Looking At Pretty Graphics Of Dot Com Demographics

chris_robison writes "A talented guy wrote a great example of the quality of talent that is going to waste in these economic "hard times". An unemployed friend of mine put together a kickass tool which lets you query a database of craigslist statistics and generate graphs comparing various things such as job postings and apartments for rent. Although the stats are geared toward San Francisco and the Bay Area, it does make for some interesting reading, even if you aren't from around there. Here's his explaination of what he did (included below)" "hey kids.

I'm unemployed and bored.

With all the talk about dotcom booms and people moving away and all these really general statements people are making; i was curious as to what's really going on now, what went on four years ago and what effect did the boom really have on this community.

So.. i wrote a script that went through the craigslist archive on egroups and tallied the number of postings each day for each category then i stuffed it in a database and made a grapher tool.

It's kinda neat cos you can basically see some somwhat hard data on what the san francisco bay area has been doing over the past four years. you can graph job postings from various industries against things like apartments for rent or housing wanted postings, also for sale postings and resumes.

Some of the interesting things I found is that the number of housing wanted postings seems to be slightly down recently but pretty much unaffected by the drop in jobs. perhaps people are always in a state of wanting to move to a city.

One thing to bear in mind, this data isn't one hundred percent accurate for a few reasons... people do repost their information multiple times in a given month, sometimes people post a number of avaliable apartments in a single posting and craigslist has become significantly more popular over the years in question. however, I do still think that it makes for a decent general indicator of trends in our community. (I'm considering doing some kind of normalizing based on the total volume of posts- I need to think about it some more)

(Unfortunately, personal listings aren't archived. I guess that's a good thing... but I guess it also would have been cool to graph activity on the personals categories against some of the categories that reflect the general state of the economy. (maybe when people aren't tied up in career they start to think about more important things, or maybe not...) )

Either way, the data is there, you can look at it for different time periods and categories. draw your own conclusions and have fun!

The url is here:

http://www.signal11.com/charts/chart-o-m atic.cgi

take it easy..

--adam "

Comments

Not just silicon valley

[jchristopher]

Not just Silicon Valley is being affected by the job crunch - there are a lot of GOOD people out of work in the Los Angeles area too. Not FrontPage monkeys either, real designers and coders.

Re:Not just silicon valley

[sinster]

The job crunch must be pretty close to global. I'm sure there are isolated areas with employment spurts, but in average, everyone is having trouble.

I make this claim based only on a report in the Wall Street Journal on Friday (7 Sept 2001) morning that claimed that almost every stock market in the world closed down at least 1%, and that if the trend continues through the next quarter, that this would "meet the classic definition of a recession". And not just a recession, but a global recession. Of course, the value of this claim is proportional to how much you trust the WSJ to accurately report financial news and how much you believe that the stock markets influence employment rates.

Sorry, I don't have a link: I get my WSJ fix through my palm pilot with AvantGo.

Nice one, but some oddities.

[Joel Rowbottom]

This is quite a nice tool which could be used as an example to create "live" management statistics for various applications - certainly doing live plotting of figures against each other. I know I'll try a few new things now I've seen the advantage of using checkboxes ;)

Now, enough praise... ;)

There seems to be some data missing - most notably the "people" data, which would have been interesting to plot the migration of people to and from the area as opposed to housing availability, jobs availability, etc. The other thing is that the server sometimes seems to return an error for some reason or another, although this may be due to the /. effect - I can't imagine the live plotting of data will have a positive effect on the resources ;)

But other than that, a good attempt, and certainly some good ideas there.

jobs - housing.

[garcia]

just b/c you lost your job does not mean that you are quite ready to pick up and leave immediately. Most people are going to try and find a job in the general vicinity *first*, then if they cannot find anything a relocation would be necessary. I would assume that is why there is little change in that department.

NYC is bad too

[xtremex]

The guys who are MCSEs and FrontPage Monkeys will be out of work for a LONG time. It seems the trend here in NYC is towards the UNIX/Linux world (seriously).
Since there are over 300,000 MCSEs here, and the companies that want them are disappearing, they need a new skill set.
There was always a minority of *NIX people, and THEY are the ones who can still be picky about the pay/job they want.
Since the financial industry is a UNIX world, AIX and HP/UX guys are in HIGH demand.
At the job I got a month ago, they were looking for a good UNIX admin for 10 months before they hired me! That's why their infrastructure in in such a state of disarray.
They hired me on the spot and wanted me to start same day. I am not even the best UNIX admin out there. (I still can't get the UNIX printing system :))

The market is flooded with Java guys from India who will work for less (Nothing against the East Indians..I'm just stating fact)
I now lead a department. Out of 100 in the department, 97 are from India/Pakistan.
They had NO trouble finding a job.
They all have UNIX skills, DB2 or Oracle and they all have Siebel skills.

Maybe it's just jealosy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's probably just jealosy, but the one thing that really got me about the whole dot-com thing, and the people who identified themselves with it, was the constant repetition of the article of faith that dotcommers were exceptionally talented, smart, or worthy of praise. What about chemical engineers? Ingenious construction workers? (God forbid) Politicians? Accountants? And as for the revelattion that talent goes to waste when the invisible hand gets moody, well, welcome to the real world. I would bet all that I own that there are hundreds if not thousands of farmers in any given state who could out-think the best of the dot-commers; that there are people in your city right now on welfare who are smarter, more inventive, and wittier than you. And me, it goes without saying.
Like I said, this is just jealously, bitterness.. but a social group which lacks the basics of humbleness, and toots its own horn shamelessly, becomes a prick in the side of this lowly helpdesk worker.

oh, hell. I'm posting anonymously.

Re:Maybe it's just jealosy

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can be talented at their job, their is no doubt about that. And I'd agree that dot-commers were probably paid more than people in other industries of the same talent level.

But, as much as it's PC to say that the lowliest of the low is (Surprise!) smarter than everyone who thinks they're smart because of their college education, I'd have to differ. Surely, there are some very talented agricultural engineers and biologists who create GE crops. But I don't take it this is what you mean by "farmer". If you think the average construction worker, or welfare recipient, or farmer, has deep reserves of intelligence that they are just not willing to show to people on their high horses, you should try hanging out with some of these people.

I've met many such people in my life. One thing is clear. Most of them would've taken dot-com jobs if they could have. But they lacked the skill set, and they lacked the drive to obtain the skill set.

The reason why people thought the dot-commers were so smart is because, as much as it seems counterintuitive today, many of them were in fact smart. They were not smart because of what they did. Once you learn http protocols and the principles of servers and templates, etc, it's not that difficult. They were smart because they picked up these things faster than anyone else.

To be the first to move on to the moderately complex world of internet programming, that is why they stood out. It is the same reason that we John Carmack, who always pushes the envelope, and that we don't worship John Romero, who spent three years trying to play catch-up and finally releasing a shitty game.

I'll also admit that many of these people were egomaniacs. But many of them were not. You can't lump all of these people together.

Dot-commerce gave us much great technology, this is good. The internet is not going away, but the adoption rate of this technology fell sorely behind the amount of technology that was being produced. It will be a shame that the technology created by many of these companies will simply be re-done in the future when sufficient demand actually exists for it.

Another good thing is that most of the people left aren't money chasers. What sickened me the most about the dot-commers was the fact that many of them were only there to get rich. Most of these people have since been disenfranchized, their high and mighty (and lucrative!) position is now no longer what it used to be.

So now we are left with people who do this because it is what they love to do. That is why I program, and why I continue to take an interest in internet technology.

Not all dot-commers are capable.

[standards]

I don't feel sad for every one of the dot-com unemployed. Many of them were dreamers, who never lived in the real world.

There are/were thousands of silly dot-coms, with stupid business plans and cobbled-together technology. Many of these shops were not part of any "talent pool".

I remember this one guy who I worked with. Marc was a nice guy. Marc thought of himself as a strong manager who was helping to fuel the dot-com revolution.

But the fact is that Marc didn't have a clue about management OR technology - he was just caught up in a ball of momentum. Marc was in a high-profile position in a very high profile organization. But that fact alone didn't make Marc a capable guy.

Marc left us for the dot coms of Atlanta. The last I heard, Marc was still looking for a job. Not because of the economy, but because he didn't have any skills.

Re:Not all dot-commers are capable.

[garcia]

most of the people were caught up in a seemingly endless supply of capital.. There was so much out there and it just seemed like there were too few people to fill all the spots.

It was almost as if people found the pot of gold a the end of the rainbow.. Problem was that the sun disappeared behind the clouds and only the miserable rain was left. :(

I do feel bad for those that were employed. Just b/c they didn't have the skills necessary does NOT mean that they were the ones at fault. It was those that were sinking in millions to get a company off the ground knowing that it was near worthless.

Re:Not all dot-commers are capable.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working for a place that's growing well and is in a hiring mode. I'm tired of hearing from job candidates who are:

1. looking for a top management position
2. looking to make $250,000+ per year
3. looking for my job, not the job offered.

So many of these people just don't understand that their experience at the former employers weren't in line with what we're looking for. I'd rather take the old COBOL program and convert him, than take a dot-commer. The old COBOL programmer will be willing to learn, and will have an understanding of project plans and production quality. The dot-commer? Some do, many do not.

site slowness

[ajdub]

the slashdot effect is in effect. we underestimated the traffic it would generate and are moving the script to a bigger machine now.

if you can't get to it, please bear with us and try again in a few hours.

thanks again

--adam

on the IT job or worker shortage

[diamond0]

This month's issue of Communications of the ACM features a reader forum titled "How to Address the Global IT Worker Shortage."

Ralph Castain of Fort Collins, Colorado wrote the following, which began on the same page (12) as Google's ad, "Google Seeks Expert Computer Scientists"

As someone who has been involved in industry and academia over the last few years, I find the current IT "shortage" to be somewhat self-inflicted due to several factors:

• Super-specialized requirements. Many companies express no interest in investing in employee training. Hence, we are treated to job listings requiring a combination of skills unlikely to be held by anyone outside that specific company. For example, a recent local job ad required candidates to have at least five years of experience with a highly specialized, industry-specific software package; three years of experience with a specific software-development package; and one to three years experience in that particular industry. When contacted, the human resource manager blamed the IT shortage for her difficulty filling the position.
• Low salaries/limited experience. A scan of recent job ads at one popular Web site showed an average salary range (where quoted) well below industry standards in the U.S. In addition, experienced programmers (for example, those with more than five years) report being rarely contacted for interviews, even when meeting all other knowledge requirements. This raises the question of whether there really is a shortage within the industry, or a shortage only of entry-level personnel willing to work for below-standard wages.
• Inflated job listings. Companies have become notorious for the placement of job listings on popular Web sites they have no real intention of filling. For example, a large multinational company recently placed more than 100 IT job openings on a Web site over the course of a two-week period. At the same time, the company announced massive layoffs, salary reductions, and forced vacations due to declining sales. How likely is it that any of these listings will ever be filled? Yet the IT shortage studies include such listings in their statistics, thereby distorting the overall picture.

As opposed to a shortage of IT professionals in the U.S., the recent experience of a local headhunter is much closer to the norm. After placing a job listing on a Web site for a SQL server DBA, the headhunter was deluged with more than 300 resumes and 100 phone calls within a 24-hour period. A similar experience followed another listing for a C++ programmer.

The fact is many of us in the corporate world outsource our IT needs to foreign companies and professionals simply because this practice is cheaper. Programmers from foreign countries are willing to work for much lower wages than their U.S. counterparts, especially if they stay overseas. The inefficiencies caused by such remote operations are more than covered by the savings in compensation.

IT shortage? Rather than trusting questionable statistics, I'd recommend asking the people in the job market and the head-hunters.

Ralph Castain, Fort Collins, Colorado

This upsets me

[litewoheat]

After playing with the chart for a while and noticing the indication of an exodus from the bay area I began to get upset that all these "dot.com" people came to to bay area, jacked up the median rental and home prices, then bailed after things started going bad. Although rentals and home prices have started to level off they have, for the most part, not gone down. If they did that would accelerate our decent into resession. That sad thing is that's inevitable. Foreclosure rates have already gone up.


So now what I have to say to all the people who flocked here, threw high-test gasoline on the fires of the economy, burned everything to a crisp then took off, Thanks a whole lot from someone who was here a long time before you! I feel no pain for any of the dot.com loosers.

Re:This upsets me

[juuri]

Are you kidding? Rental prices other than inside SF have started to plummit. There are tons of new condos/apartments that just got finished where the prices are damn good for the area. Even downtown prices on smaller units are only slightly more than they were 3 years ago and if the drops continue they will reach the rates they were in 97.

Seriously look in the north bay, east bay and to some extent at the south bay. You will notice tons of completely new properties offering discounts as extreme as 2.5 months off your yearly rate. They are hurting... and this is good for us.

Home prices on the other hand are still absurb. 350k for a small 2 bedroom in an ok neighborhood is just fricken robbery.

Slashdot Job Referral Service

[BrookHarty]

How about starting a head hunting service linked to the /. amount of people in the techincal field.

Everyone bitches about issues, how about using /. as a portal for answers. And OSDN could even charge a small subscription fee for all the new services.

--
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

Re:Slashdot Job Referral Service

[Reality Master 101]

How about starting a head hunting service linked to the /. amount of people in the techincal field.

Available for hire: Perl, Apache, Linux programmer. Have only built l33t sites of a few thousand lines of spaghetti code. Will only work for "free" software company. Company must not use any Microsoft software. Regular Quake breaks a plus. Minimum salary requirement: $150K/year.

Their talent was wasted during the *boom*

[Anonymous Coward]

You have it backwards. It was during the boom when people were wasting their talent, creating useless software and websites, justified by insane business plans. These hard times are a correction. Their unemployment is a sign to people laid off from the boom that they have wasted their previous years, and they need to find something next that truly will be useful.

Re:Chart doesn't mean much...

[ajdub]

Well...

The resume is on there at the suggestion of someone on craigslist who said that I should put it on there. I thought it was a bit slimey but at the same time I figured that it couldn't hurt.

As far as it getting posted to Slashdot, I didn't post it and I *do* know the guy who posted it but I did not ask him to do so, nor did he tell me before he did it. (and his text is a bit cheesy, no?) :)

As far as useful statistics and normalizing based on total number posted. I am planning on adding that stuff. For the second version, I'm planning on adding normalizing, moving averages by day (right now it's only tallied by month) and possibly some other stats. (I've recieved a few good ideas from a few people and I've got some emails out to some math folks about how I might be able to do some interesting forecast graphs)

--adam

Armchair engineers have moved out.

[heroine]

There's definitely a difference in the quality of the emails I get from software engineers these days. They're much more technically adept.

Seems as if most of the computer scientists working for .coms neither had the interest nor the ability to solve real computer science problems and have now switched to non-technical, and for them, more interesting careers. Wired ran a story about how many armchair engineers from the 90's went back to school and followed their true passion to become actors, artists, and writers.

You might say the quality of software being written today is slightly up compared to the 90's because the only people programming are the ones who really want to do it.

Another employment graph/script

[atlantageek]

Hi All,
Another unemplyed geek here. I wrote a set of perl scripts that graphed the # of Jobs available on computerjobs.com for several cities. It is on the main page of AtlantaGeek.com

Source of figures

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I could really make good use of those figures that show that an outsourced 1st level support position can cost $5k-$6k. I would be very grateful if you could post a citation on those numbers.

Better data anyone?

[KFury]

As astounding as this data is, it would be infinitely more useful (and accurate) if it were normalized againt actuall traffic usage on craigslist, so the growing/weaning popularity of the site wouldn't skew the demo data.

Anyone wanna get Craig's archived logfiles?

Re:Chart doesn't mean much...but...

[Teun]

Still a neat project and interesting to play with for someone from 'out of town' (Europe)
The source(s) and limitations are stated on the site and any one knowing statistics knows aswell how to use this one.

Good luck on the job hunt!

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

But you may have to wait quite a long while for the next bull market. The last real bear market back in the late 60s-70s took over 10 years to finally play out. What if you were 60 yrs old when the '70s started? Can you survive a 10 year long bear market? What about a 20 or 30 year bear?

More importantly, the 60s was a boom time if you were an aerospace engineer, but it all fell slowly apart during the 70s. The world changes and what it wants out of people changes as well. We never have had the same demand for AEs since. But we have had a huge demand for CS people.

Who knows what the Next Big Thing will be, but I doubt that it will be in the computer industry. The world will go from CS to something else. I wish I knew what, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? Don't know what that old world is going to do next.

In the end, you have to look at what the world wants, and what you have to offer it, and try to do something that will make you both happy. Otherwise, it's all been a waste of time.