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Is There REALLY an IT Worker Shortage in the US?
dwalker asks: " I found a disturbing manifesto while I was investigating the H-1B situation. Dr. Norman Matloff is a computer science teacher at UC Davis and he makes some radical claims about the tech industry including ,
'Rampant age discrimination...at age 35', H-1B workers as cheap labor and 'Indentured Servants' , and he claims that there is no labor shortage. His testimony was presented to the U.S House Subcommittee on Immigration in 1998 right before the last H-1B visa increase. Plus he has quotes and documentation to back up his claims, everything from personal e-mail to articles in the Washington Post. I'm not in the workforce yet but if this guy is right my CS Degree isn't gonna mean much. I'm curious what the tech community at large thinks of this guy and his claims, especially now after 2 years?"
A snippit from the linked document which I think sums it up.
When the industry claims a shortage of programmers, what they mean is a shortage of cheap programmers. A September 28, 2000 article in the Chicago Tribune said it succinctly:
``If you're willing to pay market rate, you can find people,'' said Pete Georgiadis, founder and CEO of eBlast Ventures, a company that funds and builds technology firms. ``The issue is if you're budget-constrained, you can't get the people you want.''
"Employers only hire about 2% of their software applicants, and they admit that they reject the vast majority of their applicants without even an interview. If employers were so desperate, they could not afford to be so picky."
okay, enough cut-n-paste action, but the article is really convincing.
Tweny years WORKING will expose one to a larger variety of coding situations than you could possibly expect in your four years of scool. And what do they teach you in scool? Likely it is the very same nearly dead languages that these professionals put away years ago. With 20 years of EXPERIENCE you can look at most problems and KNOW that you have the logic to solve the problem because you have seen it or something ver similar before. Furthermore, in solving it previously you have likely studied it in depth and know how to avoid common pitfals that will snag less experienced coders.
Yep, that's what GOOD people get. I get the same GOOD treatment, and I am foreign national (not US though). Yes I work a lot, but it's because I love it and I was doing it for free as a hobby for the last 12 years of my life (that's HALF of my life in total), but hell no one can accuse me of undercutting wages -- In fact I am one of the highest paid people in the company IT dept.
All you need to be sure of, is that you are REALLY GOOD, and you worth the money you want, otherwise, sorry, but maybe you will be successful in other speciality.
As for H1B visas, well had it not been for them guys, US would haved lagged behind the world, and company would have OUTSOURCED most of IT work abroad paying VIRTUALLY NOTHING, so your salary would have been a lot lower than when these people come to yOUR country, and help you all stay on top. Say thanks to them, if you got any brains. America is a land of immigrants, look how many top people are not native born in the US, heck, who can claim he is real NATIVE of the US? Only a handful of living indians (whatever the spelling).
Obviously we (foreigners) say thanks to the countries who give us refuge from political instability and general shit in out home countries, and who give work we love more than anything, we work hard to make sure that our benefits are justified, and God sees, at least the best of us (won't claim all) wish all the best to the countries that let us it. Heck, it is not just wishes, we actually DO something to make them better because our own well being depends on how successful our new home country (yeah, we all want to stay there for longer than just temp visa, it's obvious, who will work for 6 years just to leave at the end?). Now, can you tell that ALL or MAJORITY of your citizens really give a shit about your country? Well, maybe US is different but in country where I am now, I have seen so many native citizens who just don't give a flying fcsk about their country, that it makes me wonder a lot.
And yeah, I don't care if no one sees my post at 0 score, this is for best people, which I am sure will understand me.
Sure there's a shortage...
There's a shortage of graduates from top name schools with a 4.0 GPA who are willing to work for less than market rate.
Well, duh.
I'm 41. I'm a manager. I hack.
I have been lucky enough to have an very good selection of job choices either as a hacker or a manager. nobody has looked twice at my age.
it's very hard to find good people. what I want are people who can solve hard problems and don't require babysitting. I'll take any age.
at my last job my best hacker was 50. there's an age pyramid. there are a lot more programmers now than there were 20 years ago, so we have a young programming population. when you hire, you get the cheapest person who can do the job so it depends on what the job is, if you want an H1B body, or a PhD, or a PhD who can hack, or an IT guy who knows everything about NT compatibility thisnthat.
I interviewed a management candidate who was mid-40s. he wanted a management position because he was "tired of keeping up." he didn't get the job, not because of his age, but because of his attitude. no offense to the guy, but how could I justify funding his early retirement?
plan for the future. if you have one year's experience repeated 20 times, you're setting yourself up to look bad next to someone cheaper, when you are in your 40's. there's no conspiracy out here. if you don't have a steady track record of good projects reinforcing your value, you are going to have problems when you are older.
add value
add value
add value
big projects. responsibility for deliverables. responsibility for others.
No there is not an IT shortage. However, there is a shortage of "cheap", malleable, young IT labor. The pinacle of this need is the H-1B Visa bill. The H-1B is an extreme form of age discrimination. The average age of an H1-B Visa holder is 28 years old (Thanks Dr. Matloff). Add six years to 28 and you get 34 years. How ironic - it is a well known fact that anyone over 35 years is considered old in the hi-tech field. The H-1B system was designed and paid for by Silicon Valley to churn through young, cheap, malleable, foreign labor. Immigrant laborers need to keep that in mind when you apply for an H1-B Visa - it is a "temporary" visa, and you are a merely a resource designed to be obsolete in six years. And even if you're skills are current in six years, you'll either be too old and too expensive when compared to next wave of cheaper labor. It's all part of "Designed Obsolescence". How ironic.
It would be helpful for many in the IT world to take a basic economics course. "Shortage" means only that you can not find what you want "at the price you are willing to pay".
Prices are set by the market (not by "costs" as so many people mistakenly believe). As prices climb, more people enter the field. Its called market economics. It works, apparently, for oil, butter, and executive salaries. The market is alleged not to work for software developers. Their price is merely "Too high" and must be brought down. Hmmmm.... it sounds to me like the market is generally working. Unfortunately, many believe in free markets selectively - that is, when it favors them and oppose free markets if it means their costs must (temporarily) go up. The H-1B visa program has little to do with visas - it is actually a government imposed price control system on IT salaries. By flooding the market with nonimmigrant workers from low wage countries (the majority of H-1B workers come from very low wage countries), the supply is increased relative to demand, thereby applying the market economy rules that we choose not actually believe in :-)
Bottom line: Software is not a career field due to the rapid pace of change. Skills are destined to be obsolete very quickly. As such, experience offers little of value. Its a job, not a career. If you want a career, you need to earn the right credentials and pursue a job in research (PhD), or marketing/management (MBA). What ever you do, run away fast from software development. Ed, kf7vy@hotmail.com
This is in the UK so I don't know if the situation is the same as in the US. The company I work for has been trying to recruit several people with a few years C++ programing and at least a reasonable understanding of the principles of object oriented design. We've had no shortage of applicants who claim many years C++ programming. At a first interview it becomes clear that most of these people know enough to use the wizard in visual c++ to write a skeleton application which they fill in the gaps with code that is made up as they go along. Few of them have even heard of UML, and when asked about basic object oriented design stuff, like how to use polymorphism, inheritance they might be able to say the appropriate words but it soon becomes apparent that they have little understanding of why, or how to use these principles. We've suceeded in recruiting a couple of people in the last few months but it really does seem difficult to find people with any real level of knowledge. Many of those that have been good have had job offers from several places and have accepted other jobs before we even manage to make them an offer. There are a lot of "computer" people out there, but few with any valuable skills -- If you have any real understanding, and are able to communicate that to an employer you should find there is still a demand for those skills. The technology is getting more complex and there is more to learn every day, but because some of of the tools are making the basics of software development appear easier, there is a real dumbing down of the skills that people have, making people with real skills even more valuable.
Well, I'm an H-1B in US, working for a non-profit. I'm paid mostly within 90% of the market rate. Oh yes, I'm from India as well :-) It is always the money that matters in these things. We are paid better here than in India, and employer gets a hard working person for little less. Because of H-1B terms (which are now changing), the employer is surer to keep the employee for a little more time. In my couple of years here, I've seen the following assumptions by employers:
1. More people in a project means more efficiency.
2. More managers also implies more efficiency.
3. More analysts are also better.
4. More meetings are great as well.
Needless to say, I disagree with all these. Very few Americans who are CS degree holders want to
be programming after 5 years on the job. A lot less number of folks from other background who
just had some HTML-ASP course want to actually do coding for more than a year. Everyone wants to be an analyst or coordinator or manager or the idea guy. If they need to code, they are unhappy and thanks to the citizenship, they can easily change jobs - that said, I've really seen employee shortage atleast around DC area. And many American companies' IT departments seldom follow any kind of written standards for software projects - I'm talking about companies with primary business NOT being software development. This makes it very difficult to cope up with a change in work force.
what corporate America needs is experienced work force and some decent HR policies to keep them.
My suggestions:
1. No need to increase the H-1B cap, this just makes it worse.
2. Relax the H-1B restrictions so that changing employers are easier.
Isn't America built upon the principles of competition? This will help keep the pay higher, and will certainly make employers see the light in hiring experienced American employees.
3. After 6 years on H-1B, one needs to take an year out of USA. Lift this restriction.
This will help the employers and employees financially.
4. And for God's sake, before any one starts on an IT project, have a plan before the first line of code is written or the first resource is committed.
About the report of the Professor, it just seems like a political rhetoric, in tune with the rest of the world. I say this because before USA, I had worked in Europe, Middle East and Japan. And India. Similar sons-of-soil preachers are on the rise there too.
It makes sense about a small % of H-1Bs are really really good though. And that the emphasis should be made on general programming talent and learnability.
Serious question, that. Because while I'm older than the 20-somethings and can't work 16 hour days on a regular basis anymore (my health suffers), I'm definitely no slacker. If you look at the current project I'm on, there may have been an entire team working on the product, often working 14 hour days, but I bet that I personally wrote close to 50% of the lines of code in the product.
So SHOULD I be paid the same as some twenty-something college dropout slacker who knows nothing and thinks he knows everything? I don't think so. Luckily my employer agrees.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I know of one company that thought they could hire good programmers for $40,000 per year. They advertised for months, and were complaining about the IT worker shortage. Then they went to a recruiter. The recruiter calmly told them that a) the skill set they were advertising was very specialised and would cost them $120,000 per year, and b) if they relaxed their requirement for a particular object-orient language to simply requiring that the employee know object-oriented programming, they could get an employee for around $70-$90K/year. After a big gulp, they said "Okay." Three days later both open positions were filled.
There was no shortage of workers, just a shortage of workers willing to work for a ridiculously low wage. That is true of most open positions out there.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Sure, there are some nationalistic people who want to keep foreign labor out at all costs, but those people are not libertarians in the first place.
No, and those who advocate H1-B aren't real Libertarians either.
To be logically consistent, Libertarians must advocate unrestricted immigration. Period. No H1-B visa stuff in which they are indentured; just let them in. Then they will get competitive salaries.
H1-B is corporate welfare. It is a program designed to provide businesses with artificially low labor costs. As you have pointed out, "It is certainly not a free-market situation." I have never read anything about the Libertarian party supporting H1-B but I certainly have read some misguided arguments from self described Libertarians in support of H1-B.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Everytime we post an opening, we get lots of good resumes, more than we know what to do with. And yes, many are older guys. We've turned away some good candidates. We have never had any problems finding qualified people. But does that stop my company from paying lip service to this H1-B program? NO! They want to avoid paying us more by bringing in these artificially low paid serfs. But the southeast is a cheap pace to live. Silicon Valley is too expensive to live in. That is the crux of SV's employment problem.
All the evidence on both sides of this issue is anecdotal. So, we just go back and forth, hashing and rehashing but consider the following. The demographic bone pile of discraded techies is growing. They are bitter.They will not go away and they will not be quiet. This subject continues to air on slashdot because it is a gross inequity which begs attention. It will get worse before it gets better.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
These days, you can learn the hottest technologies on your PC at home, at virtually no cost. A programmer who has been out of work and hasn't even bothered as much as to learn Perl or Java does not seem to be a very attractive candidate, simply because they don't seem very motivated or interested in the job.
I can personally attest to the fact that companies will not hire you on the basis of course work or self paced home study. They want paid work experience. Been there, done that, been said no to! Read his paper more closely and you'll see that Matloff made this point.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
- claim there are not enough people so we need to import labor. this labor is obviously cheaper than domestic labor
- contirubte to flooding the local talent market thus cheapening even the local labor
The are some other ways they are dealing with labor costs like farming out to third world countrys dirt cheap..eventually, of course, what most /. readers get paid for now will probably be more like a trade skill like being a mechanic or plumber. hopefully programming will become common knowledge...
Electronic submission has made it worse. Any job position gets a boatload of resumes, many of which aren't particularly qualified (though it typically doesn't help when ads always ask for more than they could expect to get).
Compound that with resumes that inflate and exagerate -- not only do you have to sift through all the resumes, but you have to determine what they really mean.
HR has brought this on themselves, of course -- they respond to bullshit, they ask for bullshit, and so they get lots of bullshit. But even an enlightened individual in HR can't change the system.
--
You are not a "Senior Software Engineer." You don't remotely have the experience to be a SSE. SSE is a well defined level of experience in the industry, your company does not follow the same convention for naming their engineering positions.
How about me, then?
24, been doing engineering (hardware and software development) for 5 years. Experiences (not just passing but in-depth) include industrial electronics design, power electronics, thermal design, firmware development (microvolt A/D hw/sw, closed loop control, I/O multiplexing, communications and failsafe operation), induction motor theory (squirrel cage, synchronous, wound rotor), wire-knowledge of industrial communications protocols (ModBUS, ProfiBUS, DeviceNet). Quality control, test and repair and onsite customer service. Not so thorough experience in variable frequency drive design, magnetics and analog design.
Education: High school. Do I "qualify" for a job title with senior in it?
Personally I always thought that "Senior" positions had over 10 years' experience (no fasttracking, you can't short-circuit experience no matter how good you are) and even if you were a crackerjack engineer you didn't have that prefix until you had that decade or so of experience.
"Or at the VERY least, free drinks"
;)
That's such an easy way for companies to con their employees! If they added to your salary what they paid on the drink subsidary, you wouldn't notice. The trouble is, for most companies, free drinks are something like Pepsi. They could do their employees a favour be at least supplying free drinks that are good for them! Kind of callous otherwise!
There are a lot of people whining about H1's keeping wages down. Most software engineers earn as an individual more than the average *family* income.
In somes ways, keeping wages down is to our advantage. Software development is already hideously expensive. If wages spiral out of control companies are either going to stop developing software, or move overseas. If they move their development efforts overseas, they'll hire even more foreign workers. Moving software development overseas will also mean fewer positions for support staff, admins, janitors, etc. That sounds worse to me than allowing more H1's in. This situation is very feasible: I'm currently consulting for a company in Silicon Valley, but I don't live in the US (I'm waiting for an H1). They've also hired a team in India for one project.
I can't say that I'm complaining about high wages myself. When my H1 comes through I will be taking a huge pay cut to become a full time employee... I'll still be earning *a lot* more than the median mentioned in the article (and I don't plan on living in San Jose either). I'm not worried about other H1's either. I get job security by being good at my job. I just get annoyed with this stereotype of H1's being under-payed: the majority of the ones I've worked with in the past have been very well compensated, and if not, have successfull resolved their issues.
"The basic theories of economics still apply. Nedessary skills are still necessary skills. For worker 'A' to perform job type 'B', he will still need the a minimum set of skills to perform adequitely. For your average software 'engineer' to acquire a skill set he needs either personal capital (ie. a nice home - setup,books etc) or professional experience (ie. those mainframes at work). Now most of the students from India, Nepal and other 'third world' nationals could not afford a nice net connection and tons of recent books. They only picked up skills after being in the US for some time. I on the other hand, have owned many computers, worked for companies that exposed me to a great many different proprietary products, and collect documentation religiously. This has raised my skillset. The H1B workers often face a great deal of difficulty since their skillset is often initially limitted to what they learned at an American university which while good may not be as full as it otherwise could be. In time they will catch up but initially they are not as well situated skill per dollar. "
;)
That isn't quite true. You're judging the rest of the world through American eyes. However, not all places operate the same way as the US. I've been an H1, and I'm from the UK, which contrary to popular belief there isn't a third world country! I didn't need to come from a well-off background. I didn't need money. At the time the government paid all tuition fees. They also paid a grant to cover living expenses. There were also interest free "top-up" student loans available. I didn't need to work during the holidays (although I did). The university's facilities were good enough that I didn't need my own computer, and I only bothered buying about 6 books total! I've also come to realise that I have benefitted from an exceptionally good education which is opening many doors for me in N. America. I've had a good start to life courtesy of the British government and British tax payers (it makes me feel kind of bad that all of my taxes are now going to other countries... but not that bad
As for the economic theory (I'm not an economist, so I'm not sure if I can express my ideas clearly)... it seems to me that not allow H1's will decrease the supply of good software engineers (or programmers, system analysts, etc)., and increase the costs of software development. This is really a bad thing because the actual market for software developers extends beyond US borders. As the costs within the US increase, it becomes more financially viable for companies to move their efforts offshore. Personally I would rather let in a bunch of H1's than have a company takes its business elsewhere.
I agree. I have long maintained that people who practice software development should have an association like the American Bar Association and also have education and licensing requirements the same as lawyers.
Yes, this would be onerous compared to the free-wheeling situation we have today but there would also be advantages.
For example, much of what's wrong with the UCITA could be fixed through such an arrangement.
To choose one example: the lack of liability on the part of the software vendor could be side-stepped by making it a violation of professional ethics to ship a product with known but undocumented bugs.
While the company might not be liable via the UCITA, the individual developers would be via their professional oaths. This would give them firm grounds for refusing to do certain things.
Look around any corporation that has an in-house legal staff. Compared to the technical staff, why are the lawyers paid more? Why is more credibility given to what they say? It is because they are professionals in the original sense of the word: licensed to perform their jobs.
Yes, I do know that lawyers are not usually perceived as being paragons of virtue. That doesn't mean that the model is completely wrong.
There is more about this at the OpenSourcerers web site.
OpenSourcerers
This is completely true. I just watched an office full of people get shut down with no notice, or even a word from the PHB who sent hatchet men in his place to do the dirty work.
After laying off everyone the PHB discovered that there were outstanding contractual obligations that were going to require the presence of at least a few people who knew what was going on.
When those people tried to bargain as a group for the few weeks of work that were offered (to help transition product development and support to a cheaper team overseas) they were accused of attempting to exploit the situation and take advantage of the company!
Never, ever, kid yourself. If you are a typical employee of a typical company, you are just a component in a machine to be replaced as needed.
OpenSourcerers
As someone who spent 8 years working in the US for a British company with a large percentage of its employees on H1-B visas (ICL), I look forward to reading your views after you have some actual experience with the situation. If your experience is anything like mine, you will have a completely set of opinions.
In the meantime, your ignorance is abysmal.
OpenSourcerers
I will assume that this is not a troll and try to give a straight answer...
There are many ways to deduce a person's age! When did they graduate? Are they married? What schools in the area are appropriate for their kids (high school or elementary)? Business-related chit-chat ("...remember the Christmas wreaths made from punch cards?").
If the company asks for a complete work history and you only list jobs from the last five years, that is cause for instant dismissal, and it will be noted that you lied on your application.
OpenSourcerers
is it just me or does the so-called "worker shortage" keep coming up about once every two to three months.
at any rate, from my experience, the market seems to be flooded with techs and cs majors. what there seems to be a strong lack of is people with a clue. as cs degree by itself means nothing. i have seen way to many people who finish up a cs degree and still don't have a clue. but if you have a degree and a clue, and you can demonstrate that going into an interview, you'll do well. a little experience doesn't hurt either...
i've been in and out of the workforce for 2 years now, and i'm about done with my degree. a lot of the people i've worked with have not had degrees. if you're around competent and clueful people, you really can't tell a big difference between those who have degrees and those who don't. i have been able to tell a big difference between people who have taken at least 2 years of college and people who haven't. at any rate, having a clue is more important than having a degree. but you should still get the degree. it may not do you as much good as you like straight out of college, but (at least from what i've seen) it will be a good thing to have several years down the road, when you want to start moving up the ranks, and not get replaced by other hot shot new programmers.
note that these are only my observations. as i said, i've only been in the workforce for about two years, and i haven't quite got my degree yet, so my interpretation of the situation may be wrong.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
If you're working more than 40 hours a week to be a code monkey or a sysadmin, they owe you overtime.
A person's salary if for 40 hours per week. After that, unless you're a manager, they owe you time and a half. It's the law.
Reminds me of my old history teacher,
"Everybody put a dollar on the table before you leave class, we are saving up to buy Mike a clue-bag."
that should have read 'CS degrees, MCSE, ,'
forgot to uncheck HTML formatting. D'oh.
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
okay, one more time:
'MCSE, [insert pointless certification here],'
grrr
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
It's important to remember that just because there may be no shortage of candidates with CS degrees, MCSE, , that does NOT mean there is an equally sufficient number of skilled, gifted or CLUEFUL individuals for a given position. The real shortage, in my experience, is not in the number of people getting into the IT field - we have more than ever before. In fact, we're practically flooded in comparison with recent years. But we're not being flooded with clueful, knowledgeable, SKILLFUL sysadmins/network admins/engineers. Most of the tide, like *any* popular movement, is filled with people who are along because it's popular, pays well, or because they want to get in on "the next big thing." The individuals who are here because they love what they're doing, would be doing it for free if they weren't making a career out of it, and have a firm grasp on the cluebat still seem to be fairly few and far between. A degree/certification doth not a competent admin/engineer make.
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
Hmm. Just now I had a profound thought. What about a new fraternal organization for the high-tech, you know, like the Elks, Masons, Moose, or Water Buffalos? Yeah, I could dig that... Anyone know of one? I think someone needs to get going on that right away.
*sigh*
Um, actually, the Libertarian party platform opens up US borders far more than they already are - basically letting anyone in.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Isn't this just the (2 and half months until the)21st century version of Chinese workgangs building the railroads?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Usually they want someone who's 20 years old with 30 years experience, willing to work 80 hours a week for the equivalent of 40 hours at miniumum wage, and on a contract that lets the employer dump 'em any time for any reason with about 20 seconds notice, but binds them to a non-compete clause.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
And just like any other industry there are some cases where the skilled do the work and the skilled at office politics get the big bucks.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
To work at a radio station as the person who took the meter readings on the transmitter, kept the transmitter log, and adjusted the power as necessary, as well as turning the transmitter on or off, required a 3rd with a Broadcast Endorsement.
In order to work on CBs and other 2-way radios, you needed a 2nd-Class Ticket, which involved all the tests for the 3rd plus additional electronics questions.
To be the Chief Engineer for a TV or radio station, or just to do what a 3rd did, but on an AM station with a directional antenna array, you had to have a 1st Class License, which involved even more electronics questions.
I only had a 3rd but encountered people with 1st Class Tickets you wouldn't trust to change a lightbulb..
Turns out there were schools that taught you how to pass the test without having to bother with understanding any of it.
If you didn't pass, they put you through the course again at no extra charge until you did, but only after "debriefing" you to learn what the current questions were so that they could teach the answers to be memorized.
There's a lot in the computer biz that doesn't feel new to me at all.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Go into management. ;-)
--Be human.
Yes, it's true there is a shortage. Yes, it's true that the H1B visa thing is being abused.
I think we ought to open our doors to green cards, not H1B visas. The only thing the H1B visa thing does is drive down wages. Which, in turn, discourages new people from joining the field. Not a good long-term solution.
Of course, if we flooded the US with good, cheap, long-term laborers (instead of short-termers), then people will get taken advantage of. The only answer I can see is unionization. I hate unions, but I fear that this will be the only way that I will ever be able to work a 40 hour week. Not have 5 workers in an office designed for 1. Be able to get a chair that doesn't cause severe upper back pain. The list goes on and on.
I really, really don't like unions. I think they were very useful in their day, but I don't think modern unions are fighting a good fight. The tech industry is one industry that I think needs a union. Where the original purpose for unions is still necessary.
--Be human.
I have a friend from the PRC who was quite older than 35 when she came from China and there was no question of Agism in her hiring 6 years later even. She is MANY years out of University yet sharp as a pin and always makes sure she is up to date with the latest tech. It's not about the younger generation passing you by guys -- clearly not all IT imports are wet-behind-the-years easy-to-manipulate fresh-out-of-college 20-somethings and experience DOES count even in Soft Eng. It's about keeping up with todays technolegy and if you're looking for a cobal job Y2K is over and there's no more work for you! Sure there are some companies who follow agist practices, but clearly if companies are sponsering immigrants in their late 30s and early 40s it must be that they cannot find people in the united states even at THAT age group to fill the proper IT positions. I do feel that we need to be weary of cheep overseas labour just as much as we need to watch out for companies like Micro$oft and Oracle shipping all their development to virtual sweat shops in India and the PRC where due to the shear number of folks prove that even if the percentage of the population with IT training is small, there are a LOT of them produced. So face it, we can be as protectionist as we feel like crying our sour milk sea of tears, but until we as a nation can broach the REAL problem of educating our population as well as other nations do and realise that we need to WORK for our goals and not just believe them our God-given right, we will get nowhere with this H1-B debate. Let's just remember, this ain't communism, there's no Constitutional Guarentee of Employment (much as I'd wish it) and just like goods and services, so too are we, the IT labouror, a capitolistic commodity. The free market will and must dictate how we are hired and for what compensation. If it can be done cheeper, it will. And if we're REALLY up in arms about cheep labour taking all the IT jobs, rather than taking up the Luddite practice of blaming all the more skilled, better valued overseas workers, let's not forget that the world of Collective Barganing can work FOR us as well as against us. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but I believe that the global market is best for IT and if the best talent comes from elsewhere so that is where we must recruit. After all, if you come over here to work, you're NOT going to live on $30k a year -- if a company tried to pay anyone on a Visa here that amount, they'd look for a new job before even filing the Labour Certificate or at most after the I140 if he or she plans on staying. This is a country of immigrants and we should not form racist protectionist barriers to keep the 'Middle Kingdomers' and 'Andrapradeshis' out, for we can build a better country together, as we did with the Irish, Italians and Jews in the last century (this statement will be true in 2 1/2 months). An eductated population makes us stronger, especially when the eductation is provided 'free' from another nation. We must work together, as a team! Only then can we be happy. :)
:)
And finally, need I remind people that you need to speek English to get any kind of work in the country? Most companies will, all else being equal, hire the person who can better communicate in the English language every time, believe me!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
i think what a lot of people don't get is that not all businesses are trying to find slave labour. many of them simply can't afford to hire what an experienced IT person would charge. i make AU $36000 a year (divide by 2 for US$) doing SCO and Linux admin and support for an IT distributor. I'm the sole tech contact for users and resellers in two states. i got that job with two years experience in ISP tech support (start, run, inetwiz sort of stuff). some might say i'm underpaid but i would never have been able to get a position like that if they were paying market rates.
--
enterfornone - logging in for a change
Culture? Corporate Culture is for companies that
have been in business since 1920, or for industries that have "Culture", like a theatre,
or an oil exploration company, or maybe a recording studio.
Tech companies don't have "culture"
Everybody that works there, works there because
they get a bi-weekly paycheck. That's it. That's
the culture. How one "fits into" such a culture
is a no-brainer.
If you were applying to Lloyd's of London or the
Wall Street Journal or something like that, they might be able to make the case that there's a certain culture beyond the usual corporate deal.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Yet readers of the articles proclaiming a shortage would be perplexed if they also knew that Microsoft only hires 2% of its applicants for software
positions, and that this rate is typical in the industry."
This is a blatant case of spin-doctoring.
The 2% rate shouldn't seem atypical to anyone who's done staffing for specialized jobs. Even
in food service, you might have one position available and have 200 people respond to your ad.
Now, a restaurant will probably hire the first dishwasher or hostess or whoever and stop taking
applicants, but a chem-eng r&d job might not get
filled for months, while applicants come and go.
Just because you only hire one person for a job that a hundred people applied for should be no cause for alarm.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The catch is that if you have less than 2 years of
experience companies don't want you and if you
have more than 5 years of experience they think
you cost too much and don't want you either.
Those who hire green engineers have them work
their asses off for lower than normal wages and
get rid of em when they start refusing to work
excessive unpaid overtime.
Very few companies are smart enough to understand
that they should get the best and brightest. Their
HR dept will pick whatever cost the least. They'll
spend money on bullshitter managers but not on
real workers.
If you come under the temporary visa you are held
by the balls and can't leave even if you feel you
are screwed so you must to take the pay that is
offered to you.
If you leave that company in that 6 years you
can't apply for a green card.
Technically we are only importing cheap temporary
labor. We're not in Germany here, this is
America. If you work and pay taxes in this country
you should be entitled to stay here.
You need to wake up to reality. Most engineering
firms work this way :
There are several level of management, usually
made of morons as is well described in the
Dilbert cartoons.
The engineers are assigned projects which
deadlines are usually based on dreams or
idiotic ideas on how long a project is supposed
to take. It turns out that in most cases projects
are not delivered on time unless a lot of overtime
is done. Since the companies that pay for overtime
are extremmely rare it turns out that for most
people this is unpaid overtime.
A good experience programmer knows that the
company can't get rid of him or her easily
or dictate the number of unpaid overtime hours
that he or she ought to do.
Take an engineer on one of those temporary visas.
It is nearly impossible to say no. The alternative
is scary for those people. They are in a foreign
land with nowhere to go. They must stay at the
company they work at or may suffer certain
penalities. What happens then is that the
temporary worker could end up working 80 to 90
hours for the price of 40 or 45 hours.
How can a normal immigrant or citizen of this
great country compete against that?
Next time you think of coming up with bullshit
like your dumb defense of the ill conceived
immigration bill, talk to real engineers who
have known the engineering work place in the
US so you won't look as stupid as you did.
I have nearly 20 years experience in engineering
and I am seen by most companies as "over
qualified". Finding work at my age is nearly
impossible.
When I had around 10 years of experience and had
to take a temporary contract of 3 years in
Montréal (Canada) in order to survive, this was
after 7 months of search all over the US North
East.
There was a place in Rochester where the manager
told me flat out that I was too old (40 years old)
Right now I'm working as part of a five-man QA team which is going to audit a utility billing software package.
Good news: at 42, I'm the baby of the group. It looks like we'll be able to do the job in 40-hour weeks (i.e., no overtime), we're getting the training we need, & life is good.
The bad news: the week before we kicked off this project, I mentioned to one of my coworkers (his age is about 50) about my fear that I could get laid off work & it would take months to find another job. He understood me without much effort: when you've been in the corporate jungle^Wworld for a couple of decades, you've seen people screwed out of their rightful pay, pensions, & rewards in order to keep some PHB happy & content. Laying people off because they are ``too old" is just one more ugly stunt.
I wish I had better advice than to always keep looking over your shoulder, & never relax concerning your security. Even if your boss, & your boss's boss are clued & cool, they can be replaced in a matter of weeks, & your nice little job that you hoped to retire from has turned into a greased chute into hell.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
My experience with H-1B's is that the knowlege is just book knowlege. Questions can e answered, but designs are ugly. I see the same results from everyone who goes into programming for the money.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
I think that's more a sociological sort of thing as opposed to a technology constraint.
I am a software engineer. I tell my boss what it is I want to do, and how long it will take me to do things. I also tell him I'm spending a day this week browsing the web and playing about to learn some new technology he doesn't even know about, and I am spending half a day every week to go chat to the guys in another team entirely just so I can keep up to date with what they're playing with.
I work flexible hours - nominally 9-5.30, in practice usually 8 till 6, but I often take 2 hour lunch breaks and it's not unusual to get in at 10 and leave at 4.
Now compare a friend of mine at another company. She does, on the surface, the same job as me. She has to be in for 9, can't leave before 6, has to take no more than 1 hour for lunch between 12 and 2, gets given more work than she can handle, has no choice in what that work is, and doesn't even get web access. People at my level in her organisation get paid less than I do too.
So technology is not the differentiator here. Management practices are. Control your managers, don't work for companies that treat workers badly and you can avoid a 'slave class'. Compare working in a cube to working in a sweat shop - trust me, you don't have any problems..
~Cederic
It doesn't matter if there's a shortage of workers or not. CS degrees don't mean shit to anyone who really knows whats going on. I've worked with folks who have CS degrees who don't have a clue how to write decent code. I've often cleaned up after their clueless attempts at programming. In some case distilling 14 lines of useless, broken code to one line that works and does exactly what the spec calls for. I've seen guys with CS degrees write stuff like this:
:-)
if (x == Y) x = y;
Yeah, no shit.
Of course, I've worked with people with CS degrees who know what they're doing. I've also worked with some self-proclaimed "hackers" who don't have a clue how to write good code, either.
Same with those silly certifications. Having a piece of paper doesn't mean you know anything. It just means you've slept through enough lectures and parroted back enough of the instructor's drivel to pass. Yeah, it fools the pointy hairs, but it don't fool the long hairs. You better know what the fuck you're doing, and I don't care how much paper you pile up in order to make yourself look good.
Heh, I even recall fixing some code by a guy on a H1-B visa, too. He no longer works there, but then again, neither do I.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Just for the record, let me clarify that I do have two Masters Degress, one in French Language and Literature and the other in Information Science.
Also, I'm speaking from my own experience, so there's no "degree envy" going on here.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
There is no shortage. I know several people who are skilled, enthusiastic, etc. and are unemployed. The problem is IT companies are unwilling to train, even just a little bit.
It is common for jobs to require experience in a specific compiler, or even a specific version of a compiler, not just C++. Employers arent interested in skills, they're interested in buzzwords - agencies cater for this by essentially stripping your CV down to a list of keywords (I've seen a few agencies' CVs... they are awful).
This is the only industry where people can require '2 Years Microsoft Visual C++ Service Pack 4' and still complain about a lack of candidates...
(you may laugh... I was once turned down for a job because I had been using VC 4.2 not 5.0).
You still see the occasional job which requires 8 years java experience... even though java isn't 8 years old.
Tony
Replace "has to pay" with "supposed to pay".
It has been well documented that some companies have paid well under prevailing wages to their H1B employees. I know from past experience that it can take years for the government to handle these cases, assuming they decide to prosecute at all. Too many sleazebag managers have the attitude that laws are for the losers who get caught.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Same thing for experienced Java programmers; you just can't find people with the background and some reasonable amount of experience that easily.
So I would say in my experience that for some key areas the shortage is real. Now you know what to study if you want to get a job in Seattle after you graduate :)
So what is someone like myself to do. If you take this article at face value my prospects are rather grim. I am 29, a 'software engineer', very skilled in my field, but when I have tried to branch out into other fields I have gotten a very cold reception.
My area of expertise will not be around forever - it pays well now and finding work is easy, but what happens to me when the next big thing comes around and I am 33?
Management here I come!
-josh
From what I've seen from my last six years working in local and nationwide consulting companies is that age can be a desired attribute. The fact is that very few companies are comfortable paying $225 an hour for a baby faced engineer. (Finally, a receding hairline is taking care of this for me. )
In consulting, companies want to see people who have seen their problems before, and are able to get to work immediately on solving them. It does take a slightly different mindset to bounce from client to client, but I find it results in more interesting work for me.
Consulting firms are also able to continue promotions and pay increases even if you don't want to enter the management track. Training is also important to a company that needs to maintain/increase the value of their primary resource: consultants.
I've been very happy working as a consultant. Even as a UNIX Systems Integrater/SysAdmin, I find my skills in very strong demand. In fact, my compensation has out-paced almost all of the programmers I took CS classes with at the UofMN. Not bad for a kid from northern Minnesota, eh?
RonSpace
These days, you can learn the hottest technologies on your PC at home, at virtually no cost. A programmer who has been out of work and hasn't even bothered as much as to learn Perl or Java does not seem to be a very attractive candidate, simply because they don't seem very motivated or interested in the job.
In any case, the argument about retraining is hypothetical, since the situation that someone applies and asks for retraining is pretty rare. If anybody shows even that much initiative, in the current job climate, they will probably get hired.
The US neither has a monopoly nor a god-given right to IT jobs. The IT industry is flourishing here because the US has been fairly open to foreign IT workers and because IT workers are mobile. If the US were to close the door, the IT workers would simply go elsewhere.
So, don't spoil a good thing. Both the US and its citizens, and foreign workers coming to the US benefit greatly from the fairly liberal US immigration policies. The only people who have cause to complain are the countries that all those skilled, educated IT workers leave.
If you keep foreign IT workers out of the US to restrict the supply of IT workers in the US and raise salaries, US companies will be less competitive with foreign companies, not only because of the higher domestic salaries, but also because they just freed up lots of IT workers to work abroad.
Competition with other businesses and market elasticity is why companies cannot raise IT salaries arbitrarily, no matter how restricted the supply of IT workers may become.
H1B workers pay all the taxes a US citizen pays, but without being eligible for most of the government benefits and programs they are paying for. They are also not eligible for some tax deductions that citizens can take advantage of.
I have changed jobs on an H1B, and it was a quick and easy process.
The H1B is a work visa. If you don't have an H1B, you can't work, but you can stay in the country on some other visa.
The green card application used to be fairly quick. It's only since 1998 that processing times have skyrocketed, due to INS internal administrative problems. This has caused a lot of other serious problems in addition to tying employees to a particular employer for a couple of years. The solution to that is to fix the INS.
And the new H1B bill actually addresses this issue, allowing most people to change jobs while their green card application is pending.
If you know your stuff, people don't care where you learned it.
Last time I checked, the waiting time for a green card has grown beyond the time you're allowed to stay with an H1B.
Well, that's wrong on several accounts. First, even under pretty bad conditions, getting a green card takes less than six years. Second, after the initial stages of the green card application have been processed, most people can continue to work indefinitely until the INS gets around to processing their application. There are lots of people that are getting screwed by INS regulations, but on average, the process works in a slow but predictable manner.
Did you ever think about WHY IT workers are mobile? Because they're paid enough to move. H1B's can move, but they're not going to. Read up on H1B to see why.
I have changed jobs on an H1B. It's a quick and simple procedure. There was nothing my former employer could have done to stop me. The notion that H1B's somehow tie employees to employers is fiction.
With all these supposedly out of work, over the hill, US-born computer programmers, where are the resumes of these people? People in SV are desparately looking for qualified programmers. Yet, they don't seem to get any applicants, and they are nowhere to be seen online either. Why doesn't Matloff take some pro-active measures and actually create a job web site for the people he claims to care so much about?
My challenge to Matloff is this: put up or shut up. If there are large crowds of qualified, unemployed programmers, do everybody a favor and publish their resumes so that employers can find them.
MCSE, MCDBA, and NCA about commoditizing basic computer management skills. It's roughly the equivalent of learning some skills as part of working at a food or car maintenance franchise. That's hardly the sort of thing that commands high salaries. In fact, the thing that makes Microsoft software so popular with management is the promise that it makes IT functions supposedly easy enough so that anybody can be trained to perform them.
Of course, just like MacDonald's didn't eliminate the need for good, experienced chefs, Microsoft hasn't eliminated the need for good, experienced IT staff. At best, you can use an MCSE as a stepping stone to getting some real experience. If you don't quickly broaden your horizons beyond MCSE, you are likely going to see yourself out of a job pretty soon.
I believe that rampant technology has created a new 'slave class' of workers. The janitors in my building often get better consideration than us cube rats do. It is only the truly elite geek that has any pull these days. I'm trying to move up into management, so I can get at least some control over my daily schedule and workload.
The more our numbers grow, the more we become dispensible. Perhaps it's time we unionize.
I won't argue that people who do more, regardless of the hours, should not be duly compensated. I think that is exactly how things **should** be. However, just because someone is 15 years older than me, or has 10 years more experience, does NOT mean they do more or better work, only that they have lived longer.
You completely contradict yourself in the first paragraph. By doing more, I don't mean doing more crap, I mean doing more good work. I could give a rats arse how many lines of code that translates to.
Also, there are good bosses and bad bosses...and the same can be said of engineers... Don't assume the entire world looks just like the piece you think you've seen.
Many people complaining about age discrimination seem to feel that they are automatically entitled to work less hours and get more pay than the younger croud. And then they complain that the employers will hire the young ones, who will work more, at potentially less pay. If the employer needs a code monkey, and the young guys can do more in less (calender) time, for a competitive wage, why should they hire someone else? Maybe we should just get rid of the assumption that you will always make more money as you get older, and realize that your pay should be related to your worth to the company...
--Ben
You are assuming that the options will grow at all. Some of the economic analysis that I've seen makes this an uncertain proposition. The most likely outcome, perhaps (not certainly!), but certainly a gamble.
Projections of the future are always uncertain. Expecting the details of the future to resemble those of the past is almost always wrong. Your believed in projections are based on what seems to you to be the appropriate large scale (i.e., abstract) meta-patterns. These frequently do repeat. Noticing which of them you believe in is often illuminating.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Which do you think came first, the mobility, or the unfair pressure?
Anyone who believes in the "invisible hand" should observe the tools that are used to strike the new balance. It's called economic power politics. Those who have power, use it to their own ends until sufficient resistance develops. It even feels like this could be modeled with Ohm's law, though I've never really tried to quantify it.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Regardless of the claims of worker shortages, I know several IT people, those who are just starting out as well as those who've been employed for years and are now looking for other work, who aren't finding work as easily as they did two years ago. Or even last year. The jobs aren't paying as much, there isn't the sense that the company is desperate to find someone to do the work...
I'm in the Midwest (Wisconsin), so maybe the situation is different toward the coasts, but you no longer hear of newly graduated/newly certified people getting top-dollar jobs, as they did in the recent past.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
Startups and small to medium size companies want young, single, idiot IT folks to fill the positions because they'll waste their income stupidly and require the job to feed their crazy lifestyles. It's pretty much a fact. I worked for an ISP in Ottawa, Canada. Within the first three questions in the interview I was asked, "Do you like doing what you do, or do you love it?" That's saying, "Would you be willing to live to code, or would you be the kind of guy to take off early on a Friday because you want to see your girl".
:)
Many IT managers suck.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
What are they paying in Boston?
Here's how to figure it whether the salary worthwhile, in my opinion. Starting where the job is located, draw rings (not exactly round) on the map at 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes and 40 minutes, for average commute time one way. Now find out what the median (not average) home price is for the areas within the ring (but not including the ones in the inner ring for outer ones). Multiply the median for the 10-20 minute range by 1.333, the 20-30 minute range by 1.667, and the 30-40 minute range by 2. Now average these 4 numbers together. Now determine the ratio of salary to the average.
Now figure out this ratio not only in Boston, but in other areas, including suburbs of Boston, and other cities in the country. You can change the times and multiplies to match up with different levels of importance for different lifestyles but the above is probably a decent starting point.
Different kinds of jobs will have different ratios, of course. A programming job should get at least 0.5. In California, the ratios are much lower due to extremely inflated housing prices. Shift the pricing to apartment lease rates for a different perspective on it (California still loses). Is Boston somewhere peope really want to live in?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The worker shortage might well be real in California. Those who live there love it, until they discover it is cheaper to live somewhere else (unless they are stuck with golden handcuffs). Those who don't live there don't want to go there.
Maybe more companies should leave California.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I wouldn't want to work for Intel anyway. I know they have some good people working there, but the quality of their products is going downhill, so it must be the silly bureaucracy of the company. It's already obvious based on some of the lame answers I get on their own USENET site from people that I know actually know the right answers, but aren't allowed to tell the truth. So if Intel complains about lack of IT workers, what they are really complaining about is lack of secretaries with CS or EE degrees.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If they can't afford to hire someone who can make the difference in how effective their organization operates, then maybe they're paying the executives way too much.
The pay scale should vary by experience, and it will be influenced by how much experience does value a business. The high pay is expected because some businesses are indeed paying that. They are paying that because they recognize that they need to have the clueful person on staff to make a difference in their company. The probably hired them away from someone company that just didn't give a damn. The problem is that other company won't change.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The market rate is NOT that high. Salary expectations are. The reason is because there really is an available supply of people. If companies would start hiring from the available supply, instead of nit picking and whining, then salary expectations would not really be high because there would not be that massive number of job openings. If you look around all the various web sites, there are probably well over a million high-tech openings in just the USA alone. THAT sets very high expectations by people because they see it as if there is an IT shortage when in fact there is no shortage of AVAILABLE people. There is just a shortage of what companies are currently willing to hire (like someone with 5+ years experience with C#).
The simple solution for Corporate America is to NOT have so many job openings. Make the jobs themselves look as scarce as their tendencies to hire really are. Then people will expect less, and they can hire them for less.
There is a shortage of clueful corporate executives and HR directors.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I have to disagree ... there is no shortage. But there is a gap. There are enough people out there to fill every one of the over a million job openings. The problem is communications and perception. There is also the problem that many of the jobs are junk jobs (mostly the 3rd party contract jobs).
Why are you wanting to hire a QA engineer to sit and follow an existing test plan, instead of developing them? That's not an engineer's job. That's a test TECHNICIAN. I would not have taken said job for any LESS than $150k because it's TOO LOW for me (yes, my demand goes UP for mismatched jobs, even for lower level ones).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Soon, every job field will have a shortage of qualified people, while millions and millions of people sit around unemployed (and are not collecting experience).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There is demand for people who can make things happen. And suits do think that means high-tech skills. And indeed high-tech skills could do it were it not for the bureaucracy ingrained into so many corporations that effectively squashes any ability to do this. A few months ago I reported a bug on the web site of a major high tech company. I did get a followup inquiry back, and explained the problem further and gave a solution. They told me they didn't have the authority to fix the problem, but would try to contact someone at another office who handled the contracting to a web site development company who had contractors doing the work. I could tell that company was in a mess. I know I wouldn't want to work there (and no, it was not Apple).
I recently changed jobs. It doesn't fit that profile at all. But I've worked in the past for places that have lots of people just as you describe. I do believe what you say.
It's all about whose nose gets the brownest.
Send me your resume. If you can't crack my e-mail, you wouldn't qualify :-)
And there's probably some resentment over the fact that the Internet caught nearly every business by surprise, and it's us techies who actually created it.
Or maybe you just wouldn't "fit in" :-)
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
With more Americans not getting programmer jobs, and more H1B workers taking them instead, and going back home after they can't, or won't, work here anymore, there will come to be a new and real shortage ... of people who have actual long term programing experience to take jobs as project leaders and managers. We'll be effectively sending that experience overseas.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
See, this all really depends on how you define the IT market. IT = "Information Technology". To me, this means server admins, net admins, web devs, and others. Or in other words, not the true thrust of most CS curricula. Skilled programmers (yes, even those fresh out of college, given you have a decent set of work-related skills, hopefully honed through an internship or two, or a co-op) should have no problems finding a software development position these days. However, the CS student that is majoring in CS solely *because* the market appears to be insatiable (or did so a year or more ago) is going to have a tougher time of it, and rightly so.
So, unless you're one of those rare (in my experience) CS majors who aspire to nothing more than being a sysadmin, nettech, or other various support roles, your job outlook is still quite positive. (Note to sysadmins/nettechs/others: I'm not saying that your jobs are easy or useless or whatever other connotation you derive from the above, but simply that they typically don't require a Computer Science degree).
Then again, there's something to be said about continuing on through grad school to get a Master's or even a PhD. I'll probably do that myself, one of these days, but my BS in CS is currently "good enough".
Hehehehe..Your comment actually made me laugh out loud. :) Yes, even I grow tired of shameless self-promotion and parasitic trolling. :)
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I dont think it's so much a matter of education as it is a matter of having skills. More and more these days, IT jobs have a pretty wide spectrum of possibiliies for demonstrating that you have experience... You know, "Bachelors degree and 2 years experience OR 4 years related experience." sort of things. The problem is, most places arent willing to go to the line when it comes to salaries. For example, I could get a position here at the University doing system administration, but i'd have to take 10-15K below industry standard wage since the University cant afford to keep step with the rest of the industry. To make matters worse, they invite recruiters onto campus to gobble up most people before they even graduate.
Theres a point of diminishing returns..Your peak of marketability is what matters. A subtle formula of age, skills, and competencies.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
They didn't mean "there's a shortage of IT work labour".
What they meant to say was "there's a shortage of COMPETENT IT work labour."
--jordan
The average CS undergrad has had exposure to at least these three language. The average PhD will have exposure to 6 or more languages. My point is would you hire someone with 20 years C only experience for a C++/Java job ? He had a responsibility to keep current, there is no excuse for being a CS PhD and not knowing C++ or Java.
And wrt to HR practices, I concur. But an NYU PhD should not have to go through HR to get a job, especially an experienced one. This is not age discrimination but rather a flawed approach to his job search
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
It may not be legal, but it is a fact of life.
There are ways of gleaning this information during an interview. Questions like, "Do you have any problems with working round the clock when we head into a crunch time? This is a salaried rather than hourly position."
I am a person who is married, has 2 kids and would love to work a moderately sane schedule. Supervisors above my immediate boss are more than willing to let me know that people like me are a dime a dozen. Mainly, because they can hire new inexperienced bodies or visa labor for less. They may get what they pay for, but their main concern is the bottom line on payroll. Penny wise and pound foolish, they do not have a clue about the services they manage.
Until I can line up a position which pays at or above where I am, I am trapped taking the crap and lousy hours (60 is tame) because I do have a wife and 2 kids to support. At the same time, if you go looking and they find out, things can get very nasty.
P.S. I am a systems administrator who has done work in BSD, Linux, Novell, NT, and OS/2. Additionally, I have a programming background with 13 languages when I graduated from college (about 10 yrs ago). Currently, I am programming in VB, Perl, C, C++, and Java. Because of being a one man show, I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. Aside from cramming in the RHCE over a year ago, it is hard to get focus time when you are too busy watching your vacation time being flushed every year and any comp time you earn over 120 hrs gets flushed immediately.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
... = more income for the gub'mint. I assume H1B workers have to pay income tax, but do they have to pay social security? They also have to pay sales tax.
cpeterso
Candidate A is single and has no problem working 60 hour weeks, while B has a wife and 3 kids and wants to work only 40 hours. How can you expect the company to ignore the fact that A is going to give them more for their money?
The prospective employer cannot whether know Candidate B is married or has kids because these are illegal, discriminitory interview questions. Therefore the employer has no (legal) way to make this "value for their money" comparison.
cpeterso
I find I don't so much *ignore* someone because they have MCSE on their resume, but I look at the whole thing.
If MCSE is simply listed in with some other certifications, at the back of the resume, and they didn't make a big deal out of it, and if their resume shows that they aren't brainwashed by the man... fine.
Oh.. btw... new MCSE grads *ARE* useful as Jr. IT types if you have NT stuff to work with. Just don't give them power until you've reeducated them.
Perhaps 4 or 5 is conservative, I was only making a point. I do recall reading years ago that at some company (It was IBM I believe), programming rate was set at 15 lines of fully debugged code per day.
Of course, the one thing is, what constitutes a 'line'... that's changing... and depends on what kind of project it is.
You are so right. They are afraid not to look busy (so am I). I know in my own programming, sometimes 3/4 of the day is spent figuring out the best way to solve a problem, and at the end of the day, usually spitting out some nice, clean code that I am happy to put aside and work on the next bit.
Too true.
I heard a story from an anonymous colleague. THey do internal software development for use within their company. Safe to say, what the programmers produce is critical to the business model of the company. The software makes it work.
One day he told me 'yeah, we're ditching the SUN stuff and going to these big Linux servers'. I said 'that's neat.. but why are you doing it? You ahve a big SUN investment already. Not working for you?'.
THe answer? "The programmers are doing all their development on Linux, and when they port it, it causes problems, so they want us to use Linux instead of SUN".
Wow. What inane twisted logic. Seriously. As a systems person, I would think one would chose SUN for whatever reasons they chose it; support, reliability, scalability, whatever.... and the programmers *JOB* should be to write software *FOR THAT SYSTEM*. Talk about screwed up.
Now.. of course, I don't work there, and I may have the story completely wrong.... but that's what it sounded like to me.
And this wansn't due to some big 'flaw' in SUN systems... simply taht they were developing solely on Linux, and viewed porting to sun as an 'extra step imposed on them by Management'.
I can say that I'm fairly young (26).
I've seen this 'aging IT worker' shortage happen.
Let me say.. I know several 50+ year old programmers who are worth *TEN* younger programmers. Sure, their attitudes are different. Sure.. they don't put up with 80 hour workweeks.
And they produce nice, clean code at an amazingly steady rate. Oh sure, it might be 4 or 5 or maybe 10 lines of perfect code a day....
But that's awesome!
WHen they say something will take them 10 days? It takes them 10 days.
The article asks many good questions, but it seems that alot of the evidence relied on
a) Magazine articles
b) Limited number of interviews (the deatils of these interviews were not revealed)
c) Anecdotal evidence
d) Statistics for which no source is provided
Does anyone know of any un-biased statistics about hiring rates, avg salary, etc? These would go a long way to proving/disproving these claims
Touch The Puppet Head
I am an H1B worker for a large US company and I work in the Philadelphia area. My boss is ALWAYS short of people. I see him interviewing constantly, and hire people that he would not normally hire hoping that out of the 10 people he hired, he will be lucky to find at least 2 that will turn out to be any good. The other 8 end up being layed off a year down the road - but not until he tried hard to make something decent out of them (many many classes, we have HUGE accounts with companies like Global Knowledge, Oracle training, etc.).
It really sucks! Yes, there definetely is no shortage of applicants for IT jobs. However, my boss will tell you (as several people have told you already in here), there is a HUGE shortage of QUALIFIED IT workers.
Then people will argue that companies should not hire H1Bs, instead they should rehire these older people and re-train them (and yet still pay them the huge wages they've expected to earn coding cobol). Bullshit. It is your duty to keep your skills up to date. Just like doctors always have to keep up with the latest and greatest equipment and drugs. If you're not willing to do that, too bad for you.
Now comes the H1B part. My boss didn't specifically look at H1B workers. I just happen to work there as an intern and I was (apparently) so good that he made me an offer I could not refuse.
The indentured servant argument is crap - and my boss knows that as well (he's always doing everything he can to keep me a happy employee). I can change job anytime I want (yes, there is a bit of paperwork involved) and I am not exactly making minimum wages either.
Before I get the hundreds of reply with the usual "I know 27 H1B workers from india that work for $3/hour, etc.. etc.." I will just put my standard disclaimer: EVERY law in the book gets broken by some people, and I am sure that the H1B laws are no exceptions. If you see companies/employees breaking the H1B rules and regulations, report them and stop bitching. And yes, I think that these cases are the exception rather than the rule. You may say that most H1B you see are in that situation, but guess what? It's always the bad ones that stand out. The good ones, you may not even know they are H1Bs (not exactly tattoed on our forehead).
Check out this article in Forbes:. html
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/1016/6611036a
It's humorous but right on the mark.
I have proved age discrimation to my co-workers by building two made-up resumes, one with dates so that age can be determined and one with no age clues and different names. The one with age clues never gets a response, the 'ageless' resume has at least a 50% hit response rate. Don't believe me, try it yourself.
You will notice that people who design cars still get paid significantly more than people who repair them.
I don't think this is a good analogy for software development. Designing code and writing new code is easy. Maintaining someone else's code is hard. At least for me. Being able to quickly find and fix bugs that are somewhere in 100000 lines of code that may be poorly commented if at all is a rare skill. I have much more respect for these people than for the software 'architects' I know who say 'oh, I don't code anymore'.
"Myself, with 25 years of experience in the industry (15 with unix and linux since '92)"
This reminded me (for some reason) of an ad I saw in the classifieds for IT jobs a few years back, when I was looking for a job. These people wanted "Java programmers with 5 years experience". Only the Java language was about 3 years old at the time.
Hear hear. A buddy of mine with a comp sci degree + honours and about a year of work experience, who is clued up with C++ programming, went to a recruitment agency .. he was told flat out by one guy "don't waste my time". I had not unsimilar experiences when I graduated (I had been doing C++ programming for a few years already part-time, and was obviously fairly qualified); yet not one recruitment agency even bothered to look at my CV. They first waited 6 months or so, so I was settled into a job I like, then they dug out my CV and started harassing me with phone calls about all these wonderful jobs they have lined up for me. Screw them. I don't know what it is with these people, basically they seem to want people experience, but aren't willing to pay for them. Experienced people will typically quite easily perform a task in under a third of the time an inexperienced person will do it, and do a better job of it - yet so many places still seem to think it's cheaper to hire inexperienced people and pay them peanuts. Really, how can you complain about an IT skills shortage, when it takes a C++ programmer with several years experience *8 months* to find a job?
yes, wages would rise somewhat if there were no H1B workers here.
but one thing is completely illusionary: the educational system is not going to get better because high tech needs skilled workers!
even if you would succeed in reforming the entire american educational system so it is up to par with, say, western europe, in, say, one year. then it would take at least another 6 years until these enlightened young people graduate with some sort of degree.
that makes 7 years. 7 years from now, requirements may be entirely different. who knows what is needed then?!
what this country needs is a reform of the entire educational system, not with the goal of producing what we need tomorrow, but with the goal of providing as much education as possible to as many people as possible.
i come from germany, and i must say, honestly, that people there generally work a *lot* harder than people here. they are also more on top of things, e.g. we simply do not have people who do some job but don't actually know anything about it [i have seen this here frequently]. and this covers all areas of work.
please don't be offended - this is just my experience. since i don't believe americans are somehow born dumb, it must be the education system. go figure.
i am not talking about elite universities. we all know US universities drive much of the world's research. i am talking about education for the masses.
like high schools. i am in the bay area, and high school teachers earn something like $25k a year. if you are from somewhere else: for this kind of money, it is pretty much impossible to live here! if education is valued this little here you will always have to import smarts.
It's a subject of continuing interest. Legislation was just passed. It isn't going to go away.
I suppose every story you read about the RIP bill after the very first one was a repeat too? No? It was something that actually concerned you, and you wanted as much information as possible? Well, then.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Hit me with a clue hammer if I'm wrong here, but isn't that the case in ANY job catagory!? We are dealing with a free market after all. Businesses want to bring the cost of programming labor down... the best way to do that is to increase the labor supply. Duh!
The article also misses the point that programmers are not interchangeable cogs. Some programmers are an order of magnitude better than others and are worth paying a premium for. These are the people who are REALLY in short supply and can charge top dollar. I don't expect that situation to change no matter how many H1B visas they issue or how many new CS grads they churn out. Real talent is always a scarce commodity... and thank goodness for that! It is why I get paid way more than I am worth. ;)
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Is anyone here following User Friendly's latest thread? Let's hear it for old programmers! Go Sid!
By the way, I have to say that Dr. Matloff's assertion that mathematical background dosn't matter is simply wrong. Back in the day people entering the programming field were much more likely to have strong mathematical background than many people entering today. Of course, most of the programs written were crap, because nobody knew how to write good programs back then.
Aside from the immediate practical value of knowing discrete match, probability, algorithms and data structures, mathematics gives important practice in the intellectual skills you need to be an excellent programmer rather than a fair or even good one. The key in solving a tough mathematical problem is to find a representation of the problem with which it is convenient to solve the problem. The exact same intellectual skill is needed in functional decomposition and object oriented design.
I've often dealt with programmers who were hobbled by the inability to think sufficiently abstractly to come up with general solutions. For example, it may be that if you need to transform a certain data stream you can build a parser for the input stream's grammar instead of an ad hoc algorithm for slightly more effort. This means that you can very quickly and reliably change the software as the definition of the input stream changes; ad hoc programs tend to act like a house of cards. Skillful abstraction not only produces reusable software, but maintainable software.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Because, while a union is a necessary bludgeon for fighting back against stupid and selfish management, I'd rather work for somebody smart than for a greedy, selfish bastard who only treats me decently because he's afraid of a strike.
I have worked side by side with IATSE (the theatre technical union) electricians. The level of sloth in those guys was astonishing. Saying, "Not my job," seemed to be their job. I'd much rather be known as a person who can do things.
I've been programming professionally for over ten years. I've seen a lot of stupid management decisions. There have been times when I thought unionization was a good idea -- for instance, when the law passed in Washington, declaring that if you get paid more than $20 per hour then you're not eligible for overtime pay. But for almost any other situation I have seen or can think of, a union is not an acceptable solution.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Let's assume that what is said in this report is correct. If so, then if someone founds a company that has an HR department that say, hires people regardless of age, for a reasonable wage, and says "Hey, you have this skillset, but you look reasonably bright, we will employ you for 4 months to see how you pan out". They should, in the medium term, if there are experienced, qualified, capable people out there, produce better software.
Why is this wrong ?
c'mon. Your 26 and making more than your father made in 10 years. Get over it.
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Wow. Nice reading comprehension.
He said: "Ok, lets say that after taxes you're making 40k a year."
You said: "You are missing something drastic: The very small detail you miss is TAXES"
Apparently the other reply missed this as well.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
All professions should unionise. HB-1's should join too, same pay same benifits.
I work for a IT "consulting" company that has a great interest in connecting IT shops with H-1B workers.
The company I work for finds the people, finds an IT shop for them to work in, and then pursue the H-1B visa.
The company goes into a business with 5 to 1000 IT professionals and talks to executive management. The company I work for sells H-1B visa'd IT people by highlighting the following points:
- H-1B IT professionals are "very inexpensive"
- H-1B IT professionals are "eager to work"
- H-1B IT professionals have "great skills"
And that's it.
IT shortage? I don't know. But if you are promised a BMW for $50,000 or $35,000... virtually everyone that I know of will go for the $35,000.
Not -all- H-1B employees are cheap.
But most of them are significantly less expensive than their US Citizen counterparts.
My employer has a pool of IT employees in Asia. As necessary, my employer will fly one of these people to the US to work on an H-1B contract. My company will "put up" these people in a (shared) apartment.
In the end:
1. The IT organization that that uses my employer's "H-1B" labor gets an excellent rate. Typically, I believe there is a 30% savings.
2. My employer makes a good percentage... perhaps 40%. HOwever, there is a nominal charge for the apartment, flights, and legal fees. But in relative terms, these expenses don't make the deal unprofitable! My company still makes a larger percentage per employee for an H-1B than for a citizen (in the general case).
3. THe H-1B employee makes more money than they otherwise would in their home country - plus they often learn valuable skills and get to check out the USA.
So everyone wins, except the US Citizen employee, because everyone either makes more money or gets a good deal.
The US Citizen employee loses because the supply of IT professionals is significantly increased - dropping demand, and therefore reducing salaries, training, and in the end, employability.
I have no problems with H-1B employees or with people from other lands. But let's be real: the goal of permitting more H-1B IT professionals is lower cost IT labor.
Although lawyers are
Odly enough, I never put my age on a resume. In the US of A you are not required to. And I figured that, with them not knowing my age, I stood a better chance of at least getting there for an interview. But for the exact opposite reason of most of the people posting here. For I am 18 years old, and I was afraid that anyone who read my resume and then saw my age, would surely think that it was a work of fiction, and simply toss it to the side.
With an interview then you at least get a chance to let them know who your are and how much you know. And they cannot rightly discriminate as to your age ahead of time. Also, chances are, even if the recruter did by chance read the resume, they probably would not understand how valuable any of your experience was.
With that in mind, I have had nothing but good experiences with getting hired. Infact, I have had employers fumbling over themselves trying to hire me away from the other. Within the last year I moved to another state, and I was worried about being able to get another job that I truly enjoyed and that was worth while for me. Once you get past the recruter things are fairly simple. At least for me, that is how it worked. All of the positions I was interviewed for, first I was interviewed by the recruter, and then by the
manager who I would be working under and, in most cases, a coworker or someone who I would be working directly with and who knew what the job needed most. For two of the positions, the manager and employee actually put together a test of sorts, to measure knowledge in areas of interest. Or perhaps just to make sure that I was not some 18 year old who thought it was fun to write bs on my resume. Whichever was the case, it seemed like a hell of a good idea to me. And if I am ever in the position to hire someone, I will surely do something simular. Anyway, with that going for me I was accepted for both possitions.
Now I have since moved to another job in the same organization, bypassing completely the recruiter (which was nice) and having the manager come to me and offer me a "better more fitting" posstion. Actually, he pestered me for a few weeks before I agreed to interviewing with him and his manager. And then there was a few more weeks where I was hesitant of leaving my relatively recently acquired possition.
I would suggest that you not include your age when submitting your resumes. I do believe that you would stand a better chance of at least being acknowledge if there was any sort of discrimination going on. Also note that both of the men who I work with now are well into their forties. And one of them was hired, from outside, a little more than a year before me. So it is infact possible to acquire a decent tech job (in this case of the Unix admin/programmer type) at those ages. The down side to that is, I am subject to allot of little kid type joking. Pretty soon here I am going to have to come up with some old-man come backs to put them all in their places.
On the subject of hours willing to be worked. I believe that everyone is very much correct in saying that younger people are hired for their willingness to work ridiculously long hours and hardly compensated. Which was actually my final deciding factor in leaving my last position. Some young people (like myself) maybe just need to have this pointed out to them. "Hey, look, you are working well over 60, sometimes 70 hours a week and they are not giving you what you are worth for the first 40." Let people know that they are being taken advantage of because either they do not knoe any better, or they do not mind. That way, if everyone works ~40 hours, the employer will see who is truly worth more. No doubt the more experienced or well endowed employee will be getting the job done, and done right, in lesser time.
-xtype
Yes of course I went to highschool. ;^)
and then some...
and some more later now doubt.
Just hp-ux admin now though, and cisco cert. pretty soon.
I better make a hell of allot more after that.
-xt
Your point may (or may not) have merits. But I'm getting irritated at
A conspiracy is a group of people agreeing -- that is, "consipiring" -- to act in concord to some goal. A trend is a bunch of people all doing the same thing without benefit of coordination.
Since presumably you're all bright enough to know the difference between a conspiracy and trend, one is left with the conclusion that the common practice of calling trends "conspiracies" is a vacuous rhetorical move explointing the negative connotation of "conspiracy" to discredit the person discussing the trend. It is a red herring, an attempt to deliberately muddy the waters of the discussion.
It doesn't work. It just makes the respondent look dumb.
By that logic, if 20% more people buy Fruit Loops(tm) this month than last, that's a conspiracy. Try again.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
This is something that really gets my goat. IT is no different from any other industry. All industries are plagued with people who aren't as skillful as the top 10%, whether you're talking about hiring a secretary through to hiring a CEO. The people who are skillful are getting paid large amounts of money. So what? This is the same anywhere. Are you better than everyone else around you? Move to another company which will pay you more.
... the current crop are mainly old economy), information asymetries will decrease, and along with them will salaries.
Where IT is currently different is that the people who aren't skillful are also getting paid large amounts of money. This will change. IT is a market in transition. Because of huge information asymetries, employers cannot currently tell how much a potential employee is worth. Because of this, low skilled employees will get paid amounts similar to highly skilled (and don't try to tell me that coding in HTML and JScript deserves 60k plus). BUT, I firmly believe that current salaries are unsustainable. The amount of people wanting to move into IT means that supply will increase, driving salaries down. An increase in overall supply will also mean an increase in the supply of quality workers. As IT gradually loses it's mystery to the average CEO / CFO, and as more CEOs and CFOs with some IT experience are promoted (which will happen
Knowing how difficult most IT jobs are, the salaries they attract are disproportinaly high in comparison to the skills and experience required. I mean really, do you think a person with two years real experience is worth 80k? I don't. It's just representative that people with 2 years good experience are hard to find and that people don't know what IT is about.
Give it ten years. If you're in the industry now, make your money and get out. If you're moving into the industry now, expect you salary in 10 years to be the same as that accountant next to you, not double his. If you're in it for the money, money can be found anywhere. Better to be in it for the love of the job. Just don't expect your current salary increases to continue. (As an example, the hourly rate for SAP developers around here has droped from $120 an hour to $60 an hour in the space of a year. It does happen).
IT is just the most recent goldmine. It's not sustainable, and I firmly believe that if you're in it for the money, make your money quick.</RANT>
There. I feel better now.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Instead of demanding resumes (and, believe me, I could supply a ton of qualified candidates for almost any job; willing to pay $100+/hour?), how's about demanding the companies produce job descriptions that are actually useful? If I see another position that doesn't say anything more than "SV pre-IPO Java Web", I think I'm going to be sick. Companies simply will not give you the basic facts of what you jobs is going to be anymore (maybe they never really did). If they can't go into a bit of detail, how am I supposed to determine whether or not I really want to work there? Instead, they always try to pump up even the most grunt of labors while at the same time downplaying the value of the position so they don't have to pay as much. Face it, the companies themselves are at fault, not the labor market.
Better to listen to him than to listen to an AC who isn't even a "division manager for an IT company".
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Designing code is easy? I beg to differ. True, it's easy to write code, but designing it is another matter.
For instance, many algorithms can be written either as a 100-line piece of deeply-nested looping code, or as a single, simple, mathematical formula. Many people will find all sorts of different ways of writing the 100 lines, but few will see the simple math formula that will do the job a dozen times more quickly.
Those guys that say "I don't code anymore" spend their days coming up with the ways of making sure those 100000 lines of code never exist in the first place. I have more respect for those guys than the people who write code that simply works.
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Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
I'll add to that. I did some of my first debugging 26 years ago. It was just RTFM, but I learned that early.
I've been paid for my computer skills for 21 years. I've demonstrated ability to learn, and then teach, any technology required.
My productivity is two orders of magnitude higher than the average programmer, still even one order after I've taught them the technology.
Some companies do take a while to pass me through the required levels of their interview screen. Those that take too long, lose.
Because by then I'm working for their competition.
The companies that can recognize and hire talent, without any kind of blinders, will win. There maybe temporary blips as the job food chain is momentarily dominated by the stupids, but they'll get eaten soon enough.
Huh?
Ok, lets say that after taxes you're making 40k a year.
You then make 3300 a month.
You expenses equal 1200 a month.
Leaving 2100 a month in play money.
Unless I'm missing something drastic, you have plenty of money. Live reasonably!?! You can support a family of four with the money you make!
Easily!
Sheesh,
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I agree that basing hiring decisions solely on whether you will be willing and/or able to work >>40 hour weeks is stupid and shortsighted. However, in some cases I can see the logic. Say you have two 30 year old applicants for a job with equal skills. Candidate A is single and has no problem working 60 hour weeks, while B has a wife and 3 kids and wants to work only 40 hours. How can you expect the company to ignore the fact that A is going to give them more for their money?
Being willing to work longer hours is equivalent to being willing to work for less money; it's just supply and demand. Many people seem to think that having a family and children should come with zero tradeoffs, but it can't.
And yes, even if well paid, 70-100 hour work weeks == crap treatment and abuse of a salaried worker. Just like you can't justify exposing workers to workplace hazards by claiming, "they're paid well and accepted the job"
I work around 70 hours a week (with occasional /. breaks...). I am paid well, I knew what would be involved when I signed up, and my work environment is fantastic. I really don't need you to inform me that I am being "abused" and to prevent me from making voluntary and informed choices.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
First, about myself: I'm 27, I've been working mainly in the Internet industry since I was 21. College dropout because work was too interesting and my grades stunk. I was hired at my current company as a mid-level UNIX Systems Administrator, with two years UNIX experience (and five years Windows/DOS/Macintosh experience). I am now the manager of Systems Administration for Excite Business Applications in Utah.
I'll freely admit that I see age discrimination regularly. Many managers assume that older IT workers do not have the current skill sets to handle our work. I believe that's wrong, but having been in the business six years now I'm noticing that the average age is going up -- whereas most workers were under thirty before, I'm regularly seeing people into their forties and fifties in positions of responsbility at my company and elsewhere. I really feel that it's the *industry* which is finally growing up. There is an enormous shortage of competent, skilled workers in the field. From anecdotal evidence, I would suggest somewhere between five out of ten and nine out of ten applicants do not have any clue about their jobs. That's pretty sad, and makes us (managers) very jaded.
I'm looking for bright, competent workers in our entry-level systems administration positions. We hire more experienced admins as well; please allow me to offer a few tips on resumes that really make the difference for me on whether I ask someone to interview with me:
- Do not list time frames for previous positions on your resume. This avoids potential pre-interview age discrimination. Most employers aren't actively discriminating against older people, they just assume you're far too expensive for the position. Don't let them know your age on the resume.
- Remember, your resume is an advertisement about yourself, not a listing of your previous failures. Talk yourself up!
- List only relevant experience about yourself in your resume. If a job you held 15 years ago is relevant, list it. If the last job you held had nothing to do with the position for which you're interviewing, don't list it.
- The only way I'll believe your Summary of Qualifications is if I see work history that backs up each bullet point.
- Leverage your age as an asset in the interview. Convince the interviewer you are reasonably priced (their first concern when interviewing someone older than they are), more competent than any "young gun", and (most importantly!) able to learn quickly.
Many employers assume older workers are high priced, out-of date, and slower to learn than younger people. It's the prospective employee's job to recognize age discrimination exists; prove to the interviewer that these stereotypes do not apply to you. I hate to say it that way, but there are a lot of clueless newbie managers out there who simply don't know it's illegal, unethical, and stupid to discrimate based upon age.The law says all employment in the U.S. is "at will" -- you can leave, be terminated, or not get a job for any reason or no reason, outside of the following federally-protected exceptions:
I believe there are more, but cannot recall right now.
These are the things I, as an employer, willfully discriminate upon:
I wonder if I'm the exception rather than the rule? I certainly hope someone out there was benefitted by this post; if not, at the very least it helped me clarify my thoughts on this issue.
Matt Barnson
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
What the average PHB doesn't have a clue how to measure is how effective an engineer is. "Effective" includes doing the right job, doing it efficiently, doing it maintainably, doing it in such a fashion to avoid near-future pitfalls, and enabling others to work effectively at the same time. Effective does not include number of hours worked or number of lines of code written, nor even number of suck-ups to the PHB.
I can tell you from direct experience, the boss typically hasn't a clue how to measure that effectiveness and tends to rely on simple indicators like hours worked and the amount of ego-massaging they receive from their subordinates. They're even quite willingly cheerful to admit those facts. I've seen a near-net-negative producers highly praised because he spends so many hours at work - when most of those hours are spent fixing problems he created in the first place.
If I ever start my own company, I'm going after the older guys who have kept fairly current and really know how to get the job done. Doesn't matter if they cost 50% more than the young guys and will only work 40 hours a week - it's how much they actually get done per buck that counts, and the more experience the more likely they'll do better by this metric.
Everybody's discussing if there's a shortage, but nobody is defining the term, so everybody uses their own definition, and don't really communicate.
Pretty much by definition, there CAN NOT be a shortage, in the sense of economic theory, of anything on a free market. If supply (of IT workers, in this case) decreases or demand increases, this results in higher prices (wages, in this case), not a shortage. When prices are high enough that the number of employers willing to pay them are equal to the number of available workers, equilibrium ensues again.
OTOH, you can take the fact that engineer earnings have skyrocketed as a sure indication of a shortage in the sense that employers would love to hire many more engineers, if only they were a bit cheaper. And be equally right.
Of course, in the REAL WORLD, where I've been working, we have very often been a few people short, perfectly willing to pay them real good money, but just haven't found them. I'm not sure what that means...
You are probably not a programmer. Any programmer can tell you that working more hours != getting the job done faster than working less.
a human brain can only process that much in a given day. It doesn't matter if you dit in front of the table and hack your ass off, you will not produce.
however, it might be different in IT fields, such as system administration.
What bull. If this were true, then Nurses would get paid more than Doctors, Bank Tellers more than Loan Officers, the Military would be a well paid job and Firefighters would get more than almost anyone
:). The price we put on a position more relates to how important that position is to the company. This is sometimes hard to quantify though. If it's sales, that would be easier, but how do you determine how much money a NOC tech brings into a company? On one hand it's 0, seeing as how he is a net consumer of resources. On other hand it's infinate, since if we have NOC staff we have no stability, and no customers. Oops. But what it comes down to is I have a budget for staffing, and have to make my salaries fit inside that mark.
*grins* well I won't answer for ills of other segments of society, as I personally have no control over them, and in fact, agree with you.
Now, I can easily understand where a worker is not worth more than he can bring in in revenue to the company, input from your Finance person is important, that's a reasonable way to set the upper limit on what you'll pay
This is in essence what I was driving at, but I should have typed it after sleep instead of before sleep
Also, my view of candidates is circumscribed. I get a stack of resumes, generally with a number written on it, that comes from my HR dept usually obtained through a pre-screen telephone call, representing the opening salary offer from the candidate. Looking at these I put together a subset for interviews and toss em back at HR. If they are immigrants (to Canada in my case, btw) I don't know.
Minupla
*shrugs* that's how it looks from my side of the argument anyways.
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Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
You see, this is the attitude that I don't understand. Why is it that hiring manager's think there is some arbitrary amount of money after which they'll pay no more?
:)) I'm here to tell you that every position I've hired for started off with HR, me and someone from Finance sitting down and deciding how much this position is worth to us. We set a number that we won't go over. There are very very few key positions in an organization that you _MUST_ have the very best person avail, regardless of cost. The other positions (NOC techie for example) are commodity positions. I mean really, how much knowlege does it take to watch for the flashing red icon on HP openview and follow a list of resolution procedures (reboot the machine, if that doesn't work, call this list of ppl in accending order?
Becasue there is. As an IT hiring manager (techie who's risen to his level of imcompedance
Pay is consumerate with difficulty of position, as it should be.
Minupla
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Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
One thing I think is a problem is that people see the prices being offered in Silicon Valley and apply accross the country. However living in Silicon Valley requires 100k just to have the same cost of living as most other parts of North America get for 50k. So you start comparing apples and oranges and as always when making fruit salad, you get yourself into trouble.
:)
On the other hand, in my experience there is work out there on the sysadmin side (can't speak to softeng, since I'm not one) of the fence. Even at high profile firms.
And I'm one of those people that even if IT workers got paid the same as window washers at traffic lights, I'd be doing it. No choice, it's how I'm wired. I ran a fidonet node when I was 13. Such is life
Minupla
----
Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Hey,
Even in interview and in job descriptions it says the position is salaried and at least 45 hours a week.
I'm not kidding.
That's exactly his point.
A lot of the pseudo-libertarians around here think it's great that we should have limited government, but once they perceive their jobs are being threatened, it's "no more H1-Bs!"
--jbAll this goes to show that the US congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of big business, just in case anyone hadn't realized. Clinton signed the previous H1B bill just before a fundraising trip to Silicon Valley.
The DMCA Act is another example of the same thing. In fact if you look at the history of copyright and patent law big business has been getting what it wants for 100 years. Since, in fact, the US became an exporter ot intellectual property. Before that the US did not honor intellectual property just as 3rd world countries do not today. Now is is regularly extending the scope of it.
H1B is about driving down the salaries of programmers. As many posters have pointed out H1Bs are in many ways like indentured servants and are in a very weak and vulnerable position.
I know several people who went over (from AU) as H1Bs and for most it was an unhappy experience. Things were not as they were promised and there was nothing they could do about it.
Several people argued that if we do not allow the H1Bs the jobs will move offshore. As someone who works for a multinational corporation I can tell you that running projects across time zones is a nightmare. This is a huge barrier to exporting these jobs. So many companies tried to do this with Y2K work and ended up doing it in house because of the poor results.
A much better way is to have a skills based immigration scheme and allow the required people to get green cards day one. This avoids the 'indentured servant' problem at least and employers will have to pay market rates.
I worked in the US for a while and I was really surprised at the low salaries that people were earning. Especially considering the high cost of living in the US (housing, fresh food, restaurants, high heating bills in the north and cooling bills in the south).
On a recent trip to Mountain View (evaluating some software technology, not looking for a job), I was told that the firm I was visiting no longer recruited outside of Silicon Valley because there were no other parts of the country where there were experienced people that could afford to move to the Valley. I interpreted "experienced" as meaning they were old enough to have bought a house, might have kids, etc.
This would seem to imply that one of these days we'll see the whole Valley implode as all the companies that can do so move out to where their people can afford a reasonable life style. Moving should be easy for a software company, at least compared to, say, a hardware company with a billion-dollar fab line.
I have been working in Silicon Valley for 20 years now. I am now in my 40s and there is zero shortage of demand for my skills. It is embarrassing how much money is chasing me. It is also obvious from inside of every company and project I have been on that there is a very real shortage of good software talent. The toughest work I have experienced is trying to find good people and get them in the door. Also I notice that many of the senior people on most projects are about my age, so I doubt it is just me.
On the contrary - I think the salaries are too low. You should know better how much time, effort and persistence takes to keep up-to-date, let alone to gain in-depth knowledge and experience. And there are sacrifices you must make if you would like to be at the top of your field (well, it is like that in every field). But even your average so called IT-specialist deserves much more for her work.. Look at the pro-football and basketball players. What they get is not what they deserve. But in the market economies marketability is what that matters. So coming back to the point - salaries are based on what the employers are ready to pay. Let's make them appreciate us more ;).
Mr. Anonymous, although your last question was not directed at me I felt compelled to give my version of an answer. So: there are exceptions but generally you need specific way of thinking to be good at this job. A way of thinking that does not come with getting a degree but with long hours in front of a computer doing what you like to do. That is what makes it very unlikely your recently graduated middle-aged man to be suitable for hiring. I mean, I would like to be a basketball player but I am too short - isn't that 'unfair' discrimination ?? Actually the last question is what the essence of my answer is.
your case obviously is not related to the skills and qualifications of an individual. you see only what you want to see. i just wanted to note the possibility that certain jobs are very hard to get into and there are objective reasons to this. it is sad when someone is unable to raise above his personal opinion and is ready to interpret whatever is told to her/him the most suitable way to her/his views. what my intend is that the employee should be able to do the job, learn on the job and have a little passion about the job. all you see, mr. coward, is digits.. why is that, i wonder..
I don't think there is much of an audience to an anonymous poster but anyway - I am not a shill. I'm just the living proof for the superiority of the anonymity. At least I can spell your name correctly..
You constantly miss the point and use partial quotes to skew what the meaning was. Which was, for everyone who missed it - you: getting a degree means nothing (in this particular field). There is much more to it. I start to think you don't know what it is or you just don't have it..
Back to the ballgame: let's extend the metaphor: the short basketball player will do (some) work on the floor but she/he is handicapped thus her/his team is handicapped. That player won't grow much more, it's just too late and that's part of life. There are second chances but now ones says they must be as good as the first ones.
Again, getting afraid of being misquoted, people should not be judged by their age or whatever you would like to find to differentiate them. It comes down to being able to do the right job, having the skills and the drive.
I don't get it why you are so stubborn? What is it? You are over 40 and missed the train or something ?
P.S.
And yes - the reason is objective (with or without the italics and the exclamation marks) - because there are people for everything. You can't just decide one morning that you are dead bored being truck driver - from now on you are going to be a rocket scientist. You go buy a book and start building a spaceship out of your truck. May be in the movies it can happen but not in real life.
I thought there was something called freedom of speech but obviously only you are free to express your thoughts and they are always right. I said something three times in a row but three times in a row you do not get it.
Nobody is forced to do anything. If the employer does not respect employees - they are free to leave. If you are good enough - you would not have problems finding a (good) job.
I would like to avoid personal remarks but it does not make you smart if you do not even try to see things from different perspectives.
Good luck changing to your next career.
I'm a division manager for an IT company, and we've been interviewing people for Java and Perl positions lately. And while we do get alot of candidates (of which only 1 was unemployed, and less than 10% in H-1B status), quite few actually have a decent knowledge of computer science. Very basic questions about knowledge of algorithms and such are answered all too often wrong. And on average the H-1B candidates do alot better on basic CS knowledge compared to US candidates. (Flame away if you like - it's an observation of reality.)
So in all, I can say that there definitely seems to be a shortage of CS professionals that actually really know what they are doing and that have the knowledge to be productive in writing quality software, rather than software that merely works.
I can't speak for anywhere else in the country.
However, I just went looking for consulting work here in Silicon Valley. Put my resume up on dice on Thursday, was working Wed AM 13 days later. Five interviews, 3 offers. Took the position of "Software Architect" on a big router project for a startup.
I am 55 years old. Most of my friends have grey hair. Nobody I know complains about discrimination of any kind: we all marvel at how our years of experience translate into top consulting rates. This includes people with Ph.Ds and people with some art classes past high school. All serious technical people for 15+ years, all in great demand.
The company I work at has signs up in the cafeteria: $5000 reward for recommending an engineer who gets hired. They are still way behind the hiring curve. Good company, so far as I can see, good opportunity.
As for "umpteen hours a week": our guys work 9 hours a day just now -- design phase. It is 9 real hours -- heads down, and push all day, go home to the wife and family in the evening. No doubt it will be harder when we get near deadlines.
Most I have to complain about is traffic and the cost of housing.
In case you think this isn't worth it, I have lots of multi-millionaire friends as a result of their few years of hard work. Haven't made it myself yet, but maybe this one. Or maybe my wife will be lucky.
Either way, our resumes get better at 4X the speed of time working for startups.
No doubt, there are asshole managers and idiot companies who treat people bad, especially people who can't quit. Easy solution for those people: work for a company which rents them out as consultants. If they don't like the job, they move to another. I know lots of people who have gotten their green cards this way. I can recommend a company if anyone asks.
BTW: We are hiring. I am not an employee, so no hidden agenda beyond making our project work.
Lew Glendenning
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
Three years of work experience for every year of college the candidate lacks. Counted from the age of 18. That means the soonest somebody can get an H1B without a Visa is 30
Michael
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
The capitalists who ru(i)n the computer industry in this country wouldn't be working so hard to scabify and undermine their employees if not for Katz, and by extension, slashdot as a whole. Why? Because this is the place where loudest of all we heard the cry "Hax0rs are the linchpin of twenty-first century America!"
Now the guys who really run this so-called democracy are the investing class; their mode of operation is to have someone else do all the work for them, and then they rake in the profits, throwing only enough crumbs to the actual workers to keep them just the down side of active revolt. Now that is a cushy job, but one which makes the jobholder plenty nervous, because obviously one could behead the five hundred richest Americans, parasites one and all, and national productivity would not decline by even an iota. (One could also hang them or stand them in front of a firing squad, or weld them into cages down in unlighted dungeons and let them starve to death. Ah fantasy!)
The point is that one could not, without dire practical consequences, behead, as a group, the programmers of America. No programmers = no programs = no software industry = dead computer industry = NASDAQ goes through the floor = rich guys's portfolios suffer grievously. For the investing/ruling class, that's still cool, so long as all the programmers aren't aware of their own power.
Everything was cool, then, until this bigmouth Katz (note: no hax0r himself, but a publicist and lay sociologist instead) started coming out with all his talk about the central economic importance of the hax0r class. So then hax0rs, especially young ones, started to imagine they could impose certain political and economic demands upon the ruling/investing class. But the r/i class is not in the least willing to share any part, no matter how small, of their overmastering power or wealth. Sure the worthless, parasitical r/i class can't write their own software, no more than they can do any work of value, and yet that software must be written to keep America's industries afloat.
But whereas hax0rs all dress funny and have rings through their noses, eyebrows and other unmentionable parts, and obviously they control no Washington lobbyists at all, in contrast, the r/i class runs Congress like whatshisname ran Charlie McCarthy. So, for the same reason that Reagan ran unemployment up to 12.0% in 1982 - that is, to smack down the labor unions and put them lowly workies down in their place - here come the software-writing scabs, with their ridiculous H1-B visas, specially crafted to deny them rights which full-fledged citizens take for granted, such as the right to trade in one massa for a better position at a competing plantation down the way.
As I say, it's all Katz's fault. If he'd kept his yap shut a little while longer, who knows how far the sinister hax0r plot for world domination (hey come to think of it, Linus Torvalds could have been a tad more discreet too) could have developed? Now, alas, history will have to wait for another Spartacus to arise.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
The situation you described sounds like your management is the real problem. If others have to pick up the slacks left by this system administrator, then the work moral will suffer, resentment will result as you stated. I don't understand why "there is no way he could be fired". If this is indeed the position of the management with a full knowledge of the situation, then maybe it is time for you to look elsewhere. It sounds like your management is not willing to make tough but necessary decisions in this case. Just my $0.02 worth.
0x1bAtSBCGlobalDotNet
You see, this is the attitude that I don't understand. Why is it that hiring manager's think there is some arbitrary amount of money after which they'll pay no more?
These are markets we're talking about. People price themselves exactly at the point where it's a question whether you want to pay that or not. If they are pricing themselves any lower, they are short-changing themselves.
Hire or don't hire, pay or don't pay, but don't say there's a shortage because you won't pay what people are demanding. A shortage is when you can't get something at any price. This is just a tight market where people demand more.
-Jordan Henderson
What bull. If this were true, then Nurses would get paid more than Doctors, Bank Tellers more than Loan Officers, the Military would be a well paid job and Firefighters would get more than almost anyone.
You just have this problem where a bunch of petty management types aren't willing to participate in the market for people. It hurts their egos to think that a geek could make more than they do, or more than they made 10 years ago.
Now, I can easily understand where a worker is not worth more than he can bring in in revenue to the company, input from your Finance person is important, that's a reasonable way to set the upper limit on what you'll pay. But just having a bunch of HR and other management types sit around and say "that job's not so hard, it's not fair that they would get X" is just crazy.
If a job is so easy (like watching blinking lights and following a set of procedures), then it should be easy to get someone who can do it cheaply. If you can't find people to do it cheaply, then maybe you don't have an understanding of the job.
-Jordan Henderson
Interestingly, this article was included as "the" first thing in the current issue of Forbes, so the topic isn't just a geek one.
So let me ask you something: as a young (23 years old) guy with $18,000 in college debt who is now working as a software developer at Microsoft for $55k/year and living in the uber-expensive-cost-of-living Seattle area, how can I possibly stand up and demand any better compensation?
I do strongly believe that Microsoft seriously underpays its software developers for the intense (and sometimes extended time) work that we do, but there's nothing I can do about that. There's no one at Microsoft I can ask for more money, and if I were to try, I'd lose my job. If I were to go hunting for another software development job around the area, I would run into similar pay and (from what I've heard) even more ludicrous demands on what ought to be my personal time. I certainly don't have the luxury of taking a few months off from work to hunt around for a better job, since I have over $300 in loan payments and over $900 in basic living expenses (rent, food, car) each month.
I'm young and relatively inexperienced, and so no employer is willing to pay me the kind of money I need to make in order to live reasonably, pay off my debt, AND set some aside in savings every month. It's a very frustrating situation.
While I love the work I do, and I'm satisfied to be doing it, I cannot escape the feeling that I'm missing out on some of the most crucial personal time and opportunities I could ever have. I would be happy with a $55k/year job in this area if I could be guaranteed a 9-5, no weekends work schedule. But if I don't take this kind of job at these kinds of wages, then I'm SOL.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
The options are meaningless because they aren't worth jack with the way the stock's been, and I'm not even vested anyway.
I'd get the hell away from Seattle if I hadn't already grown into a new life out here. I'm not willing to start my life over again just over a job.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
Okay, here are some fun things you're forgetting:
- Taxes
- 401k deductions
- housewares & clothes
- telephone bill
- cable bill
- emergency shit that always comes up
(computer dies and needs to be replaced;
car needs a new transmission;
thief breaks into my car and steals $750
worth of stuff not covered by my insurance;
plane flights back home)
By the time everything is done each month, I find that no matter how carefully I've budgeted and planned, I can't come out more than about $300 positive each month. It's not as if I'm buying tons of electronics and fancy cars and lots of stocks every month--I just buy basic living stuff that I need to live a lower-middle-class lifestyle. That's not adequate savings for a person in their young twenties.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
So many idiots like you claim that it's all about "having balls", and that's where you're wrong. If that were all it were about I'd switch in a moment. You seem to forget that I have some huge college loans I have to pay off. I simply CAN'T take the risks many other people can because if I miss too many payments on those loans (they are FEDERAL loans, BTW) then I can get hauled off to federal prison.
So as you can see, there's a big difference between "having balls" and being stupid, and you seem not to know the difference.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
There is a far simpler explanation for why your interviewer has not seen many skilled people. It is because they are actively ignoring them. It goes like this:
They think that Age == Bad because older workers expect higher salaries and aren't willing to work those 18 hour days.
So, these employers never even interview the people who are older. They neglect to realize that often Age == Experience. One reason experienced people aren't willing to work 18 hours days is that they prefer to work smart -- often the reason for 18 hour work days is not that there is a lot of work, it is that management has so fucked things up that the only way out is for people to put in a herculean amount of effort.
Of course management never wants to hear that they are the problem and so they prefer that a bunch of newbies who don't know any better work those 18 hour days.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Actually best people understand that the problem with H1B is not immigration, it is the lack of OPEN immigration. Sure, let these people in - send us your brightest, most talented people. But don't force them to work for the same employer at whatever crap salary that employer feels they can get away with. Don't constantly hold the threat of deportation over their heads if they speak up about poor working conditions, or start looking for another job.
Sure, some people jump on the H1B problem to further their own nationalistic agenda, but fundamentally what is going on is that we have big business that is not willing to settle for a simple free market of labor, they have got the US government to provide them with what is essentially slave labor.
It doesn't matter if you are GOOD or not, H1B (and to a lessor extent even green card application process) is a force that drives down wages for everyone. Sure, the good people get paid more than average joe, but personally I'd rather have a market where the average joe makes $100k and the good people can make $200k than a market where joe makes $25k and the good people only make $50k. Wouldn't you?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'd suggest that you get to know the real world.
Every year we've had an H1B visa bill it has contained similar wording regarding paying at least some high percentage of the prevailing wage, this is nothing new. The trouble is that such requirements have little teeth.
In the real world, there is very little enforcement of that requirement. In the real world there is very little budget to enforce the prevailing wage requirement, there are no inspectors who verify these things. In the real world all a company has to do is attest that they are paying a prevailing wage, that's the only requirement.
Here's just one game that gets played - lump all of IT in one group, so that the there is no difference between an operator (aka tape monkey) with 5 years experience and a C++ developer with 5 years experience. Pay the H1B guy 90% of what you pay your operator, but put him to work doing C++ development. It happens all the time.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Always disturbs me whenever I hear of the new guy who just got hired at some rediculous 6-digit figure. I get intensly jealous.
Don't get jealous, get a new job. When you know someone gets hired to do work similar to yours but is getting paid boatloads more money, this is a sign that you are underpaid. Don't be jealous, be glad that you've found out that you are potentially worth a lot more money. Then go act on that new knowledge and get yourself a 'rediculous' 6-figure salary.
Better do it while you can too, in a couple of more years we will probably see another down-turn in the IT labor market and then you may be unemployed. It is a lot better to be unemployed with a big bank account balance than it is to be unemployed with a small bank account balance.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
One thing to keep in mind when people start quoting the number of vacant IT positions is the methodology used in counting them.
Amazingly enough, positions that are filled by contractors (aka temporary workers) are usually counted as vacant. There are easily more than 300,000 contract workers in the US IT market. So, whenever you hear some parrot the Big Business line about 200k-300k vacant IT positions each year, keep in mind that a large number of those positions are not really vacant...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Perhaps you don't get it.
Let me state it more clearly.
H1B visas are designed so that their holders are not able to participate in the free market for labor. H1B visas are not open immigration.
I say, stop letting the government meddle in the market for IT labor, leave the borders completely open. If a company can find a skilled guy for $70k in Europe, hell yes hire him. But, when he gets here and sees that he could be making $100k, then the government shouldn't stop him from changing jobs immediately.
Until then, big business is the hypocrite, not me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Why should there be a limit on what people are paid? Isn't America suppossed to be the land of the free-markets where goods and services are sold at whatever price the market will bear? Do you also support some sort of subsidy for IT people when the market turns bad? It was still less than a decade ago when IT jobs paid crap, a lot of people really took it where it hurts the most - in the wallet.
Big business didn't give a damn then about the people, they paid them as little as they could, they down-sized/right-sized/whatever-ized them into unemployment. It seems like we get screwed on the down cycles as well as the up cycles.
H1B is just another form of corporate welfare, America was built on the backs of immigrants with a strong work ethic. Parts of it were built on slave-labor even, but in this modern time should we really accept slave-labor in the IT field?
Big business is all for free-markets for their products, but when it comes to paying for required resources they are a bunch of hypocrites.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The issue for the libertarians is that a vast majority of H1B's do not have the LIBERTY to seek better paying jobs. The mechanics of the H1B visa process are such that changing jobs is often effectively impossible. This feature of the H1B visa (and to a lessor extent the green card application process) is an artifical downward pressure on wages for the labor market in general. It is certainly not a free-market situation.
Sure, there are some nationalistic people who want to keep foreign labor out at all costs, but those people are not libertarians in the first place.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Each year, a new batch of H1B visa are issued and it takes 6-8 months for the quota to be filled. The contractors at RealRates can usually tell you when the quota has been filled by the change in the contract job market. Within a week or so of hitting the quota, these people report getting a huge increase in the amount of interest from job brokers. It is almost as if someone has flipped a switch and turned the job market back on.
I think this phenomenon is clear proof that H1B visas are used to supply artifically cheap labor to the IT market.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What is wrong with putting in a full 8 hours of work and then going home? The US has an 40 hour work week. This is what the high tech industry has truly forgotten. Companies can not expect people to work more than that for long periods of time withouit the productivity of workers to go so far downhill that they are actually behind. If a company is too cheap to higher more workers than that is not a place I want to work.
With all the money techs are getting paid, after 10+ years you are supposed to be with us having a piña colada here in Hawaii, or maybe loosing all your money in a Fucked Company.
So let them come to do the work we did.
---
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
I agree, multiple skills in different areas increase your value immensely, and make you much more useful to a company.
That does not make you more hireable.
I myself have found it very hard to find a job in other areas -- to gain that experience in other areas. I have been a tech support-type for years now, with a BS in philosophy (part of my problem, no CS degree). I have made the transition to sysadmin, first in the Windows world, and now with various Unix flavors. What I'd *like* to do is move into programming. As it stands, I have a lot of valuable experience with computers, but little programming experience -- I use VBA and Access every day, but that doesn't count, and I realize this. I've taken courses in Oracle and Java, and I believe I have enough skills in these areas, combined with my skills in Unix/Apache administration, to be quite valuable.
But the recruiters I talk to don't seem to see this. Instead, I typically get a runaround speech that says they want to market me to my strengths (sysadmin), and away from my areas of inexperience, because that way I/they will make more money.
I'm not really willing to take a lower-paying job than I currently have -- in the area I live (NYC), my current salary is enough to be comfortable, but not enough to save much.
In addition, the starting salaries of the "junior" positions I seek are roughly equivalent to my current salary. The difference between myself and other candidates is that they (often) have more academic skills (BS in CS) than I, and are fresh out of school.
I have a lot to offer, but I keep running into a familiar refrain: no experience, no hire AND you have too much experience elsewhere, work to your skills.
On the other hand, I convinced my current employer to hire a guy fresh out of school with extremely few skills and very limited experience, simply because I knew, on interviewing him, that he was intelligent enough to learn the job quickly enough to be useful. And, lo and behold, for the most part, he is useful.
Go figger...
---Phoukka
Thank you for your suggestions. Working on an Open Source project is something I've been wanting to do for a while now, but I have miniscule knowledge of C/C++. While I would like to add C/C++ to my roster of skills, it imposes a substantial bit of overhead to contributing.
I suspect I'll go peek at java.apache.org and jakarta.apache.org, and see if there is anything I can help with there, since Java is something I know.
And I completely agree with you, I've found my admin & tech support knowledge immensely useful in both the design stages and debugging stages of the projects I have done.
Thanks again!
Recently, my aunt's husband, an NYU PhD who's in his mid-50's quit his job at a research lab in upstate NY when it was taken over by a hostile competitor. He figured that he wouldn't have a problem finding a job in this market, given his qualifications and years of C programming on the net, mostly in advanced scientific application work. It took him two months to find a job. In between, he was turned down by I2, which claims to be desperately short of manpower. They were pretty frank: He was too old and they didn't think that he could make the switch to C++/Java (from C?) or handle B2B (after mass spectrometry?). The same company imports large numbers of H1/B's mostly from India, many of them with bachelor's degrees or less, and most in their 20's. I am happy for the enterprising young Indians who have taken these opportunities (I'm Indian myself), but I agree with a lot of this testimony. The hiring practices in IT reek.
I'm 26. I returned from Europe (teaching English in Prague) 2.5 years ago. I found an entry level web dev job - I was a TOTAL newbie, had never written a line of code, and was not even a "power user"... I'd tutored logic and have a decent IQ but my undergrad major was psychology and I had NO experience.
SINCE THEN
Over the last 2+ years I've taught myself html, dhtml, css, javascript, coldfusion, some java (ok I took a grad-level course in java last spring, my only formal cs education) and have become proficient with photoshop, imageready and dreamweaver... and picked up some perl for cgi and can do some basic sysadmin and server admin type things... and last month installed linux on my home machine. my salary when I started was $32k, and is currently $50k. No big deal, simply doing fine - living in Boston, 50k is enough to pay the bills and have some fun.
NOW
3 weeks ago I decided to put my resume up on monster.com. It went up at 11pm. 8:15 the next morning the phone started ringing and the emails started coming in. 40 calls and 50 emails later (by the end of the week) I had scheduled 5 interviews with good companies. After bombing the first interview I went on to turn the other 4 into offers. The highest $ was base of 80 with incentives to 100 plus decent stock options and 3 weeks. The lowest was 70k with 4 weeks vacation and 8 hour days. I ended up taking a position for 80k with a great company I'm excited about and have very valuable options... and will be learning JSP/EJB/J2EE on the job.
MY POINT
My point is, if a psych major with just over 2 years of any computer-related experience and no real formal training can do this, there must be a shortage of some kind. Not to sell myself short - I learn fast and have acquired some real skills - but I had no idea I'd be turning down the chance to make 100k this fast. And I wouldn't be if there were enough people out there who could do what I can do.
SEPARATE THOUGHTS ON AGE DISCRIMINATION
I know it happens when you just send out your resume blindly to 100 companies. But this is not how to get a job! If you've been in the industry for 20 years and you don't by now know a TON of people who have moved on to management and who want you to join their team, then age is not the problem.
My father is a perl guru in his mid 50's and he just accepted an offer to became the highest-paid engineer (making more than the founders or any but a couple of other people) in a company of about 100 employees. If you have skill and have impressed anyone over the course of a longish career then you can move at will to any number of companies who really seem to need senior engineers.
Anyway that's my unscientific, anecdotal take on the whole bit. Sorry if I've offended anyone having a hard time finding work. Good luck.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
I had heard stories like this when i was thinking about picking a major--which is why I am a compE and not CS... Hopefully hardware won't have the same problem, but its looking more and more like hardware is joining the same lame boat as software.
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
$900 for rent food and car is cheap. I live in tampa, fl... I am paying about $1400 rent food and car. I wouldn't guess that the cost of living in tampa is higher than seattle. I could be wrong though.
There is no contradiction here. I have been hiring programmers for many years. 50 resumes to one hire is actually less discriminating than many places I know of. A professor, who flunks incompetent students, knows that there are job applicants who are inappropriate for a given job opening. If someone accused Professor Matloff of discrimination because he gave F's to people who didn't pass his tests, even though they were old, or brilliant guitar players, or real good at video games, I'd defend him.
I've screened a whole lot of programmers' resumes, interviewed a lot of people, and hired a bunch. Nearly half my hires were foreign born and educated; none had an H-1B. Many of my hires had college degrees, and I didn't hold that against them, but high grades in school, or prestige of the institution, didn't convince me to hire anyone. I don't happen to have hired any UC Davis graduates, but two of the best hires I ever made came from CSU Chico; they came to work on day one, sat right down, and went to work learning our proprietary language, operating system, and tools, with no fuss.
The companies I've worked at used highly paid experts to screen out inappropriate resumes, so I didn't see the real junk. I still examined ten to twenty resumes for every one that I chose for telephone screening. About half of these were worth interviewing. About half of the people interviewed got an offer. This is a lot of work to go to for each hire, but it's a lot less costly than hiring somebody that doesn't work out.
One time I was asked to "work the booth" at a Silicon Valley job fair. That was when I saw the real losers, unfiltered. I stood behind a table and talked briefly to each candidate in a long line. There were all kinds of nice people. They deserved to have good jobs. But most were light years from being able to work in a software company. One example: a high school shop teacher. Really pleasant person. Anybody who can do that job is organized, mature, and able to tolerate BS. He'd taken a course in BASIC at a community college and wanted to become a programmer. Cool, good idea. But I could meet my deadlines with less cost and risk by hiring somebody else. I told him he needed more courses and more experience.
On the other hand, I am quite sour on hiring H-1B workers. The lengthy and expensive process of applying for one, and the rule that you can't pay somebody until he has a visa, means that once you decide to hire one of these workers, you have to wait six months. Forget it; in the high tech environment, that's half the life of a company. The H-1B workers can't go to another company without starting over with a new application, and if their current employer finds out they're looking, and terminates them, they have to leave the USA. This happened to a company I worked for, and an important position went unfilled for six months, and the worker ended up back at the country of origin.
I have never seen any practice of paying workers less based on their visa status. But companies, when hiring, make the lowest offer they can that will get the worker, and it's quite possible that people who need an H-1B will accept lower offers.
The assertion that H-1B workers' resumes lie about their credentials, while American programmers' resumes do not, doesn't match my observations. Lots of resumes are inflated, foreign and domestic. When an interviewer discovers that someone claims to know more than he actually does, in an area relevant to the job, that's an instant turnoff. The few cases of blatant resume fraud I've encountered were all Americans.
Professor Matloff writes, "any competent veteran programmer can become productive in a new programming language in a couple of weeks on the job." I wish it were that easy, but I don't think this is true, especially for his example of a C programmer beginning to use Java. Writing "C-in-Java" programs that aren't object oriented and use Java poorly isn't really "productive." Object orientation isn't something you pick up on the job in a couple of weeks.
The high-tech companies I know about expect new hires to learn on the job. They want to choose people who'll succeed at this, and lots of people can't. There is a 10 to 1 range in programming ability, that's an old result, and there's another range of 10 to 1 in "performance attributes" like being able to work in teams, make and keep commitments, communicate clearly and openly, and learn new skills.
I've interviewed at companies where I was a perfect fit for the job, and they said so, except that I was already making more than their CEO. "Too bad for you," I said. (Hmm, come to think of it, all those companies failed.) So I agree with Prof. Matloff that companies can be short-sighted in their understanding of their best interest. I've also met experienced programmers who feel that they deserve a high-paying job with short hours and low pressure, and who think they are being discriminated against when others will work harder for less money.
I see this in my company and others too. I am 35 and hope that I can stay put in the job I have now because I won't get two glances at my resume.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
If there is such a shortage, then by the laws of supply and demand, the salaries should be in the 6 figures. The IT companies say they can't afford that, but middle management in my company makes six figures and there is no shortage of those guys. It seems that for the price of one or two middle managers, we could have several good engineers. We have a developer position that the HR team hasn't filled in 9 months even though I have given them several good resumes of people who could do the job competently, but would need a small amount of training to have the exact skill they want, (i.e. streams driver development). These candidates, if hired a month or so ago, would already be up to speed, but HR waits for someone with less experience so they can pay them less, work them harder and chuck them to the side after a couple of years. There is no incentive to learn new skills and move up in the company because they want the engineers who have the skills to stay put.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
I am 35 and I am the oldest guy in my group, and almost in my division.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
I saw an ad the other day, I'm sure you have seen similar, seeking 10 yrs of Java development experience.
Also, I agree about the degrees. Many companies don't recognize skills learned in the field, (which may be more valuable than skills learned in college). I went to college in 1983 and my University didn't offer C programming. We learned Pascal. Not too many Pascal openings out there these days. I write C code now but I didn't learn it in college. I had to teach myself.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
Tech shortage? Come on, I just graduated from college, and I had a HELL of a time finding a good job in Denver, CO. Why is that so? I'll tell you, it's all the people being brought in from other countries for so damn cheap. I finally found a job, but it's a rare job, and honestly, I don't think I could find another like it. I had to go through a temp agency, and even work on contract to start rather than going full time like I had hoped for. There is a standard being set, and if we're not careful, all IT staff will soon be contract with no benefits!! Can't we join some kind of a union?
Eventually the 'A' students will end up working for the 'B' and 'C' students. Grades mean squat, attitude and aptitude are what count !!
All comments are my own (Unless I am having a out-of-body experience).
Could it be because I'm in my 40's, because I expect to be well-paid for what I bring to the table, and don't expect to work 80 hours/week because my employers are too cheap to hire two people to do two peoples' work?
You've hit the nail on the head. And if you want to test your theory out, try leaving your date of birth off of your CV. I removed my date of birth a few months ago, and now, firms want to talk to me!
Of course, it doesn't mean I'm going to work 80hour weeks for peanuts, so I still turn down most of the jobs...
Young at heart, jalalski...
.sig available on 'Need To Know' basis only!
Well it depends on what market your working in. I live in Columbia, MD and I get atleast 20-30 calls a day from companies wanting my services. I'm just a unix administrator and currently working on contract. I get offers constantly. No one knows my age by my resume. I just have alot of good experience that they are looking for. And I do charge top dollar. I have found 2 truths. 1) People really do think if you charge more your worth more and more dedicated to the project. 2) People are willing to pay a consultant a hell of alot more money than to hire an employee because of the legal ramifications involved in having an employee. You have to be responsible for their SSN benefits, withdrawls, taxes and crap.. You also have to give them benefits(well if you want them to actually work for you). You also have to keep enough to work to keep them busy. The other thing is that most good contractors/consultants dont take off work. (Cause they dont get paid if they aren't working) So unless im really sick Im at work on time and getting the job done. I was recently out at our office near San Francisco. And my goodness they actually advertise positions in the movie previews. I was shocked at this. And they have a hard time keeping people because unless you are a powerful and have money to spend you can't keep the employees long. As soon as they get even a tiny bit of experience or get their paper mcse they are out the doors making 150k or more. Now granted a 1-bedroom apartment costs like $2400/mo. out there but still. That's still good money. So you have to living where the markets are hot like these kind of places. Another example is in Maryland there are TONS of jobs available in the Rockville, Montgomery country area because most people aren't willing to go through the traffic nightmares to get there and back each day unless they live near by the office. Too too much congestion. Also areas like Northern, VA are booming. The key is working with a company like Onsite Technologies or TekSystems to get placed in a position as a contractor for 6 months (temp to perm). Then if you like the place you end up working for 6 months and they like you , you can take their offer or move on to doing more contracting. Or if you have alot of free time you can try doing direct contracting.
Oh well i've said my piece and now im going to go. So I think there is a shortage of truly qualified people out there. SO crack open those books and start tinkering with the new technologies so i get down to 10-15 calls a day. I hate having to say no to high-paying contract positions.
BITE ME! Unionize? They have a union where Im contracting now for the hourly pc techs. Unions are nothing but exploiters of the workers for profit. They are *EVIL*! I WILL NEVER WORK IN A UNION SHOP! That's probably one of the reasons i contract because I dont want to work for anyone but myself(and my customers).
Candidate A is single and has no problem working 60 hour weeks, while B has a wife and 3 kids and wants to work only 40 hours. How can you expect the company to ignore the fact that A is going to give them more for their money?
Candidate A is much more likely to be a maverick, too. Companies do see an upside to a family - it implies stability, responsibility, accountability, and (dare I say it in today's market?) loyalty. For example, candidate B is more likely to be employed with the hiring company three years from the hire date.
Also, many companies/departments recognize a downside to overtime: high turnover, burnout, high project risk, reduction in product quality. Software engineering best practice does not require long hours; on the contrary, 70+ hour weeks are a failure of management that may in fact be counterproductive.
Anecdotally, I've seen the family thing benefit candidates at least as often as not, especially in IT management or officer roles - and especially for men, where anachronistic cultural mores allow even a family man the occasional 100 hour week if the production schedule demands it.
I don't have statistics, but my bet is that married men on the whole occupy positions of greater responsibility than single men of similar experience. If I was looking for an engineering team lead to grow my department, and had to choose between a hotshot with 6 jobs in 4 years in 5 cities who has taken no vacation in his memory and rarely bathes lest it take his hands off the keyboard, and a father of three well-adjusted kids who has proven he can prudently balance his family and professional responsibilities to the success of both, I know what decision I'd make. Now, if I was looking for a coder for a 3-6 month burn, maybe I'd go the other way.
Maybe, maybe not.
I know that before my resume was even presented, there was already the hint of interest. I merely presented what my skill-set was and how I though they would get benefit for my skills.
So I could have been 35, I could have been 15. It was as far as I can see my skill-set and my value proposition. I am 25, and I will Not be willing to work more that 9 hours a day on a regular basis.
To me it sounded like the resume was just to confirm my previous emails as a step before the interview.
Shrug... Time will tell.
Although this doesn't directly help your situation, one suggestion would be to look at contributing to an Open Source project.
Actively working on a project does give you experience. I know that in a few companies they won't consider Open Source experience of any value, but in a lot of others, having actively contributed to a couple of big projects (and being able to show what code did what) should help you considerably.
The other option that might help you is that you can look for admin jobs in a place that has a lot of development. Again, adding development as a skill that you work part time on in the work-place should add a lot of value.
I too have moved from a Admin background to Development. (The admin background helps immensly in understanding what is going on sometimes). The first step I found is always take the admin job with development as a useful second skill.
Good luck none the less
I am currently looking at coming to the US on a H1-B. I recently had a phone interview. Although I consider my skills modest, the commment that was made is that I would be one of the more senior people that they had interviewed. This surprised me no-end.
As indicated by other posters the market is flooded by people who have precious little idea outside a narrow range of subjects. It is become a market full of par people, and then a smaller percentage of multi-skilled IT professionals.
I have seen the same situation in Australia. We are looking at hiring people, and although there tends to be a few responses to the job ads, 95% of them would add value in a very narrow situations. So we are left in a situation where we are understaffed, but don't want to take on someone who can not handle themselves in the range of situations that we are exposed to.
I have heard it said by quite a few people, that unless you have had 2 or more very different jobs in IT in the last few years, you are placed in a basket of 'narrow specialist'. In most organisations, particularly with the rapid leap-frogging of technology, it is almost imperitive that it's employees can roll with the changes.
The crux of the situation isn't so much that there a shortage of trained IT people - there are plenty, it is that there is a severe shortage of Skilled people.
If successful, I know that I will not be paid a lower than average wage, I also know that I will not be working in an environment where I will be a second class worker.
Multi-skill and really understand what is going on, and there will be less of a shortage. I know that the company I am at at the moment would be in a lot better position if there where more people who where truly skilled.
I've seen tons of these people though, sure they have the diploma, certification, experience but put it to the test and they fail miserably.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
another problem with the age discrimination issue is that it's just really hard to prove. There's some prejudices that come with age that need to be gotten over like that young people are inexperienced, or older people don't work weekends or over time, and that the group right in the middle 25-35 are ideal because they haven't established a life yet and they're willing to work harder. I think the truth of the matter is that the middle section probably appears to be doing more but gets the same amount of work done as any of the other groups.
Just me thoughts.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Well sure there are less jobs. Where there is a demand for work there will eventually be a supply sufficient if given enough time. In this case though i have found personally that IT jobs are easy to come by ( midwest and california ) for those who know what they are doing. I have found there is a real need not for warm bodies. But, for a person who knows what they are doing there is no real problem. I can't think of the times i have heard yeah we can fill that position but will it be with someone who actually knows what they are doing.
This seems like a trivial thing, as i am involved with the interview process at my company for the IT portions of the interview i find it amazing the people that try to apply to certain positions. This is the case in any job but it seems even if a person is college educated and supposively technically savy, it turns out to be not true or they end up being more suited as a help desk technition rather than a programmer.
off and out
For well over a year, in both the local paper and the college one, there has been a job listed for a Linux/NT networking person. Naturally, I applied for it but never got a call. A few months after I applied for it, a few people were talking about it on the local LUG mailing list. One of the people actually worked there and said that there is not, nor has there been an available position for this job. The company just wants a lot of resumes so that just in case the job does become open, they will have plenty of people that they can scrutinize for the exact thing they are looking for.
Oh, I dunno. Maybe it's just a Silicon Valley thing, but I find a great many of the companies I've worked at now offer such perks as standard. Any company without at least a ping-pong or fuss-ball table must be substandard. Or at the VERY least, free drinks.
:)
I'll agree with the 6-figure digit. That's pushing things. Always disturbs me whenever I hear of the new guy who just got hired at some rediculous 6-digit figure. I get intensly jealous.
But ya GOTTA have the ping-pong table. Heck, what else are we supposed to do during new system installs/upgrades, and periods of stability? Stare at the screen?
As for IT shortage, I know a good many IT people who have great difficulty getting a job, even after lowering their standards. Not for any lack of talent, mind. Largely because non-techies seem to want to pidgeon-hole IT positions, even though any good tech should have enough of a grasp on the basics to apply their knowledge across the board. Never mind if one can administrate a Solaris system, a good deal of that could carry over to administering a network [Cable monkeys!]. Heck, any good admin worth their salt probably started out making their own cables! And don't even get me started on Web Development (the cushy IT job). I remember HTML tags. It used to be called word procesing in programs like Word Star. And people need front ends to do this? All you need is vi/emacs/pico/nano/ed/echo! Feh! I tell ya, the techs these days... FEEBLE MINDED!
I've lost track of my original point, and am now rambling. Umm... Dreamcasts are good alternatives to Ping-Pong tables. Especially if you offer Soul Calibur.
--
Xiphos
That amount is usually their own salary.
But a real CS degree means that it doesn't matter. In a computer science department, you learn how to think. How to solve problems intellegently. Which methodlogies work well for which problems.
My old university's CS dept used to get calls every couple of weeks asking "Do you teach Microsoft Certification?" The answer always was, "No, we teach computer science. Go call the local community college for something like that."
With a real CS degree, the programming language or company's product doesn't matter so much. You can figure it out quickly. Yeah, your code won't be quite as sexy as the 12 year-old C whiz, but once the compiler is done optimizing, his code won't run any faster than yours anyway (optimizing compilers really do level the field:)
So the next time you're asked in an interview, "What languages can you program in?" Standup proud and say, "All of them" :)
Every US Citizen should read the series of articles at fairus.org and their H1B focus area, as well as the excellent series of H1B news and links.
:-)
The amount of funding spread around to legislators, from rich, powerful IT firms, in return for passage of H1B workers is astounding. We can fully expect to see the numbers increase everytime the politicians are seeking to enlarge their war chests.
This is targeted immigration, implemented primarily to control the wage and status of US IT professionals. There is more than enough evidence to show that US high tech companies have padded their employment requirements and used those falsified statistics to support H1B. The H1B legislation is based on a huge lie.
Remember when H1B first came onto the scene? All the retraining, worker protections, studies on job loss that were guaranteed to happen? Well, most of that has been rolled back now, courtesy of the dishonorable David Dreier (R-CA) -- a recipient of HUGE donations from tech firms.
There were also dozens of ads for programmers in every major paper, as well as regular calls from headhunters. Well, all that's gone now, but the H1B just keeps getting increased. High Tech America is as hooked on H1B as your average smack addict, and congess just keeps feeding the monkey -- for a price.
One can't read about this and not be alarmed. My personal opinion is there should be limits on the number of people allowed in; once in, they become full citizens; and you can't discriminate against who gets in.
This way, we get some good programmers, auto mechanics, teachers, lawyers, politicians, airline pilots, doctors, lawyers -- a spread of people. And *they* don't have to worry about getting sent home.
Targeted immigration should be outlawed immediately -- there is more than enough evidence that is was based on falsified statistics, and is probably the most horrifying and clearly irrefutable example of just how corrupt the US Government is.
I think, when the truth really comes out in all this, there may be a class action lawsuit against the US on the behalf of American IT workers. Maybe even a huge settlement? Without H1B, I think I'd have made an extra 20-30 K for the last 4 years.
Let's see, $30K x 4 years x about 5 million programmers...that's about a $600 billion settlement or so. Congress, the clock is ticking. Stop passing laws based on lies while you can still get out cheap
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
What really annoys me are the constant comments from your average L^Huser that "you are so lucky" to be a geek in this day and age. Bullshit, you're better off as a lawyer, doctor or chartered accountant. Even a pinhead with a BA and experience in personnel is better off once past 35.
Fsck 'em.
:wq
I have heard a lot that there is really no shortage of qualified people with computer skills, it is just the fact that most of the companies are looking for younger kids willing to spend 18 hours a day in front of a computer, and with a very small salary demands. Well, I have somewhat different perspective. First, if coding is what you've been doing all the time, since you were 18, 28, 38, 48 ... than you end up fucked up a big time - but you have to realize there are some other things besides the coding. My transition for instance was as follows: a coder (assembly language and machine code) - systems programmer - network programmer - network designer and architect - performance and capacity planning. As a part of my transition I had to go back to school to learn more math, statistics, and probability, and related subjects, never felt sorry for that, at this point inspite of my advanced age I feel very comfortable with myself and fairly confident if I do loose my current job I won't have any serious problems finding another one. The problem is that lots of people I've meet in this field - well, they just got stuck with their current level of knowledge. Or outright fraud. Don't know a shit. Here is an example. we had to hire consultant (we didn't have funds to hire perm for a while), so we have contact agency, received several resumes. One (american-born) looked a bit like lightweight. second one - resume was great, also american-born, unfortunately for that guy I had a *luck* to meet with him at my prior job and I knew that guy was a fraud, pure and simple. So I've recommended to pick up the third guy, from India. A guy was really cool, hardworking, was a real pleasure to deal with him. I know I know this is not the typical case, but nevertheless these are my experiences. Cheers.
I personally feel that the US should open its doors to the infow of talent from whereever it may come. It is the thing that has kept the US vital and inventive. But, there has to be a way to protect folks that are imported like this.
Hmm... There are lots of intelligent people who can and want to come here to accept a relativly high paying job an pay taxes on that salary. Some even want to stay. These aren't sweatshop fodder comming up from Mexico, pregant wife in hand.
What's the problem here? Isn't this what made America great?
If we do anything with H1-B's we ought to contain the abuses and make it easier to make them citizens.
Henry Fnord
Good points. I remember my step-father going through things like this 6-10 years ago when he was job hopping in Silicon Valley. He was in his late 40s - early 50s at the time (he's retired now). He intentionally removed older jobs from his resume so that he would appear younger and less experienced. It seemed to work - he was able to get interviews and jobs.
"There is no shot you can take that I cannot simply deny." - Ertai, wizard goalie
The Forbes article has a somewhat different spin. Rather than saying that a glut of foreign workers is responsible for the "labor shortage", Matloff contends that companies are setting unreasonably high standards for applicants. He says that companies are rejecting people that, while they may have experience and good programming skills, don't have the specific skills the company is looking for (although they could be retrained in a minimal amount of time).
There's probably some truth to this argument, but I believe that, as some others have brought up, age is more of a factor than this.
"There is no shot you can take that I cannot simply deny." - Ertai, wizard goalie
Working >40 hours is overtime, for good reason. Occassional overtime may be necessary, and working 45 hour weeks routinely doesn't strike me as being very unreasonable. Once you reach the 50 hours or more threshold, then you're talking about the company being patently unfair, unless they're compensating (with paid time off that would be seperate from any 'earned time off'.)
Your friend's exprience may suggests that her employer may be breaking the law.
I am a 39 year old Canadian citizen in the U.S. on an H1-B visa as well, and my employer has obtained a labour certification for a permanent position offered to me. More on that later. I arrived in the U.S. on a Nafta TN-1 visa on November 4, 1997, renewed once, and obtained an H1-B subsequent to my employer's petition in December of 1999.
Now, the TN-1, or NAFTA visa is open only to Canadians (with a TN-2 equivalent for Mexicans), for one year only, for a temporary position. It may be renewed indefinately, but your intent to stay in the U.S. is presumed to be temporary and that may be questioned if you have "too many" renewals. You need a degree from a recognized university or equivalent professional experience, and the job must be in one of several catagories. For example, systems analyst is a recignized profession, but programmer isn't. Basically, you show up at a U.S. port of entry with an offer letter from the U.S. employer that lists the job correctly, proof of your degree or experience, and proof of Canadian citizenship. There's a processing fee, US$50 when I went. You can renew either by mail or at a POE (port of entry). The salary is supposed to be commensurate with normal wages paid to Americans, but is not checked uness a complaint against the company is filed. You must support all U.S. social programs via your taxes, but may not benefit from them. You CAN benefit from public schools (for your kids) because they are generally funded from city property taxes and not federally. Now according to the NAFTA legislation, the degree doesn't have to match the job, but the INS officer has a great deal of discretion to deny you entry if it doesn't match. Tough. The presumption is that anyone entering the U.S. is doing so illegally, and you have to prove otherwise. Changing jobs isn't too bad: you have to get another TN-1 for the new employer, but I think you have to go to the border to do it. It's a bit tricky because you have to start work for the new employer shortly after entering the U.S. on the new TN-1. There is no limit on NAFTA visas, and the process can go quickly. Of course, you risk ending up on the wrong side of the border if something goes wrong.
The H1 visa is different. It's good for three years, renewable once. In order to be in H1 status again, you have leave the U.S. for a year. You CAN revert to a TN-1 if the six years are up, but the whole "temporary intent" issue may be questioned. AFAIK, lying to an immigration officer is a felony and may be grounds to be barred from entry to the U.S. for a ong time (I'm not sure how long).
H1 visas are availible for anyone, not just Canadians and Mexicans, like the NAFTA visas. There is an annual cap. To get one, the sponsering employer files an LCA (Labor Certification Attestment), which is a testiment that the foriegner will be paid the going wage in the industry, and isn't being hired to replace Americans locked-out or on strike. There may be restrictions regarding recent layoffs. So, if a company hires someone on an H1, and underpays them, a complaint to the INS is in order. Basically, such an employee can't be treated any worse than an American employee.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that there can be a difference between law and practice. I don't like to see H1 workers treated as indentured slaves and particularly underpaid, because it strengthens arguments by American workers that they take their jobs away. Of course, such arguments should be levelled at the employers violating the law.
A game often played with H1 tech workers is that, instead of being underpaid, they're overworked, forced to work overtime without pay. Since their presence in the U.S. depends on their employment, they can feel trapped. But, again, tech workers in general can be so treated, espescially in States that permit "exempt" employees to not be paid overtime. Still, it is difficult for the H1 worker to leave poor working conditions.
While it is possible for an H1 visa to be transferred to another employer, the actual process is time-consuming: the new employer has to get an LCA approved, file an petition to hire the H1 worker, and then the worker with the existing H1 visa can begin work for the new employer. A year ago, in Illinois, the process took four months. The current employer need NOT find out until the employee actually starts to work for the new employer, but you can only work for one employer at a time. If the current employer finds out vbefore the process is complete, the results may be disasterous: you have 10 days to leave the country.
Now, a bill currently in the process of moving to become law makes some changes to make it easier for H1 workers to migrate to better jobs, limiting opportunities for indentured serviture: you only have to have applied to begin the transfer process in order to start working for a new employer (but, if that is not approved, you have no safety net). In addition, people nearing the end of their H1 visa 6 year limit can get annual extentions while they have green card AOS (adjustment of status) pending. Contrary to at least one post here, you can apply for a Green Card while on an H1 visa (and even a NAFTA visa, though that's more iffy -- more later).
This used to be a big problem. Getting a green card (i.e. employment based immigrant visa), involves three steps, LC (labor certification), I140 immigrant petition, and AOS (adjustment of status), or CPIV (consular processing). This can take from one year to more than six years (hence the problem with H1 visas expiring).
The first step, LC, involves the employer applying for labor certification to hire a foriegner for a permanent position (which can be substantially identical to the temporary position a foriegner currently occupies). The employer has to prove that there is noAmerican to fill the job. This can be done in one of two ways: filing the petition, requesting RIR, or not. RIR is Reduction in Recruitment. It means that the employer is asking to not have to recruit for the position because of a recent (within the past 6 months) history of actively advertising, on a national level, to fill the position, without success. If RIR is not approved, the employer has to post an ad for the job in several national newspapers for at least 10 days, as well as on the job site. All candidates must be interviewed and their resumes forwarded to the State Department of Labor. The employer must hire an American that meets the minimum job qualifications before hiring the foriegner, even if his/her qualifications are better. Oh, and you can't artificially tailor the job requirements to the candidate. (In practice, this means that you can't be obvious about it.)
An RIR LC can take about 6 months. Mine took 5. A non-RIR LC can take several years to get approved (though 18 months is typical). Note, that unlike an LCA, which is a simple promise by the employer, an LC is subject to great scrutiny. The LC is said to be the biggest hurdle.
Once you get an LC (well, once the employer gets it for the position for which they want to hire you), it's time to file I140 - the immigrant visa petition. There are several priority queues for immigrant visas. Employment based are called EB1 (highest priority), EB2, and EB3 (lowest priority - duh!). EB1 is for people with skills of national interest to the U.S., those who are recognized as among the world's best in their fields -- Nobel Laureates, for example. EB2 is for people with advanced degrees, PhDs and Master's degrees. (I qualify for EB2 by virtue of my Master's degree in Computer Science). EB3 is everyone else. It takes from 6 months on for the INS to process an I140, depending on the processing center to which the petition is sent.
Along with the I140, you need to supply letters of reference and a resume as evidence that the foriegner has this skills for the job. The kicker is that the skill have to have been acquired before having worked in the U.S. (say, on a NAFTA or H1 visa).
I'm told that my I140 should take from 5 to 12 months to process.
When you file the I140, you have the choice to select AOS, or CPIV (though you can change this decision when the time comes to follow through). AOS means that once the I140 is approved, you apply to actually have your status changed from non-immigrant to immigrant. If not already working on a non-immigrant work visa, you can apply for EAD (which takes about 6 weeks), to start work. Your spouse and dependents can too. Spouses and dependents can generally enter on derivative visas (TD for TN, and H4 for H1) that don't let them work. In the case of immigrant visas, the annual cap applies to derivative visas which are as good as the main one. AOS can take from 6 to 24 months. 12 months is typical. During this time, you can't leave the U.S. (unless you apply for "Advance Parole" -- some have commented that since you are a prissoner of the INS processing queue, the term Parole is appropriate).
CPIV is different. With CPIV, you leave the U.S. to go to the consulate in your home country, armed with your approved I140, and complete the process there. It takes about 10 days, and involves, among other things, police fingerprinting, and criminal background check. In both cases (AOS and CPIV), there is a country-specific limit on how many visas are granted in a year -- just because you can get one, doesn't mean that yo don't have to wait.
Bottom line: it isn't easy to get into the U.S. I don't think that skilled American tech workers need worry. While the system is abused by some employers, the employers should be brought before the INS, and resentment not leveled against the workers (unless they're knowing participants in breaking the law).
My employer (Teradyne) is constantly looking for Americans with string embedded system and networking technical skills. I can't make any promises, but if you email me at hollan@enteract.com (rene@hollan.org has smtp troubles right now), I'll pass any resumes along to my HR department, in confidence.
More on applying for an immigrant visa while on a non-immigrant visa: The law recognizes the doctrine of dual intent. That is, you can intend to be in the U.S., temporarily for one job, while at the same time, seeking to immigrate on the basis of a permanent job. The legislation regarding H1 visas explicitly recognizes this, but that is not the case for NAFTA visas. Thus, many immigration attorneys won't try to pursue an immigrant visa while you're on NAFTA visa. Mine considers it too risky. Others (Joseph Grasmick, for one), do. The biggest difficulty is that you'll likely have to renew your NAFTA visa while your green card is pending, and that will be taken as non-temporary. It's splitting a pretty fine hair.
You could've hired me.
And mind you, this is just personal experience, so take that as you will...
I recently go into this field at the ripe old age of 25. I do tech support work and data error tracking, so basically it's an extended help desk position. While reading this thread, I began to feel distinctly uneasy about my future in this field, until I remembered one thing:
I'm the youngest in my department!
Hell, my boss was hired only recently at the company (about 5 months before me) and he's old enough to be my father (mid-late 40s), one of the system analysts we hired is probably of an age with my mom, one of the coders could be my -grandfather-, he used to be a baker before he injured his leg, too!
(and man, he makes some of THE BEST cakes you would believe!)
I think we all need to step back and realize that there are a lot of shit companies out there who'll take all they can get. We just have to stand up for ourselves and put our foot down AT THE FIRST SIGN of anything resembling unfair work practices.
As I've noticed here (long time lurker), we have a great tendency to discuss at length our problems but we never seem to be able to motivate to do anything. Well, it's time to do something.
when all is said and done, all a man has left are his blades and his honor.
Yes, all my non-geek friends think I have it made. They don't realise the abuse that goes with the job. We should start a union or association or something.
There was a time when new employees underwent month(s) of training for their new jobs. Today, employers expected you to know everything necessary to jump in and begin work immediately, or perhaps with a one week orientation.
By flooding the market with IT workers and floating the idea that the IT market has a huge shortage, the industry assures itself a steady crop of new, young employees (with such variety of skills that training isn't needed).
IT workers are sheep. If your dreams of getting rich quick from an IPO have faded, perhaps its time to work for an established, profitable company that will still be here in 5, 10, or 15 years.
You've been duped by the most easily duped people in the world - journalists.
It is not surpising that his definition of IT is programmers. To him, that is all that matters and all that CS people should be doing. He didn't really have much respect for what we would consider to be IT - weither it was the full-time staff sysadmins or the student admins who ran the systems the undergrads used.
He's also got a big thing about internships that shows up a little in the article. I worked for the CS department there for about two and half years as a student admin. I learned A LOT and the guys I worked with (both students and staff) were great. I already knew I wanted to be a sysadmin when I graduated. So for two summers I worked full-time doing the same thing I did part time during the year. That way I didn't have to loose my apartment or anything. Dr. Matloff told me on more than one occasion that I should take an internship in the valley, go into debt (because they don't pay you enough to pay rent in two places), and do some menial programming I didn't want to do, just because it would make me more employable than doing real sysadmin work even when I wanted to be a sysadmin.
Guess what - I had one of the top offers the quarter I graduated, and way better than anyone else in the CS dept. To do...you guessed it...sysadmin.
So I guess the main point I'm trying to make is that don't be confused...when Matloff says there is an IT shortage, he means PROGRAMMERS and not much else. I don't think he considers true IT to be a worthy profession. Who knows, that was back in '97, things could have changed...he might feel differently after his personal box has been slashdotted. :-)
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Personally, I've noticed a trend over the last few years; as I've applied for jobs for which I'm truly well-qualified (i.e. many years of relevant and up-to-date experience in exactly the pertinent areas) I've found that not only do I not get the job, my cover letter/resume submission isn't even ack'd.
I find this puzzling, given how often this submission is done electronically, making the process of ack'ing it trivial. I would have expected that as more and more of this interaction takes place online, that we'd see increased responsiveness from employers, not less. And in the case of a handful of positions that I applied for this year, I'm outright baffled: they listed X buzzwords, I have 90% of them in theory and practice and a bunch of related stuff that they didn't bother to list. (I make a continuous effort to keep my skills current, and while, for example, I haven't tackled PHP yet, I do speak perl and Java, run Linux and BSD, speak fluent sendmail and DNS and Apache, etc.)
So why didn't I even get called for an interview?
Could it be because I'm in my 40's, because I expect to be well-paid for what I bring to the table, and don't expect to work 80 hours/week because my employers are too cheap to hire two people to do two peoples' work?
I don't know. The lack of interaction with potential employers means that I'm speculating and trying to correlate anecdotal evidence with experience. But I find the trend disturbing, not only because of how it impacts me, but because of what it means for those who are entering the workforce twenty years behind me.
I'm concerned that employers who avoid people like me -- because we're (relatively) expensive and won't work ourselves to death -- will try to take advantage of younger workers, and that they will succeed. Again, the evidence is mostly anecdotal, but I'll bet that at least half the people reading this worked more than 60 hours this week and were not fairly compensated for it. I'll further bet that a quarter worked more than 80 while being paid a salary commensurate with 40.
Of course, there's no way for me to know if I'm right about that or not; maybe I'm way off base here. (shrug) But my advice is not to buy into the PHB-propagated myth that you are somehow obligated to do this for the company you work for. You're not. And if you do, you may find that twenty years down the road, you'll discover that all the sacrifices you made, all the things you gave up, were never appreciated or paid for -- but that the people above you, the ones who have profited handsomely from everything you gave up, have taken their money and gone somewhere else to repeat the cycle.
Well, let's be fair; you're going to find that in any field. If say some CFO came out and complained that there were too few accountants, and the ones that did enter the industry didn't really enjoy their jobs and hadn't done bookkeeping in their free time since they were young and got that first leatherbound ledger, we'd probably laugh. A lot of people enter the IT field because they think they're going to make money. It's the same reason they enter any other field, and I don't know if they'd be any more competent if they were in marketing or sales. We just have to live with them.
--
I think one of the problems we face is that a lot of IT workers refuse to accept that they might have trouble down the line in terms of finding employment. I can't tell you how many posts on slashdot (I'm sure we'll see some here) go along the lines of, "I was hired because I know what I'm doing! If you have trouble then that's somehow due to your lack of skills!". It's a pretty naive view; in the real world your job is dependent on a lot of things, and your actual competence isn't the only one (many times it's not even the most important). The state of the economy, the cluefulness of management, and luck all play a factor.
To answer the question posted, yes, it's mostly employers wanting to get out of paying American workers what they're worth. Personally I think the best thing for IT workers to do is unionize, along the lines of other professional workers; something like the American Medical Association or American Bar Association. Believe me, if the AMA sees legislation pending that would adversely affect their members, they move fast and they move hard. The Association of Information Technology Professionals fulfills this role to an extent; they do apparently lobby congress. I've looked through their 1999 report, and it doesn't say anything about a position regarding increasing H1B workers. They did, however, speak against UCITA, so they can't be all bad. Someone more knowledgeable about this organization would have to tell you more, but I think a lot of IT people are going to have to overcome to a certain degree their independent streak if they want to ensure that they're treated fairly in the workplace.
--
Exactly. I recently had a phone conversation with an HR drone. She was trying to talk me into one of their positions. I told her how much money I wanted. It was about $20k more than they were listing the position. She told me that she thought I was being unrealistic. I told her "that's why that position is still open" and hung up.
Another job I know of was listed for at least 6 months, 3 of those after the "application deadline". I know of two well-qualified people that applied for it. So why didn't it get filled? The company wouldn't make a decision and eventually decided not to fill the position due to a money crunch.
In my opinion, that's the labor shortage in a nutshell. Every open position I see has a story behind why it's still open. It isn't because there aren't people out there looking for work. It's because the job is underpaid, they aren't really hiring, nobody can make a decision about hiring, etc. I've seen plenty of jobs listed where it's obvious that the someone priced the position using 1997's salary chart.
thats great.. tell a unexperianced 23 year old to go drop his job at work for himself.... good thinking
It doesn't work for everyone and if you need startup funds, trust me, age does help..... I don't bash anyone trying to start off on their own (Ive done it twice, each time with sucsess but nothing to write home to cnn about). but when I tried to get funding this year around.... march... it didn't work.... maybe its better now but if you have a great idea but need funding the age 23 is not the best to be.
There seems to be a severe shortage of decent computer people in Boston. I'm in school, but friends in startups are constantly asking if I know any good people that they could hire, since their hiring quotas are going unfilled. One friend talked about getting a half-dozen calls on the day he posted his resume. My academic program has been pillaged by startups; our photo board has a whole section devoted to students prematurely eaten by companies-- as well as several professors.
BSc Degrees are pretty useless in the UK, as far as I can tell (I hold a 2(i) with Honours in Computer Science). It's done me little good, having had a few bosses younger than myself who've spent that time boosting their career within the company. However, I do find that some employers value it, but honestly can't see why, since I've used very little I learned there out in the real world.
Steve
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Damn straight it's corporate welfare...
as a voting Libertarian, I cannot possibly believe how a person claiming to be Libertarian can use Libertarian arguments in favor of the H1-B system.
I don't know if the labour shortage is everywhere but I'm being headhunted from Europe to the US because companies can't find people my age (47) and experience (20 years online) in the USA. I'm not aware of being an indentured servant...yet.
I agree on this.
:-).
Last year I was doing my industry placement (part of my CS degree) at a certain company in Munich.
Now, I had to work 35 hours a week and get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. I was encouraged to show up before 10:00am and I could go in and out however much I wanted, as long as I kept those 35 hrs each week.
Not bad for just a student, heh?
As time went by, I was allowed to take work at home and don't set foot in the office. I just had to let them know that this day and/or the next I'd be working at home and they'd have no problem with it. And this normally is a normal employee's privilege, not a student's.
To keep it short, as Cederic says, it's really up to the company. If you're interested in the mentioned company, then send your CV to Infineon Technologies AG in Munich and apply for their R&D department (where I was
I'd also add that I'm not surprised that Americans make such complaints. The US has a notorious reputation in Europe for its excruciating hours and horrible work conditions.
Be as advanced as you like, if the price you have to pay is being slaves or feeling like them, then I'm fine in the not-so-advanced (or maybe that's what you want to believe) Europe.
My principle: work to live, not live to work!
Trian
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
Now that we are seeing both age and domestic discrimination which accompany the exploitative hiring practices of the IT world, perhaps IT professionals should consider collective bargaining. Sure, this will make international labor even more attractive because they will work without joining a union, but this problem is not new in US history. Such an idea is probably ahead of its time, since at this point most IT people think raw capitalism is the only way to do business. But only a handful will make a ton of money: everyone else will either become itinerant workers or have no chance to enjoy any leisure. Unless you're willing to bet your life on the elusive (capitalist version of) the American dream, you may want to think about what the priorities of your profession should be.
I do think there is a shortage of good IT workers here - I have seen what my management goes through, and there's tons of people who fill their resume with buzzwords that look great, but once you get them in for an interview it becomes immediately clear that they don't know what they are talking about.
Then tell your HR people to get on the freaking ball and speed things up a little. One of the most frustrating aspects of working in IT is dealing with HR departments that haven't the slightest concept of 'internet time'. If I send out a batch of resumes, and I get a pretty good offer within two weeks, and a GREAT offer in a month and a half, the great offer won't matter because I'm going to have already taken the 'pretty good' one. HR depts. everywhere need to realize that techies are generally NOT patient people and don't tolerate inefficiency and bureaucracy.
I work at a phone tech farm for a major hardware supplier in the US. As a mentoring tech it is my job to take the guys straight out of training (which is good training BTW. I went through it too) and get them prepared to actually apply the knowledge of the hardware and software sets that we have to fix peoples computers. Fairly low level here. You don't need to know how to program, or any networking above setting up TCP/IP and pinging another system to prove the HW is good, just troubleshoot and fix a computer. For every person that I get that I think will do a good job I get two people (oddly enough usually MCSE certified with no real experiance) who I doubt will ever advance at all above a basic tech support roll and probally shouldn't be doing that. (entry level promotion to own level of incompitence.) I also happen to live in Austin which is only second to Silicon Valley in the number of IT workers available. Is there a shortage of people in the IT field, no. Is there a shortage of people in the IT field who know which end of a screwdriver is used to take the screw out, YES.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
They were still looking for someone to fill the position 4 months later, and had lost the ISP market in that City to 2 other companies. I later heard that the head of HR had been dismissed by the head of the parent company.
I had another odd experience with another organisation. Again my skills were sound, but I was also turned down. Co-incidentally I had been talking to someone who worked at that company on a newsgroup, and discovered that they didn't want to take on anyone too skilled as they feared for their own positions.
I now test financial systems for a living. Still not sysadminining. I'm totally out of my depth when it comes to development work, only having worked in Pascal and some 4GLs. OOP wasn't really around when I started.
My conjecture is simple - older tech workers are not nearly as numerous or willing to take staff coding positions as any of you claim. Until I hear at least one useful statistic, or at least one convincing realistic anecodte, I treating this issue of vast and systemic age discrmimination as complete hooey.
My counter anecdote is that I work for an internet company that you would think is on the cutting edge of just about anything, and we certainly have numerous programmers old enough to be my ...very old uncle.
Obviously, there is no shortage, or I would have a full-time job and not be relying on piddlyass week-long contract jobs to pay my rent right now.
It all boils down to plain old greed on the part of the companies. The beancounters ask themselves, "Are we willing to sacrifice quality for the sake of our bank account?" By that, they usually mean "Do we want to hire this person who does really spiffy work and is asking for a fairly reasonable salary, or do we want to hire this college kid who equates "I can use FrontPage" with "I have MAD HTML SKILLZ" and is willing to work damn near for food?"
There is no IT worker shortage, unless by "IT worker" one means "IT worker who knows what the fuck he/she is doing and is willing to work for peanuts." and it pisses me right the fuck off every time I hear about it. Which explains why I have gone to the time and the trouble to post on this when my post will already be buried under ~300 other posts. Just needed to vent.
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
Don't know about US, but I'm hearing more and more that there really isn't a shortage of personel, but that HR isn't keeping up with IT demands, ie hiring people who can't do what they say they can, or not being prepared to spend the money on someone who can actually do the job properly.
I strongly suspect there is a serious shortage of software engineers sufficiently skilled to work on life-critical systems. Whether there is a shortage of web designers is a different question entirely...
I can empathize with the comments listed here. I'm also in my forties. A few years ago I visited two college campuses with the idea of returning to school and getting an MSCS. I currently have about 24 years experience with computers so I thought it would be helpful to have. I spoke with the chairman of the computer science departments at these schools and received the same response from both of them. Sure, I could go through the program but I had better be ready to face the unspoken age discrimination that would follow me. I didn't think much of it until I applied for a position. I had a phone interview and did very well. The apps they wanted me to use I had plenty of experience with and wasn't demanding too much money. Everything seemed great until they found out how old I was. After that they quickly terminated the call and promised to get back to me before the end of the week. I never heard from them again. Although very demoralizing I firmly believe the only way the "elderly" within this business will prosper is to form their own businesses and groups. As they say, "old age and treachery will overcome youth and enthusiasm."
Why ignore? Some of us just get certifications because well... it's just another challenge. It doesn't mean that I will push MSSQL if I have a MSDBA. To ignore someone's resume because of four letters pn the resume is very short sighted. No wonder there is a labor shortage. Bad management.
Rigggghhhttt.
And you can't hire someone without papers/citizenship for agricultural jobs by law either.
Where do you people get this? One of the points in application for H1 visas is that the employer has to pay a rate comparable to the top rates in the industry. As a foreign student i've been made an offer by a tech company that is about 10k over the offers my US friends are getting at the same company at the same time. I'm willing to bet that's not because of my great skills, but so that they can show the INS that they really want me to work for them and couldn't fill the position with a US citizen, which is true in this case. bc
It is blantantly illegal for an interviewer to ask about marital or family status, and if they ask, there's a presumtion that they're making decisions based on this, which is also grounds for a labor discrimination suit.
You always have a little Nomad II set on record when you're interviewed, don't you?
This does have an element of truth to it, I know someone getting training at one of those shakey "take your money and run" certification "schools" who has one of those attitudes. They got educated into this by some of the news stories, misc movies, etc. Nevermind the sales agents.
[It was a bad day for that school when all of the management positions changed from geek to marketroid. They actually hired used car salesmen, among others.]
But it also reminds me of the actual newspaper ad I saw a while ago that said:
My memory is hazy, maybe it was 5 years.I called them up and laughed at them. What they basically wanted was to hire an experienced person at entry level wages. This is the basic complaint that many competent people have here. It takes a long time to get really good at something, 5 to 10 years. Then your don't fit into the culture?
On the flip side, this reminds me of fast food places, with their armies of manager trainees as recently featured on The Onion.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The very small detail you miss is TAXES (state, federal, local, property), health care or insurance, FICA, etc.
This adds up to between 35 to 50 percent of the income. So the extra spendable cash might be as small as a few hundred per month. Remember: Extra free cash IS an oxymoron!
Never mind he might want to spend some money on a luxury/novelty like a computer. or other professional resources.
Of course, we know that all tech professionals use the free dial up access provided by AltaVista. But, working for MS, he probably can get the MSN dialup at half price, if he wants to spend a few bucks for a superior service.
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
and other countries... This is why H-1B visas are needed, to keep work here in the U.S.
Foriegn workers are tax-payers, and contributors to our economy. Better to keep the work here than ship it overseas, where developers get pennies on the dollar compared to here in the U.S.
In the search for cheaper costs, managers have resorted to using sub-standard foriegn resource centers, often lacking basic communication capabilities, and operating in time zones wildly out of whack with customers here in the U.S. This practice, in my experience, has been a disaster. Ultimately, I've seen business LOST because of this, and whole programs lost as control drifted away from the original teams that developed them.
And yes, there IS a shortage of qualified software developers and IT personnel. Can Visas replace them? Well, in my experience, the percentage of clueless is about the same, but at least SOME of those coming here are qualified and skilled. In my opinion, those are the people we need to encourage to STAY here, permanently. Unfortunately, the H-1B Visas are set up to PREVENT that from happening.
I'm a college freshman, just starting to work towards a CS degree. This past summer, I went to look for a summer job as a programmer, and was absolutely overwhelmed by how easy it was to find well-paying work coding Java with *no* working experience aside from personal projects and unrelated Web consulting that I did in high school. Reading what others here have beeing posting about how difficult it is to get a job given the same or similar skills to my own at the age of 35+, I am *very* worried. Sure, it may be wonderful to be able to earn a high hourly rate as a young worker, but what is that worth if I can't continue to do what I love past the age of 35 or 40? Every older IT person I know is a faster coder, makes less mistakes and has vastly more experience than I have. I know a few who have found their niche as consultants, but few who have gotten salaried jobs with any kind of security. What I now know is that I need to take the large paychecks with a grain of salt... since the ones I receive from the age of 18-35 may have to cover for the ones that won't come from the age of 35-100+.
_______ Be your own oracle.
Then fuck you. You get fired, you slacking lazy graying old bastard.
Then when this fired worker applies for his next job it's, (interviewer to himself) "What? You're married with two kids?" (interviewer to you) "I'm sorry but you're { not qualified | too expensive | not what we're looking for }". It is discrimination pure and simple.
H1B visas are not about filling in skills US workers lack.
Nor do employers want more H1B visas so they can pay workers less.
H1Bs are a source of people with no family ties or other responsibilities whatsoever. H1B workers, along with most fresh college grads, are the only work group that can work the really really long hours, and devote their entire waking hours to "the company".
Now that the first wave of IT workers is getting married and having kids, employers are saying there is a "shortage of IT workers". Bullshit. There is only a shortage of workers who will let themselves be treated like crap. And yes, even if well paid, 70-100 hour work weeks == crap treatment and abuse of a salaried worker. Just like you can't justify exposing workers to workplace hazards by claiming, "they're paid well and accepted the job", so too can you not justify abusive work hours by claiming "they're paid well and accepted the job". In the USA, workers have rights, wheather you agree or not. Just get over it and accept it, or, move your business China. But if you want to operate in the US, then you play by US rules. It's just that simple.
Expect to see IT worker unions form if employers don't clean up their act. Do you hate unions? Hate the corruption? Hate the politics? Well, you have your chance to fix things now. Get off your ass and set things straights before the unions form. And don't bitch and whine about how unions are holding your company by the balls later because it'll only be your fault for fucking people over now.
Let's not forget the demand side of this equation. Truth is, we have so much need for IT professionals and the demand so far outstrips the supply that we're being forced to take on virtually any warm body who can claim a passing familiarity with computers.
Those of us who are a little older will probably remember when the newest programmers weren't given anything much bigger than a few functions to write and maintain. No so anymore, when the need for programming talent has driven prices up so far that all some organizations can afford are those same "new" programmers.
When I started writing code, the algorithms that were especially clever, useful, or elegant used to get collected by engineers and bound into books. You're a crusty old one these days if you have an old, xerographed copy of "The Hackmem" or even know what it is. Doubly so for old copies of "Collected Algorithms of the ACM" which used to be distributed on microfiche!
Instead, these days you get a chorus of untrained "experts" in "visual programming" who loudly proclaim that algorithms are unnecessary to programming!
Don't believe me? Last year, Visual Basic Programmer's Journal had the temerity to publish an article showing some very basic algorithms and how they could be applicable in VB programming. The response from readers was stunning. One said: "I have worked in VB for 10 years and NEVER used an algorithm."
As a manager of software developers, and one who came up through the ranks as quite a good software engineer, I have been used to using a light touch when trying to get developers to improve their practices, because most had pretty good practices and had an extraordinary pride in them.
These days, I'm finding that I often need to switch completely to playing the role of the drill sergeant, because so many engineers lack even the most basic skills for developing clean, reliable, understandable code.
There is asolutely no reason to import workers...there is not and never was a shortage, unless your counting the shortage of people willing to work s**t hours for s**t pay. Companies would have no issues getting(and keeping) the help they need if they would pay for it. MCSE, MCDBA, NCA, etc should = LARGE $$, but imported labor keeps that from happening.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Here is a suggestion: send resumes - but with a fictitious name, age, less experience, and see if you get a reply. I haven't tried this yet but I think I will. This will answer the question.
I think it is more of a problem than just age. The problem is that most resumes are not even read. Nobody gets to the age part of resumes because nobody looks at them. In my experience the only time anyone reads a resume is when you are sitting there in front of them. I suspect this is because most people lie on resumes - if you have done a lot most people assume what you've written is a pack of lies.
I do know resumes aren't read: when or if I do get in front of someone it is obvious they are reading my resume for the first time.
22 years ago I got a job from a newspaper ad - it was from a rapidly growing firm who was looking for anyone who knew anything about digital. Other than that I have never had any luck from classified positions. Every job I have had since has come from a personal contact: I knew someone at the company or I was recommended by someone who knew someone at the company.
Could someone who has worked in an HR department explain why nobody seems to read resumes?
Are there competent HR people? Of course there are, the ones who read Slashdot probably fall into the competent range. So I won't get an answer to my question from them - as the competent minority they do read resumes and hire good people. I was looking for an answer from the people who would never answer.
Everybody take note: an example of Veteran properly using Hanlon's razor; I only see malice involved when it actually is at work.
I said in my post that I was a pretty bright guy, which means that I know that I am able to learn things at a rate which is high enough that no one in the world is able to learn fast enough to make up a 27 year head start on me. If a person can bench press 500 lbs he knows for a fact that there is no one in the world who is able to bench press 2 times as much as he can.
I am not the most intelligent man in the world, nor am I the fastest learner, but I am intelligent enough and fast enough a learner to know that given the head start that I had that there is no way anyone half my age knows as much as I do. That is not arrogance or hubris - that is a simple statement of fact.
How much have I learned? Well I know that all of logic is based on a demonstrably false postulate. That when you attempt to use logic to win a fight, that you make a false assumption that you have a firm base from which to argue. Aristotle was wrong about everything else, what makes you think that he was right about the thought process that led him to all of those erroneous conclusions?
I have learned enough to know that the phrase "The truth hurts" means that the truth is being used as a weapon to damage someone.
Stop and think for a second: if this were a completely logical universe it would not be possible to make an illogical statement; such a statement would be incompatible with the nature of a completely logical universe. There are other truths than logic at work in the universe.
I don't like to fight - I consider it a massive waste of time for the most part, and one in which both sides get hurt. It is because I am a certified expert in fighting that I see little point in it. Be very careful before you start a fight with me. Don't make the intellectual error of mistaking "doesn't want to fight" for "can't fight".
Of course, I could be wrong, some people keep their youthful arrogance as they grow older; they are the ones who never learn anything worth knowing.
Age gives you the opportunity to gain some wisdom. Whether you choose to take advantage of that opportunity is up to you.
Ok, lets take a little quiz to put things into perspective for you: When you were born I was oh say 27. I'm a pretty bright guy, and I've never stopped learning, and doing it at an ever increasing rate; I've learned how to learn more efficiently over the years. I think that even you will admit that when you were born I knew more than you did. So the question is: "Exactly when do you think that your level of knowledge passed mine, when you were 12, 18, 22, last week maybe?" Does it occur to you that there is no way you could know as much as I do, simply because you haven't been around long enough to pass me up yet? Congratulations, that would be the beginning of wisdom on your part.
Cisco
As someone involved in hiring for IT positions, I can tell you straight up - it's hard to find good people. And then when you do find them, they sometimes want a ping-pong table, video arcade, and six figures, which is unreasonable for our entry-level IT positions. If you don't price yourself out of the market, and you know your stuff, you'll find a job very quickly.
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You basically made my point. A worker is hostage to his company if he wants to stay. Sure, if he only wants to stay 6 years he can go to another company.
I would say that most, if not all H1B's want to stay. They are being denied due process (by a bureaucracy that is so bloated, like all government agencies that it takes more than 6 years to do a simple job). This is inmoral, and against the founding prnciples of this country.
Simply, all skilled people should be able to immigrate, so long as they aren't criminals. I have no problems with skilled people who will not be a burden on taxpayers (like me), but will be a contributor.
The whole recent expansion of the H1B program was because there are a number of people who's time is running out, and the corpers want to replace them. Not keep them, mind you, (which would mean paying them what they are worth), but replace them with more that they can exploit and underpay.
In 2000 America, is a non-lawyer truly free?
The H1B visa exists for only one purpose: so that companies can get below market cost labor. This can only be done because the H1B immigrant is denied equal proteciton under hte law as with other workers. H1B's get 6 years, and as it's been pointed out in an earlier /. article, it's taking LONGER than that to proces people for citizenship/green cards.
So what happens is that the company has the H1B worker over the proverbial barrel. He/She can't fairly negotiate pay, benefits, etc with their employer because if they get fired, have their sponsorship pulled, then they have no chance at staying.
Note that the megacorps pushed for MORE H1B visas, not an extension on the 6 year limit. It's because they have no desire to see these people stay and become citizens, why, if that happened then they'd have to be paid the market rate for their skills.
I am not at all against these people coming in. In fact, I think that there should be NO restriction on skilled immigrants. These people will never be a burden on the US taxpayer.
Simply put, the H1B visa is a tool that allows businesses to get a temporary, captive workfore, that has to take below market pay because they have no choice.
IT jobs pay what they do because that is what the market that has become driven by tech skills will bear, not because we are greedy. H1B is a non-capitalist attempt to use the government to allow companies to get more than what they pay for.
In 2000 America, is a non-lawyer truly free?
You might also ask how long it takes to get to the position of "senior programmer" or equivalent. If it takes only six to eight years or less to reach that level, you might ask what the career path looks like beyond "senior programmer," and how many people get beyond that level.
Whoa. Personally I like companies with a more result-oriented approach. Instead of having a set time schedule on what position an employee can reach, one's position should be based on the person's skill and experience. A senior staff should have the technical knowledge required for completing the project and evaluate the recommendations submitted by members of the team, and enough experience to be a team leader. On top of that, the senior staff should also know his or her own personal limitations and know when to ask for help (but is still experienced and knowledgeable enough to distinguish a good idea from bad ones).
I'm 26, four years out of college. Yes, my official title is "Senior Software Engineer." I've been in the leadership position for many projects, working with people much older than myself, and am totally comfortable with it.
On the other hand, I believe talking to senior staff during interviews is crucial in evaluating the success of the company. If you don't think you would trust the person in senior staff to run a successful project if you were the company's CEO, I'd put a big question mark on the state of the company.
As to life after being a senior staff, there are always more challenging projects out there, or more challenging jobs in other fields....
I don't think anyone that has ever searched for a job on Monster board can possibly suggest that there isn't a shortage of IT labor, but I would think that we can assume the causes of this perceived problem are these: Age descrimination in the workplace, xenophobia and a market that changes so fast that its hard for workers to keep up with it. Companies believe that they have to move to the latest technologies to keep up with the productivity levels of their competition. They believe that the "kids" of today are more in tune with today's technologies than their older counterparts. This may in some instances be true, and in others not, but it is the perception of the marketplace.
In turn, there is this backlash by programmers, with perhaps older skillsets who have begun to be passed up on newer technology positions in favor of younger people (leaving them stuck in their older skill sets). And when some of them read about H1 Visas being granted for MORE young "kids" to come here and further erode their possibilities of getting a newer technology job (which as we know you must keep up w/technology, or die), they find themselves justifying their dislike of the immigration system.
To answer to the person's question whether or not their CS degree is worth much in this day and age, in my experience its worth about a year's of work experience, not much more. I've never met a CS student that didn't think that one of their professors didn't know how to teach or was also out of tune with the latest technologies (generally caused by them reminiscing about punch card programming, and FORTRAN), and frankly my own aborted experience as a CS student has shown me the narrowness of the scope of the program wasn't a worthwile undertaking, and when I got into the job market I wasn't surprised to find out that the company was just happy that I went to collge, and didn't care that I had a B.A. in Politics, so long as I knew my stuff.
methinks that your above statement somewhat contradicts this one:
H1B is just another form of corporate welfare, America was built on the backs of immigrants with a strong work ethic. Parts of it were built on slave-labor even, but in this modern time should we really accept slave-labor in the IT field? Big business is all for free-markets for their products, but when it comes to paying for required resources they are a bunch of hypocrites
After reading that twice, I think the hypocrite is you. You have no problem with people trying to get $100k for a no-brainer job, but when the company refuses and gets a skilled worker from Europe for $70k, you call them hypocrites.
Same thing in the US. We've had plenty of applicants claiming to know all kinds of things, but 2 minutes into the interview it became painfully obvious that they didn't know squat. The particularly stupid ones didn't even know what our company does!
In such cases it is quite a relief to be able to get a knowledgable and motivated worker from Europe (most of our H1-B workers come from Europe), who actually knows the ubject at hand, and actually knows what company he's dealing with.
Actually, the hypocrite would then be the government, which allows these workers into the country to boost the American economy, but wants to kick them out before they get old and start costing money.
Too true, and not just in the IT Indistry. It is what happenes in ALL industries.
You read too much User Friendly (Sid Dabster thread)
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
Really, if you have 25 years of experience as you claim...you're overqualified or too expensive. And even if you aren't, 25 years of experience projects that impression.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
Interesting stuff, but it reeks of "These foreigners are stealing our jobs". Even if imported labour is cheaper and relatively easy to come by, I don't beleive for a second that a talented programmer need be unemployed against his or her will for longer than it takes to go to geekfinder, while this does seem to be the sword the author is holding over our heads. .
I know for myself that the only way I can get skilled programmers is by stealing them away from other companies. Granted I'm not in the US, but stil. .
By the way, interesting little quote here:
Twenty years after graduation from college, only 19% of computer science majors are still employed as programmers. This compares, for instance, to a figure 57% of civil engineering majors who are still working as civil engineers 20 years after leaving school.
20 years? Hardly surprising. Whatever a CS learned at college 20 years ago looks little like what programmers do today, and I dare suppose the environment they worked in was a damn slight different. In all honesty, without having read it in full, this whole article strikes me as a rather clever bit of reverse engineering by somebody with a hidden agenda.
I want the fire back.
Arrogant jerk... ...if that is what employers mean when they tell me I won't fit in with their culture, I've got a serious problem.
I generally regard myself as a very nice person. I'm very chatty and I go out of my way to help anybody who needs help. At my last position, people always went out of their way to make sure I was assigned to their project and frequently called my manager to say how nice I was.
I really hope I do not come off as an arrogant jerk.
meept!
meept!
I know everything about everything and still no job. What gives?
Seriously, my resume reads like the index of the IT encyclopedia of everything and I have a string of real world projects that impress everyone who takes the time to look. Over the phone companies beg me to work for them and promise great salaries and unheard of benifits. Then I go for an interview and get shot down like I was wearing a big red target on by chest and it's open season on IT workers. The answer I always get is "We are very impressed with your skills but just don't think you'll fit with our culture". WTF?!?!
I dress up a level above the interviewer, I'm nice, I talk about how great the company is and how much I'd love to be a part of their team. Then they show me the door.
The only thing I can think of is it is readily apparant I am less than half the age of anybody else at the company (I'm 21 and all the tech's I've been interviewed by here in Wisconsin are 50+)
meept!
meept!
Maybe it's different in the States, but in the Netherlands there still is a big shortage of specialized IT-people. Friends who did finish their studies at univercity and persist in not working in IT earn half the money that friends without a diploma working as programmer or system administrator earn. I think IT-specilists are getting more money then they deserve because of this shortage and yes when you're 35 and not up-to-date because you don't know how to work with the newest stuff you just should have known better.
I've found that in my field: ERP and E-business consulting, it's the exact opposite. Most of my peers are at least 30, if not older. There are very few 20-somethings such as myself. Similarly, this sets a sort of standard for what the customer expects when they get a consultant. When I first started, I was 23 and most customers had difficulty beleiving that I could get the job done like my older peers.
At least I have the re-assuring knowledge that as I get older in this field, I'm more likely to retain my job.
The funny part is that a guy had to do the html page for Dr. Norman Matloff.
That had to have been funny. ex:
"hey timmy (html grunt worker), yea you in the cubicle, convert this page to html and index it" - Dr. Norman Matloff
"What's it on?" -Timmy (html grunt worker)
"How you're going to be out of a job in 2 years" -Dr. Norman Matloff
has anyone measured the hurt we do to the families of those we transport to our shores?
i fear that the h1b visa and indentured servitude are becoming one and the same.
Money makes all the difference, ealier, now and forever. And labour flocks where the money is. In yesteryears it used to be by force, now its voluntary. Don't the overseas guys know the situation, yet they are willing to face being called servants because they reason that in the end they stand to gain, experience and moneywise. And it has been the nature of the host country to always feel superior. Even the british colonies where they started out as traders, were looked down upon till they became the rulers. They were underestimated till they had taken control of the country. Another very different example is that of Saudi Arabia. 30 years ago they came to india to sell merchandise and lived an almost nomadic life and were pitied, but now the Indians go there in search of livelihood and are treated like dirt. So I would say it's how the social psyche works and people compromise with it. No foreigner will give up the opportunity to work in the US just because some dunk pointed out what he knew anyways.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that you were not screwed. However, there are many people of the older generation who apply for Java jobs listing 20 years of COBOL experience. Furthermore, the same people often have massive chips on their shoulder.
In my last company, there was a system administrator whom they hired at vast expense. The guy had more moods than a prima donna. Not only was he not up to scratch on latest technologies and getting almost as much money as the project lead, he was also insufferably arrogant and thought nothing of leaving at 4:00 PM on a regular basis. His reasons included volunteer basketball coaching, church activities etc. Anyone who tried to remonstrate got a blast of a lecture with similar themes, about how he was a senior engineer, how he had a life and how he was not going to be exploited by some profiteering corporation. As you may imagine, there was no way he could be fired and so we had to increasingly have other people take over his responsibilities. I can tell you that people who experienced that situation would have trouble sympathising with Mr. Matloff's position.
Magnus.I can agree with some of the points in the article, mainly that there is real age discrimination in the IT biz. But it all gets down to money, as always. Employers want H1Bs so they can pay less, and get more hours out of employees. But this does not necessarily mean more output or higher quality work. Quite the contrary, usually the more people thrown at something, the worse it gets. But PHBs think that if you have a lotta people working on something, more must be getting done.
I am not precisely sure how old he is (I didn't ask in his interview to avoid any age discrimination claims), but looking at his resume, the most recent AS/400 system administrator I hired is more than 60 years old.
I got tired of young punks (I am younger than 30 myself) who held paper certications and an e-mail subscription to the job lists on Dice, Monster, and HotJobs. I purposely set out to find an old guy to to the job and it has paid off. He has the maturity to always treate the users with respect, has the experience to perform administration functions well, and has not balked yet when I needed him to stay overnight once in a while.
If you can find the right guy, grab him.
open mind: teaching computers the stuff
I'm a 14 year veteran of the IT industry, and I see no labor shortage. I do see shortages, but not where people think they are. There's certainly no shortage of applicants. But once you use standard HR screening tactics you've tossed out a good majority of your qualified applicants. This leaves you with a run of people who may or may not be, but likely aren't, qualified for the posted position. How does this happen? Here's the shortage I see most often: HR departments aren't being properly trained in valid, effective hiring practices. Much like the UPO they don't understand what they'd dealing with.
It's understandable to want documentation to support claims being made by an applicant. Degrees are fine examples of documentation like this, but I'm afraid this practice breaks down on the IT level (is anyone else reminded of the standard argument about common sense breaking down on the subatomic level?). I started college in 1984 - how many IT degrees do you think were available then? A grand total of two, and I was attending one of the many larger state universities at the time. I had a choice between becoming a computer programmer, or a systems analyst. I decided to become a systems administrator, instead. In a world of bright white shirts, pressed slacks, sport jackets and neck ties I slapped on the warpaint and donned a feathered headdress. That's possibly the best analogy I can come up with (especially at 8am).
We're voodoo priests to most of them. They don't understand what a systems administrator does, how he or she does it, or what skills are required to work that particular brand of voodoo we do (anyone who understands the rule, "Read the man pages. If that makes the process either ridiculously easy or bloody impossible, STOP! You don't know what you're doing. Read them again!" knows what I'm referring to as 'voodoo').
Perhaps if the HR departments and upper management were better trained they would be able to modify their screening practices for IT categories and we wouldn't hear this near-constant cry of a shortage of workers.
Just remember, there's no shortage of call center technicians. But being able to walk someone through reinstalling modem drivers over the phone doesn't qualify you to upgrade the kernel on a Sparc station. Conversely, being able to compile your own kernels or make custom modifications to them doesn't, by itself, make you a systems administrator.
Well, other than your argument from authority (a logical fallacy that you should have learned about by now, oh fast learner)...
How do you know that everybody starts at a slower learning rate than what you have finally achieved?
If you're 40 and I'm 20, and you were learning at a rate of 4 units at birth, which accelerated and compounded at 2% a year, while I started at 8 units which accelerated and compounded at 4% a year, guess what? I not only know as much as you, but I'll be ahead of you next year and for the entire future.
Since it is known that humans do have wide variances in learning capacity, apparently "wisdom" is lack of knowledge of reality, ignorance of mathematics, or hubris.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
What is really needed is a H1B Visa program for politicians and business executives. Obviously, there's a shortage of qualified people for the above positions.
Dr. Norman Matloff is probably the most visible and recognized voice against this 'IT shortage'. He is hardly a marginal figure, since he has appeared on programs such as PBS's McNeil-Lehrer news hour. (The only reason I remember this is because they filmed part of that story segment at my university.)
The government's own GAO (General Accounting Office) points out deficiencies in the current system. You can find the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/he00157.pdf
I know Prof. Matlff's positions are echoed by IEEE- so yes, the technical community takes him seriously. You can find several IEEE statements at www.ieeeusa.org. Here's some testimony IEEE has given to Congress at http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/00feb29.html
Well, Dr. Matloff was a professor of mine back at UC Davis in the early 90's. I seem to recall he was married to a woman who emigrated from China, and he was very into Chinese culture and language. Not something a "Pat Buchanan" would do.
What do you have to prove that is "credibility is NOT good among minorities"?
Cheers.
This link has been posted HUDREDS of times in the HUDREDS of slashdot articles talking about the IT workers shortage.
You really DO recycle your stories.
Slow news day, EH?
I work with a top company that has many H1-B's, some work in my department and get paid more than than some of the guys that know more... just because they have a CS Degree? WTF is up with that? I know several contractors, that have been let go, that have been working an acount, that know the ropes, work hard etc. just to be let go, and replaced with non-native's for lack of a better word. Maybe if companies would just hire the qualified people and pay them for what they know, I don't think we would have a so called IT shortage
Too many myths are perpetrated by those who don't honestly know what they're talking about. As a UK citizen who's currently going through the rather gruelling process of getting the visa, I find it remarkable that so many of you seem to think that an H1-B is something readily obtained without paperwork, investigation, hassle, cost, and so forth. Apparently, if the opinions evinced here are to be believed, the H1-B allows US companies an easy source of slave labour; never mind the fact that companies pursuing an H1-B need to investigate the prevailing wage paid for the given job in the given area, and pay that wage. Never mind the fact that an accredited degree is a prerequisite for attaining an H1-B. (Okay, so "equivalent experience" is an alternative but, as I recall, the length of experience that is considered equivalent to a degree would preclude the attainment of an H1-B by the foreign kids you all seem so terrified by).
Now, to be fair, the study mentioned in the paper does cover all of these issues with greater depth than the average /. post. When it comes to the fact that certain companies are taking advantage of H1-B workers and paying lower salaries: go figure. There will always be unscrupulous companies out there. We're hardly talking slave labour, though; perhaps all of the American brats are too taken in by the IT myth, and have started believing that they're worth what they're paid. Goodness knows I've worked with too many people on exorbitant salaries who didn't really know what they were doing.
At any rate - I honestly couldn't be bothered with reading through the entire testimony; what I did read seemed to rely on a few examples rather than any large-scale study.
By and large, though, my argument would be this: any software company worth its salt will aim to employ the best available, irrespective (within reason) of the salaries demanded. If people on H1-B visas accept substandard salaries, it's either because they're just not that good, or because they're allowing themselves to have the piss taken out of them. That's their problem, frankly. As I mentioned, I'm in the process of getting my visa sorted out; my arranged salary is above that of the other (American) employees working at the company, because my skills are better developed. I know that the company in question has spent many months in trying to employ developers, without any real success - the one (American) programmer that was brought on board proved to have significantly overplayed his skills, and was little more than a poor HTML coder. This is in the Chicago office - hardly a back-water, although a city admittedly without the tech community of certain others. Point being, though, that it's all very well to stand around arguing that there's no job shortage - but it's quite another thing to fill the jobs. If I'm being paid no less than my American counterparts, and if there's a significant effort required in getting all of the visa paperwork arranged, why is the company in question willing to go through with it if there is no skill shortage in America?
I don't necessarily doubt that the visa system does lead to some abuse -- such abuse is endemic in business affairs in general, as well as with the entire immigration issue. What irritates me is the blanket statements made by too many people who are either too bitter, too stupid, or too arrogant to get the jobs that they see going to their foreign counterparts. Well, those people are right to be concerned: as someone with an American girlfriend, I'm very proud to be stealing both your jobs and your women.
--George.
The basic theories of economics still apply. Nedessary skills are still necessary skills. For worker 'A' to perform job type 'B', he will still need the a minimum set of skills to perform adequitely. For your average software 'engineer' to acquire a skill set he needs either personal capital (ie. a nice home - setup,books etc) or professional experience (ie. those mainframes at work). Now most of the students from India, Nepal and other 'third world' nationals could not afford a nice net connection and tons of recent books. They only picked up skills after being in the US for some time. I on the other hand, have owned many computers, worked for companies that exposed me to a great many different proprietary products, and collect documentation religiously. This has raised my skillset. The H1B workers often face a great deal of difficulty since their skillset is often initially limitted to what they learned at an American university which while good may not be as full as it otherwise could be. In time they will catch up but initially they are not as well situated skill per dollar.
Now, in normal circumstances, a higher skillset may demand higher wages. In the land of Software Engineering this is not entirely true. First we must understand that a Software Engineer is not really an Engineer at all. Engineering in the stricted sense of the word is a requlated and licensed proffession. For example, I may be able to out doctor the best doctor in the world and make 205K+. However, doing so would have legal consquences. This is why hospitals haven't started their own H1B push and most doctors are in private practice and can bill directly. How many unemployed doctors do you know.
The lack of requlation/licensing in the software industry is the reason for the downward wage pressure in the IT industry. Corporations can easily sacrifice quality in the name of time to market with little legal/regulatory consquence. If a REAL engineer consistantly builds bad bridge he may be held liable. Not so true of Software Engineers.
On a personal note, I am leaving my current possition for just the same reason. Time to market and poor design are emphasised. They hired seven very bright H1B's have been hired. But their skillset is not yet up to snuff. Yet they are still put on critical projects and taught to emphasize time to market over all else. My last project could have been modular and virtually bug free if I had one more week's development time. The H1B workers that I spoke with would like to do the same but are not permitted to because of their workers.
Now, my opinion on the matter is that H1B workers should be allowed to work in the very least in same manner as green card workers and be put on a US citzenship track. I don't mind competing as long as it is not against indentured servents.
And besides, a great many many of the H1B workers that I know are great guys/gals and would make great additions to a nation that was built on immigrants(at the expense of the natives). They don't deserve to have their bargaining potential deminished by limitations placed on their workplace modility.
Women are the ruling class. Guys who don't like it should get a sex change. But I don't want to be a lesbian.
Most H1B workers come from countries where it would be difficult to demand commenserate salaries. So they are mostly happy with what they get EVEN though a FREE MARKET would give them 15-30 percent more in real earnings.
So, in the end the employers are the only ones with no downside. The extra legal fees are easily offset by the guaranteed retention.
I am not saying that you should not be working under an H1B. I think you should have been given a green card so that you could freely participate in the job market. Those who can not are prisoners or indentured servents.
I just don't aprove of the hinderance of the free market. Free Market means more than just corprate rights. Captilism and a Market economy are a good thing. They just need to be balanced with human rights. Everyone deserves the right to do the best for themselves and their family.
Women are the ruling class. Guys who don't like it should get a sex change. But I don't want to be a lesbian.
You should say that there is a scarcity not a shortage. There is no shortage since a desired IT person can be hired for a price. If the price is more than companies are willing or able to pay it would still not be a shortage but would be a scarcity.
I resemble that remark!
Bowie J. Poag
Founder, PROPAGANDA Desktop Enhancement Graphics (Enjoy!)
Age discrimination at 35? Fine by me. I'm 25 years old. I have been using computers all my life, and this is my ballgame, not theirs. I'm sick and tired of getting rooted out for "lack of experience". Not any more, now I'm top dog. They aren't. We are smarter, because of being stupid enough to sit in front of our computers 18 hours/day while our friends were off playing football. We were the geeks in high-school. Well, now we drive the online world. Older people who didn't know shit about it saw $ signs, and tried to jump into it, but they don't understand it. We own them. They must bow to us. CEO at age 25? Can't argue with that. All those old bastards out there... well... tough break. Some win, some lose and some are lucky. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna let some gray-haird "senior executive" drive my work-flow in the usual conservative BS management style. It's over. Admit defeat.
See the following paper:
e in.htm
l
"How and Why Government, Universities and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages: An Introduction to the Real NSF 'Shortage' Study" By Eric Weinstein, located at:
www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Library/Archives/Weinst
The introduction states:
"Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say that they don't exist. They are created when employers or government agencies tamper with the natural functioning of the wage mechanism..."
In: CIO Magazine - August 1, 2000
Opinion Sound Off - Taking Sides on Critical Issues
"MORE H1-B VISAS; FEWER PROBLEMS?" BY MARTHA HELLER located at:
www.cio.com/archive/080100_soundoff_content.htm
Shelley Morrisette, senior vice president and director of research at Darwin Partners, an IT workforce solutions company, said:
""...'Changing immigration policy will not work,' argues Morrisette. 'Technology is constantly changing and accelerating, creating obsolete IS workers daily. The real issue facing the high-tech industry is how to effectively and continually retrain and use obsolete workers.'
According to Morrisette, the whole staffing crisis - and the notion that throwing more visas at the problem will solve it -- is a red herring launched by the high-tech industry to put downward pressure on IT salaries. More bodies may increase the pool of candidates, and many of those bodies may come cheap, says Morrisette, but CIOs who chase down H1-B visa workers are wasting their time. Their energies would be better spent retooling their human resource strategies for the new economy.
An obsolete worker is an obsolete worker, and 10 are no better than one. Regardless of the number of H1-B visas available, says Morrisette, companies that implement effective retraining programs, pay a premium for highly skilled talent and ignore the doomsday laments of staffing crisis propagandists will successfully manage their own staffing situation. Companies that expect a larger and cheaper labor pool to solve their staffing woes for them will be the first to go.""
I wonder what excuses the "first to go" will offer as they go out of business...
Visit the H-1B Hall of Shame located at:
www.zazona.com/shameh1b/
And the "Age Issues" forum on Monster.com located at:
http://forums.monster.com/forum.asp?forum=127
And this was supposed to be temporary...
g eid=1186345
"INDIANS JUBILANT AS US HOUSE CLEARS H1-B VISA BILL" By Ashish Kumar Sen San Francisco, Oct. 5
http://isn.unices.org/news/20001006153311.html
"" Till Monday, Vivek Nair, a San Jose-based software programmer, wasn't sure how much longer he would be staying in the United States of America. For him, time was running out. His six-year H-1B visa had entered its final weeks.
Two days later he gushed: 'I'm proud to be an American!'
The source of Mr Nair's pride was the Senate's unanimous decision to approve an increase in the number of H-1B visas that can be issued annually by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the next three years...""
Nair's statement is an insult! It's time to WAKE UP AMERICA! H-1B's HERE ON TEMPORARY VISAS ARE NOT AMERICAN CITIZENS!
http://forums.monster.com/viewmessage.asp?messa
Source: "A question of fraud - Silicon Valley pushes for more foreign workers despite federal probes" By David Lazarus - The San Francisco Chronicle (September 21, 2000):
www.usbc.org/info/jobs/0900probes.htm
""FAKE CREDENTIALS
One of the most common forms of H-1B fraud involves falsification of academic and work credentials. A bachelor's degree (or its vocational equivalent) is required for H-1B status, as well as proof of specific work skills.
Some Indians have reported that overseas recruiters will charge workers as much as $6,000 to improve their visa chances. In return, relatively unskilled workers will receive a month or two of computer training along with paperwork attesting to far more extensive work experience.
Diplomas from existing or even nonexistent universities also can be arranged.
'It's a well-known fact that people in India will take two or three classes in Java programming, then the body shop will create a resume for them,' said Inder Singh, a former H-1B visa holder now working as a programmer on the East Coast.
'You will find that a lot of them don't have the work experience they claim to have,' he said. 'The body shop does it for them. They are very good at glossing over resumes.'
...Yates told legislators that a subsequent immigration service investigation revealed that 21 percent of vocational resumes submitted by visa applicants were fictitious and 29 percent more 'were either probably or possibly fraudulent.' ""
What does that say about the products being "designed" by these people?
When you review some of the comments you may want to take a close look at those who are posting them. For instance The poster who spells labor as labour. Good bet this is not someone from the US and probably has a bent toward h-1b's. I am not anti immigrant (my wife is Asian), but the h-1b program is being abused. I have over half a dozen close friends who are out of work and have been for some time, yet congress wants to bring in 600,000 more h-1bs in addition to the close to 1/2 million already here. I guess maybe I have a slight bent against the program that was once well intentioned I think. Now the only purpose is for large corporations to bring in cheap indentured labor (not labour) and oust older (over 35) programmers. Yes, my friends use older technology, but they have trained on the newer languages like Java, but still no one wants to hire them. http://www.h1breform.freeservers.com
You can do better in this economy. It depends on your age whether or not you can do better. If you have been with a company a long time it is often difficult to leave for the same or more money. You have been reading to many articles in the press and probably not tried to find a real job recently, either that or you are under 35. It is damned difficult to find a CS job right now unless you have a specific high demand skill with experience to back it up. As I said in a previous post, half a dozen of my friends are out of work and have been for some time. I have others who have taken positions at almost one half of their previous salary, now does that sound like a shortage to you?