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U.S. IT Hiring Increases Despite Outsourcing 497

Posted by Zonk from the yay-for-jobs dept.
surefooted1 writes "A CNN article reports that a new study has shown that U.S. tech hiring has increased, despite oversees outsourcing. It mentions that the job market is higher today than it was at the height of the dot-com boom." From the article: "The study suggests that there are several factors in the continued growth in demand for IT workers here. The report said part of it is due to the use of offshoring by U.S. companies, including start-up firms, to limit their costs and thus grow their businesses. That, in turn, creates more opportunities here even as an increasing amount of work is done overseas. The study also said that companies from a variety of sectors in the economy continue to discover greater efficiency and more competitive operations through investment in IT."
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U.S. IT Hiring Increases Despite Outsourcing More

U.S. IT Hiring Increases Despite Outsourcing

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  • It's Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:44PM (#14786089) Journal
    This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.

    How addicted? So addicted that we'll hire people skilled in it no matter where they live.

    Don't believe me? Learn how to speak English and get an I.T. related degree. Bam! You're employed.

    The United States is a developed nation. What do developed nations do? Just sit around on their hands waiting for the other nations to catch up? Not quite. Industrialized is one thing but to have a solid infrastructure and to lead the world in technological advances is the current goal in the game.

    Everything is beginning to depend on computational devices. Maybe they aren't used in the end result but they're most certainly used in developing/researching any and all products. Even farming has many uses for computers. It's the new basis for information exchange and delivery. How much more important can an industry get?

    Why then, is it news that the United States has a great job market for IT Workers? This shouldn't be surprising at all. These workers are needed everywhere and anyone who can't see that hasn't looked at the stock market recently.
    • > This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.

      Keeping America competitive requires affordable technology. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to technology, which is often outsourced to spicy-food-eating parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through oil. Since 2001, venture capitalists have blown nearly $10 trillion to develop faster, cheaper, and more reliable technology sources -- and the guy who throws chairs at

    • Re:It's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:52PM (#14786182) Journal
      It's important to note that we are nowhere near approaching market saturation as computers are concerned.

      There are still millions of homes that do not have computers at all; that number is shrinking every day. And more and more households are building home networks, some even going so far as to add servers. Home automation is becoming practical and affordable, meaning even more IT-related equipment is going into the home.

      Schools are still trying to catch up to the digital revolution as well. The local district has a 4:1 student to PC ratio, and their target is 1:1. They'll be buying PCs as quickly as budget allows. The more they buy, the more they'll spend on IT--and most of that will necessarily be in the immediate area.

      And of course businesses are investing more and more into IT as they stop seeing it as a money sink and start viewing it as a way to increase efficiency or even as an investment.

      The outsourcing we're seeing is simply the offloading of what jobs can be done without being on site. There is a lot more IT work that requires proximity than work that can be sent overseas.

      • Re:It's Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ucklak ( 755284 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:10PM (#14786868)
        There are still millions of homes that do not have computers at all;

        I don't even think that computers are important in the traditional sense.
        They are too complicated for the average consumer.
        Devices that eliminate the horrible computing UI that just perform simple tasks are what the masses need.

        Look at how DVD has replaced VCR's in the media player sense.
        People get the -buy an electronic device, -buy content for that device, -hit play.
        A good bit of the VCR's sold were just that, players even they had the record feature.
        A lot of people that did record on VCR's recorded at the time they were watching becuase that's the concept they know, get it as it's happening.

        Remember those Internet appliances at Y2K? They required a monthly subscription and still too complicated for the end user and not really a reason for the common person to use it.

        People get iPod. The extra step required to get their music on it is a self-educational step they're willing to take.
        Really a computer isn't needed for that. A network appliance with an Internet connection and iTunes interface is all that's required.

        Take digital photography today, that's the barrier that will bring or self-educate the end user to the electronig age. The ability to instantly share photos and experiences.
        Kodak and Flickr and other photo outfits have the right idea about setting up a shared space for users to share photos (although I disagree with the requirement for a viewer to have to sign up). People who didn't know how to program their VCR do understand how to use Kodak's interface and share photos.

        I believe that Microsoft and Apple are the reason that computing or computing devices aren't really in more homes. The term 'computer' sounds like you have to be smart to know how to use it.
        The same people that bought NES and Playstations with their Disney VHS tapes don't buy computers because there are too many choices.
        For MS and Apple to keep the computing angle going (their livelihood), they've abandoned the appliance market.

        People would just be fine with an Internet Browser, and a way to organize their photos. Pre Y2K when digital photography didn't have the market it has now, we all knew that those expensive appliances would fail.
        If there is going to be a $100 laptop, why not a $100 screen with basic OS and can handle simple networking and external storage?

        • Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)

          by SchrodingersRoot ( 943800 )
          People would just be fine with an Internet Browser, and a way to organize their photos.

          I'm not so sure about this. My previous experiences in retail would seem to say otherwise. I mean, there are still similar devices available; MSN TV still exists. I've even sold one.

          One. To an old lady who kept coming back to the store once a month for 6 months to look at it before buying it.

          In contrast to hundreds of computers. Even people who only want simple internet access seem to prefer to buy a full fledged (if bott

    • Re:It's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:01PM (#14786271)
      This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.

      I dunno. Saying we are addicted to technology is like saying we are addicted to air and clean drinking water.

      Secondly, business is like war. Those with the most resources and better technology win (or go home with the bigger stock options). A company that doesn't have a competant IT staff and workers skilled in using computers and is competing with a company that does, is like a band of spear men going against a tank in a war game.

      Sure, if you throw enough spear men at a tank, you can beat it like in Civilization II, but your basically bleeding more money than a drunken VC at a Phantom Console shareholders meeting.

      No one wants to be sent on a Bi-Plane with machine guns against a guy with Stealth bombers and guided missles. The same goes for a guy with a hand crank calculator and a peice of paper going against a guy with a copy of excel and a laser printer.

      • Re:It's Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:27PM (#14786510) Homepage Journal
        Sure, if you throw enough spear men at a tank, you can beat it like in Civilization II,

        Only if you're REALLY, REALLY, REALLY lucky. A tank could literally roll over entire armies of spear men, crushing them where they stand. And God forbid they should stand close enough together for the tank to fire a slug. You could lose hundreds of men in a single salvo.

        Consider other scenarios for a moment:

        * The firing lines of Civil War soldiers could be completely cut down by a single man with a modern machine gun.
        * A Roman Legion [wikipedia.org] could be completely destroyed by a single bomb from a fighter or helicopter.
        * An RPG or Bazooka could eliminate a castle's defenses by simply blowing a hole through the side.
        * The armor of a knight would fail completely in the face of armor piercing munitions. (It's quite possible that an average handgun would be sufficient to penetrate many armors of the time.)
        * The most fearsome warships of the Spanish Armada could be destroyed over the horizon through shelling by battleships that are now a century old.
        * The best biplane pilots would have been eliminated by guided missles before they ever got their guns close enough to take a shot at a jet fighter. (Assuming they could catch a jet aircraft, which they couldn't.)
        * The best battleships of World War I could be easily destroyed by planes from a modern carrier without any losses on the carrier's side.

        You point still stands, but it's actually stronger than you think. Having old weaponry won't necessarily prevent you from winning, but lacking technology will guarantee your loss. :-)
        • "Assuming they could catch a jet aircraft, which they couldn't."

          I think that the A10-A may be able to fly slow enough that if the Biplane was at it's maximum altitude and used that to get to maximum mechanical tolerance velocity (don't know the proper term for the spped just shy of when the wings shear off), he may just possibly catch up to the A10. Not that his guns would do much of anything.

          Sorry, I know it's off on an un-needed tanget but it was fun to think about.
          -nB
        • (It's quite possible that an average handgun would be sufficient to penetrate many armors of the time.)

          Easily. At close range, even a .22 would go through plate armor. Probably not a 2" thick shield held in front of the armored opponent, but the plate armor itself, sure.

          Chip H.
    • That's true until you gain some experience and start looking for your next job.

      At that point, you'lf find yourself categorized and pigeonholed based on the tech that you've had formal wexperience with, not the tech you actually know.

      It's easier to find work (in some ways) when you're fresh out of school.

  • Told you so (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) *
    The more people on the planet involved in the global economy, the more we will ALL benefit. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.

    This doesn't mean you can get complacent and stop learning and innovating. Just that everyone can learn, innovate, create, and all humanity can benefit and get wealthier.

    • Re:Told you so (Score:2, Troll)

      by mabu ( 178417 )
      This global economy:

      System Administrator ($60k/yr in the states) ==> India (CHEAP)
      Software Engineeer ($80k/yr in the states) ==> India (CHEAP)

      Data Entry ($8/hour) ==> United States
      Classified Ad Placer ($xxx) ==> United States

      Yes, everyone benefits. Some much more than others. The rich get richer, the poor, get poorer. Some really super poor get to move into the middle class, but the middle class in the states gets shafted.

      This is how the "global economy" works. As long as there's some pseud

    • Re:Told you so (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cyber-vandal ( 148830 )
      I'd love to learn how you get the 2-3 years experience in a platform you don't work on in order to avoid losing out to India. Funnily enough there are no courses available in that.
    • I work my butt off in college, i work my butt off at professional levels, they outsource my job and hire me for the position which should involve a raise at LOWER pay just so their execs can suck up more money, but "I" should work harder.

      You sound like a supply sider who needs a wakeup call.

    • Complete and Utter Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Concern ( 819622 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:13PM (#14786902) Journal
      First of all, this article neither proves or even really implies anything in either direction about the general notion of "globalization" - which is really just a codeword for Laissez Faire capitalism.

      Pretending it does is utterly and prima facie dishonest.

      But since you mention it, the free trade premise is complete and utter bullshit.

      Free Trade (sometimes also known as Globalization) just means that if you don't like the laws somewhere, you can go somewhere else to avoid them. If you think it would be more economically advantageous to grow cotton with slavery, you can find a nation where it's legal, and these free traders will happily buy it back where it *used to be* illegal. By the way, do you think anyone benefits from a labor "market" that's so "free" it includes competing against slave labor?

      Well, I guess the slavemasters benefit, temporarily. But not even them, in the longer term. But I digress. Now, remember, IT outsourcing isn't cotton picking - but it piggybacks on the imbalances (currency etc) created by the same differences in social and legal policy.

      "This is not about slavery!" Of course not. But the reason the example is so upsetting is that it's the perfectly logical conclusion of laissez faire ("free trade"). We used to have laws that would compensate for the legal and social differences between trading partners, so that you could actually have effective legal protections for workers, social safety nets, and so forth. Free trade is a conspiracy to delicately and gradually remove these policies by making them economically unviable through trade policy.

      As a more practical matter it comes not to explicit American-style slavery but "working conditions." It's quite respectable in some economic circles to have a society where the proletariat is, from the age of 6-8 years old, forced to work 14 hours a day in a factory for subsistence wages, where when unsafe working conditions result in some heinous injury making them unable to work means they're thrown onto the street, and without any form of welfare they beg and die there.

      Without meaningful public education, class stratification occurs and you once again get back to where we started, a hundred or two years ago.

      The problem is that even beyond all the outrageous dishonesty in the free trade policy and rhetoric, it's also a stupid idea. The first world's economy is powered by consumer spending - by a big old liberal lower and middle class. It feeds off the innovation, curiosity and energy of a large population of educated people with leisure time and disposable income.

      We've already come from Laissez Faire, and we ran screaming into the Liberal's arms, where we found the most incredible prosperity in human history.
      • That "slave labor" of globalization has brought 100 million people out of absolute poverty (making under $1 per day) in China, but perhaps you would prefer if they returned to absolute poverty.

  • So outsourcing hasn't killed the economy? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stlhawkeye ( 868951 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:48PM (#14786133) Homepage Journal
    In other words, outsourcing has actually helped our economy and provided new employment opportunities for the displaced, just like almost every respectable economist has said it would, just like it has always done over the years. Yes, perhaps Paul Krugman disagrees, but I said "respectable" economist, which immediately disqualifies him.

    • Re:So outsourcing hasn't killed the economy? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by halivar ( 535827 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `reglefb'> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:53PM (#14786192)
      In other words, outsourcing has actually helped our economy and provided new employment opportunities for the displaced

      Correlation != causation. There's nothing to say the tech industry wouldn't be even more vibrant without the outsourcing.
      • The AC reply to this is spot-on, but let me elaborate. There's no fundamental economic difference between outsourcing a job and importing a good. If you prefer, you can think of 'outsourcing a job' as 'impoting a service'. And there's no fundamental economic difference between 'goods' and 'services'; in fact most economic theory will use 'commodity' to refer to both goods and services.

        So pick only two:
        1) Against outsourcing
        2) For trade
        3) Have a coherent point of view
        • So pick only two:
          1) Against outsourcing
          2) For trade
          3) Have a coherent point of view

          Listen, I don't know much about economics, but couldn't there be a rational middle ground of "for trade, but not for quite as much importing as we're doing"? I mean, the trade deficit and INCREDIBLY low % of savings we in the USA have...I mean, there's got to be some questions of sustainability about that, right?

          Similarly, with outsourcing...I think that we're "lucky" that it's been proven not to be a panacea, that it brings
      • Correlation != causation.

        The rallying cry of the ignorant. There is a dramatic & distinct difference between indirect correlation, i.e. synchronicity, and direct correlation, i.e. causation.

        Every day I get up when it's dark outside and scratch my arse. Shortly thereafter the sun rises in the sky. However, correlation != causation so I know that scratching my arse does not cause the sun to rise.

        After scratching myself, I slam my head into a brick wall. Shortly thereafter I have an intense headache. Howev
        • Why is that the rallying cry of the ignorant?

          Correlation does not equal causation. It doesn't mean that there's never a connection between the two, or even that there's necessarily rarely a connection between the two. It just means that there's not ALWAYS a connection between the two.

          The rise and fall of a job market is not a simple thing. The very valid point the post you replied to had was that outsourcing didn't necessarily help things. He didn't say the the supposition was wrong. He merely pointed

      • Re:So outsourcing hasn't killed the economy? (Score:5, Informative)

        by mjh ( 57755 ) <(moc.nalcnroh) (ta) (kram)> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:03PM (#14786809) Homepage Journal
        There's nothing to say the tech industry wouldn't be even more vibrant without the outsourcing.

        I beg to differ. The theory of comparative advantage [wikipedia.org] says that the tech industry wouldn't be more vibrant without outsourcing.


    • In other words, outsourcing has actually helped our economy and provided new employment opportunities for the displaced, just like almost every respectable economist has said it would, just like it has always done over the years.

      It's helped IT workers the same that it helped Autoworkers 20 years ago. From TFA:


      expanding opportunities for those trained in fields such as software architecture, product design, project management and IT consulting

      Depending on what one would call Software Architecture, most of t
      • ...no-one is watching out for them...

        While I am all in favor of providing opportunities for success, personal responsibility must still be first and foremost. If they are not watching out for themselves, there is nothing more that I feel obligated to do.

      • Ok, I have to (Score:3, Insightful)

        by flyinwhitey ( 928430 )
        "Every day the US is becoming a country where the educational and economical divide grows. The problem is that those on the top are increasing looking down on those below them, and those below them, are becoming increasing bitter of the fact that no-one is watching out for them.
        (I'm not advocating that outsourcing be banned, however, I am advocating that something be done to help those who were displaced)"

        I vehemently disagree on the educational front, and would suggest you post facts for the "economical" d
        • For the most part I agree with you.
          There are two catchs on the education argument:
          1) availablilty: schools are crowded, not all that apply are accepted.
          2) accountability: many of the same people that say "woe is me, I'm disadvantaged" do not accept accountability for their actions. Our schools have a very bad tendancy to pass the problem on, rather than holding students back.

          The economic devide does, in fact exist. It's roots can be traced back to a decrease in quality of education.
          The solutoion is to spe
      • It's helped IT workers the same that it helped Autoworkers 20 years ago

        Indeed, autoworkers working in Toyota factories in the U.S. are far more productive than those in American-owned factories. Of course, this is because of restrictive union contracts.

        On the other hand, in Japan it is mainly robots on the assembly line.
    • "The study also said that companies from a variety of sectors in the economy continue to discover greater efficiency and more competitive operations through investment in IT."

      "outsourcing has actually helped our economy and provided new employment opportunities"

      1+1=2, "great efficiency" means that there are being sacked people in other then IT depratments because IT department helps to be "more effecient"...

      So does it mean that there are more _IT_ employment opportunities and less overall employement opport

    • In other words, outsourcing has actually helped our economy and provided new employment opportunities for the displaced, just like almost every respectable economist has said it would, just like it has always done over the years. Yes, perhaps Paul Krugman disagrees, but I said "respectable" economist, which immediately disqualifies him.

      Not always. That's why there used to be a vicious cycle of depressions until the 1950s (of course, some argue that recessions are just muted depressions).

      But there are

      • Not always. That's why there used to be a vicious cycle of depressions until the 1950s

        The "vicious cycle of depressions" before 1950 was mainly a macroeconomic effect because of poor central bank management (as was Stagflation in the US during the 1970's).

        Paul Krugman has been more right than wrong

        Can you document this, or are you just making up this data?
  • "Overseas" not oversees

  • a little more info please... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mike77 ( 519751 ) <mraley77&yahoo,com> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:52PM (#14786180)
    Saying that IT hiring has increased in the US is a little like saying hiring in automotive technology has increased. It tells you nothing about what kinds of job hiring has increased. Are we seeing a rise in higher paying jobs, or low paying jobs? code monkeys or program architects? Jobs which can lead to a career, of ones with no future?

    And is this at all related to turn over in the industry? are we seeing more hiring because the people who shouldn't be there in the first place are finally bailing?

    • Are we seeing a rise in higher paying jobs, or low paying jobs?

      From the fine article:

      Citing information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it said that IT workers have seen steady gains in average annual wages for different fields in the sector of between about two to five percent a year.

      Peace be with you,
      -jimbo

    • It isn't the number of jobs.

      It's the number of jobs at each salary range. Let's make it easy. Here's how it should look.

      $20,000 and below | old # | new # | percent increase/decrease

      $20,001 - $30,000 | old # | new # | percent increase/decrease

      $30,001 - $40,000 | old # | new # | percent increase/decrease

      And so on. Then you also need to look at the actual JOBS. Things like "programmer" (entry | mid | senior) and "network engineer" (entry | mid | senior).

      Remember, most people do NOT start as the "senior" level.

  • GREAT!!! There are more jobs... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rifter13 ( 773076 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:53PM (#14786193) Homepage
    I am glad to hear there are more jobs... but then, why am I making 25% less than what I was making 5 months ago? Hell, when the dot com bubble burst, and then I got laid off in 2001, was the highest I have been paid in my life. It was not a lot of money, but I wish I could make that much again. There may be more jobs, but I think that there is a flood of people taking them that are not getting paid as much. I have over 10 years experience, and struggle to find any decent employment.
    • I hate to tell you this, but the days of high school grads getting a Cisco cert or reading an O'Reilly book and pulling down $80K in an entry level job are gone forever. That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.
      • That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back

        Noooooooo!

        All my hopes are still pinned on the IT fairy.

      • Re:GREAT!!! There are more jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:35PM (#14786574)
        That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.

        I'd have to disagree. Mostly, because I believe economics and technology is hard to predict. We might see somthing similar in the 2020's if Nanotech took off or neural interfaced VR etc. Heck, we might a second bubble in the 2010's with robotics.

        All our current college degrees and current certificates might be worthless when a new technology pardigm comes along and shatters our current economic mode.

        The internet boom from 1999 to 2001 was unpredicted and unexpected. It was a shock to the current economic system today and changed all our lives. This is of course the nature of accelerated changes in technology growth.

        To sit back and say "This won't ever happen again." is kind of a 'head in the sand' kind of mentality. Personally, I know it may never happen, but I am keenly aware of the fact that if I fail to constantly update my skills and be willing to learn, I might miss out on future oportunities and in worse case scenario also face a pink slip because my skills and degree are no longer valid.
    • You answered your own question. The DotCom boom created a sudden and unexpected demand for tech workers that artificially inflated the value of those workers. Now that the bubble has burst, the market is correcting for incorrect salaries and paying employees their real market value. It's still possible to get DotCom wages, but you have to be both utterly invaluable to a company and in the right place at the right time. Otherwise your skills will be valued at a rate similar to those of most non-executive bus
    • Why should the gold standard be the point in time for the economy when a lot was smoke and mirrors?

  • Outsourcing Slashdot Writers (Score:3, Funny)

    by PhatboySlim ( 862704 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @01:56PM (#14786218)
    A CNN article reports that a new study has shown that U.S. tech hiring has increased, despite oversees outsourcing....

    Looks like writers could be the next to suffer outsourcing ;)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Up here in Canada we have seen an increase in the number of available positions over the last six months. From what I have seen, the increase has been broadly based, spread over a number of different sectors and in most region across the country. Employers really need to act fast to get the best talent before it is snapped up by other companies. We have not yet returned to the hysteria of the dot com days, but certainly have experienced an upswing.
  • I dont know how truth there is to this but I remember reading a while ago that companies where having problems with outsourcing. Projects where late, missing requirements and so on. Maybe this increase in employment is a reflection on the companies realizing that it is better to have local companies do the work? If you have to outsource part of your project to a company that is say next door or on the same block it is alot easier to keep tabs on what is going on and on making changes.
    • If you have to outsource part of your project to a company that is say next door or on the same block it is alot easier to keep tabs on what is going on and on making changes.

      As a project manager who has worked with developers in India, I can say that the preceding statement is false.

      I found it just as easy to keep tabs on what was going on. The fact that the developers were not right next door made us do a much better job on requirements gathering, design, and change management.

      It's all in how t

  • New IT Jobs (Score:3, Funny)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:03PM (#14786285)
    I've heard a lot about these new IT jobs.... You can make up to $1200/week, working from home, using a computer to place tiny classified ads on various web sites. It works!! Yes, IT is booming in the states!

  • Replacing workers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by a_nonamiss ( 743253 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:06PM (#14786312)
    Doesn't it make sense, thought, that after a long cycle of firing IT workers that they will need to hire some of that lost staff? Just because hiring is on the rise doesn't mean the IT field is suddenly healthy again. If I start up a company and hire 100 workers over 5 years, then I fire 75 of them, then a year later hire 25 more, I could rightfully claim that my company is growing faster than ever. Doesn't mean it's more healthy than ever. Doesn't mean my company is better off than it was 3 years ago.

  • what the hell is it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:15PM (#14786407) Homepage
    First off, it is I.T. it's an acronym not a fucking word.

    Second it's a meaningless acronym. Information Technology ... [yes, I've said this before...]. Information == content, Technology == subjective. Books are technology. So are cave paintings.

    So an I.T. specialist could be anything from an archeologist, librarian to a systems admin with 10,000 IBM servers under their thumb.

    My larger point here is just the vast sums of meaningless techno babble that swings around in the press. "IT hiring is up" ... what the fuck does that mean? In the states? In Canada? globally? What are these new employees doing? Data entry? ...

    For the love of god stop over simplifying everything. Yes we use words like "doctor" or "mechanic" but we still acknowledge they have specialties. Why isn't it the same when we're talking about "business". Is it just because it's simpler to hide the truth and sounds more important?

    Tom

    • IT hiring is up" ... what the fuck does that mean? In the states? In Canada? globally?

      Ofcourse he means the US of A. The rest of the world is just target coordinates.

  • When I fill out my IRS tax form, I am required to put my occupation and the amount I made. I believe the government keeps track of this sort of thing at the Bureau of Labor [bls.gov]. I used their webform to select all computer and mathematical occupation numbers for all industries and generated an Excel spreadsheet. The data is about a year old. Then it was easy to figure the trend using a little arithmetic. According to my calculations the US gains around 50000 new tech jobs every six months. I suppose it's p

  • It's High Level Jobs at Lower Pay (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GoCanes ( 953477 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:36PM (#14786581)
    I've seen the effects of outsourcing first hand. I'm fairly senior, and for the last year I've been involved in hiring a team in India to perform entry level tasks. Yes, I went to the dark side, but you've got to feed the bulldog. We're hiring like crazy in the US, because the India teams require a lot more supervision than a US team. So we're hiring manager level technical people. These managers would have been writing code 5 years ago, but there's not much future in writing simple code these days. The jobs are available in design and architecture and going to endless meetings.

    I've also seen that we pay quite a bit less for manager level jobs than we did before. I make less today than I used to have to pay a developer five years ago. I know lots of developers that got out of technology because the market was so dismal. Forget being a college kid trying to land an entry level programming job, they just aren't available.

    So we're basically eating our children. There's no future in entry level jobs for the US tech worker -- those jobs are gone. By definition, the pool of senior people is getting smaller each day, so those jobs should become higher paying over time. But right now there's a lot of highly experienced people available and even though hiring is up, salaries are not following because the pool of people available is still pretty large.

    20 years from now we'll be as dependent upon foreign tech workers as we are today on foreign oil.
    • Let me be the first to contradict this post. In the SF Bay Area right now software companies are scrambling to find good local Software Developers. There are more open positions and a steep increase in compensation as the competition heats up.
      • No they aren't. How much are these "scrambling" companies offering? If it's less than $100k, it's a joke. You can't expect people to pack up and move to the most expensive place in the world to live for a salary that would only afford them a cardboard box under a bridge.

  • Offshoring not outsourcing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tweekster ( 949766 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:44PM (#14786664)
    Outsourcing is a good thing (give the work to some other company dedicated to the task) The article is actually refering to Offshoring. taking the work out of the country. If it werent for outsourcing, MANY IT people would be unemployed (think contractors and consultants) Outsourcing is good, it funds new businesses, offshoring is bad
    • Outsourcing is good, it funds new businesses, offshoring is bad

      Why does an imaginary line in the sand make outsourcing to Joe White 3000 miles away on the opposite coast but under the same government OK, but not to Miguel Brown 200 miles away under a different government?
    • You are absolutely correct about the confusion of the word "outsourcing". The practice should probably be called "outsourcing through offshoring" or something like that, because it is both.

      As for your blanket statement that offshoring is bad, let me rebut that by brining up several areas where offshoring is good.

      (1) It provides high-paying technical jobs to countries that don't have a vibrant IT economy. This in turn will help bootstrap their IT economy, perhaps making them viable competitors with the US an


  • do{

    programmer = hireprogrammer();

    software= programmer.work();
    costs+= programmer.pay();
    costs+= software.market();
    revenue=software.sell();

    } while (revenue > costs) /**
    The above function says that if your costs of marketing and paying programmers is less than the
    amount of money you make from selling the software than you'll always keep hiring programmers.
    Since there are tons and tons of possible profitable applications to make there will almost

  • Missing info from the told-ya-so's (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mjh ( 57755 ) <(moc.nalcnroh) (ta) (kram)> on Thursday February 23, 2006 @02:55PM (#14786749) Homepage Journal
    The title of the top post in to this article (as I write this) is "Told-ya-so". And, for the most part, I agree with what the ideas in that post. There are other posts conveying the same sort of thing. While I agree with them (in general) they're missing one point. That is that a single area may shrink when something new comes along (e.g. offshoring & outsourcing). But that *OVERALL* (key word) the economy is better.

    So for example, the overall economy is better because of the invention of the automobile (*). It has opened up new markets and new ways of doing business and increased productivity in our country in countless ways. But it obliterated the businesses of horse-drawn carriages and buggy whip makers. So, while *OVERALL* the economy is better, that doesn't prevent pockets of the economy from massive suffering.

    (*) I didn't say anything about the environment being better or worse.. just the economy.

    The same is true with offshoring & outsourcing. The IT industry may be hiring more overall, but that doesn't discount the fact that there are pockets in that industry that are suffering massively as a result. My guess is that coders are the most impacted by this.

    But don't fret too much. There are other jobs that are becoming available now that coding is getting comoditized. And don't forget that the same facility for easily shipping code half way around the world has also given us free/open source software. So, it's not all bad, and *OVERALL* it's good.
  • Judging by the Washington Post classifieds, demand for IT workers in this area (DC and suburbs) is a fraction of what it was during the dot-com boom.
    • Employers don't print IT jobs in newspapers anymore. Try looking on that Internet thingy.

    • Re:Don't see it here (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheSync ( 5291 ) *
      Everyone I know in IT in DC is well-employed now! If you have a security clearance, you can go to jobs fairs where they serve caviar!

      In DC, Monster.com lists 255 jobs for "web developer", 225 jobs for "systems administrator", 146 for "programmer", 100 for "tech support", 51 for "web designer".

      Perhaps not up to "dot com" era, but then at that point totally unqualified people were being hired. Wrapping nail artists who spent two weeks with "Perl for Dummies" were doing production code work!

  • This is an ACM study, but who funds the ACM? (Score:5, Informative)

    by br00tus ( 528477 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:08PM (#14786847)
    As the article says, the ACM s behind this study.

    While the ACM or IEEE are theoretically advocates for US IT workers, they both receive a lot of money from the same companies advocating no cap on H1-B visas and so forth. Go to ACM's events and conferences web page [acm.org] and click on SIGCSE 2006. Who is sponsoring this in big letters on the bottom? IBM, Microsoft and Sun, the main drivers behind more H1-B visas.

    There are other organizations which are not as in debt to these organizations. I did a web page [geocities.com] of my own about this a year or two ago. Any organization like the ACM that takes massive money from these corporations which advocate no H1-B caps can not be trusted to advocate for IT workers. Only an organization that only depends on money from IT workers can be trusted. It's common sense. In fact, these corporate officers usually have more sense about these things, and who is on whose side, than many IT workers.

  • As you know from previous slashdot articles, the increase was only in project management and above. The demographics of Silicon Valley have definitely shifted from technical positions to high level marketing and coordinating positions. There are more high level positions than the total positions in 2000, but these positions are much harder to get.

  • Every time slashdot runs an article like this there's always a bunch of people that post something to the effect of "Oh yeah? Why can't I find a job for the mad money I was making in 2001?"

    Every time we have an open position, finding someone reasonably competent is like pulling teeth. We routinely have applicants lie about their experience. We had one guy say he's been doing NT support five years longer than NT has existed.

    When we hire C programmers, we give a programming test. Most applicants don't

  • The pop economics promulgated by the politicians and media is static. But that's not the real economy, which is dynamic. All of the doom and gloom scenarios regarding outsourcing were the result of static thinking. But the real dynamic world is still changing and evolving and <gasp> growing.

    Every action changes the world. This is true whether the actions are done individually by one person, or whether they are the aggregate actions of millions. We could follow the cascade of changes that occurs when o

  • The ACM is not free of bias (Score:3, Insightful)

    by J.R. Random ( 801334 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:35PM (#14787084)
    Its members are mostly academics, who make their living not by programming but by encouraging as many people as possible to major in computer science. So naturally it is in their interest to paint a rosey picture of future employment prospects.

  • So says the "trade group" ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Wansu ( 846 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:36PM (#14787093)


    This article has been planted by the "trade group" to further their self-serving interests. Their lobbyists can point to it as an example of why the cap on H1-B and L-1 visas should be extended or why all the outsourcing and sweetheart trade deals with foreign gov'ts and companies ain't so bad afterall.

    Well, it doesn't jive with the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. According to the BLS, IT lost 17% of it's workforce in the US over the past 5 years, communication equipment lost 43% of it's workforce and semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of it's workforce. The US electronics industry has shriveled. Hundreds of thousands of engineers have been unemployed or underemployed (in menial jobs) as a result. I personally know several dozen. No doubt they bristle with rage as they read these rosy assessments of the job market.
     

  • Who ya goin'ta believe, the ACM or your lying eyes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wintermute42 ( 710554 ) on Thursday February 23, 2006 @03:44PM (#14787155) Homepage

    I read the New York Times report on the ACM study this morning. All I could think of was that old joke about catching your significant other in bed with someone else. "Really", they tell you, "it's not what it looks like. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes".

    My resume [bearcave.com] is published on my web page. So one way I judge hiring is by recruiter calls (obviously this lacks something in the scientific rigor catagory). The other way I judge this issue is by press reports, which I've collected in an annotated bibliography that is at the end of my web page An Economics Question [bearcave.com]. Many of these press accounts describe the experiences of other engineers in today's job market. There are a few conclusions that I draw from the current engineering employment environment:

    1. There are still interesting jobs that pay decently out there. However, pay and stock options are definitely not what they were, even in 1992, much less 1999.

    2. Job instability is way up. The days when you could get another engineering job relatively easily if you had a good background are over. This greatly increases the risk of working for a start-up, since you could experience many months of unemployment if the start-up fails and you're out of a job. The problem here is that most start-ups do not compensate you for this increased risk. They pretty much give you the same pay and stock options that you got a decade ago. But in this new environment you stand the risk of losing your savings or even your house because of a long period of unemployment.

    3. Job security is also way down. There remains a big pool of engineers looking for work and employers definitely have the attitude that they can always hire another engineer, so you're a disposable, interchangable commodity. With many software development jobs there is always the threat that your project will be "offshored" or that when you complete it, maintenance will be offshored and you'll be out of work.

    4. While hiring is at best tepid in the United States and Europe, hiring is booming in India. Employment demand for Indian engineers who graduate from schools with education comparable to schools in the US or Europe has entirely outstripped demand. The good news is that this is forcing salaries in India up. But my lying eyes tell me that what is fueling the demand in the Indian job market are "first world" jobs that are being outsourced.

    With the ACM report working engineers are faced with that question of "who are you going to believe, the ACM or your lying eyes". My lying eyes tell me that the story told by the ACM does not reflect the employment experience of the ACM membership.

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