "if I pay you less, I can keep more for myself" than a true lack of qualified professionals on the market. If engineers wanted to flip burgers they would have studied at the burger flipping college!
Re:hire the unemployed IT professionals? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:hire the unemployed IT professionals? (Score:5, Funny)
IBM and double standards (Score:5, Interesting)
If IBM were so concerned about the number of IT workers, maybe it should become a better employer first.
You see, IBM for the past several years has been on a hiring binge, but with very rare exception, every new hire is brought in as a "supplemental". A supplemental, by IBM's definition, is a temporary position that CAN NOT continue past 18 months. Once your supplemental service is over, you are blacklisted by IBM for another 6 months - no rehire possible.
When I left IBM (near the end of my supplemental "tour of duty"), IBM was in a hiring freeze, there was no way to become a full-time employee, regardless of demand. Oh, and as a supplemental for IBM, the ONLY benefit you are eligible for is the employee stock purchase plan. That's right, no insurance, no 401k or pension, no education assistance, nothing else!
If IBM needs more employees, then they need to stop chewing through their existing stock (and spitting them out) so rapidly.
Re:IBM and double standards (Score:4, Informative)
Re:IBM and double standards (Score:4, Informative)
the layoffs provide managers with an opportunity to dump their deadwood.
Oh, I should mention that this is a good thing, because IBM is so afraid of ex-employee lawsuits that it's damned near imposible to get fired for cause.
I know two people who got fired.
The first one took a position as CEO of a client, without quitting his job at IBM first. He was drawing both paychecks for about a four-month period, and working within IBM to sabotage our efforts to get the client in question to pay a large outstanding invoice. He was fired, but he was also given a large cash settlement in exchange for a promise never to sue IBM -- which absolutely amazed me given that he was scamming IBM.
The second one was a project manager who wanted to tell a services client that they needed to pay us an extra $200K on a $500K project. The project was over budget due to mismanagement and he wanted to tell the customer "Sorry, we already spent an extra thousand hours, you'll have to pay this bill for those hours. Sorry we didn't tell you about it and let you make the decision as the contract specified. Pay up". This PM was specifically ordered by his boss not to do this very, very stupid thing, and then did it anyway. In addition to that, the guy had a long history of backstabbing co-workers in an effort to build his own little empire. That is normal in some corporate cultures but anathema in IBM's.
He was also fired, although the process took six months, resulted in a board of inquiry that examined his boss and his boss's motivations. Though the firing was fully justified and the boss was exonerated, it was long an painful.
Given how hard it is to fire anyone at IBM, it should be no surprise that IBM managers have a strong preference for trying people out via supplemental and contractor relationships prior to hiring them full-time. It should also be no surprise that there are layoffs after hiring binges, because that's the only way to get rid of the lousy employees who slipped in.
Huh ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Technology Paradise Lost
[...] many believe that the sector will regain its past glory and blistering growth rates. [...] it's not going to happen. [...]
Today
Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years
[...] worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals [...]
If there's no sector growth, is there really increasing IT workers demand ?
Aren't these mutually exclusive points of view ?
*Yawn* not again (Score:3, Insightful)
The industry's wet dream is for IT-workers to become completely disposable and low paid.
We really should not let this happen, and most could use a history lesson to figure out what happens when we get into this situation.
There once was a seriously real need for labour unions folks, and that time could easily come again. Maybe it is already here.
Same old - same old (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all a scam.
Big computer, defense, and, to a lesser extent, manufacturing companies pay shills in academia and "think tanks" to gin up these kinds of studies every couple of years so Congress has some political cover when they increase the H1-B cap. It's not true, and it never has been. The only shortage that ever materialized in those two decades happened during the boom, and that was caused by a huge spike in demand.
The goal here is to make sure there's plenty of hungry technical people around so they don't have to pay them too much.
Equilibirum and the graying work force (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty soon companies that are flocking to the third world will run out of qualified IT workers there too. Then the salaries will start rising. How long before they reach equilibrium? I'll bet not very long.
Too, I haven't read TFA yet (running out the door to my non-outsourced IT job) but I will bet that it didn't make mention of the huge proportion of workers (and not just IT workers) that are getting close to retirement age. We could see a spike in demand the likes of which nobody has seen, and one that even a third-world supply of workers won't be able to fill; all to replace current positions, to say nothing of economic expansion. (Business 2.0 had a recent article about it called "The Coming Job Boom.")
I'm 45 and I work in IT. I'm not worried. In a few years it'll be raining soup. Grab a bucket.
Advise to my son (Score:3, Insightful)
Why choose IT when our arrogant US govt rewards corporations for outsourcing and keeps increasing the number of foreign student and work visas for the fewer jobs here instead of rebuilding and expanding our educational systems.
No need for IT grants here or money for research projects or support for local education funding when we can get it done in China or India. We would rather spend our money on wars, and since we have a monopoply on the OS anyway, who cares.
So son, become a doctor or an architect or a marine scientist or something you enjoy first, then get the tools to do the jobs yourself, and oh yes, learn Mandarin along with your Spanish.
Just pure BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps its got to do with the current job situation where only the people who are truly interested in Computer Science, major in it. So you have students of much higher quality.
Judging from the total disregard for the job market shown by some of my US friends shows that the US still has a very bright future in Computer Science as long as these "anomalies" are around.
These companies have vested interest in outsourcing cheap labour. Don't believe what they say. They just wanna keep salaries low and their bottomlines high. The anomalies are more common than they would have you believe!
Corp short sighted destruction of local brainforce (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a tech corp that has laid of 60 000 people (or about 60% of the brainforce). Those that remain are in hell for a few reasons:
1: We are expected to get double the work done.
2: We spend most days interacting with Indian Contractors. Makes #1 harder.
3:Coding we used to enjoy has be replaced by draconian productivity sapping process. We metric our coders to death. Klocs is the new religion. I am in the invite list for several doc reviews and code reviews per day. Makes #1 harder.
I really wonder when the have outsourced most of this where they think the next generation of tech leaders will come from. It is not hard to imagine that India/China will stop serving our interests and instead compete with us. Already happening in my industry (telecom).
We are led by short sighted morons.
Bought & Paid-For Advertisement-Propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
A job vs. college (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's an IT professional? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I graduated, back in the days when punched cards and paper tape were still common, there was no single vendor dominance of vast swathes of the IT industry and it was therefore important to teach people the principles of Computer Science - algorithms, algorithmic complexity, computational methods, principles of machine operations, operating system design, relational database design - rather than turning out people familiar with Windows, C++ and Oracle knowledge.
People with those fundamental skills have much greater adaptability and potential career longevity - after all, very little has changed in the fundamentals in the last 25 years although superficial things have changed considerably. I can quite happily pick up a book and start programming in C# or Java if I need to; on the other hand, the graduates I've had in recently for interview can competently operate Visual Studio but seem rather hazy about balanced trees, queues or the performance implications of changing privilege modes on the average CPU. And perhaps they don't need to - some library or "wizard" will hide the difficult bits in some way no-one will quite understand, but probably won't break until the original coder has moved on.
It seems employers don't want people with "fundamental" skills who can adapt to changing technologies, they want an MSIE/CNAA/xyz who can deal with a specific problem at a specific point in time and whom they can replace later on with someone with a different "qualification" when their needs change.
Unforunately, universities seem to have commoditised their graduate programmes to churn out tradesmen in contemporarily fashionable skills to supply the job market as it exists rather than fulfilling their traditional roles of providing the foundations for lifelong professional development.
It's no wonder that people aren't going in for these kind of courses, knowing their career lifetimes are likely to be relatively short and tied to the waxing and waning fortunes of manufacturers.
If you want to work in a trade, you can earn considerably more being a plumber or electrician than working in IT. I'm seriously considering it.
If you want to be an "IT professional", the opportunities to do so are few and far between. You're probably better advised to find a nice Open Source Software project to work on in your spare time...
This happened before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Space was supposed to have been the future. But it didn't turn out that way. The number of engineering students in universities dropped precipitously. After all, why go in to a job like that with little or no future, where your industry could evaporate overnight at the whim of a few "business leaders."
Later in the Early 1990s, I witnessed something similar when half of my class at the university disappeared because all the major defense contractors were laying off.
Engineers and other technology workers are well paid in good times. However, you need to keep a reserve and a backup career just in case the industry you're working in goes in to the toilet.
In the scheme of industries which have suffered, you folks in IT have little to complain about. Ask an engineer from the 1970's what life was like after the Apollo missions ceased.
Re:This happened before... (Score:4, Interesting)
I met a guy in the mid 90s who was once an engineer in the Apollo program. What was he doing? He was a cemetary plot dealer, I was buying one for a family member. Kind of poetic, from the theme of this article.
Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
putting the cart before the horse (Score:3, Insightful)
None of the labor shortages predicted during the past 30 years has come to pass.
Some pundits, politicians and industry leaders seem to think that if the market is flooded with more technical degreed graduates, industry will be attracted. In other woirds, build it and they will come. That's putting the cart before the horse.
Enrollments have risen and fallen in direct proportion to the demand for graduates of the curriculum. For the past 5 years companies have been shedding workers in the US. Consequently, enrollments in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering have fallen dramatically. Should this trend continue, these curricula may be discontinued or scaled back at many of the 2nd and 3rd tier engineering schools.
Why do we keep hearing this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the shortage? It's crap.
I think this is what big business keeps saying so they can convince the US gov't to let them bring in more H1B's who'll work for a bag of peanuts every week.
What are they studying, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have a big drop in the percentage of top people going the computer science or IT route, then they must be a corresponding increase in the people taking other courses. Either a big jump in specific areas, or else it's dispersed across disciplines. The former indicates that there's a specific discipline that is now seen as a hot item. The latter indicates that computer science/IT is now seen as a cold item. So, which is it? And, if the former, is it just our path, or are there other disciplines similarly affected? All the sciences, for example?
Once you know what the real reasons are behind the figures, then maybe you can do something to intelligently address the problem.
Trends in Software Development Hiring (Score:5, Insightful)
In spite of the fact that there are more jobs available, companies are still only willing to pay salaries in line with the Dot Com Bust era. In other words, I get calls almost every day (and frequently multiple calls) from recruiters who are representing clients that want to pay 35% less than what I was making as a full-time employee in 2002 and 25% less than I'm making now as a 1099 consultant now.
The ones who are willing to pay the higher salaries (read: Wall St.) expect skillsets that are so specific that they will not talk to you if you do not have every one of them. In my opinion, they are asking for trouble because the technologies in use there are used very rarely outside of those sectors. When the IT staff they have in place now decide to move on, they will be hard-pressed to find trained people to replace them.
I actually had an HR employee at a company who was interested in me as a potential employee tell me that their guideline for translating 1099 to full-time salary was to subtract 30%. I asked her how they arrived at that figure and her response was that it took into consideration benefits, vacation time, sick days and retirement plans.
Color me stupid but benefits these days are not what they used to be from the perspective of the amount the company contributes. I pay less than double than others at full time companies do, but I'm paying 100% of the cost. This isn't your father's IBM where the company paid for nearly everything and you had an amazing medical, dental, vision, etc. plan.
Couple that with the fact that the vast majority of people do not take a lot of sick days each year and you have me scratching my head and wondering what drugs that HR person was on when she told me 30% and expected me to accept it like it was a given.
Am I living in a pipe dream?
Re:Trends in Software Development Hiring (Score:5, Interesting)
I have experinced the same thing as a programmer. I was laid-off during the burst and could not get a job because I was overqualified. People would not hire me for 35% less because they figured I would just leave when someone came up to what I am worth.
My solutions was simple, I started my own business until I was able to get a new job. I refuse to accept a full time position that will require me to give up that business and now I have a high paying full time job and a thriving programming business on the side. I suggest for any programmer that they do not sign any IP agreements and tie themselves into one company. Do not put all your eggs in one basket....
I am no longer afraid of the outsourcing issue becasue I have found that many of the major companies are oursourcing but many of the small businesses in your area do not know anyone in India and do not want to deal with someone they cannot see and talk too. There is a very fertile field of work that makes me plenty of money.
My formula does not work for everyone but it is what i have experienced.
This is a GOOD THING(tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
We have VB "programmers" and Flash "programmers" filling up teh intarwebs with more useless and poorly written "apps". We have people replacing perfectly good and efficient text interfaces with point and click GUIs where such a thing is NOT beneficial. Case in point... where I work we had a decent text menu based system but it got replaced with a poorly designed GUI. The users all complain about how what they used to do in just a few seconds now takes minutes. And they're right. Now this company is going to implement this monstrosity in Java. Can you believe it? JAVA for god's sake!!! They can't even write a proper app in their hodgepodge of C and they plan to do this in Java?
The drop off in people going for computer related degrees can only mean one thing: the wannabees have left the building because the party is over. This means that the only people signing up are people who (gasp!!) LIKE to PROGRAM. People who CAN PROGRAM! Making money with computers is OK, but unless you love these machines, you shouldn't bother. All the "get rich quick" types ruined the business during the 90s but now those fair weather friends aren't so hot to get into IT because now there's work to be done...
Deja-vu? The great bogo-shortage debunked (Score:4, Insightful)
And that the article is thoroughly debunked here on slashdot, in the exact same manner?
*sigh* Okay one more time:
1) To work as a lawyer/doctor/nurse/chemical engineer, you must have a degree like JD/MD/RNBS/BSCE. IT has never been like that, and still isn't. A CCIE or CISSP will earn you more than BSCS. Very few IT jobs require a degree of any kind, and the few IT jobs that do require a degree, will typically accept any technical degree.
2) How many IT workers can actually be called "Computer Scientists" ? There are all sorts of IT related degrees today: network engineering, software engineering, information science, etc. Most of these degrees seem much closely related to an actual IT job roles than "computer science."
3) The IT is glutted as it is. Where is the crises in a lack new BSCSs? Especially when that degree was never in high demand, even when there was a shortage of IT pros.
4) IT jobs are sent overseas as fast the major companies can ship them. Why train for a field that is already glutted, and likely to get worse?
5) I suspect that employers will never be satisfied with the pool of IT workers; and that colleges are finding it difficult to find people to sign up for the nearly worthless BSCS (especially women). So we see these bogus articles about the the bogus shortage of BSCSs. College comp sci departments, and employers are looking out for their interests - not yours.
Fool Me Once (Score:4, Insightful)
The old adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me." applies here. IBM and other companies obviously want to increase the number of H1-B's and universities want to increase the number of students. So many IT people were burned when the dot com bubble burst that they are rightly not interested in going back or into the field. And to add insult to injury what few jobs were left were filled by the H1-B's, essentially company serfs with the govt's blessing.
I only recently after almost four and a half years got a REAL job in the IT field again. Three of those years were spent in call center hell. Bottom line: Choose a field you are going to love, come thick or thin. Not based on where the demand is, real or imagined.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interpretive languages at fault? (Score:4, Insightful)
This 'coding is a destiny' and cant be learned crap is just a self comforting excuse for saddos who dont have the requisite skillset to actually get a job or compete in the job market.
Re:Interpretive languages at fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you only hire people who look good on the jobmarket, who sell themselves well, you either get bogus posers who don't get anything done, or if they are really good (yes, sometimes looking good and being good coincides), they pretty soon find a better job, since the others notice too.
you mean java is slow? (Score:4, Insightful)
please, wake me up when you've got a new cliche to peddle. as a java developer who develops on windows and linux and deploys to solaris I really don't know what you're on about. it takes more effort or a great deal of stupidity to write non cross-platform java. and as for it being just like XML... thanks for that. at least I don't have to go to the trouble of exposing your ignorance.
I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but I'm having a bad day.
landscapers (Score:5, Insightful)
Every job or position is just as hard as every other. Say that to yourself over and over, because you're obviously a snob who needs to get over an assinine, overinflated sense of your own importance.
A car salesman needs to know about sales technique, trends in the industry, demographics, and the technical details of how cars work. A grocery store manager has 10,000 items to remember, including watching their popularity and knowing their proper use, so that when a customer asks him he can give a ready answer. And a landscaper needs to know which plants are best for which soil, shade, and design criteria.
Not everyone finds their calling in high school. Some people know their calling, but don't get the breaks to get there.
I knew when I was 14 that I wanted to program computers when I grew up. That's what I do now, almost 30 years later, but it took me the first 10 years or so to arrange it.
Before that I was a
If you asked one of the people who knew me in one of those other roles, they might tell you I'd be a landscaper by now.
I gotta tell you, some days I consider it.
By the way, that former friend of yours probably would make an excellent contact for you the next time you're downsized or simply fired for being a jerk.
Re:landscapers (Score:3, Insightful)
It's this kind of politically correct BS that's causing outsourcing and the shortage of programmers in the USA. What you say was dogma in the early days of the soviet revolution in the USSR. The problem, as they quickly found out, is that no one wanted to do the hard work studying engineering if they could earn the same wage as a grocery bagger. By the early 1920s, Lenin reinstated the capitalist principle of paying more for jobs that require more skill,
Re:landscapers (Score:3, Insightful)
People are just griping because you're coming across as a Wesley Crusher type.
The educational papers would do you well. You'd absorb the material quickly because you're interested in it. It would also broaden your knowledge and save you from re-inventing the wheel when you're working on projects.
I started programming when I was 13. But I stopped, because no one would hire me without a "certificate"
Have you ever seen code written by a 13 year old working by themselves? It looks awfully similar t
[OT] Re:Not only America (Score:5, Insightful)
For me it would have more to do with the threat of software patents than the threat of outsourcing. At least with outsourcing you know what you are up against. With the software patent mess you could be doing just fine until suddenty $GREEDYCORP comes and pulls the plug just because they had the resources to buy a patent when they though of the same idea that you also thought of.
(sorry for being a bit offtopic, but for me its a much bigger reason)
Re:Not only America (Score:5, Interesting)