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No Shortage Of Programmers?
Robber Baron writes "While searching with Copernic for the old Indian-head test pattern, I chanced upon this article (funny how search engines work, isn't it?). It seems (surprise, suprise) that this whole IT labour shortage crisis was a myth generated by large IT companies to justify importing boatloads of foreign IT workers willing to work for low wages in substandard conditions. Anyone have any experience with this?"
As someone who spends a lot of time hiring (yes, I'm a manager) I really have to disagree. The problem isn't finding "programmers" i.e. people who write classes all day, and regurgitate the algorithms they memorized in college, but finding what I like to call "Developers;" that is, people who think, who see a big picture. My staff is compromised entirely of thinkers, and it's a small team. We have a hire rate of around 25% of interviewees, and that's generous.
Nothing against polytechnical schools, but universities seem to produce "thinkers" not just "doers" It's all well and good to be able to write code when you're given explicit direction, pseudo-code, etc, but a real "Developer" just needs a "goal" There is definitely a shortage of highly motivated, problem solvers, not a shortage of code monkeys.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I read through the article, and to me, there were many statements which contradicted
themselves, but, aren't that obvious as they are well spread out, and the article
is long, with alot of points.
It appears that the article is a politically biased article trying it's best to
appear to be objective.
For exapmle, towards the end of the FAQ section, we come across -
"Question: The industry lobbyists claim that the H-1Bs tend to be
``the best and the brightest'' from around the world. Is this true?
Certainly not. We should definitely facilitate the immigration
of the outstanding talents throughout the world, but only a small
proportion of the H-1Bs fall into this category. 75% of the H-1Bs
earn less than $65,000, far below the salaries of top talent in
this field, which exceed $100,000. "
This is trying to imply that the average H-1B is not the top talent, and is
most likely only average or below. This may, not may not be true, I am
not discussing the merit of this point, but I want to focus just on what
the report is saying.
But, those with not so short memories will remember right at the top of the
FAQ section, Matloff said -
"The industry lobbyists form a lone voice on this issue. There is
a broad consensus that the H-1Bs are indeed exploited in terms of
wages and working conditions."
and
"... study at UCLA, which found that the immigrant engineers
were paid 33% less than comparable Americans "
and
"Thus it is indisputable, from basic economic principles, that on
average they are making less money than they would if they had their
freedom."
So, Matloff, along with all of the studies mentioned, say that these
workers are getting far less than they should due to the exploitation of
restrictions in the system.
Hany on, how can you say that they are getting far less than they are
worth, and then later on, say that
"far below the salaries of top talent in this field" ???
Let me state this one more time. Matloff says -
- they are underpaid for their skills
- if we use at their salaries as an
indicator, they are not very good.
This is a direct contradiction. You can't have it both ways. Either
they are underpaid and worth more, or they are paid what they are
worth and are not the top in their field.
I found many other instances like this through out the report. This
guy has a point he wants to prove so much, that he even switches
sides in his arguments.
I wonder if he even realises what he has done?
If you are going to respond to my post, please note, I am not taking
sides on this debate. I am just trying to point out flaws in the
report.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
As a manager of developers, I can tell you that there absolutely IS an shortage of IT people. At least a shortage of good ones. I mean, I get tons of resumes from people who don't know anything about software development, but they're not useful to me. I have had 4 developers in my group. 3 of them are here on H1B work visas. I didn't hire them because they were foreigners. I hired them because they were the best I could find.
I have one other person that I'm probably going to hire in the next few weeks. He's was born and raised American.
I've interviewed at least a 50 developers over the past year. I'd say that 80-90% of them have been foreigners looking to get work visas. So, if you ask me, it looks like there's a serious shortage of IT workers in this country, or at least in my area, which is a high-tech center (the Dulles Corridor of Northern Virginia).
We (the company I work for) write parallel processing applications. We had a skills shortage, but managed to get around it by training people with good experience in technologies similar in nature.
I wasn't born with parallel processing app dev skills. Neither were any of my foreign co-workers. They were trained on the subject, and the criteria for hire is/was an ability to absorb new concepts with minimum effort. So a hi IQ gets you the job.
I suspect in your case that you didn't pay the prevailing rate for the position (perhaps bad information?) and/or you were not geared to recruit people with the real prerequisite: The ability to comprehend what was necessary to make the software work.
Unfortunately, the people making hiring decisions do not do so optimally. That is just a matter of human nature. I think that that your specific requirements drew you into a sort of no-win situation, in that you could not keep/advance your career without a guaranteed success, and in response to that you targeted your audience too restictively, which effectively precluded success.
The next time you look at finding a person to fill a position, look at what is really required outside of the core technologies. Those who fulfill these requirments are the people you need to interview for. Which is the unspoken point of this article: We have created an atificial limit on applicants and suffered, but now that the price has dipped somewhat, with lowered expectations we have a surplus.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
I estimate that approximately 80% to 90% of the people in Software don't belong here. Why are they here? It's simple. When they went to the local school and told them that they want to learn Software because they heard it pays well, their counselor didn't bat an eyelash!
When people ask me if they should get 'into computers' (because they heard it pays well) I tell them this:
"If you don't love it, don't bother. If your in it for the money, you'll never be any good at it. In order to be a good engineer of any kind it has to be in your blood. If you're doing it for the money you'll never be any good at it. If you are a natural, you don't do it for the money; the money just follows"
Unfortunately, I am responsible enough to do this, but your average 'American Joe' who takes a job as a counselor doesn't see a problem with getting into a career for the money, even if he/she didn't choose their career path for the money. It's the American way. Unfortunately, the result of all this is the current state of Engineering in America today 8^{
The good news? I look 10 times better when compared to 'the average.' Still, every time I hear someone proudly call themselves a 'programmer', I shudder. These people are often performing the Software Engineering function, and they still don't know that programming is only about 20% to 40% of the puzzle. Scary!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
2. We can't find any skilled coders.
Hello? Does anyone else see the correlation here? Skill is the product of talent and experience. Talent comes from God Almighty in precious little doses, but experience comes with age.
The skilled coder you can't find is probably one of the ones you dumped because his salary was just a little too high. Now you'll pay double his salary in recruitment costs and receive nothing productive in return.
You would think even an MBA could understand this.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Older workers (I'm hitting the big 4-oh this year) have negatives beyond age. We often have wives and families, which mean we're unwilling to work 6-80 hour weeks and on weekends. Wives also come with children in many cases -- leading "mature" workers to want benefits like insurance and pension plans.
A couple of decades ago, having a family was a *plus* when applying for a job; it proved stability and responsibility. Today, when the average tech job lasts for a year or two (if that!), employers are more interested in cost-cutting and reducing benefit loads. Which may explain why so much software today just simply sucks...
The same force that drove manufacturing jobs -- cheap labor -- overseas will now begin to eat away at the U.S. tech industry. Someone working in Mexico or India requires a lower salaray and fewer benefits than the equivalent U.S. worker. In a world driven entirly by the collection of wealth, does it surprise anyone that tech company have foreign development shops or employ H1B indentured servants?
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
Sure, a few years ago when companies laid folks off, it was usually the slackers and technical marketing types. But no longer!
As an ex-NORTEL employee (by choice long before they cratered) I can tell you I am absolutely blown away by the names I'm seeing come across the local mailing list for laid off NORTEL folks. These people were best in class programmers with excellent skills. The kind of people who got the top level review rating each year that only %5 of employees got. Thats because companies are now shedding entire projects and divisions. Before that used to happen on a small scale and most of the top coders got jobs elsewhere in the company. But in today's environment, theres nowhere else to go in a company laying off 30% of its work force - all open positions are GONE. So what happens? When a divison gets cut or a major project cancelled, EVERYBODY gets the ax.
Now you'd think they'd have jobs just lined up - well, as someone whose been looking for a halfway decent job for 7 months I can assure you its not always that easy, at least not here in RTP Many companies are laying folks off, not hiring. The # of job postings have gone down by at LEAST an order of magnitude. Even worse is the companies KNOW this and can hand pick the person that fits every single one of their requirements where before if a person fit 80% - it was a catch.
I've even noticed it in the job postings - an almost arrogant tone that basically says if you can't meet every single requirement (and they list tons) then don't even bother cause they won't even acknowledge they received your info.
During 1999 - there WAS a shortage in certain areas, no question. Totally unqualified people were getting hired because whatever work they could do was better than the job sitting unfilled for months. Now, its brutal and companies that can manage to get an opening approved are taking their time finding the gems - and then are paying them much less than they used to. I know excellent programmers who earned $80K getting offers of $65K
As for the middle maangers - yes they seem like incompetent dorks who serve no purpose, well, I can tell you that while sometimes they are, often they server a very important purpose, at least they did @ NORTEL. If they didn't exist, you'd probably spend more time dealing with customers and requirements, and release schedules which would drive you nuts - I've worn both hats and project managemednt can be a very difficult job, especially when you have to manage a project with hundreds of design teams who all say their feature is the most important (of course) So don't get too high on that pedistal because without project managers, your release would never make it out the door on time and without good technical marketing types, you'd have no customers for your product and no job.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
One day one of my coworkers was doing a service job and discussing the computer system I'd designed with an employee of the customer. The employee had just finished taking a management course and asked my coworker if there was any backup for me. To which he replied, no, our guy's pretty unique.
The customer employee then demonstrated his grasp of management principles by saying that he'd just been taught that if you have anyone like me on the payroll, you should fire them at once! Sure it will hurt for awhile, but eventually you'll recover and you won't be at their mercy.
So that's what it's about, boys and girls: POWER. We do stuff they don't understand and it scares the shit out of them. The only way they can feel secure is to be sure we can be instantly replaced. Fifteen years of loyalty? Meaningless. Skill and experience? Meaningless. Modern management teaches that the most important thing is staying in control.
Fortunately, my current employer is as out-of-date as I am, and doesn't feel that way. Which is another reason I hang around even though the pay isn't so great.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Exactly. Like I said, it's about power.
And the answer to your question is "enlightened self-interest." I have demanded, and gotten, certain concessions as a result of my influence, but I'm smart enough to know what the company can afford and will put up with. They've worked with me long enough to know that I am a reasonable person. In short, they treat me like a human being and I return the favor.
I suppose they just assume everyone is out to grab as much as they can, which is just natural, considering they are the 'mind' of the corporations which are agents of greed.
Exactly. It's about power. It's not about satisfying the customers, it's not about building something we can be proud of, it's not about being the leaders in our sector, it's not about being efficient or beating the competition, it's about being in control. It's about responding to a human situation with the knee-jerk response of a machine that isn't capable of understanding pride, craftsmanship, or loyalty.
Fortunately, the feeling is mutual. I wouldn't want to work for someone who would act that way anyway. For that matter, I suspect a lot of people who share my skills feel that way. Maybe that's why some of the managers who have posted here have such trouble finding people who know what they are doing.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I'll take one example. We had a data warehouse (mostly a big Oracle PL/SQL application). The engineer who designed and implemented the original code left the company, and I was tasked with hiring his replacement since there were some pretty substantial architectural changes we needed to make.
Now, there are a lot of database people out there. A lot. I looked at more resumes than I can count. My ear was sore from phone interviews. Thing was, just about everyone I talked to fell into one of two categories:
I looked and looked. The executive staff got really antsy and started leaning on me to do what the article suggests, just hire someone to get the work going, even if they weren't perfect for the job. I resisted for a while but finally caved in.
The contractor we brought in -- one of the better ones I'd interviewed, though I hadn't liked him well enough to want to hire him -- did a decent job of talking to the right people, gathering requirements, and getting himself acquainted with the layout of the code. But then he started to submit his own code, and man, what a disaster. I wasted weeks correcting his mistakes. Finally I fired him and went back to my original search.
The specifics of the story here aren't important. The point is that it doesn't take many times being burned by the "hire any bum off the street, just fill this technical position" attitude before you develop a very healthy caution about hiring the wrong person. I've seen it happen at other companies and I think it's a universal truth: hiring the wrong person for a job can leave you in a much worse position than hiring nobody at all. Not least because you think you have the position filled, so you stop looking for a while.
Experienced managers know this, so they put themselves through the "there's nobody out there!" routine when the job market is tight. It sucks massively, but it sucks less than the alternative.
(How did the story end? We found an H1-B person who fit the bill perfectly. Then the government took so long to process his paperwork -- months -- that by the time it came through, he'd gotten cold feet. Ugh! Happily by that time I'd moved to a different group.)