The IT Labor Shortage

Carnage4Life writes "Dr. Dobbs Journal has a very insightful article on the shortage of IT professionals that is constantly being touted by the media and industry execs. It debunks this myth by discussing the results of the IT Workforce Data Project which indicate that there is anything but a shortage of IT professionals in industry today. " Good points, talking about the oft-heard of preference for recent grads and such. What do you folks think? Is it hard to find a job?

Comments

The only "shortage" is of **CHEAP** tech workers.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a shortage of people who will work for peanuts. Employers like the H1B visa holders because they can rule them with an iron fist. Don't hit that "moderate" button just yet! The H1B visa requires an employer to agree to hire you and remains tied to a specific employer. Low pay? Loust treatment? Crap assignments? Too bad. If you quit, your visa is void, immediately. Maybe you can find another job fast, but gov't paperwork will take so long to complete, that your visa will expire before you can get it transferred. The result? You have to leave the country. So the employer knows he has you by the balls. You'll take whatever and like it with a big smile, because you are in no position to bargain. The employer holds all your cards. So yeah, employers like this. They can pay less than you deserve and get away with it. They want more, so they cry about the "labor shortage". Look at misc.jobs.resumes. It's packed with skilled or readily trainable people looking for jobs. But American workers are too damned expensive, they dare to try and abuse their salary to do things like buy a house, car, support a family, and spend time off the clock with family, and other non-company related activities. Bastards! Employers would prefer a cheap H1B that lives in studio apt, rides a moped, and has no life, and will work 80 hrs/week. Duh. The free market makes this a good choice. But "The Shortage" is totally bogus.

Not here...

[jezzball]

Here in the Philadelphia area there is anything but a shortage of IT professionals.

I use the term professionals very strictly. At my current company we have a strong proliferation of IT wannabes. Horrible, horrible people. And we do multi-million dollar contracts with high-profile clientele which we frankly don't deserve.

I wouldn't release our product if I had say, but being 19 and definitely the junior in the department, I don't.

It took me 24 hours to be offered this job. It took me 5 days to get 12 different offers. The market here is very hot for someone with skills, even if they don't have that little degree slip of paper or, heaven forbid, and MCSE or similar.

The problem with the current employment situation isn't really a lack of good developers or an overabundance of horrible ones, but rather no good way to certify people so non-IT types can verify who they're hiring.

MCSE as mentioned recently doesn't do the job. No certification does. Programming is as much an art as anything else which, imho, is being hacked away at by things like VB and components people just download of the 'net and hack together to get to work.

Why write my own work when I can stand on the shoulders of others to create my piss poor crap?

Whatever, maybe I'm a little sick of working here. I'm looking for a new job, as is everyone else. It's horrible.

But, with today's market (yes, I've kind of gone tangential) it should be easy to do that. :)

Enjoy.

Jezz
ls: .sig: File not found.

labor glut

[vyesue]

If there isn't a shortage of qualified tech-industry workers, I'm very much at a loss to explain exactly why it is that the vast majority of companies I have personally had experience with are staffed by peopel that don't have any clue what they're doing.

One would imagine that in a situation where there was even anywhere near enough workers in a given field, there would not be half as many completely knowledgeless people running around with "certifications" and "experience".

Statistics and data projects aside, I think that anyone who looks around them and evaluates the people that he is working with and for can tell you that there are not enough qualified people in this industry.

that said, I'm not sure there are enough qualified peopel in any industry. but that's another story, I guess.

Re:labor glut

[Mendax Veritas]

If there isn't a shortage of qualified tech-industry workers, I'm very much at a loss to explain exactly why it is that the vast majority of companies I have personally had experience with are staffed by people that don't have any clue what they're doing.

Because the hiring managers are clueless too. As are their bosses, and so on, all the way up to the CEO.

I've felt for several years now that most companies are best understood as dysfunctional families. Daddy, the CEO, doesn't understand his own life or the role he plays in it, and takes out his frustrations on various wife- and child-surrogates (the rest of the company). The VPs and middle managers, representing the older children, deal with the abuse they receive from above by passing it on to their subordinates and learning, by example, that the way to be a good parent/executive is to abuse your inferiors and blame them for everything that goes wrong. The grunts (the youngest children) take all the shit and hope to be promoted because then they'll have someone to abuse. (Usually they start out with better motives than that, but such idealism is quickly crushed out of them in most cases.)

To the extent that there is or can be a solution to this, mostly you just need to find relatively non-dysfunctional companies where everyone seems to be not only competent but also pleasant and respectful of other humans. And you need to be pleasant and respectful of other humans yourself, or you'll just contribute to the further degradation of whatever corporate culture you happen to get into.

It is a truism in psychology that abusive parents were almost always abused themselves as children. I suspect that this applies to the work environment as much as to families. It explains many of the nasty things that happen in companies, including why so many of them seem to be staffed by imbeciles. Many corporate drones aren't really stupid; they've just been beaten into submission by the dysfunctional corporate machine, and no longer really care about anything except not being blamed for whatever goes wrong next. Of course, this defensive attitude tends to encourage things to go wrong, since the workers are thinking much more about covering their asses than about doing things right or looking ahead more than a few weeks.

MSCE = job?? I don't think so!

[payneinthe]

Where does this idea come from that having an MCSE gets you a job? When I'm reading resumes, I immediately toss out any resume with MCSE on it.

I found out empirically that people who put MCSE on their resumes just can't cut it. MCSE doesn't mean you have skills. It just means you passed a test.

A college degree is no different. It doesn't mean anything unless you can back it up with some good sample code or a good answer to an algorithm question in the interview.

it's easy to get a job

[Anonymous Coward]

And good ones aren't hard to find either. It didn't take me long to land this position. I program for a major software firm that I can't name. In addition to the thrill of a job well done, and very competitive pay (I receive $13 THOUSAND dollars every year . . . which my manager assures me is higher than most programming positions), the job is chock full of nifty benefits.

We always get the newest hardware to work on. Right now I'm sitting with a shiney new 12mhz 286 with FOUR megs of ram!!! These beasts are too powerful to even set loose on the commercial sector yet, and let me tell you, it BURNS compared to my last box. My manager assures me that I'll be the first in the department to get the new CD-ROM drives too. I love my manager so much.

Everyone gets a company sponsored apartment. It's like I never even have to drive anywhere to get to work! I have a whole 7 foot square room ALL to myself. The rags and blankets I sleep on every night I didn't even have to PAY for! You can't ask for better than that! And there's a hole in the corner that leads down to the sewers for waste removal. And over that hole is a spiggot with RUNNING WATER. It's soooooo cool! The entire package is in the greatest location too; about 75 feet below my office in the sub-basement! That's prime real-estate there!

And my manager (did I mention he's so cool?) comes and gets me and the other programmers at the beginning of every day. I don't have to spend money on an alarm clock! Not me! He comes down and PERSONALLY wakes us up, and even gives us a good minute to become aware of our surroundings before hauling us out of our rooms by the scruff of our neck! How generous!!!

He's sure to make sure we're all locked in front of our workstations with three manacles, and surrounded with a barbed wire fence. No, no other company is going to come and drag US away! We get to keep this job FOREVER! And at the end of our 18 hour workday (you can get SOOOOOO much done in 18 hours! You wouldn't believe it!) he unlocks us and PERSONALLY escorts us back home, usually taking the time to kick us into our rooms. Sure, sometimes my head hits the wall pretty hard, but we take entertainment where we can get it, and we get the best.

And food . . . Oh, we get the best food here at Microso . . . where I work. Thrice daily they pull out any waste that gets caught in the nets and grates lining the sewers and drainage gutters. I don't know what they do to it, but they turn it into the BEST stew in the WORLD! For FREE!!! And sometimes we even get nifty toys, like shopping carts and old needles. Just like a box of cracker jacks!!!

I know you're jealous and want to hear more, but I have to get back to work before my manager catches me. Last time he saw anyone reading slashdot, they were denied dinner for two months. MAN that must have sucked. But anyway, these jobs are easy to get. Just walk around Redmond Washington. You don't need to look for a job . . . they'll find you.

Is English your second language?

[FallLine]

No offense, but is english your second language?

When you say there isn't a "shortage of IT professionals", do you mean people who merely get paid to do the job, or do you mean competent people? The problem is that when you say you use the term "strictly" that would imply the later.

In any case, as you may or may not know, the market for IT employees in Philly is very tight (I, too, live in philly). Witness: rising salaries, employers willing to pay virtually anything for competent help, the plethora of weak certification courses, etc. In what other career can a high school dropout take some certification course and make 60k++ within a year?

While you are certainly right that (atleast if I read this much correctly) employers have a hard time finding competent IT employees, I disagree with the cause(s) and some of your other statements. Although I don't disagree that you'll find atleast 20 idiots for every half competent IT worker, the problems extend far beyond just being able to test it. I think there is a genuine shortage of talented IT workers. Truely excellent IT people stand out head and shoulders above the rest, if for no other reason than 1 good IT person is worth atleast 20 monkeys. Regardless of whatever their formal credentials are, recommendations and the like are highly telling. I happen to know many employers and headhunters, the word generally is: If you have talent, give him whatever he wants. Consequently, employers have a very difficult time finding new (not age) talent, because they're generally quickly devoured.

The bottom line: Most employers have to spend absurd sums of money to get decent IT. Because skilled workers are impossible to find, employers are forced to turn to monkeys. And because monkeys are so damn ineffective, it takes 20 times as many to do the same job. Which causes the market for monkeys to skyrocket as well....

...which of course leads to the need for platforms such as NT. Which, ultimately, leads to the need for more monkeys. Which causes even more employee (non-IT) downtime, which only adds to the cost....Any sane skilled/intelligent person, of course, avoids such environments...Which naturally makes the majority of the up and coming generation virtually braindead when it comes to IT....

...sorry to run on. =)

gotta run

As an ex-manager

[Kismet]

I spent considerable time reviewing resumes and interviewing hopeful candidates.

People with degrees may or may not be useful. Candidates with a four-year degree in traditional Computer Science were the best candidates. These people generally had the interest to complete the degree and the smarts to apply their knowledge.

People with certifications were not useful. Their certifications don't give them the creative background and basic understanding necessary to solve a problem from the ground up. They are versed only in the know-how needed to use systems popular at the time of the certification.

People with lesser degrees from lesser colleges were not useful. Their situation is similar to those who sought only a certification and tend to have skills that are specialized for the systems at the time of graduation.

Courses and certifications may be useful to those already employed in IT, but they provide little information of lasting value. Those who seek these credentials to get a job in the IT industry generally do not have the aptitude necessary to get the job done.

Students who apply themselves to a higher education in theoretical computer science have a better chance of being able to do the work. They are also more likely to innovate new technology.

I don't personally hold any degree or certification; these are just trends I have observed and will keep in mind the next time I find myself in a management position within IT (if ever).

Re:Don't you all realize this is a good thing?

[Rombuu]

If the only thing that is keeping you in your current job is the fact that you are the low bidder to do the work, you deserve to be flipping burgers.

IT shortage

[lomion]

Personally, i think the shortage is not of IT professionals, but of competent, well-trained ones. I have seen a number of programmers, developers and designers that don;t know anything but fake it real well, or the flip side which is those that know real well but are complete mercenaries and would screw over their employer or client in a heartbeat. I've dealt with both situations too often in the last year.

Missing the Point

[goliard]

I finally managed to get into ddj.com and read the bloody thing. I was not impressed.

It wasn't about whether or not there was a scarcity of tech workers. It was about all the political crap which gets wrapped around that "issue", e.g. whether or not the US should allow more foreign workers.

Look:

• Yes, most employers are idiots who write nonsensical job descriptions, and then bitch and moan when they can't get applicants.
• Yes, most employers are feeble in their failure to exploit the talents of their existing employees through training and other career development programs.
• No, the fact that there are currently lots of open IT positions does not mean you should go to college and major in an IT field; it does not mean those jobs will be waiting for you when you graduate.
• None of these things really has to do with the scarcity (or lack there of) of high-tech workers.

And, frankly, connect-the-dots prognostication is silly. What no one wants to admit is that we've managed to create an environment (the net) in which the basics of operating a retail establishment (a store) require personal characteristics (facility with abstract thought) of the store workers (geeks) which only a comparatively small percentage of people have.

It would be one thing if ecommerce sites were like brick&mortar stores. Once you put up your KornerMart, it stays built, and you can pay all your architects, construction workers, HVAC experts, etc. and send them home. It would be one thing if new-media sites were like radio stations. Once you raise your KLUE transmitter and plug it in, you can send away the engineers who put up the tower. You can staff your KornerMart, your KLUE station with non-geeks and have your business run.

But an ecommerce site, a new-media site is constantly being reinvented. What's now is passe, so "five minutes ago". The envelop must constantly be pushed.

So long as that is true, you can expect the market demand for geeks to be rapacious. We are the only people who can run their store fronts in cyberspace, the only people who can keep the store open 24/7. They can't do without us, and as they try to expand, they will only need more and more of us.
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What Shortage?

[onyxruby]

Shortage of people with 7 years of JAVA? How about a shortage of people with 2 years in Windows 2000, or 6 years in NT 4.0? How many times have you seen want'ads requiring a combination of experience that 5 people on the planet have? How many times have you seen want ads that require a bachelors degree? Yet someone with real world experience gets passed over for someone with a degree in forestry (happened at Honeywell). Than their are requirements for more more experience on a product than it has been around. You would not qualify for many of these jobs unless you wrote the original product!

The shortage is artificial. This is nothing more than an attempt to bring in foreign labor cheaper than local market labor. It is the same thing that the trucking companies do. I mean this as no slam on those IT professionals outside the US, but the reality is they are viewed by IT managers (not my view neccasarily) as a "cheap import". Yes, I realize many of these people are certainly not cheap or unskilled, but 98 times out of a 100 they are brought in because they are cheaper. That is the bottom line.

Companies complain about not having enough "qualified" tech workers. I wonder how many of these companies are willing to train their internal employees? I imagine very few. My company provides under $2K a year for school. That doesn't go very far. The fact that I (or anyone in my position) will recieve no pay increase when finished shows a shortage of vision on the part of management.

The shortage could easily be alleviated by companies looking within. When companies raise artificial obstacles (4 yr degree, and 3 years exp for 30K) they are going to suffer. If a company wants a trained & skilled IT workforce they should look at realistic hiring requirements, new people without experience (everybody has to start somewhere), training those employees they do have, and more to the point, keeping them. I have no sympathy for people who throw stones in glass houses and complain of windows breaking...

Re:IT shortage

[Nastard]

Couldn't have said it better myself. That's because I'm an idiot.

I've been playing with computers since the age of 12, I'm 18 now. I'm A+ certified, and wear a Linux t-shirt to job sites. I have 7 computers of my own in various places around the house, all networked together, and 3 behind my firewall. I have not one, but two 36inch stuffed TuXes from linuxmall. I am a geek, no doubt, but does this make me a genius?

You see, my friends, family, and the people I have worked with think that I am some kind of computer genius that can fix anything. The downside to this is having to listen to the endless barrage of inane questions I could care less about, and usually don't have answers for. So what do I do? I make them up.

What they don't know is; I'm an idiot. I have no idea what I'm doing. The reason I'm always working on a computer is because they are always breaking and I haven't a clue how to fix it. I make up answers to questions I don't know, because they expect me to have the answers. You know computers right? Well can you find this part to my 10-year-old apple laptop? (actually had this one)

My point is, no matter what people label you as, be it IT Professional, computer genius, or landfill worker, you are what you are, and your skills will show through. No amount of IT training or experience can make up for being an idiot.

A students perspective...

[mynameistim]

I returned to school 3 years ago to get a degree in Computing Science -- not because I wanted more money, but because I am fascinated by so many areas related to computing. Imagine my dissapoinment when I realized how many other students are in it for the money, and even worse how many don't even really like computers!!! OK, so I was a little naive...

If there is a shortage of good people (like someone else proposed), as opposed to just a shortage of people in general, then I don't see a solution soon. With all of the "carreer colleges" and "professional education centers" advertising the quick buck and easy employment, the number of people doing it for the money will only increase, and will do so much faster than the number of people who are doing it for fun, so to speak. Unfortunately, the former group is likely to have a very small proportion of "good" programmers (someday I hope to find out what that means), but it is the group that will dominate the workforce. The other group (including me, one day, I hope), as well as those "good programmers" from the first group, will have to accept that the skills of many coworkers are inadequate, or alternatively that there won't be enough people who can get the job done, and so they will be overworked.

This may cause incomes to increase, and I believe will only cause the problem to spiral out of control. Eventually the whole poverbial bandwagon will crash, and the I see one of two possibilities:

• The crash is loud and painful (huge pileup on I90). People not involved (i.e. government) will decide that the industry must change, and will come up with some sort of professional regulation -- similar to what exists for architect and engineers, possibly.
• The crash is quiet an uneventful (a fender-bender). People inside the industry decide that there must be some minimal skill level, and will enforce that standard. Simply having a degree or diploma or manufacturers certification won't always be enough. This is different from the other option in that people who understand the industry use their knowledge to ensure it operates efficiently, rather than outsiders forcing rules on the industry that may be well suited to other industries, but not to computing.

Either way, something will have to change. Maybe not anytime soon, but eventually.

Then again, I'm only a student. All of my experience is from another industry (construction), so I may be way off base. Comments?

Tim