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Fewer Jobs, Less Pay In The IT Industry
dipfan writes "At last an explanation why you can't find a job: a report in the Washington Post says there were more than 500,000 tech jobs shed in the US during the last year, and (for the first time in several years) average IT workers pay is down by 11 percent - down from $71,000 to $63,000. There is some good news on the horizon - the survey of employers by the Information Technology Association of America says that more than a million IT jobs are going to be created in the coming year, taking employment back to pre-2001 levels."
I'd say the IT world is shedding the cruft. I hope I'm not cruft.
Software Wars
Programmers and IT geeks will be the factory workers of the future, Only that factory work requires a BS, a handfull of certs, and years of knowledge and experience. I should have gone to med. school.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I agree...
I'm part of the Sun Certified J2EE Architect Yahoo Group email list preparing for the 3 SCEA exams and I'd say that 50% or more of the people posting are from India judging by their names (which really signifies little, I know) and the constant requests for where to find specific books in differing parts of India... And these guys know a TON.
A country like that with low wages, super-high education and English speaking is perfect for a world connected by the Internet. I've read that there are still a lot of problems with managing a team in another country, but I think those problems will go away quickly because the rewards for making it work are so huge.
It's pretty obvious to me too that we're going to see a LOT of work moving overseas soon.
-Russ
Me
Developers seem to be much worse off. It's a lot easier to cancel new development, so new development has been cut down to the bone.
Maintenance programming is still going on, but if you're a developer in new software and you're out of work, things are very very tough right now. There are still some jobs of course, but the competition is very intense.
i got the CS degree - and crossed the line from database appliacation development to embedded systems engineering :-) (i was really, really, really bored working on DB's... not bored now...)
... thin clients... using linux... 300t 300t)
/Profession/ that we're in by non-professional people.
(not VERY embedded... kindof embedded... alright
there are CS people that could make legitimate Engineers. However, there is a general weakening of the strength of your average IT worker - most suck, due to the "make 70,000 with MSCE!" schools.
i dont know what the answer is, i think that we are seeing a much needed shake-out in this industry. There has been a lot of damage done to the
but, i still say - the average IT Programmers - should unionize. otherwise they will be used and abused until they're burnt out.
... hi bingo
they're not saying that pre-2001 *hype* will return, just the employment levels... i.e. number of jobs. That doesn't sound unreasonable. Companies will continue invest in IT projects, as there is real return on careful and reasoned investment.
Why do you think that employment will return to the Y2K-Elevated pre-2001 levels? Seems like the over-investment in Y2K IT fallout is what we're dealing with here, and I'd be suprised if we don't end up with 1998 employment levels. (with some upward adjustment for the honest to goodness benefits that can come from automation and improved communication).
I really wish I could run into a good NT guy, just to change my perception. The last guy would reboot the NT server...
That's why you can't find any good NT guys. They're all working here at my corp, with 1800 NT4/W2K servers to support. There are 12 of us doing (internal) client consultation, need analysis, installation, config, app loads, support, patching, and monitoring.
I just joined this group from a different area of the bank where I was the "NT guy" and we had 5 serves, All I wanted was a chance to get Win2000 MCP-test training. They said "not in the budget." New group says "MCP within a year is a requirement on your perf review." I am a happy man!
And by the way, if you know what you're doing, and you have a group of solid people behind you, the environment stays stable. Security oversight is handled by our own security division, but we make sure everything is test and configured as it should be. We only see about 3 bluescreens / ASRs per month. Most from NT4 Compaq boxes slated for replacement anyway.
So your yokel "NT guy" is the guy who applied for my job and said "I like to reboot servers when the MMC crashes." I don't profess to know everything, but I take the time to learn when I don't know how to do something, and I work with like-minded people.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
... at least for applications development and support ... American workers are being replaced with H1-B visa imports. It's more commonplace, and it's happened at the last 3 shops I've worked at, and in once case my position was replaced with an H1-B visa holder - the firm there doesn't like to use the term "outsourcing", they prefer to term it out-tasking. The bulk of the programmer team resides offshore (in India, or Maylaysia, or Indonesia, or Mexico ...), while a few business analysts and lead level (which are mostly staffed by H1-B visa workers employed by the contracted offshore firm).
Here's a list of prominent Fortune 500 companies that have moved all or a significant portion of their application support and development programmer staff offshore, that I and/or friends have had firsthand experience with:
The trend seems to be to move data center and system programming operations to the likes of IBM but to move the application coding development and support to offshore vendors. I can't speak for smaller/medium sized firms, but at the big corporate shops, this is a certainly a constant for contemporary times.
Sorry if it appears that I'm ranting, as this issue has affected me personally and it sucks watching friends and colleagues struggle to find work, unemployed for entirely too long now, about to lose their house if their wife/husband don't have a good income and they can go back to school to learn another craft. It's really disguisting to see foreign labor still imported and populate the workplace when these experienced individuals go hurting. Especially when those brought in or those who work in foreign centers aren't even close as qualified - with unverifiable references and doctored qualifications. Yes, it's gets personal when you study and work hard to put bread on the table for your family and you are powerless to stop the curtailment of opportunity. Being programmers, it's our nature to be independent and introverted, and that works against us - as I couldn't conjure up a scenario where this would occur with um, let's say truck drivers. There'd be blood in the streets.
But to hear all of the politicos du jour speak, it's simply a matter of education! Poppycock. In the new paradigms of globalization, it really doesn't matter, as "knowledge" jobs can be moved just as easy, if not easier, than manufacturing jobs. There's some deeper questions that need to be asked and answered in the new century. Else we end up in a universally feudalistic model, with a small fortunate few and the the rest of us left to fend off eachother for the few morsels tossed our way ...
And the ITAA are nothing more than tech industry lobbyist shrills, who have only the interest of employers at hand, and care not for the tech worker.
Here is an open letter to Mr. Harris Miller of the ITAA, in response to blatant misinformation propagated by him and other lobbyist shills.
AZspot
Programmers and IT geeks will be the factory workers of the future
As they were in the past. The first (female!) programmers were actually looked upon as a sort of secretaries, and AFAIK, working with computers has gained the little sex-appeal it has only in the 80's and 90's. I'd say it's rather remarkable that it has the status that it has now, more than that it's remarkable that programming work will be seen as run-of-the-mill work in a couple of decades.
Enjoy while it lasts!
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Yes, and yes. :-) Depending on where you work, and for which agency and directorate, you may only need a background check, not a formal clearance. But a good starting assumption would be that you'd need a Secret clearance, which isn't too difficult to get as long as you're not an active terrorist.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
you ever work in a DB applications shop?
a good one can get a no-experience kid up and running at full speed in 6 months.
i'd call that interchangeable.
... hi bingo
Since this whole topic pisses me off, I like to use the word bullshit a lot. This "market cycle" stuff is bullshit.
Guess what? The ITAA (the organization funded by IT employers) has been riding both sides of this bubble. On the way up they were talking about the massive need for workers, and spent millions getting H1B legislation passed. We had 200,000 H1-Bs come in in the last year, despite falling wages and people being laid off - this is technically impossible with the law, but it has enough loopholes and lax enforcement to allow this.
Now that we're on the downslope, the second strategy kicks in - employers cutting wages, unemployment rising and so forth. And the ITAA still issuing reports saying there will be 1,000,000 new jobs. Well hell, I guess we should raise the number of H1Bs from 200,000 this year to 1,000,000 in that case, the ITAA would never tell a lie!
You talk about why they're rich - they're rich because they have been united in fucking us over for years. And here we are with our wages cut, unemployment up and people are smiling and just accepting that this is the market and super-genius, hard workers like them will not be unemployed (although their salary will be cut and they'll go from working 60-hour weeks with 24/7 oncall to 65-hour weeks).
There's only one solution - team up like the employers team up in the ITAA. Most engineers I talk to don't want to collectively bargain like a union, so the solution is a professional association like doctors (AMA) and lawyers (ABA) have. The best organization like that is not IEEE who have sold out to the employers as well, but the Programmers Guild.
My web page discusses these topics in more depth.
Doctors (in America at least) are already factory workers. Medical school wouldn't have saved you from the drone farm.
I'd like to know what you based this comment on, exactly. While I'm in technology, obviously, my girlfriend is a resident at a major hospital. She's got a Ph.D. and an M.D., and she's in training to be a surgical specialist.
I don't know all doctors, of course, but most of my circle of friends is made of doctors, med students, medical scientists, and health-care pros; people my girlfriend works with. I don't know anybody who would agree with your assertion that doctors are (merely) factory workers.
Docs train for between seven and twelve years after college. They work ten times harder than you or I do, and their work matters. If I screw up, somebody in QA will catch my bugs and no harm will be done. If my girlfriend screws up, a five-year-old girl will go permanently deaf. And, of course, docs get compensated in proportion, although maybe not as much as you might think.
So, as you can tell, I'm just wondering where your comment came from.
Hmm, I can just speak as a currently out-of-work UNIX admin. Here's the way my salary progression went:
:) In any case, this was the height of the dot-com boom, and this was another dot-com.
1994-95: $20/hour working contract for a small ISP doing sales & support.
1995-1996: $13.50 an hour, but full-time work, with a small screwdriver shop in Las Vegas doing UNIX (my first experiences), Windows, and Netware support. We were heavy into Netware.
1996-1999: $37,000/year plus bonusses. (Note that this equates to roughly $18 an hour). Was a unix/linux/windows/netware network admin for a now out-of-business computer game company called Singletrac. They were the ones that did the original Twisted Metal series for the Playstation. Unfortunately, they over-expanded, sought a buyer, lost major talent, dried up. The usual "game house that gets too big for their britches" syndrome.
1999-2001: $55,000 a year. Shot the moon in the interview and they gave it to me; I thought I had won the lottery!. Was doing UNIX support exclusively, and got to run the systems administration team (that was fun!). Got regular raises up to $77,000 a year by the time I left for the next big thing. The company was thirty seconds from doom anyway, but many got ticked off that I jumped out of the tub while they were circling the drain
2001: $85,000 a year. Telecommuted to a small Silicon Valley company. I was all fired up about it, but I discovered that telecommuting is not really for me.
2001-2002: $85,000 a year. Worked for a tech startup here in Salt Lake City, Utah. They were still coasting off the dot-com boom, but just barely shut down. Did UNIX and Cisco support mostly.
At this point, I almost consider my salary history a liability. Realistically, my family would get along just fine on US $45,000 a year. More money than that is really nice, but it's gravy beyond our expenses. We're a typical middle-America family, three kids, no car payments, house payment, student loans, etc. I expect at my next job that I'll get somewhere between $65,000 to $75,000, and that will be just fine. The ride was nice while it lasted, but with my experience, I was overpaid.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
And what's wrong with that? Shouldn't the U.S. take care of its own citizens' employment needs before importing foreign workers? It's obvious from the facts presented that industry has lied about the "IT shortage" and that the H-1B program needs to end now.
Yeah. Doctors are overpaid, too. And lawyers, for that matter. And CEOs. And anyone doing research in industry. And managers. I mean, really. The only equitable way would be to have everyone that's part of our economy come to a consensus as to what a fair wage for each job is, then mandate that. They'll ask you first. Cause, like, the economy could be wrong.
Opinions here are worthless. Everyone has an ax to grind regarding how much they should get paid.
Personally, I have never enrolled into college. However that does not mean that I have no spent the last three years of my life trying to read/learn/expirement with everything and anything I can.
I feel that for someone with 5 years of Tech backround, three in unix, I have learned a lot. I usually have no troubles holding my own against a college graduate. But in the general sense, I fall into this "under brush" category.
Think about this, people like myself, we do truly do this for the love of labor. There was no driving force of college, just myself and a box. My own internal drive to learn and educate myself. To me these are sometimes more often the people that will really excel due to the motivation it took to get this far in the first place and the remaining drive of learning everything you can in an industry that advances as quickly as this one.
I just think that perhaps before you stand on your Berkely soap box, that sometimes you should appreciate there are more important things in knowledge/skill/education than college.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank