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Engineering Careers Short-Circuiting
8BitWimp writes "Today's edition of the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article discussing the current plight of the U.S. engineering profession. One 29-year-old engineer recently caught in Nortel Network's layoffs said "I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career." The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player. What do other Slash-Dot readers think of this situation as related to their programming and engineering careers? Would you pursue the same career path again?"
Someone needs to pull this trainload of Japanese imports, might as well be me.
Knock on Wood here, but I start my career in 91 during the last recession and am still doing fine. Of course I've changed 4 - 6 languages by now (RPG -> VB -> C/C++ -> C#, ASP, JavaScript, XML, HTML, etc ). My rule has been always try to stay current and not comfortable. If you feel comfortable, then you are on the way out of a job.
Engineering is a real big place for H1B's. Maybe even more than computers. Nursing is also big with H1B's. Noone is safe from this.
I'm a sophomore in CS now. My plan is to just stay in school until the economy gets better or until I figure out a something that needs to be done that no none else is doing, whichever comes first. But if the industry is like this, will waiting out the recession be enough?
Whats the point of developing software if your gonna get trumped by a couple of geeks who reverse engineer your project and release it for FREE under the GPL.
My company has lost around 10000 customers ever since an open source version of our project was released.
Im not trolling, it has hit my company HARD! I am fully against Open Source.
When I got laid off right after the September 11th attacks, my Job was shipped to India.
Sometimes I wonder if the whole economic problem we're having is due to many companies doing this same thing, exporting our high paying jobs to other countries. It saves them money in the short run, but in the long run its taking money out of our country and slowing our economy.
But then, I'm not an economist, and eventually, I did get another job with another company. But I was unemployed for a year, thats 1 year of my salary that I was unable to produce because my job went overseas. If you add that up over all the people in the industry who are in similar situations.
It was grim, being unemployed for a year. I even contemplated switching industries, actually thought about becoming a Truck Driver to sustain my family. But for me, my job is more of a love than a carreer. Its what I do. Its my hobby, its my passion, and I really don't want to do anything else.
But the guy in the story wants to give up on his job because he got laid off from one company, thats sad. Maybe for what he does its necesary, I don't know, but there are other jobs out there, and who knows.
Anyway, thats my 2p.
I enjoyed a programming "career" for 5 years following high-school. I am self-taught, and managed, developed and implemented databases at an ISP, a TV Broadcast Company, and for a Freight Brokerage.
Although I have not attended University or College for training in the field, I made a substantial income.
I observed many of my co-workers and friends whom had gone through University and such, and their careers ended just as quickly as mine.
The common problems we all faced were that management did not understand the nature of the job performed, and ended up hiring a large agency to take over our "home brew" projects.
I have reformed my future, and am becoming a Special Ed teacher for the Blind and Visually Impaired... because the IT industry has completely collapsed, not resulting from poor economy (I live in Canada, and our economy is quite strong right now...), but as a result of poor management and planning.
My suggestion to anyone considering, or currently working in IT, is to educate themselves in another field, and use their skills as an addition to their qualifications.
I write small applications to make programs like Excel more accessible for the Blind, as there is little, or no support for Text-to-Speech software, while at the same time performing my other duties.
20 years ago. And NOT to protect the incompetent. More along the lines of professional associations like the AMA, the ABA, the MLBPA or the NHLPA.
Fresh kids out of college know current technology, have the lowest starting salaries (so you can get more of them), and willing to work ungodly hours without extra pay. With the competition for engineering jobs ramping up in India and other lower cost countries, I realized early that I may like technology, but without having the desire to go into management or get a doctorate (to get access to career engineering jobs), then I needed to get into another profession.
Isn't seven years an awfully long time to spend in school to be an engineer? Even an MS can be accomplished in 5-6 years if your school has a fast track program.
I think careers in engineering fields require a degree of career management from the individual. They can no longer expect to be given success and wealth just because they have an engineering degree. They need to guide their career so they can grow into different positions as time goes on.
While this is no different than other disciplines, I guess it's a new idea for the technologically inclined.
You can look back on a lifetime of discomfort and wonder what exactly it was that you were thinking...
IMO, the surges in the industry attract a bunch of riff raff, which get purged when times get tough. Not to disparage the articl poster (or is it poseur :-) jest kidding); he may be a great engineer, just too much of the riff raff feeding from the new jobs trough. When it comes to staying employed, it's really about whom you know and your reputation. Anyway, during the slumps is when the real core of the industry gets to innovating the next wave...
cat
I live, breathe, sleep, and eat computer programming languages.
I have spent countless weekend evenings at home curled up with a new Java, C#, or other programming book.
I work when I want and on whatever projects I want to. I'm a contract-based programmer, and I love what I do.
Plus, it's not like I have the option of deciding to try out for an NFL team one day for a little career change.
After slogging 60+ hour work weeks for 10+ years and still not a millionaire, I've learned my lesson.
If I had to do it all over again I would have joined a monopoly. No I'm not talking about Microsoft. I would have been a premed major and let the AMA monopoly stamp me into a money making doctor machine.
There is no safe career to be had in any profession today. The dream of being a 'company man' that the baby-boomer generation had just doesn't exist. People do not get a job, expecting - or able to - still be working for the same company thirty years later. Transient workers were once regarded as flighty and unreliable; today it's the norm. In some professions (science, programming, some engineering disciplines) it's even seen with suspicion when somebody stays at the same place for long.
Forget job security, defined skill sets and straight career paths. This uncertainty is here to stay.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I have been working as an EE for 3 years since I graduated and the last two I have feared the dreaded "axe" almost every day (well at least on thursdays - seems to be the favorite layoff day around here). We have had very very few layoffs so far (looking for some wood to knock on), but the analog IC design market hasn't been hit as bad as say... opto?
Yet, if I had to do it again knowing what I know now, yes I would. In a heartbeat. I don't think I would be happier doing anything else but designing chips. Every morning I wake up and short of being groggy and not liking to move, I love going in to worrk (even mondays and fridays). That tells me that I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. All I can do is thank God that I am where I am and that through him, my hard work is recognized and valued enough to keep me around.
I still have my Linux Box, my CS degree, the whole nine yards - but I got a trade certification in massage therapy, and I got out of programming. The hours were way too long, and the pay cut from $55,000 a year to $52,000 per year isn't really a pay cut when you look at the hours I work at the hospital. And especially when you look at the amount of education required. Plus, these days I can actually look into the faces of people I've helped. It's so much more rewarding.
/. and I still program. But I can't imagine going up against the H1-B competition again - those guys were working 80 hour weeks for 35k a year... I just can't compete with that.
Course, I still read
Almost every career can be viewed through this narrow minded window.
Similar reasons can be found for almost any career being short, and statistics can be shown to support that (as well as almost anything you can think of.)
Problems with the current economy shouldn't cause one to abandon a career.
Maybe we're too paranoid. I've seen burn-out, and lemme tell ya, it dosen't need to happen, and most people I've heard complain about it are really NOT burning out.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
What I see disappearing are the median income jobs. It seems like things are becoming more and more polarized w/many many low pay jobs and a few very high paying jobs.
I don't think this is a good trend for our nation as a whole. In the long run it will hurt everyone.
I interview for a new job probably about once a month. The last one was for a single opening w/the USDA for slightly lower than average pay. It was to do development and database administration. There were over 100 applicants. They wanted a programmer that had been an accountant and got it. Being just a plain old programmer hasn't been helping me a lot lately.
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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You a rose garden. Schools of ALL types are bending over backwards to produce the type of students that INDUSTRY is demanding. When I was growing up, schools taught rational thinking, and the 3 R's. This gave the individual the ability to reason, read , write and do basic mathematical functions. Today, students cannot function without a PC, and a calculator. The US is falling behind countries who teach the basics, with no politically correct courses being offered. Give an engineer a slide-rule today, and they scratch their asses with it. They are helpless. They fail to remember that most of what they enjoy today, in the way of tools, was made possible by the "slide-rule generation".
I pity the fool who thinks getting an education in a particular field, is a guarantee of anything.
Anyone considering becoming a programmer should consider getting an easier job as a coal miner.
While I'm sympathetic, it isn't just engineering. It spent seven years in undergrad and law, combined, and have been scrambling like a demon for work since September with nary a bite. Hang in there, it only takes one offer....
I've been an engineer for 28 years. My Christmas bonus from the company this year was to get laid off. In my local area (Phoenix) There are hundreds of engineers who have been tossed out in the last 6 months with no end in sight.
I'm not sorry I became an engineer but I have no desire to return to the field even if there were some jobs, which of course, there are not.
All of the companies are moving to small management teams and are outsourcing everything, mostly over seas to Taiwan and India. This country will never learn. First we did it with manufacturing and now we are doing it with engineering. Douglass Adams was right, we are going to be nothing but a bunch of Phone Sanatizers and we will all be in the first arc to go.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
I sometimes wonder if it weren't for all the free software GPL stuff if Linux could have been profitable and we'd all still have jobs now.
Couldn't Linux as we know it have instead turned into what MacOS X is today? I certainly think so, but it's just not possible with a free-for-all licensing scheme. How are we supposed to pforit?
To a large degree I think the FSF, and particularly Richard Stallman, are responsible for the current economic downturn that much of information technology communities are currently experiencing.
I mean, just read the GNU manifesto. That Stallman prick clearly has an agenda, and it's not just about computer software.
Here's my little tale -
I got a BS in astrophysics. But, there's no money in that. So, I went into doing wireless infrastructure (just before telecommunications went to hell). Now, a little over two years later, my office is being closed down. If I want to stay with the company, I'd have to move.
My way of dealing with this is to move away from engineering (in the traditional sense). I'm partway through an MSEE, which I guess I'll finish. But, I'm really going into academia. I've taken a research position in neurobiology and will probably do a PhD in physics (or maybe an MD/PhD).
In the end, engineering's always going to be around. And it will generally be one of the more respectable professions. But, there is certainly a "burn-out" factor to it.
Personally, after having used up 2 years working very hard on something, only to get laid off.. it's kind of a slap in the face. At least if I had done something that I felt was worthwhile, I could justify it. Sure, I'm sitting on some cash now, but that isn't really worth it (in hindsight). The products we put out, in my mind, are meaningless, they were just a way of making money.
I guess engineering, if you are really into the stuff you're creating, is a good career. Otherwise, it can be a good way to pay the bills, but nothing more.
Just, find something that you enjoy doing and make sure that the end result of your work has value to you. I liked the work I did, but I have no feelings for the results of the work...
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
When my dad was young, mechanical engineer was the hottest thing around. Now, it is computers. Everyone is jumping on the band wagon. I am sure that 20/30 yrs from now, there will be need for computer scientists and engineers, but a little different that what we do now. If I had to do it over again today, I would still choose the same profession. If you ask me 30 yrs later, when some young whippersnapper is trying to get my job because I am too old, then I problably would choose something else.
The main thing to consider is that if you want job growth/security, is that you always continue to learn. People that think they are done learning after college are the ones who in 5 years find themselves knowing less than a new hired employee. If you continue to learn, adapt to changes, and keep an open mind you will find yourself in positions to take on new roles inside or outside of your current job.
The more people moan and groan about engineering going down the tubes, the more likely it will become reality.
And don't talk about engineering careers ending...I'm still trying to start mine.
...
Is it just me, or are there many different types of engineering?
Any of the big dot-com crap "engineering" is no longer viable, of course. None of that was.
If you all want to be a multi-faceted engineer (as most want to be) get a Mechanical Engineering or similar type degree. One of the widest paths available for engineers that gives you the ability to get a job in hundreds of different industries. Any "software engineer" is just a programmer type, not a real engineer.
Why are stories of this negligible intelligence appearing on slashdot ALL THE TIME now?
I'm sorry that you were laid off, but having a job lasting "only" six years is different from having a career that only spans six years. The economy sucks right now, but it will recover. When it does, your career will pick up.
In addition to just plain getting old, professional athletes kill themselves on the field. This is a horrible analogy.
What is your company name, your software product, and the name of the open source software product that was stolen from you?
My gf's friend made 2000.00 on one paycheck (extra on comission alone) in addition to her normal salary. She sells furniture. My gf got a 1000.00 bonus on her paycheck for passing a test and finding flaws in the Doctors rule book. Also in addition to her normal pay. ---I deal with real "genius's" every day, and I get normal pay..... Man, I think I might become a Dental Asst, or salesperson.... stripping's becoming more and more of a draw... money money money
I've recently started a new career that, thanks to the baby boom of the 40s and 50s, will guarantee me an increase in customers for the next 20 years until I can live on my earnings: Undertaker.
The answer to getting laid off is to employ yourself.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Thirty plus years ago I got an M.S. in Computer Science from a big-name university. The stuff I learned then was so closely tied to hardware that nobody needs it anymore. How many people need to know how to develop a real-time operating system optimized for some given environment? Or how to write a compiler? Damn few is the answer.
I got out of software and got into sales after about 10 years. Best move I ever made. But if I had it to do over again, I'd have worked on an MBA instead. Or started selling real estate.
This article is a bit of an eye opener for me. I am an engineer, but in a "mature" industry. I design petroleum and chemical facilities, mainly oil refineries. In my industry, we have never been busier. Clean fuels legislation has been a boon to us, lots of work getting sulfur out of gasoline and diesel fuel. Early in my career, I looked wistfully at the mega-salaries and bonuses of colleagues in the computer industry. But now, those who I know who still have a job are admiring the stability I have. And that's not to say I'm not well compensated, it's just that my pay has progressed more slowly.
As far as knowledge having a half life, I'd have to agree. I work my butt off to stay current and know what clients will want before they do.
It seems to me that there still will be rewarding engineering careers in the computer and programming fields. I just think that the attractiveness of the industry became it's own worst enemy and drew a ton of talented people who would have been good at anything they put their minds to. I think as the tech industry matures, it will grow a more solid foundation that will give engineers good careers, but without the outrageous perks. Sure, they may feel like they have to join a more plebeian "real world". But really, it's not that bad.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
I am one of the most powerful forces on the planet. I can conjure sets of ordered instructions that can be used to bring down governments, save economies, destroy enimies, save lives and maybe even make me a few dollars.
I'll never give that kind of power up.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
There seems to be a common misconception that programmers and often times IT professionals are the typical engineers, similar to how the term "computer scientist" is incorrectly applied to programmers. To me, that seems a broad application of the title, similar to calling car mechanics engineers as well. I many times looked over the classifieds section in the paper in the 90s and saw jobs requiring a BS in computer science when they were simply database programming jobs, for which one really only needed a trade school education.
Personally, just from looking at the numbers from my high school, I would guess that there will actually be a shortage of engineers (i.e., electrical, material, chemical, aerospace, etc.) in the next couple decades. With the boomers retiring and decreasing numbers in my generation going into engineering (because science and math are too "hard," and they have been taught very poorly in the last 20 years by the public school system so they opt for law), the US is losing its engineering workforce. One of the best observations I have heard was from a professor at MIT who observed that 50 years ago engineers outnumbered lawyers by far, whereas today the opposite is true.
Just because Microsoft and Oracle are hiring foreigners to do the programming doesn't mean that the other traditional engineering fields are waning as well. Think of how much software engineering is design versus implementation. The implementation workers are really akin to skilled factory labor, and that is why they are replaceable by cheaper foreign labor. Erecting barriers to immigration will just cause companies to leave the US.
Not to be harsh, but if this guy was any good he wouldn't be laid off. The article said he was already disgrunteled with his career choice. It sounds like he was one of those people who got into "engineering" for the money rather than having an interest in it. If he was any good he would get another job elsewhere or for a fraction of the cost of going back to school be able to start his own innovative business.
Alas people who get into engineering for the money rather than having an interest in it, quit when the going gets tough.
May be the only place left for American citizens. Can't outsource those jobs over seas or hire visa holders.
Go War On Terrorism!
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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
No fucking way would I "choose" software engineering. And in fact, I never chose it to begin with. I just sort of fell into it as the path of least resistance. But now, at the age of 51, laid off, living in the Silly Valley where 40 is considered over-the-hill, I'm seriously considering moving to Canada -- better health care for the under-employed -- or turning to a life of crime. :-)
Bitter? Yeah, a bit.
.nosig
I am not a programmer. However, I work with several programmers, engineers and designers. We have discussions about work all of the time. A couple of years ago programming and engineering seemed like great careers. However, with global competition (e.g., China and India) my colleagues are under a lot of pressure. You can cut the stress with a knife. Here are some of my thoughts on this.
1. These people enjoy stress. They spend so much time at work, it is insane. Yet, at the same time, this type of stress is different. It is inter-work stress, not intra-work stress. That is, it isn't stress related to solving interesting and complex problems. They are having a hard time dealing with it.
2. The impact of offshore competition is really starting to gain ground in most companies. Small companies, large companies, high technolohy companies, low technology companies. Especially if you are in IT, this is no joke. The global economy has arrived. Many workers never thought it would hit them, but it has. This means adjustments in salary expectations, job prospects, networking with others, and more.
3. In my opinion, most development companies outside of the U.S. don't realize the economic and social impact they are having on U.S. workers. They are relatively ignorant of how they are extracting money and jobs from U.S. workers. This isn't a complaint against these companies. It is merely an observation. (I'm curious what others have to say about this, especially developers from India, Eastern Europe, and other such places.)
4. The main competitive advantage for U.S. workers is their "sfot skills" in areas such as business analysis, communication, creativity and project leadership. A friend of mine recently interviewed with a company. They were entirely uninterested in his Java, Lotus / Domino, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. skills, but they were very interested in his ability to communicate, his analysis skills, his writing skills, and so forth. In other words, they cared that he had a clue about how people actually work, versus just being a code monkey.
5. Most technical workers I know don't enjoy technology. Instead, they enjoy the challenge of technology: creativity, problem solving, analysis, puzzles, etc. Therefore, leaving technology wouldn't be such a big deal for most folks I know. One guy wants to be an English professor, another guy wants to drive a truck, still another guy wants to build houses. This is amazing to me because these guys are diesel. I mean, they are seriously good with technology and it would be a shame to see them go.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I live very comfortably. My career allows my wife to stay home with my 2 children and me to do, within reason, whatever I wish. I'm definately better off than the majority of the population and very excited to wake up each morning to come into work and write code. It's been my hobby now for almost 20 years now and for the past 11 years it's been my profession.
to the unemployed phyisicist?
"Would you like fries with that?"
It's a bit of cruel, sick joke, but the more so because of its truth. In some respects you should be greatful if you get several good years in your major field. Most people don't you know. The real crunch is going to come in about 4 years as the univerisities are really just cranking up the "mill" to turn out programers and CS grads.
Odds are these people will never work in the field at any high level capacity. Code grinders maybe, if they're good, and if they're lucky.
An education is still a good thing you know, for its own sake. Really. And just because you end up in the plumber's union by the time you're 30 doesn't mean you can't still code and enjoy everything that the *act* of coding gives you.
If you didn't get into CS because you love it, *that* was your mistake. Coding is one of the few remaining fields in which you can still do top grade work in your "spare" time and with the internet even in cooperation with groups of like minded individuals.
Real hacking is like poetry really, a creative art form. Guess what? The poets have been used to having to be plumbers for thousands of years.
KFG
Wouldn't this analysis be the same for virtually any career? The only alternative is always having a really boring job. At least with a CS/EE/ME... degree, you have a shot at getting an interesting job.
:).
It's not about money, because plumbers make more than most engineers and programmers. It's about doing what you like to do. Period. All this talk about "strategic" career selection is ridiculous. If you like coding or engineering you really have no choice. You're stuck. Or maybe you could get a plumbing license as a backup
Those of us who happen to like this sort of thing are actually lucky, because the world seems to have some use for these kinds of skills, even if there is not enough demand to keep all of us employed in our fields for our entire lives.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Almost definitely not.
I've loved tinkering with computers since I was six (the same as most of you, I'm sure), and it had always been my hobby. But almost immediately upon entering college, I realized that making my hobby into my career ruined the hobby, and that it wasn't going to be as exciting, sitting in a cube coding 40+ hours a week.
I have just come off of a four-month layoff, which, had it not been for some decent connections and more than a little luck, would still be ongoing, and I had already started exploring other options. The real deadly thing is that when prospective employers looked at my salary history, they all shook their heads and made no bones about the fact that because my salary was much higher than they could offer, they didn't feel confident I would stick around if an engineering position opened up at another company. And so, I got locked out of other career paths because of my previous salary history.
During my layoff, I developed PalmOS software, something that had intrigued me while I was employed, but never had the time to explore. I wrote two games for PalmOS, and would have very much liked to make PalmOS software development a career.
But, I ended up back in Win32 software development, and still wonder if I could be good at other things. I can write well, but never saw myself as "creative" enough for creative writing.
As for my shelf life, I have no illusions that at age 35-40, things get tougher, as younger, less salary-demanding kids with fresher skills and less jaded attitudes will make me easily replaceable. What will I do then? Good question...
But I do know that all this instability, had I known about it (and not been blinded by the high salaries that go with tech jobs), I certainly would not have gone down this road.
I took vacation this past week and I sat next to a man who is in marketing on the plane and we talked. I mentioned that I was in IT and he mentioned "It is about time that compensation for IT workers go down". He then added that the downturn would be good for IT workers and it was long overdue for them to get hit. I thought, "what an asshole".
The major problem with IT right now are:
H1B Visas help drive down wages and jobs go to foreigners for 50 to 70% of the wages compared to what US citizens earn
Companies are willing to spend only cheap beer prices for IT workers but demand champagne type of systems
Without IT, comapnies would be a world of hurt and they need to recognize this and be nice to their IT workers through things such as good pay, relaxed dress codes, flex time.
Whould I pursue the same path again ? I don't know. I just got my Master's in CS and kind of seeing the writing on the wall, I am thinking of pursuing a law degree instead of going for a Ph.D. The down side of doing law is having to wear a suit quite a bit which I don't care for too much. The upside is it is good money especially in business law.
It always seemed that there were two types of people in my Computer Science program, those that would be there no matter what and those that thought it was a ticket to a higher salary. Even if I was working at a minimum wage job flipping burgers, I'd be spending my evenings tinkering with Linux and a junked out 386
The more you know, the less you understand.
This article is 99% fluff. Skip it. I do wonder, however, how much of the percentage of out-of-work engineers are simply "between projects"? The End-of-the-Project (and, sometimes, the Project itself) seems to be something many companies do not handle well. (Speaking from experience...) I will say that getting laid-off was the best thing that ever happened to me. During the 9 months I was out of work, I reevaluated just about everything in my life, reworked priorities, and, essentially, woke up to the real world. And survived. :})||
First thing you need to do is to be absolutely honest with yourself. On everything. You are simply who you are. Work from there & have fun. Good luck to all who are in tough times.
I love technology, probably always will. When I did tech work for a living, I was miserable. Although I was a decently paid, competent sys and net admin, I was under educated, and generally poorly treated in my opinion. I don't work in the feild anymore for a number of reasons, not the least being the amount of education required to find a stimulating job. Plus, once you find that decent, stimulating job that doesn't require selling your soul to microsoft (or some other corporate giant), they are as likely to roll over and die with out a whimper as they are to take you to the top with a roar.
Turns out, I like making things. With my hands. Big hammer and a furnace that brings steel up to 1500 degrees f. It doesn't pay as well, hammering hot steel into swords, but it sure feels a hell of a lot better.
I've been working in the engineering world for just shy of 14 years now, and here's what little advice I can give. Those folks who have a good foundation and spend their time learning more than they have to on the job are still working. Those folks who specialized in one area are unemployed. Yeah, it's not a hard and fast rule, I was out of work for a few months between end of last year and early 02, but now I've been working steady since February. I'm in a completely different space than I was last year (moved from finance to GIS) but I proved to my potential employer that I could adapt and that what skills I brought to the table were useful.
Of the folks I've worked with recently, about half of them are out of work, but the ones who really know their stuff have done alright, even if it means changing companies or changing industries. If you can design a good circuit, there's work for you. Same if you can write good code, or take care of a network.
Go to your local library or used book store and browse through a copy of Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programmers in the United States by Philip Kraft. This is a study of the programming profession by a sociologist that was first published in 1977. This book was not well liked by programmers at the time because Mr. Kraft basically got the programmers he interviewed to admit they didn't really have careers then critisized them for not doing anything about it.
It's worth a reread if you can find it. Although some of the details have changed in 25 years the parallels to todays situation are pretty amazing. One of the other more unpopular things he concluded in his studies was that programming careers were basically over when you hit your mid thirties. Too bad people generally believe what they want to believe.
I'm not a professional programmer or an engineer, I'm one of those it's-all-your-fault IT guys. ;) Right now I'm going back to school to do something that I'll really enjoy, teaching high school physics. So going back and doing it differently would save me a few years, nothing else. But given the choice, I would've said, "I hate computers, hello <insert your favorite scientist here>!"
:)
Not to mention I feel doing the stuff that I do isn't really that rewarding. Sure, I solve problem #2,382 today, but user #182 won't remember problem #2,382 tomorrow. I'm not really making a difference or anything. *shrug* I better stop rambling before I get all... weird in the head.
All that being said, I believe management and the service industry will be the last job holdouts in the US (they are the hardest to ship overseas). Everything else is (eventually) subject to overseas competition. Since McDonalds doesn't pay well, my direction is management.
Come work for the government, with me :-)
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Okay, but how many years would a progammer have to work to make as much as a football player does in one?
I've been programming for over 35 years. Mainframes - then they throw Unix at me - I dodge to C, they put a Compaq on my desk - I fade to BASIC - Now they're throwing Java 2, and I answer with PL/SQL, PRO*C, and T-SQL. If you want to stay in the business, you gotta be fast on your feet.
Just because you got laid off, doesn't mean your career is at it's end. I was laid off last year, and didn't consider my career at an end. What did I do? I went out and looked for a new job! I'm back working and still an engineer.
It took me 10 months to find a new job, but I still found one. Point is, times are hard, people get laid off. If you feel that your career is at it's end because you got laid off, then IT IS. Not because of anything else, but because YOU SAID SO.
The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player.
Some people didn't even get drafted. Of the 55 people in my graduating class in the Computer Science department, approximiately five have real full-time jobs. One of them was recently laid off. Quite a few of my classmates are in the US on student visas. If they don't get jobs soon, then they'll be deported. I even have two Bachelor's (CS & Mathematics), but no one seems to care. This industry is screwed. Oh, and I graduated in 2002.
My new favorite website is this.
In the CS business they have this weird fetish for youth. It's like they were recruiting for a football team, not an engineering department.
I think it is because we are at the same stage in software engineering that medicine was in when the guy who cut your hair was the same guy who set your bones.
We don't know shit about how to program computers, you know. Not SHIT.
Software engineering is so grossly inefficient that only kids have the stamina to weather the hours that it takes to do anything robust and useful.
I am a software engineer but I'd be ashamed to show my face at a mechanical or civil engineer convention - the buildings and machines they make don't blow up all the time, repeatedly, for no reason at all.
I am right now on the eighth floor of an eleven floor building. I'm eight stories up and there's still a thousand tons of concrete and steel over my head. I have a great deal of confidence that if I don't make it out of this building alive it won't be because it collapsed on me.
BUT - if this building were a computer program I'd be freaking terrified at all times UNLESS it had been around for a long time (and therefore rebuilt over and over after falling on other people.)
Also, this business, which no one understands, is changing at a high rate of speed.
It's as if you became a doctor and 2 years later no one had a liver anymore. They all upgraded to a new organ, about which you know nothing. All the learning about the liver you did and the exams you passed on it mean nothing.
Now all the hospitals are hiring young new doctors who know all about the new organ, never mind your years of experience.
Now you get to sit around in unemployment, watching these kids make all the intern mistakes again. Swell.
Of course, you can go back to medical school to learn the new organ, but two years from now you're going to have to do it again. How long can you keep this up?
The fact is - we are screwed. The industry has not seen it's Newton yet, so all is in darkness.
The creating of Doctors is a science. MEDICINE is an art but CREATING DOCTORS is a science. They go to medical school, they serve an internship, they pick a specially etc.
If a Doctor and his Grand Dad the Doctor and his Grand DAUGHTER the Doctor all got together to discuss becoming Doctors, they'd find they all had things in common, the toughness of medical school the greater toughness of internship etc etc.
Computer programming on the other hand, is like hiring a poet. You never know what kind of poetry you are going to get, so everyone wants an EXPERIENCED poet so someone else paid for the bad poetry they do in the beginning.
There's lamers with PhDs and great coders in high school. What to do?
The fact is, in Software Engineering if you are over 30 you had better be in management or a legacy maintenance program like me with Clipper, or you're out.
This hurts CS. Can you imagine where chemical, mechanical or civil engineering would be if they got rid of all the engineers over 30?
When CS is a mature discipline you'll see older guys dominating it.
Until then, CS, like Trix, is for kids.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Would I do it again?
25 years ago, we "whiz kids" were a novelty. We could outprogram anyone with a degree except for those few who went to schools that had that newfangled "computer science" major. And we'd do it for the same money our friends made at McDonald's. Programming was fun then, and it's still fun now (even though I do SCM and haven't done a whole lot of mainstream development in the last 10 years).
I started out pre-med with software as my self-taught fallback. Today, if I didn't do the pre-med thing again, I'd probably go into some other engineering discipline, like building bridges that don't fall down, and stick to the truly fun hobbyist aspects of computing.
I'd have all the same reasons for not going CS today as I did back then, as well as the fear that by the time I got out of school all the programming jobs would be paid in rupees, rubles or yuan.
Of all the store-bought toys my three-year-old has, all but two were made in China. I truly fear that we're not far from the same thing for non-military software. Just as plastics manufacturing has become commoditized, so will coding, and it will go the way of all commodities--straight to the lowest-cost producers.
Those who have not learned this truth lament that their field of endeavor isn't static and that salaries aren't continuing at the previous pace. They despair after a layoff. It's all about making yourself useful and those who don't continue along this path will end up economic roadkill. It's the cruelty of the skills based system and not everyone has the temperament for it.
Those of us in sub-par IT positions now wait for the disenchanted to find their "true calling" so that we can move on with our careers without the overpopulation in the IT job market. I hope that future massage therapist, nurses, CHP officers and roofers (all examples I personally know of) find a more satisfying career. And I wonder if I'll someday join them.
The Big Three are way ahead of you. Age histograms predate the Web by two, maybe even three years. Microsoft wishes they had a tenth as much iron control of its industry as the Big Three.
Here's a fun gedankenexperiment. Go down to the A&P and pick up a large box of name-brand puffed cereal. Figure out how much grain by weight is actually in the box. Go look up the price for a ton of that grain at the railhead, divide like a madman to get down to the pittance in your cereal box, then compare it to the retail cost.
Someone's making mad Benjamins on puffed grain, but it isn't the farmers and at half-percent margins it isn't the A&P either.
Ponder deeply upon this when you get bored of thinking how rich you'll get washing the dead.
Not many programming jobs out there any more, but selling herb is a booming industry!
Life is hard, get a helmet.
My one piece of advice for younger people is to save your money and keep current on technology. Ok, that's two pieces. Save your money, keep current on technology, and be on the lookout for new opportunities. Oops, that's three pieces. Save your money, keep current ...
Ok, Pythonesque humor aside, do save and invest your money to the maximum extent possible. There's nothing like having a big wad of available money backing you up to give you the courage to take an employment risk or tell your current boss to shove that piece of crap project he wants you to work on. And learn to write well. There are a lot of nearly-incoherent folks in this business, and you'll stand out if you can communicate.
I think that programming draws many intelligent people as a profession. However, that same intellect that qualified the person also leads programming to become boring after a while.
In my case, everything new in software engineering (regardless of language, architecture, etc.) just starts being a rehash of stuff you're already familiar with.
Eventually you realize that the "innovations" in computer science are either (a) not innovative, people just don't remember very well, or (b) degenerate to mathematics/philosophy.
Sure, you can get into brand new application domains, such as medical imaging. But that's not novel computer science, just a novel application of computer science.
That's why I'm probably gonna' bag it in a few years and (not kidding) study to teach philosophy.
... that routinely forces me to question the wisdom of staying in this career in the first place.
well it's called supply 'n demand:
as a engineer you're often someones bitch, they demand you design a better ___ and you better supply it, In california to many yahoo's demanded ___ and got it supplied. Las Angles is saturated with Engineers, you know what happened to the demand? exactly no mo demand the good ones stuck have 30-40 years in the field changed jobs 8 times and now have a plush life consulting for universities to the tune of 400-1k per contract with the average contract season lasting about 6 months the rest of them are licking someones boots,tossing out your' pr0n or being buba's chew toy after going postal.
the lestong hear kiddies: Go into a field you can reinvent yourselves and for the love of gods don't get stuck making the next penile implant er pentium cruft
or you'll be living in BFE living off the dividends of William Gates tax returns and welfare to work taxes
That's why I'm getting an MBA (paid for by the company) and hope to be a pointy-haired boss someday! As if I would want to work as an engineer all my life anyway, even if the company WANTED me to!
Berto
But that line of reasoning often turns into a psychological crutch for chronic whiners. How many posts on Slashdot read something like, "Dammit, I know Logo, BASIC, Pascal, VB, FORTRAN, assembly, Java, C++, and C#... and I still got laid off!" Sure, but how good were you at solving problems? Should an auto shop manager be impressed when a job applicant claims to have worked on Pintos, Novas, Malibus, Mustangs, Explorers, Cavaliers, and Excursions? How many of those cars drove away from the applicant's garage bay with their lugnuts cross-threaded?
Quality software engineering is more than a resume full of hip languages and buzzwords from the Gamma book. The best software engineering is usually done by people who got into the business because computers seemed like a really powerful and enjoyable way to solve engineering or (in the games biz) aesthetic problems. Those folks -- not the language lawyers, tool fetishists, and epicene gnomes of Unix who still have their home page set to schwab.com -- are the ones who tend to have the best answers to the question, "OK, why should I hire you?"
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
I'm just a technician, but every working EE and 95% of working Programmers I know are considerably older than 29.
Maybe it really is that bad in places like San Jose, I don't know. If so, then it's time to do something about the H1-B situation, and that means Unions. I know that's an unpopular concept among the high tech crowd, but sometimes it's the only way to protect yourself.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
"The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player."
Why not say who and where this guy/gal is?
Sounds like second hand knowledge and makes me question the rest of the article. I mean I could go out and find disgruntled workers in any field.
Though it's probably overall true... And to be fair most of the article quotes numbers from IEEE and other sources i still would have liked more objective references to end the article.
I used to be very picky, in hiring, choosing people that really wanted to work in the area we were in (games, etc.). You ought to be really sparked by games. Then I came to appreciate proffesionals that just know how to do their job. It's not my worry how they are motivated, if they can do their jobs.
But still, I think the internet boom had an incredibly bad effect of attracting people that were only in it for the money and the idea that they could pull it. I still suspect that you need to have logic geeks for good software engineering, smart-but-not-into-it really doesn't tend to be good enough in a field where we are still trying to figure out the best practices and everything is controversial. You have to care, because there is no way for an automoton to solve the harder problems.
There was a glut of new engineers, many not really interested in software engineering, though maybe they do want to do a good job. But no one knows what entails "just" doing a "good job" is in software engineering, so I think they are at a great disadvantage because they are not into really working out what works by experimentation and perfecting their practices.
One other thing: the half life of technology is an illusion. Logic is the tool. It's timeless. Software engineers are applied logicians, and it's the same logic forming a substrate underneath all technologies.
If build up a learning curve cost, you have to take a salary cut because you are asking your employer to help educate you, it's worth it for all involved, and if you understand logic then you can be sure that when you do learn, it will be with expertise.
However, I know in the real world people that hire don't always know that.
Frankly, I hope people that like software stick with it. But a lot of people who were so-so on it probably do need to vacate the industry.
-pyrrho
Programming is going through a normal transition from a craft to a more commoditized manufacturing process.
I think a great analogy is furniture making. 200 years ago, making furniture was a highly skilled craft in which artisans would need to know a lot of everything ranging from asthetics to mechanical engineering principals to make qualtiy furniture. Today, though, most furniture is assembled by unskilled labor from gluing together commodity components mass manufactured by large factories.
The same is happening with software. Today most software is made by simply gluing together components (active x controls, jpeg libraries, etc) made by a handful of large suppliers. Skilled software engineering still exists at places like Microsoft, Ximian, Apple, and many other linux mailinglists; but for the most part programmers are doing more "manufacturing" work than "engineering". Heck, many of them can't even figure out how to write sort(). I think the auto industry went through similar.
I think the industry ought to start making more of a distinction between software engineers (like the mechanical engineers who design chairs), and programmers (like the guys who glue together chairs).
I predict that just like physical manufacturing, "software manufacturing" will continue to become cheaper as commodity software components become more available. As this happens, I predict a shrinking size of "software engineering" (like automotive design) and an increasing size of "software manufacturing". I also predict unionization of software manufacturing; and a continued migration of these jobs to cheaper places just like other manufacturing jobs. I also predict 5 decades from now, most software components will come from no more than a dozen big software houses and some small shops in much the same way that auto components are made.
Should be an interesting decade.
Five years of school to get my B.S. in engineering. My career has lasted 25 years so far (damn! - that's a long time, and I must be getting old). Along the way I've gone back to school and gotten an MS in computer science (3 years) and one of these days will finish my dissertation and get my PhD in C.S. (uncounted years).
But my job isn't work - it's a calling for me, and I'd be doing much of the same stuff as a hobby that I'm fortunate to get paid for. And school is fun, too, and not something I'm doing because I have to, or explicitly to keep current.
I hope I never get laid off or see my job evaporate, but will be surprised if I reach the end of my working years without it happening at least once. I spent 15 years in aerospace and lived through multiple "contractions", and now after 10 years in the commercial sector I don't think any job is safe.
I do my best to provide good value for my employer. I *do* keep my skills current and am constantly learning new things, mostly because it's fun. I work the same insane hours I did when I was younger - 60 hours/week is pretty normal. Again, I'm fortunate in that it's not work but play, at least most of the time.
Am I glad I'm an engineer? You bet!
I meet computer programmers/enginers every day that are working on a dead end project and can't see it. I see Cobol programs that refuse to learn JAVA and hardware techs that refuse to learn DSP.
Watch whats getting hot. Learn XML, JAVA, the Linux kernel, encryption systems.
If you are holding on to something is this business your dieing and schools can't teach you this stuff. You have to go it alown. If there are more then two books about it on the book shelf at Barns & Noble its too old.
I was an electronics enginer. Now I run the web site for a F500 company.
At one time you wanted to learn the tech stuff. Don't stop. Never stop learning. That is what makes you good.
There are 10 type of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The attitude towards recent changes in employment and wages have been massively passive-aggressiveness. The things done during the 1990's to help sow the seeds of derailing the profession, like the ITAA's legislative (and PR) lobbying, were not met with and now that things are bad many people simply want to walk into some other profession, where, for less pay and possibly much self-financed education, they will be walked all over by the plutocrats in that profession as well.
Some IT people still say "My wages are the same, I have a job, everything is fine except $100k HTML coders are laid off, they're cutting the chaff from the wheat, I'm *happy* this is happening". Well, these people have a very poor view of economics usually. For one thing, in a market economy, unemployment is ALWAYS the decision of the unemployed person (although the minimum wage creates an exception when it cancels a few potential less-than-minimum-wage jobs). This makes rational sense many times though, it is often better to collect unemployment and look for a decent paying job than to get paid part-time minimum wage, leaving you unable to pay for rent, food etc. Another thing about the ridiculousness of this idea by some IT workers is that surveys show wages recently dropped industry-wide - even if you feel you will always be employed, which anyone who will take any wage WILL be (unless it goes under minimum wage), can you explain why wages going down is a good thing? People talk about it like it's the weather "well, it was inevitable wages would go down". Like some alien on another planet pulls the levers of the economy and regulates the IT profession. People truly interested in economics and how they pertain to the IT labor market, and who read and study this will not see these things as alien, like barbarians who saw thunder and said it must be gods who made it since they had no understanding of it.
Anyhow, what's the solution? The solution is organization, be it an association, a union, a guild, an advocacy group, whatever. What is needed is about 2% of the profession to be actively involved in organizing, educating, fighting against bad legislation (like H1-B visa cap raises, FLSA exemptions only for IT workers, section 1706 of the IRS tax code pertaining to IT consultants etc.) which is pushed through Congress by the ITAA, which is paid to do so by IBM, Intel, Microsoft etc. You need 2% of IT workers working on this stuff, and majority support of IT workers for this stuff. I say 2% and majority because that's what a survey of sociological studies says is the percentages necessary to have something successful get done.
Do these organizations have to be created out of thin air? No - these organizations already exist, the forums for education and coordination already exist and so on, they just need more critical mass, more people coming on board. People already have compiled all the information you want to know about, say, the H1-B visa issue, you just have to look for it. Campaigns are already working on the issue, you just have to join them. And with more support they will have more successes. Or you can turn tail and run when kicked to another profession, where you will be treated exactly the same way.
Unfortunately, the barriers for small business are quite high in this country. People don't realize it. Big, giant behemoths are able to fend off the attacks of the State and other predators (such as other behemoth-sized businesses).
Despite this, I still plan to take the plunge. I'm scrimping and saving and developing business contacts. I'm hoping that in 24 months, I'll be able to open a business. I have some ideas, we'll see.
Of course, I could get laid off tommorrow, you never know, no matter what they tell you.
Incidentally, one of my in-laws was recently laid off from an electrical engineering job, and she's now looking to go into computer science, maybe because she saw that I bounced back into a pretty good job after being laid off during the crash while she hasn't had any offers.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Coal Miners dig their work! They get better publicity too!
What your doing there so long ? falling a sleep ?
I think new jobs give me a new chance to learn something instead of keep doing nearly the same with the same people over and over again...
Personaly i would be very bored after six years programming at the same company. Even in those 3 years aprox i did 3 difrent functions at the same company and now doing the fourth, in which will looking for a new job somewhere in the world...
changes are good, go find a job...
I had a feeling after Y2K that things would never go back to what they were.
Commoditization of IT is why much of this happened. I unfortunately was a willing participant - switching dozens of Banyan/Novell/OS/2 Lan server infrastructures over to M$ products.
This very standardization is what provided the opening for companies to export development (and now engineering) jobs overseas. Once you export those jobs, they never come back. People complain about H1-Bs but the real issue is the sweatshops in Bangalore and elsewhere in India/Pakistan. You simply cannot compete with these people. You could pay 10 programmers for your salary. Sure, they suck, but with 10, eventually they get it right.
The whole programming side of the house is in for a 15 year recession as is hardware engineering. About the only place in IT that is reasonably stable is infrastructure and desktop support, and even that is under siege by hordes of paper certificate morons.
All this due to standardization. Resist it with all your might (for all the good it will do). I ponder if we had acted differently in the timespan 95-'00 whether things would be different now, or whether this was a natural evolution.
Either way, find a niche and cultivate it, or change professions. I'm not sure even championing open source will help.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Yet there is: ETS, Polytechnique, McGill, Concordia, UdeM and the UQAM recruting like mad to get those students in! Not to mention all the universities around the Montreal area like Sherbrooke!
So we have the amusing spectacle of about 1000 engineering graduates every year fighting for about 200 jobs.
Most of these 'engineers' have never touched a component in their lives. They never had an interest in electronics until the universities came in with their brochures and their pretty pictures of happy multi-cultural models and hyped promises of huge salaries and prestige.
The reality is that most of these kids will come out of school and become 'component engineers', which is fancy talk for data entry clerk, ie scanning in data sheets and making summaries of the part for the database.
Another amusing spectacle: these kids can solve Z-transforms on their calculators, but have never seen a resistor or an FPGA, and usually enter hilariously wrong information in the system. Yet THEY are the engineers, and I with 15 years experience in electronics and a PCB designer, am ignored.
Most of these kids also become very quickly disillusioned with their jobs. They thought they'd be designing Space Shuttle computers like in the brochures, but in real-life, it's the buddies of the boss that get the fun stuff, everyone else lights up LEDs or whatnot, with that powerful bachelor's degree.
Friends, University is a cult. They will indoctrinate you, brainwash you, and when the job market falls to shit because there ARE TOO MANY ENGINEERS, they'll offer you a Masters or Doctorate, where they can rake in more money and you still can't get a job.
Think about it, at its peak, Nortel had about 10000 'engineers' fogging up mirrors there. Now with an average salary of 60000$, that's 600 MILLION a YEAR in PAYROLL alone.
How many routers do you have to sell just to break even with that kind of insane payroll?
The reality is that engineers should be used SPARINGLY in a company, yet now it's a MINIMUM to get a job.
The results are what we see now. Of course, people will still keep plugging away in school, waiting for the next bubble, and then they'll think to themselves, "wow look at me, mr. cult was wrong!". That lasts for two years, then the cycle starts again.
Universities MUST BE STOPPED. If you don't have a scope in high school, NO UNIVERSITY FOR YOU. It's the ONLY way to insure PROPER RESPECT for the _REAL ENGINEER_.
I'm sitting here scratching my head as I read these posts. I've worked in the Communications/Networking industry for the past 8-10 years. I have a BSEE. I went to school for a BSEE because I felt that EE was what I wanted to do. I enjoy what I do. While it's important to make a reasonable living, it's not about the pay. I worked for one company for about 3 years when I first graduated for college. They gave me a start and I'm grateful for that. When things started to look bad there, I left. I didn't wait for the news that the place was closing. I used my business sense and made a judgement call. The company was small. I tried to speak up about business issues. I was told that engineers didn't need to concern themselves with that. To me, that's the wrong answer. In any organization, everyone must be concerned about the business. You may not be responsible for much, but everyone has a responsibility for something. In addition, the hours and stress were getting out of hand. So I started looking. I found another position that seemed to be exciting. I accepted it. When I turned in notice, I was offered a significant deal (and I do mean significant) to stay. I didn't accept it. The issue wasn't the money it was enjoying what I do and having peace about it. I volunteer as a leader over youth (teens) in my area. I often hear from them questions like, so I take it you make good money? and... What kind of money does someone in this position make? They are all valid questions to a point, but it really concerns me if the reason for selecting a career is the money. I would have to say that possibily the reason for not selecting a career might be very poor pay. But, if your in any career because you wanted the money, I don't agree with that. I'm sorry to say it, but I don't a doctor to work on me who decided to be a doctor because of the pay and not because he cared about people. I don't want to walk in a building designed by a civil engineer who wanted a big salary and didn't really like to design/build things. I don't want to sit down and have a waitor/waitress serve dinner who took the job exclusively for the tips and doesn't care about customers.
Well, as someone who actually thought a little bit about this potential problem *before* the dot-com bubble burst, I'll add my two cents and that students these days could do worse than to do what I did:
BA in English/Comp Sci
MA in Comp Sci
MFA in Fiction
The result? Lots of jobs. I switch between technical writing, article writing, and programming. I've published stories, am working on a novel, and just sold a one-act play to a regional theater. I code in ASP/CF/PHP and C#. And I love every bit of it -- coding, writing, and thinking. It all comes from the same place deep inside my brain, and I often tell folks that there's not much difference between writing a short story or coding a project under a deadline. The adrenaline flows, the creative energies get harnassed, and the subconscious does some wild and wacky shit.
And all of this came about because of an off-hand remark I once heard in a VAX assembly language language class by the prof: he assured us (eager college freshmen) that math and science students in particular should put their egos in check and their noses in books -- non-science books. Stuff like Plato and Milton and Dante -- the so-called "useless" stuff that most compsci students poopoo and claim they don't have time to read. Four years spent reading the "boring" stuff can lead to all sorts of minor and major personal epiphanies.
I'm not saying this is the answer, but it certainly is a solution. The coolest part about it is that people are actually impressed when you tell them you can code in C# and are writing short fiction as a "side project".
Everybody in the tech industry seems to want writers -- folks who can understand the technical side and then explain it simply and clearly. In fact, people go out of their way to express their admiration for this sort of talent.
Now, I'm not here to fan the flames and start another liberal arts versus sci-tech debate. But I will say that having my feet firmly planted in both sides has made things a *lot* easier. There is no shortage of jobs, people respect me, pay me well, and call upon me when the hardcore compsci folks can't get their brains out of "tunnel-vision" mode and their creative energies revved.
*shrug*
In my case, I choose not to work in my specialisation area (computer architecture). Many companies in Holland keep communicating: we want engineers. They even threaten to stop research here publicly... but they don't want engineers. They are firing them at this moment.
/. readers).
Somehow it isn't rewarded that I can do something very well. Not only is it unsexy, nor does it pay. So I won't. Instead I'll try a profession that does not require my best energy but will pay money. Studying electrical engineering was fun but here it ends mostly. I want to be where the money is. Money means you are valued, literally (yes I know this is different for many
The way I see it: if profession is a direct enabler to selling then you profit, elsif profession really sucks then you profit, else you lose. The fact that lawyers and economists make more is enough for me (don't start the lame remarks about those professions).
nosig today
Why do you deserve that engineering job and not him? If he's willing to do the same job for less than why shouldn't he get it? What makes you special? Oh you're an American.
The notion that buying from a cheaper foreign supplier is good for the buyer but bad for the country is a very common fallacy.
It's one of those things that seem self evident on the face of it, and requires a long and fairly complicated argument to dispel. A bit like how the earth obviously is flat - just look out the window!
The argument for free trade can be found in most elementary economics texts, and I'm not going to repeat it here. Search for "comparative advantage", and you should find a zillion examples.
Of course this example of free trade is probably not good for US programmers, even though the lowered software development costs are good for the US as a whole. That's of course true of any industry exposed to international competition. But the sum of all the effects of competition to each individual industry is very good for everyone, and and one of the main causes that the US is the wealthiest country on earth.
Personally I've programmed for 15+ years, and am doing fine. A few years ago anyone who had seen a computer on a post card could get hired as a "programmer". I'm glad those days are gone, as now I only get to work with skilled professionals.
Microsoft is poisoning the industry. Their unchecked, criminal, monopolistic behavior is stifling innovation. Most people don't want to risk trying new ideas that will just be stolen by Microsoft.
Microsoft has almost single-handedly destroyed the value of certification as well. Microsoft certifications are no longer respected because they are not rigorous enought to keep out the Transcender and brain dump crowds. Unfortunately, they took down many other certifications in the eyes of managers.
FSF has survived several economic booms and busts. If Linux has caused this problem, it sure took its sweet time doing it since it began in '91. Besides, Linux provides a level playing field for those selling support services and applications. In my experience, Linux users are more likely to pay for worthwhile applications while Windows users are notorious software pirates.
I actually left the workforce (because every job would become mundane after a couple of months) and went back to school with the intention of applying to graduate school. I have a completely different perspectice now, am actually enjoying the CS courses, and I definitely feel that academics is where I belong. I will hopefully get recommendations from my professors this semester and will be applying to grad school. I have already started researching. Research is fun and exciting for me. Try it. You might like it, too.
One 29-year-old engineer recently caught in Nortel Network's layoffs said "I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career."
So -- they layed him off, and killed him? too??
Not sure about unionizing, but I do recall something in Software Enginnering 101 about why jobs were being sent to India and elsewhere (other than lower development costs). At that time, the verdict was that they were writing better code. The best thing U.S. companies could have done would have been to self-regulate and increase quality of code: especially for mission-critical, life or death stuff. Maybe I was asleep that day in class and got it wrong, though.
There are plenty of jobs for programmers and engineers with the US military, CIA, FBI, and NSA. Stop your whining.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
For those who would brave the storm, have you thought about how you would stay valuable in this market? I would be interested to hear if anyone has tried to learn an Indian language in order to communicate with their intercontinental coworkers.
If this becomes a major resume item in the next five to ten years and/or an aspect of computer trade school programs, I would be interested in getting a head start in case the issue becomes reality for me. Now may be the time to buck the trend of securing your job and/or career by simply learning one language and a couple APIs per year, and get down to following the twists and turns of the business that funds the IT industry. You know. For those who are up to it.
PS. I'm Canadian, and I have work from American firms already. To some degree, getting Canadian work is a lesser version of getting Indian work: there may be timezone and communication barriers, but the work is cheaper. When you're from a country with a much smaller economy than the US, it 's often necessary to get American work. Canada's economy makes up for 3% of the world's. Not that much, for the second biggest mass of land in the world, eh? :-)
Once the technical collages started the 18 month IT courses, the party was over.
This stuff isn't all rocket science, and indians need jobs too.
I switched to marketing after 2 years at IT and never looked back. More fun work, more fun people, less hours, cooler travel, and the old IT skills are in high demand in that sphere.
Sometimes I swear they just keep me around to fix laptops and convert image formats, but my job is safe as houses.
Years ago I decided to pursue my favorite hobby as a career because then was the computer age and programmers were the hot jobs. Now it is sad to think that in a couple more years I will be entering a weak job market. With all of the pessimism I'm seeing on this forum, do people like me have much of a chance at a life-long career?
1) When I was younger (I AM NOT OLD!) I couldn't seem to get projects independently. I got the cubicle contract jobs.
2) The past two years I have been independent and have worked from home. I believe that age and perception of responsibility have allowed this.
3) Oh shit, I'm drunk already.
There is a mass of people in college who will go for whatever the highest earning field turns out to be. They're not the brightest, just the most greedy.
Right now, it's those people cloging up our field and giving it a bad name. Over time, these people will wash out, a new top field will be declared, and the problem will go away.
I just watched a program on CNBC about Peter F. Drucker entitled, An Intellectual Journey, on Christmas Eve. It was very interesting and led me to start reading some of his essays/articles about the Knowledge Worker and the emerging Knowledge Society.
He speaks of the Knowledge Worker as continually learning, with a completely different mind-set from the Industrial Worker. This worker has formal education, but not formal education alone. The worker must have a specialization.
He wrote back in 1993, that the "generalists" -- I think this to mean those who simply have formal education -- are "coming to be seen as dilettantes rather than educated people." I think we are approaching the point in time where what was once considered specialized knowledge (telecommunications or programming) is quickly becoming too general for the mediocre manager, which we have plenty of in America, to allocate effectively.
I think the right attitude, which is up to each to discover -- ideally through good role models, coupled with effective specialization is a requirement of the society we now live in.
I've been doing this since '84, and my career is stronger and more lucrative than ever. I've managed to dodge the "moved to management" bullet, yet now make more money than many V.P.s and C.E.O.s ...
The problem is that those entering college are encouraged to study engineering and computer science, yet because of this, there is now a flood of so-called engineers entering the workplace. The majority of these are "academic" engineers, with no real-world experience, and who don't have a real love of the craft. They're just looking for the big paycheck.
I'm sorry to burst the bubble, but unless you have a passion for this, look at it as a creative endeavor, and would program computers with or without a paycheck, you're simply not going survive for long against those of us who DO have these traits.
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
Man, a little nit-picky aren't we? Not get what you wanted for xmas? What I meant by not being comfortable was about your development assignments, not your personal lifestyle. Geez man, get a life. I'm happy at what I do, I don't forsee where I'm about to be getting out of a job, and I'm never going to get out of development. It's a passion for me. Geez
"Don't forget what happens to union-heavy industries in a downturn." The same thing that happens to non-union industries in a downturn? The difference in a union industry is the union must be consulted, severance pay negotiated and so forth. Also, the people who just joined the company are the ones most likely to be the ones laid off.
Yes. We're Americans, who, with our tax dollars, have paid for the infrastructure and universities that make it possible to do high-quality research here, and people who have made our homes here, where the cost of living can be quite high.
And after making that investment, it's only fair that a carpetbagger can come to town and take the proceeds from that investment back to his/her home country while our own engineers' skills atrophe.
With the flood of cheap IT labor *still* coming out of the schools that pretty much lie to the students to get them in, the future only looks more bleak for the IT job market at large.
:)
Sure there will be spots for old-timers like myself, but you always have a kid breathing down your neck.. who will work for peanuts..
If I had it to do over, a TOTALLY different market would be in order.. Perhaps a technology lawyer, they can make their own work and get paid even if they loose!
---- Booth was a patriot ----
that in Silicon Valley, about 80-90% of the engineers are already underpaid H1b visa-types, and EVERY company I've worked for has had big offices in places like Taiwan, India and even Hong Kong, to get cheap labor.
The problem is that if we want to continue having a strong economy, we have to recognize that putting Americans out of work means less Americans buying products and less Americans with disposable income.
I can't wait until we just get rid of all the countries and start cooperating as a race rather than stupid tribes competing against each other. We ARE supposed to be modern and civilized, aren't we?
Personally I think American companies should hire Americans first. If a company wants to hire Indians exclusively, then they should pack thier bags and move to India and become an Indian company.
But I guess other industries are like this too. They outsource work to some third world toilet where its cheaper to manufacture, then try to sell the product here in the States. Isn't this a bad thing in the long run? If this keeps up, the States will turn into a third world toilet itself as everybody will be unemployed and nobody can buy anything.
I'm a self-taught engineer and firmware programmer with no degree. I started out fixing minicomputers in the early 70's and I've never been unemployed longer than 2 months. I look forward to a comfortable retirement in my paid-off house with a full shop/lab in the garage. I'd do it all over again in a second, with the only regret being that I didn't get a degree.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I've been a degreed software engineer since 1990. "Back in the day" software engineers/software developers where those wizards that knew how to talk the "Crazy moon language" of computers.
Now everyone and his brother can develop and maintain computers, and so can there kids. Add to that the fact that industry caught on and has created a number of technologies that allow for cookie-cut software development.
Most software problems are VERY simple. Get info from DB, Present to user, allow input, perform calculation, put info back into DB. This describes 90% of the software solutions out there. This is EASY. If it's hard to you, you're in the wrong industry.
Most of the SW jobs out there are for maintaining and small incremental features on the above type of software. This is where the commodity programmers live. If this is all you are qualified to do, life is going to suck for you until there is a greater need for that kind of work. This work does not pay very well (It used to, during the boom, but no longer).
The remaining 10% of the work has to do with innovation or Very Hard Problems. Innovation is where you get paid to think up new things. This describes 50% of what I've been working on for the last 6 years (VOIP for me, there are plenty of other innovations out there).
This is HARD work. Enjoyable, but not easy. You get asked daily, "What's today's bright idea, smart guy?" or "Do you have the prototype complete for your GREAT IDEA?" If you can't keep 'em coming, you're out the door. The pay can be very good.
The other 50% I've worked is the pure "Hard Problem" stuff. Multi-Treaded debugging (deadlocks, data corruption, etc...) Performance, Reliability (5-9's), etc and the testing/verification of all these. These are problems that "regular programmers" can't solve. They are HARD. Most projects today created so that these don't happen and the regular programmers don't need to debug them. The projects that need these type of SW engineers are willing to pay for them and respect the capabilities of those engineers. These jobs pay well.
If you're a commodity engineer in today's market, life is not good. If you are a seasoned engineer with a proven track record, finding a job may take a little time, but won't be that hard. But then, if you're a seasoned engineer, you probably already know this and aren't too worried...
=Shreak
as a dev, there's one thing I can say in response to "would you choose the same career path". When I look out the office window and see construction workers out in the sun, moving loads of dirt or piecing together brick walkways or welding up bus stop overhangs ... that's a better job.
Sure, sure, the grass is greener, etc. They still have jerk bosses, just like us. They still have idiot program managers that are bent on ruining everything, just like us. And on cold, wet, sore, days they look at the office windows above and wish they had our jobs.
Whatever, the truth is they have better jobs.
It seems like I truly enjoyed this stuff back when I was a kid writing stuff on the Apple2...and ever since then it's been a slow progression steadily away from joy.
Alas, I have mortgage, wife, kids, etc...and so although I've very much enjoyed being laid off I'll probably start up the grind once again within a couple more months. I'm too young for semi-retirement just yet.
I got a degree in Physics.
Since then I've had all kinds of jobs, involving both hardware and software development. Currently I write Java code for food.
The one certainty in all my jobs was change. I didn't except C to last, nor C++, and I don't expect Java to last either. The first time I saw a Valid SCALDSystem, I knew my days of soldering TTL chips together were numbered.
Today on the way to work I heard a news blurb about how Delta is changing its pension scheme. Basically, it places a greater premium on continuing to exist than it does on maintaining a pension status quo. In the long term Delta will survive and the employees will have to live with lowered expectations. That's just the way the world is.
So, all you can do is look for the next big thing, grab as much as you can where you are now (training, money, benefits, experience), and jump when something better comes along.
Oh, and don't forget to save a few pennies for a rainy day. Remember: you're on your own.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
From the OED:
1. One who contrives, designs, or invents; an author, designer (const. of); also absol. an inventor, a plotter, a layer of snares. Obs. In the later quots. perh. a fig. use of 2.
_.c1420 Metr. Life St. Kath. (Halliw.) 14 In hys court was a false traytoure, That was a grete Yngynore.
_.1592 G. Harvey Pierce's Super. 8 The dreadfull enginer of phrases insteede of thunderboltes.
With hard work, I managed to find another software development position, though somewhat different to what I had been doing: digital television graphics chip automated testing instead of telecom (which is really sick these days). The point is that tough times require flexibility -- automating testing systems had been a core responsibility of mine, in addition to development, and I can leverage those skills into an area of personal interest, without "real" professional experience.
In that regard, the 20 years professional experience helps, rather than hinders: there's lots about test automation that can be leveraged to different problem domains. Still, many would-be employers cared more for modern skill-matrix check-marks, than a proven ability to think ("No, I don't really do Java, but I have pulled some servlet code out of a nasty pickle, when necessary.") and didn't give my resume a second thought. Somehow, I got the impression that I didn't want to work for an organization with that attitude.
If I were to give advice to the "aging programmer", say 40+ like myself, it would be to stay as current as possible (at least conversationally with the latest fad, and preferrably having played with it), try to go the extra mile to be indispensible where you are (performance wise, not necessarily skill wise), and remain flexible in looking for new opportunities. Above all, try to not get depressed -- that fuels a nasty downward spiral.
You could've hired me.
Arrrgggghhhh. I sympathize - - but, for heaven's sake, why join the ranks of the truly worthless? Hasn't anyone seen what happens to these wonks at places like WorldCom and Enron? Talk about expendable!! The lessons to be learned, among others, are that business runs in cycles and big companies treat professional people like commodities. Find yourself a small- to medium-sized place of employment, get friendly with the execs, and settle into an above-average salary at a place where people are allowed to have a personal life. Employment at Fortune 500 companies has been overrated for years. They are mills, and people are their grist.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
As an engineer of any variety, your job also includes spending a double-digit percentage of your time learning and keeping up to date. If your employer won't do that on company time, do it at home, and start looking for an employer who's got a longer-term plan for you.
It's very, very rare to interview an older programmer and find that his knowledge is up to date. If it is, I've preferred to hire him over the younger guy in a heartbeat, because he'll generally be more reliable and be learning-oriented enough to bring the rest of the staff a few steps farther forward.
For the last 10 years, I've been an independent consultant. Nothing is better than dictating your own hours and having the time to dedicate to your own pursuits. No committee to steer you, just your gut instincts.
A few months back I decided to throw my resume up on monster and all the other resume related web sites. With this shortage I keep hearing about, I thought I'd have my e-mail door knocked down by offer after offer. I've gotten offers, but not what I had envisioned, every one is for an RPG programming job on AS/400's.
Don't get me wrong, I love what I do but I miss the collaboration of bouncing ideas off of other techies. I've never grown my business to the point of needing to hire other individuals, just wanted to pay the bills and have the time to ride my bike.
What can I attribute to this lack of interest for my resume?
Experience: No, I have 20 years on the keyboard.
Current skills: No, I can work on many platforms including Windows and Linux.
Age: Maybe that's it, I'm in my mid 40's.
Here I am keeping my skill-set up to date, reading 20 plus industry mags a month, teaching myself new tricks everyday, not wanting to get stale, yet I am looked at as an aging codasaurus. I can still sit in front of a screen all day and night on a coding project without thinking about it.
Distractions, I have none. My wife understands my lifestyle, the kids are all grown up, the dogs warm my feet and yet I am viewed as someone who can't hack today's dedicated tech life. What's wrong with this picture?
When I entered this industry, the PC was being born at IBM. I took the initiative to teach myself these new skills, I saw the writing on the wall. Now, all I seem to be good for is coding on machines that I decided to leave behind. I think the AS/400 is a great box but I wanted to expand my horizons beyond just one machine, one operating system and one programming language.
20 years later and all my newfound knowledge seems to be useless in the real world. New age companies want to hire new blood, kids who can code while they sleep. Old company managers look at my age and become protective of their jobs.
The kicker is the want ads, all these new acronyms like HTML, ASP, PHP, XML. They want you to have started to learn them when the standards committee was drafting the proposals. Yes we want you to have 5 years of Perl, was I supposed to have worked along side of Larry Wall?
I would make a very good Q/A engineer, yet the ads for these positions require some formal experience and you must be up to speed on all the latest scripting test tools. The local tech schools aren't teaching this and the software to learn this on your own is rather expensive.
Technical writing, documentation, I should of hung out in Key West with Hemingway and looked over his shoulder while he used RoboHelp. Send us a copy of your work, wouldn't that be like software piracy?
So that leaves me to continue doing what I've been doing for the last decade, supporting my small client base and riding my bike. The job market doesn't want me, it's looking for 20 something males who are uber coders with Spock like powers to suck up years of experience instantly.
Maybe I can talk with Linus and have him vouch for me, yes I was there in the beginning, I can remember version 0.0.1, boy those were the days.
engineers' skills apostrophe
I assume you are referring to the apostrophe that you tacked on at the end of the word "engineers"?
Ok.
It seems to me IT workers in their mid to late 30's (10-15 years of IT experience) are "prime" for bailing out. I figure that's about the time when one begins to realize, "my $60k a year job hasn't outpaced inflation for the past five years. I better change up, or plan on retiring like this."
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't even try to fool myself by thinking "I'm going to do this until I retire". I've been employeed continuiously (and happily) as a programmer for the past 6 years, but I'm already planning career number two. Going to jump fields completely sometime in the next 3-5 years (if economic conditions don't force my hand sooner).
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
If you got into computers or engineering for the money then I'd say you're screwed. Myself I do it because I can't help myself. I've always lived and breathed this stuff and keep throwing out new programs and gadgets regardless to being paid or not.
If you want steady work that pays well I'd suggest getting a degree in a non-computer field with either a minor in computers or just study on your own. Bioinformatics and various other cross-over fields is where you want to be. Really it can be anything. Get a degree in education and specialize in developing software for schools. Get a degree in marine biology and write software for tracking endangered marine species. Those sort of things.
There are lots of IT/programming people that have been pumped out with no real interest in computers. They can do their job but they aren't going to be as happy or as likely to excel as those who have a life long addiction. If you want to sepperate yourself from that group you need to show your ability to understand topics outside of pure computing.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Did you know what you wanted to build things for a living when you were 8 years old? Did you constantly get in trouble for taking apart your toys? Did you have a burning desire to understand things and build them? If not, you are at a disadvantage. Like atheletes, engineers are born. If you picked the field for the big money and not getting your hands dirty, you will never be able to compete against those of us who were born to it.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I've been at this seven years, from before the boom. Even with the recession and a layoff I was working in six months, and that includes 2 months over the holidays when NO ONE was hiring.
What did I find?
I'd say a good chunk of what we see now is people getting shaken out of a profession they thought was going to be easy. I've seen people pick up and leave IT voluntarily and involuntarily, and in those cases they A) didn't keep improving and B) lacked other skills and/or job search skills.
I'm not panicked. This seems like another IT/Geek Crisis article like we've been seeing over the year.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Its rather hasty to make a call saying just because of one
... its tough. They will move on
hurdle the whole career is in jeopardy. I am sure the person
who was layed off by Nortel Networks will find another job
if not in a few days, in a few weeks (if he is good there are
jobs).
I think the hi-tech industry is always the same. There is a
huge hype and lots of jobs. Hype dies, lots of jobs are lost.
But the industy goes on and a lot of people continue with their
careers. Software/IT is now going through that phase. When the
hype shakes off all the excesses, for the remaining folks this
is still going to be a long (life long) career if they want it.
For those who were shaken off
and find other jobs/other careers.
I think comparing with pro-football is not a valid anology. This
hitech sector is in existance for a relatively short span. No one
knows whats the full stable job potential of this industry.
This industry is going to be around, and people with experience
are always going to be invaluable.
On the otherhand pro-football has been around for a long time
and people entering it opt it with full knowledge that its not
a life long career. Even though this career is going to be around
as long as people love football, the players become obsolete
due to the sheer physical limitations in a few years. Such is
not the case with the engineers.
When I opted in this career, computers were not hot. Electrial and
mechanical were and I still took this up. And I will surely
opt again if I were to make the same decision now.
DO NOT PANIC
Four years ago, I was laid off after corporate cutbacks. No problem, said I.... I should be able to go get a job anywhere. I can take these skills from engineering and industry to nearly any company, and people would appreciate it.
Then came the fun. Every single potential employer used that word -- "Overqualified." I couldn't get a job running a Docutech in a print shop for 10.00/hour. "You'll just go running back to the oil industry," they said. I couldn't even get a job at a convenience store. Nearly had a low-paying job at one point -- they'd made an offer -- but then they found out I'd dumbed down my resume. As a result, after three years, I was just about to resign myself to homelessness, literally, when I finally got a job offer in my field.
People in engineering are being seen as disposable. I know barmaids who make more money.....
Willingess to change comes at a high price and constantly retooling your skillset is not par for the course with many other professions. I read earlier where someone compared programmers to poets. Maybe true, but poets don't have to learn a new language every two years to stay at the top of their game.
First of all, I wouldn't trust any figures I'd read in a religious magazine, as they tend to make up stuff when they look bad or have some reason to make people fear God (such as believe in god and you'll get a job). Seriously. My astmatic friend nearly died when he was a child when his bible-thumper mom decided that they were christian scientists and he didn't need his inhaler because "God" would fix him. That lasted 2 days until his mother reluctantly took him to the hospital when he couldn't breathe. Christian scientists are dumb, and they probably made up those figures, as evident by all the engineers who have posted to this thread who still have jobs.
today is spelling optional day.
I'm a consultant! Been consulting for 4 years now. It's much more fun than being an employee, at times
I ended up choosing CS. Just finished up a 14 month unemployed tour-of-duty too.
They're not the brightest, just the most greedy.
Exactly! When I was a chipper, geeky first-year CS student back in the very early 90s, I was surrounded by a class of similarly-minded people--people who enjoyed coding, figuring out problems, loved the all-nighter culture and did just swell.
Years later, as a TA at the height of the dot-com revolution, the first-year class was full of fucking fratboys, dumbasses each and every one of them, there because 'dude, this is where the bucks are!' They had no love for it, no dedication to their craft, no doing it for fun at home even after weeks of slaving on assignments. They were there to get rich. It's those people that we're currently purging for those that truly do know what they're doing, people who do love what they do, and we'll be a stronger workforce for it. In a few years, the cycle will begin again.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
And that apostrophe, indicating a possessive plural, is correct.
All about me
The reason H1-B like myself are working 80 hour weeks for below the average salaries is... H1-B status. When you have to get out of country in 10 days once you lost the job, you tend not to care all that much about hours and salary. Give us a Green Card and we'll be working just like anybody else.
So, say thanks to Labor Department and INS that take 3 years to take papers from one stack and put into another.
Amazing how the best intentions (we'll make it temporary, so if the times get tough we'll get them out in no time!) have led to the worst consequences.
I don't recommend engineering. But the thing is that I don't know of any good careers in America.
Doctors have been declaring bankruptcy at record numbers because of HMO's pricing preasure. Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Teachers are legendary for being underpaid. Middle managers sacrifice everything for a pension, only to be laid off in their fifties. Burger flipping seems steady. Government work is looking more promising all the time.
Unless you are born wealthy enough to head or start a corporation that will allow you to cheat consumers and the government; steal your workers pension plan and leave the whole mess for taxpayers to clean-up you are basically S.O.L.
That said, I'm not sure everyone who graduates with a CS or EE degree should spend the next 30 years of their life doing basic engineering. Your skills are needed in managing engineers and other things as well.
More to the point, there is not that much less NEED for programmers than there was 5 years ago. Look around, most of the software in existence has major flaws. More importantly most of the needed software is for specialized tasks. Be it for small business, retail, real estate agents, or in house software for a company. Most of these specialized areas are un or underdeveloped. Also, these niche markets are going to be extremely inefficient to attack from overseas for a number of reasons.
The most likely reasons for a short career have little to do with the changing world of making software. Burnout seems to be the most likely. Foolishly thinking working 60+ hours a week for 5 years would be healthy. It isn't and you should try to find other work when you're in that position. Lack of skills / unable to stay current also seems likely. That can probably be fixed with some studying though. Finally, I think many people are in this field who just shouldn't be. They entered for easy money and don't really enjoy programming. Lots of those people will abandon a career they don't like when times are challenging.
Keep in mind, we are in a down-turn and jobs are scarce. Things will likely turn around and many of those who shouldn't be in software will have changed careers. We, as a profession, will pull through fine.
Now what do you (I assume you're still the same Anonymous Coward) mean by being against Open Source? Should it be forbidden to write free software? All ethical problems aside, how are you going to enforce that? To put it short: blame your company business model, not the ones who show that it is flawed. Well, I guess that the watchmakers felt the same way about electronic watches, scribes about the printing press, etc, etc.
I can't even begin to keep count of the number of projects that are constantly in need of programmers yet they are filled with managers who know nothing about IT, technology in general, the systems they are working with/on specifically or how to actually manage the workflow, people, resources and events required of a program. However, remember that someone at the top whom makes a mistake will most likely cause a larger armount of damage than someone below him. This simple fact is avoided by those who have no business or technological sense and is covered with a nice and thick candy coating of buzz words and forked tongue schmoozing. Don't get me wrong, you often need those snake-oil-salesmen types to create a network of clients, consultants, and other contacts for your business to run smoothly. However, this "asset" is often confused (much like a politicians rhetoric) with actual worth and competence in other fields to the point that a forked tongue BS artist is put in a position to make Ops decisions... very bad move (and indicative of a lack of leadership/business sense in the higher management that hired/promoted this person to that position in the first place).
Why is it that so many tech companies have a glass ceiling for the very thing that made them big in the first place? Why can you only go so far in the tech field before you must jump tracks and go into management? In fact, why is that word "manage" assigned to people who obviously lack the desire or ability to actually facilitate and manage the people and projects they are assigned to? Manage is not a dirty word... it is VITAL to any business or organization yet what happens is that the word is kept as a shallow wrapper while the actual substance (the work of managing) is poured onto the team. Instead of this welfare system of placing people into these key positions in order to just find them a job, why not place people in those positions who have demonstrated the ability and/or the aptitude and desire to do that job well? At the very least, train the managers to understand why they are there. If a team must do the managers job for him/her then clearly the situation calls for an elimination of one side of that equation. Bad managers tend to gravitate towards the liquidation of the actual business assets and keep the leeching do-nothings. How do you make money without the ones doing the work? Who knows?
An article in ComputerWorld ("Panel Advises U.S. IT Pros To Consider Changing Roles") has found similar handwriting on similar walls.
Techie careers are going the way that factory work did. The remaining jobs in America will be the 3M's: Management, Marketing, and McDonald's. Nobody has figured out a way to outsource these so far.
The sun is setting on the American Nerd. Let's face it for what it is.
Hell, even basketball is being outsourced. Part of the reason the Lakers are falling from grace is that many teams are getting better deals on foriegn players, and dictated salary caps limit what Laker owners can pay. Sacramento's NBA team is probably 50% non-citizens. Not to mention the "new Shaq", Yao Ming in Houston, a Chinese citizen.
Table-ized A.I.
If you take out the H-1Bs, the jobs won't go to US engineers, they will simply move to sites in India, China, and Europe. That can happen on a moment's notice, since big companies already have R&D centers there. The main reason why companies bring engineers to the US is because the engineers themselves prefer it; it's a kind of perk.w
If the US forces those jobs to move overseas by reducing H-1B quotas, the US will lose the tax revenue, production and know-how will move abroad, and the trade deficit will increase. The net result is much worse for the US.
H-1Bs are a wonderful deal for the US: other countries pay for decades of child care, schooling, medical care, and social services, and the US reaps the most productive years of those individuals. The countries who ought to be upset about it is the countries where foreign engineers are coming from, not the US. And, in fact, European and Asian countries would love nothing more than if the US closed its borders--it would be a shot in the arm for their own industries.
Read Herbert Simon's book "The Sciences of the Artificial" (Herbert Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in management theory in the late sixties and is or was until recently a professor at MIT. He's also a big name in artificial intelligence.)
The basic thrust of "The Sciences of the Artificial" is that there are two kinds of science - natural science and artificial science. So there is science about natural subjects such as chemistry and medicine and biology and then there is science about subjects which man has created such as economics, engineering, computer programming, etc. Science (or any other kind of effort or work) that is directed towards natural topics has a certain advantage for the student and practitioner - a stable subject.
Bascially, while the way medicine is practiced may change, the human body does not, which makes life a little easier for physicians. They need never re-learn anatomy because that subject is fixed even though the tools they use to study your body do improve and evolve - X-rays giving over to MRI, for example.
However, engineering and, even more so, computer programming change constantly. There is little that is stable and thus a student of these sciences must ever re-learn not just the tools of the trade but also new ways to apply the tools and new ways to approach the task at hand. Consider the revolution in materials that has changed engineering - polymers and carbon fiber and so on that have complemented aluminum and steel. Every aero-space engineer in the last twenty years has had to learn a whole new suite of materials, not to mention the application of micro-processors, advances in aerodynamic theory, etc.
If you are still in school and want to make your life a bit easier, focus on a subject of natural science. Learn it well and that knowledge will always be your foundation of understanding. Then, as the tools, processes and mechanisms you apply to your field of study change over time, you will only need to adapt to changes in the tools, not the entire basis of your career.
Read the book (first edition is much better than later editions.) It's a wonderful analysis of something truly obvious that we never bother to think about.
From the article"That was the catalyst that prompted the New York native, already disgruntled with his choice of profession, to look into attending either business or law school."
Without engineers to make stuff the businessmen would have nothing to sell, and the lawyers would have nobody to sue.
I'm majoring in management information systems and EVERYONE is required to take a course in cobol programming. Most of the students complain about having to program such a dead language. Hopefully you are right about cobol programmers being highly paid because I'm sorry I had to endure that class... maybe thats why my friends and I called it COOL-BOL.
I have no regrets about choosing engineering as a career, but I do see some disturbing trends in industry. America needs to reconsider its H1-B program and do more to support engineering students.
I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and I worked for three years in the aerospace industry. During the height of the dot com boom I switched careers to web development. I really enjoy working as a programmer; it is a lot more like what I though engineering would be like (nothing like working at an Aerospace giant to give you a bad impression of engineering). I've been lucky and have managed to stay employed through most of the recession.
When I got my degree I did not know what I wanted to do with it, I just wanted to work in technology and to have options. My degree has done both for me. I feel the rock solid education I got as an engineering student has been a benefit to many areas of my life, not just my professional life.
As much as I like programming, I will admit that if it were not for the high wages I would have not made the effort to change careers. It was a lot of work to teach myself programming. Industry complaints about IT worker shortages are bull. What they really mean is there are not enough workers willing to work long hours for low pay. Anyone with a degree in the sciences or engineering can make the switch to IT with relative ease. As long as wages are high there will be no shortage of IT workers in America.
The H1-B program has got to go. This is not immigrant bashing; I don't blame people wanting to come to America for a better life. This is economics 101. If you flood a market with workers willing to work for less then you are going to drive down wages. Do you think the Wall Street Journal's unwavering support for unrestricted immigration is because they want high wages for American workers? No, the WSJ supports immigration as a way to drive down wages. Personally, I'm not against immigration, I just think current numbers (over 1 million every year) are way too high.
There needs to be more scholarships for engineering student. Many of my high school teachers and college professors were students when the Sputnik scare prompted congress to offer generous scholarships to anyone going into math/science/engineering. When I was a student I could not find any scholarships for engineering students.
Importing foreign engineers/IT workers is a vicious cycle. The more of them come, the lower the wages in America get. The lower the wages, the less likely that American students will go into those fields, thus creating more demand for foreign workers. This needs to stop now. This is no kind of future for America.
Some years ago, I was planning to do computer-related work. Now, I know that I'll never get a job in the computer-business (since I have no education, and getting a job is difficult, even with an education (I don't think this will change, as there are so many people that are into computers).
Luckily, I have no debts to pay off, so there's nothing stopping me from studying some other subject.
I want to study either history or linguistics.
Have fun
Not to beat a dead horse here, but most of the programmers I've met (myself included) are not engineers, though they often take Engineer in their title.
Engineering has nothing to do with programming languages and CAD software and everything to do with the ability to identify problems and develop an *appropriate* solution. Where most programmers fail this test is their oft inability to choose the best tool for the job, to realistically determine costs, time to product, staffing, systems integration, maintenance, reliability, and a raft of other factors that lead to a successful job. Instead, most that I've met are quite adept at shoehorning whatever problem into the toolbox that they have at hand.
When you can afford to throw bodies at problems and it doesn't matter what you ship as long as it brings in the VC dollars, then none of those factors matter much. When you need to get a specific product or service to market on time, on budget, with the reliability and servicability that the client demands, then all these factors come into play - and I don't know many programmers that can rise to the challenge.
Good engineers can function without the technology and will adapt their knowledge to the problem at hand. In many cases they're happy to invent the tools they need to solve the problem.
Two problems plague the programmer community:
1) a history of sloppiness. Software moves ahead not because of some underlying set of principles but mostly due to unplanned intertia. If there was a community effort to improve the industry, you'd see things like C++ being formally phased out in favor of more reliable languages like Java for new development. That's not happening.
2) the realization by industry that coders can really be treated like tradesmen, and that the real engineering can be handled by a select few.
You notice that on a worksite for a new building that you don't have 200 civil engineers doing the construction. It's too expensive, and nothing would get done. Instead, you have 20 civil engineers and 180 tradesmen. The tradesmen are skilled in the tools, the engineers skilled in design. It's cheaper and more efficient because the engineer doesn't need to know much about the tools except for their suitability, and not always even that. The tradesmen can focus on their field and stay up with technology.
In the sofware world, expect 'programmer' to phase into 'coder', a bunch of people with AA level degrees that know Java or C or SQL like nobody else, but don't know the first thing about designing a large system. Expect much of the design work to go to software engineers who will direct the coders. The engineers should come from traditional engineering backgrounds - it's basically systems engineering with a software focus. They'll be on site with the client, assessing their needs, etc. The coders can easily be in India or wherever else coding to spec.
Coding will be an almost exclusively contract profession. Standards for documentation, testing, and coding will be developed that parallel those for subcontract work in traditional fields.
As for engineering, it seems to be doing reasonably well. Civil engineering is doing exceedingly well now, as is mechanical engineering and materials engineering. Environmental is struggling (Republican president and congress, and all that) as are EE and the computer fields. Much of the shift seems to be to defense and infrastructure and away from consumer products and services. Engineering is still a good deal, but that CS degree may not take you where you thought it would.
In my experience, most programmers are the equivalent of assembly line workers, trained to do a few specific steps on specific machinery without any deeper understanding of what is going on. And most of them probably don't want to continue programming into their 40's or 50's anyway, they want to move up into management, design, and other non-programming jobs. Think of the career path of most programmers as that of MacDonald's cooks: their job is not about the food, and you wouldn't expect them to be gourmet chefs in their 40's or 50's, you'd expect them to move up in management or go into other professions.
People who are dedicated to programming as a life-long profession and who are skilled enough to pull it of are far and few between.
Overall, I just fail to see a problem there.
that are just as skilled as classically trained M.D.'s
Judging by what I've seen in the workplace, and
the quality of the people I've worked with, it
usually boils down to a question of real skill.
If your profession has moderate demand (which
Engineering does), and you area truly skilled
at what you do, then you will find a job. The
field is currently overflowing with useless
inviduals who jumped on the bandwagon for the
money. Their time is up. As companies begin
to seriously cut costs, more and more excess
will be shed. The truly skilled will find jobs.
Oh, and most folks would find that a serious
career at McDonald's would be far more challenging
than your average Engineering position.
McDonald's knows how to run a business. If the
tech companies in America displayed as much
business skill as McDonald's, most of these people
getting fired wouldn't have been hired in the
first place. Businesses are simply deflating
to the proper size. They grossly overhired,
and now they're finally realizing the mistakes
of the last 5 years.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
If you're American, you have to wonder how the current topic squares with this Wired article on engineering brain-drain and how it impacts the U.S. Military. When the engineers leave, where are they going?
Experience usually shows in saving resources by not doing unproductive things, as well as being able to see the big picture. Often this effect is hard to measure because you only see it if your team doesn't have the experience to avoid major pitfalls.
Gone are the days when you could get some four-letter-acronym certification and get a job in the industry. You won't get hired anymore if your main source of knowledge is books like "X for dummies", "Y unleashed", or "Teach yourself Z in 21 days". Those are the people who, for the most part, are being shaken out of this industry now, and frankly, I consider that a good thing. However, in that same category I'd lump the people who went to a decent college CS program and didn't really work in it, barely passing, just to get to the job market. That's scarcely better. Don't become one of those people. Dig deep into the field and learn everything you can. Lift the hood and find out what goes on underneath. Remove the engine cover and learn what makes an engine tick. You wouldn't go to a mechanic who had never rebuilt an engine or swapped a radiator, would you? So why should I hire a programmer who doesn't know how a CPU works, or has never scrutinized the output of a compiler?
Learn computer architecture. Learn how a CPU, cache, and RAM work. Learn data structures. Learn why you'd want a tree in some situations and a hash table in others, and the consequences of each choice. Build a compiler from scratch. Learn parsing and grammar recognition. If you want to work on networks, learn queueing theory. Learn how an operating system works, what a virtual memory manager needs to do, how copy-on-write works, what a semaphore is. Et cetera.
If you know the entire foundation of the profession, you can pick up anything new that comes along with ease. You won't be so quickly cast aside when times get tough. And you'll have one-up on all the opportunists who learned from silly books or certification classes. They'll only know how the latest fad works. You'll know *why* it works, and you'll be much more able to set things right when it doesn't perform as advertised.
-----Chaz
What I see disappearing are the median income jobs. It seems like things are becoming more and more polarized w/many many low pay jobs and a few very high paying jobs.
People have said this for decades, and the middle class has not disappeared. That's not to say it never will, but the record of these predictions is very, very poor.
Do you have any actual data to support your contention? Is the data based on valid assumptions and samples (i.e. the decline in VAX programmers doesn't necessarily count, unless you include the increase in game console programmers).
The ones who are really good may have spent a few months looking but they're back on the job.
I usually get good reviews on my tech skills when I am working. However, I have been unemployeed for an excessive time.
I see no rewards now for doing good tech jobs. It seems those with the best BS skills get the few scraps of remaining jobs there is.
No. Simple NO scholarships. Education expenses should be paid from federal taxes. That's it.
Someone modded the parent as a troll, but glrotate makes a valid point. Yes, it sucks that there's unemployment in the US. I'll wager, though, that unemployment is far worse in India. If they can get jobs for US companies doing programming, I say go them.
It's what free trade's all about - if you don't like it, move to India and do what they're doing!
Engineering also implies innovation. The absence of wage competition in a market where government-injected wage deflation exists will force innovation and creativity talent out of that market. You're right: this is ECN 101.
We need to encourage our creative programmers who have invested in their skills development with wages that make them feel their society values them; not that their society wants cheap programming... we'll keep ending up with cheap programming and flawed software.
You can't throw drones at engineering problems and expect decent results.
No offense to the H1-Bs that come to this country seeking better wages, but there's more to engineering than being able to operate validation software...
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Now, that isn't to say that 4 Americans is equivalent to 500 Indians. Just that this PARTICULAR 4 Americans is equivalent to that particular 500 Indians. Still, it did not make me feel too sanguine about the quality of the people we're importing from India -- and certainly didn't make me want to run out and export work to India.
The point: four good people can out-do 500 cheap people, and costs a lot less money, and people who out-source work to India just because they think it's cheaper are not going to save money because they're going to end up having to get more Indians to do the work that they could have gotten a few of the best Americans to do (albeit probably for a 6-figure salary, vs. a 4-figure salary).
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
A computer-science professor in California has statistics to show that programmers have careers not much longer than pro-football players.
Putting aside the issue of programmers versus engineers, Professor Norm Matloff finally gets some credit, albeit indirectly, on the /. homepage.
That makes you a newbie as far as some of us are concerned. I started in '81 doing FORTRAN, moved on to Business Basic, COBOL, Assembler, C++, PowerBuilder, Sybase and now Oracle. Still at it; Java probably comes next.
"Sometimes," the red queen said to Alice, "You must run as fast as you can in order to stay in one place."
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Did it hurt your wittle ego to know that someone could teach themselves something that you couldn't even grasp after 4 years at school? Let mommy kiss it better.
I live in New Zealand rather than the USA, but the situation sounds fairly similar here.
A few months ago I applied for a job, and experimented with saying on my application that in addition to programming, in the longer term I'd also like to develop my more generic skills such as decision making and taking responsibility for various things.
In that instance, I didn't get past an interview with a recruitment agent. She asked me about this, and I told her that I didn't think a programming career would survive me for my whole career, so I also wanted to develop other skills where I could move into other jobs later on.
Keeping in mind that I'd spent 5 years of full time study getting a computer science first class honours degree specialising in software engineering, she appeared to ignore it and then accused me of not backing my own programming skills and might not be very confident at coding. Her reasoning was that it didn't seem like I was heavily interested in a programming job. In the end, she decided not to put me forward because I "didn't have enough commercial visual basic experience".
Honestly compared with the others I talked to, that was one of the dumbest recruitment agents I talked to. She was probably new to IT. My view hasn't changed, though. Although I'm only 24 at the moment, these days when I go to a job interview for a job that might be long term, one of my questions to the employer will be along the lines of "how to you treat old people?" I still plan to develop my other skills.
No one in this world is guaranteed a successful business model, a successful product, or profit in any form. We have a free market economy. That means you have to provide something people want, at a price that they're willing to pay, and deal with constant competition. If the market changes, you have to change with it or die.
Your problem is not open source. Your problem is you're denying the nature of the market, and refusing to change with it. If it wansn't open source, sooner or later some other market entity would come along and do the same thing to you for the same reason. Guess what? That's business. Deal with it. Adapt to the constantly changing market or die. It's obvious which of those options you have chosen.
-----Chaz
Please stop "stop H1-B" comments. There has been no new H1-B's in the last two years. Please get a clue!
There are bunch of H1-B's already in country, yes. But getting them out is not an option for many reasons (one -- some of them are hard replace even now).
So, again, grant current H1-B's permanent residency quickly and job market will improve since they will competing for jobs on par with their citizen collegues.
What about the ACM? Doesn't that qualify as a "serious professional association" for IT workers?
"One 29-year-old engineer recently caught in Nortel Network's layoffs said "I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career." One free clue, redeemable at any time.
If the company stock price gets cut in half, it's time to start looking for other work.
If you're still haven't started looking when it's been cut by a factor of 10, you must want to get laid off.
If you're still there when the company stock has been cut by 20x, then you're obviously too lazy to look out for your own interests, and so why the hell would I want you to be working for me?
Failing corporations don't reward loyalty. They do punish inaction though.
I saw an enticing job at a small startup being advertised through a recruiter and decided to give it a shot. So I sent in my resume by email. A week went by and no answer at all, so I decided to email again just to ask. Two days and no answer so I decided to call. Took a day to catch up to him but I finally did. When I asked if he even got my resume he stumbled around on his paper stack and finally found it. "Oh, the mainframe guy!" NO!! "Dude, mainframes were a long time ago. I do Unix now, and have for years, and the job wanted someone with strong Unix." But his response was "Well, with all that experience, I figured you wouldn't want to work for a small startup. You seem like someone who would want to work at EDS or IBM". I had to make it clear to him that he completely and totally misread my resume.
Here's my advice ... don't go back any further than 10 years of experience on your resume. Anything you did any further back is worthless today, anyway. And employers don't really care about mere experience in numbers; they want experience in what they have, only". The more experience you have in something else, the more expensive you are with no benefit to them.
And if you have more than 10 years experience, you better make sure you get it clear to recruiters, HR types, and in some cases, even the hiring managers, that you're looking for work in current state of the art technology, not in digital antiquities.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I have been involved with technology since I was six. To me it was more than a hobby. Everyday was putting together yet another puzzle. Now I have been at the company that I work at for two years.
It was interesting at first because the management wanted lots of different things done (all of which I needed to do solo). However, the demands never ended and only one extra person was hired to assist me (this to keep the expenses low). After two years I have now tired of technology (which I thought would never be possible). Fortunately, my college degree was in management (so I have alternatives if I decide to bail).
Generally, when I look back at everything (summer jobs, part time jobs, and this), I see that the IT sector is not something to count on in the long run. Upper management of most companies looks at things from a task and personnel perspective. This is all fine and dandy, but the problem arises when management has no clue about the technology that they are managing. My experience has been that whenever something is going to take a while or goes beyond deadlines because of technical glitches (thank you Microsoft) in comes the consultants to throw together a mediocre POS in as short a time as possible.
This problem is going to continue to worsen too. With programmers and IT staff being now viewed about the same as soda (stick with one brand as long as your happy, change when not) and India being viewed as the promised land of cheap IT, "task oriented" managers will continue running through people about as fast as they want. My advice: have a back up plan.
IT probably stabilize until management is tired of the "rent-an-IT" fad (sorry consultants). If there is a silver lining it seems that most of the managers that play fast and loose with IT also are doing the same with their books (and that is what is getting them). The only problem with that is that the economy is worsening immensely because of this.
The economy isn't in shambles because of anything Washington has done lately (they're just as corrupt today as they were 10,20,30 years ago). The real problem is that all the book cooking has created a cynical economy. Now any company wanting to do business with any other company is looked over very carefully to make sure that a bunch of snake oil isn't being sold.
The other silver lining that I see is that with such an abundance of it personnel, hopefully, some will move to management (where they can set the goals and take command). Until then, be prepared for this wild economy to continue. I hope every one packed their parachutes carefully because they 50s and 60s work for the same company until you retire days are gone for good.
I hate to let facts and statistics get in the way of anyone's opinion, but consult http://www.bls.gov (Bureau or Labor and Statistics) to see that for the decade of 2000-2010, 8 of the 20 fastest growing professions are in IT - and yes, one of them is programming. You people are dumb as rawks!!!! Quit wondering why you can't find jobs right now. If corporations aren't making profits, they aren't going to start hiring!!!!!! SHEESH! It's that simple. Wait out the recession and as soon as the corporate profits start returning, the hiring will once again commence. Want to speed up the process? Go out and buy something. ;-)
In case your not trolling an just uninformed...
H1B visa holders do NOT get to stay in the US after 6 years - they are kicked out. The point of the H1B was to address a short term need. Invariably, "short term" becomes forever in the US.
The problem is these hard working, educated (if some call them smelly, so be it) people are kicked out after six years. We IT people wouldnt care if they just upped the immigration caps.
But H1B holders dont get to stay. They have to apply for green cards, a multi year long process which the corporations use to hold them in bondage over. Thus they are not freely able to switch companies as easily as non H1B holders.
In a very limited fashion, they are slaves in that they dont have the freedoms greencard holders and permanent resident/immigrants legally have.
So they are exploited, somewhat to thier detriment, but very much to ours, by corporations.
These corporations STILL lobby for 200,000+ year NEW H1Bs at the same time they lay off people like the 29yo Engineering graduate above. Because they say engineering graduates are falling. Perhaps because 7 years of school isnt worth it for a six year career.
The H1B program is wrong. If there is a real shortage (which there isn't), grant permanent resident status to valid skill holders, not short term "maybe you can stay, maybe not" visas.
So you are irritated by anything you don't understand? How quaint.
Look, honey, a simpleton.
illegitimii non ingravare
Most of the posts i've seeen here are complaining about the problems. Sounding off can be good, but if that's all you do, then you are still left without support at the end of the day/month/year.
I am a registered professional engineer in the construction field. I've been laid off 6 times in the last 25 years. Every time the economy turns south, they stop building. The first time, I was hit hard. it took me over 6 months to find another spot. After that I learned better. Most jobs are filled by people who know someone in the hiring chain. reply to a job in the paper, and you are just one in a thousand resumes, all of whom claim to be the best expert on the planet. I've been on both sides of that. As a manager in an engineering firm (we designed sewage treatment plants) I had to decide which of the 30 or so who made it past the random psych tests might actually know their stuff. We interviewed, and i would up picking someone who I already knew a little bit about. A couple of years ago, I got laid off, and a friend told me to call this firm. I did, and met them. I was employed again before the ad even got published in the paper. It was a good fit too. Network. meet lots of people, don't be afraid to ask for help.
finally, have a little perspective. In the 60's, Aerospace was hot. Everybody was trying to be a rocket scientist. Then in the 70's it all went to pot. There were aircraft engineers and rocket scientists competing to work at Mcdonalds. after a few years it evened out. Later, it was radio and communications that were hot. Same story. Now,it's programming. Stick it out, even with lower pay, and you'll come through. But, don't let yourself go obsolete.
Also, remember, free lancing during a layoff looks good on your resume. It shows that you do not let grass grow under your feet. Managers like self starters. It also pays al little bit better than unemployment.
Good luck to you. I've been there, there are better things ahead. Not the boom again, but not a bust either.
"Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage" is one of the most thorough and compelling papers I've seen on the subject. It can be found at heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
So we should get paid more.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Hahaha! Great Irony.
Kick people out that will work for less money (or more hours for same money), *BUT* gimme gimme more scholarships. See an irony?
Frankly, the job situation for engineers SUCKS right now, sucks to the point where my employer feels free to cut its engineer's salaries without worrying about its engineers going elsewhere.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I wish we could hire more H1B's here. There is a severe lack a qualified people out there and it would be nice to hire some good people from Japan and Europe.
Of course, my field is aerospace and not CS...
I also wish it were easier to fire dead-wood. It's a shame when a project goes over-budget just because there are too many people along for the ride or because a project can't get any good workers because the other projects have gobbled them up.
It also sucks when you can't get on the project that you want because you do too good of a job and your current project won't let you go.
My vote is for more H1-B's across all fields. If you think that you can't get a job because of H1-B's the real problem is probably because you don't actually do much to make yourself useful and spend too much time browsing the web and maybe you ought to quit engineering and go to law school or business school.
I'm tired of whiney looters complaining that the foreigners should be sent back so they don't have to compete in a job market with people who actually do work!
These days it's not uncommon to have to undergo all kinds of invasive background checks, psychological profiling and polygraph testing and even sign away all your rights to privacy even as far as consenting to monitoring of all your communications and financial transactions in order to get a position with a defense contractor. I recently interviewed with one who wanted blood and dna samples so that they could search for any possible health problems I may or may not even have for years to come... oh yeah, and they expected me to pay for all these tests too, to the tune of nearly $4K if I made it to the finalists' roster, and still might not get the job. They were however offering a guaranteed 5 year employment contract to whoever got the job, but if you donn't stay with then for the full 5 years you have to reimburse them $24K for "training costs". No thanks.
You know, there's been an awful lot of self-congratulatory BS here on /. and elsewhere about how we so-called "software engineers" are the innovative brains behind the economic prosperity of the 90's and the great hope for the future. And now that the dot.coms have busted and larger businesses are tightening their belts, there's all this moaning about how we've been done wrong.
Oh please. The truth of the matter is that there ARE some really innovative, intelligent, interesting people out there using technology to build great new products. And then there are the rest of us who jumped on that bandwagon when we saw the going would be good, and who very probably weren't nearly as innovative, intelligent, or interesting as we'd like to think.
Folks, it's time to put your thinking caps on and start to solve some real world problems in ways that provide some real value. Get fired up about something! Go do something about it!
The web is a perfect example. WWW technology has really matured in the last decade, and the general population of the developed world has access to it. If anything, the web holds more promise now for doing good things than it did ten years ago due to better infrastructure. And yet, the number of companies making money on the web doing something other than selling books and CD's is relatively small. You -- yes, I'm talking you YOU -- could be the one to invent a great new service.
Go on now. Get out there and show us how smart you are.
Amen. After 12 years in the field, I don't see how we compare commercial software efforts to science. We give lip-service to solid practices, and put up with results that are barely acceptable.
Your monitor is staring at you.
Those who fail to understand the past are doomed to repeat it.
Nothing could be more true then the above statement. Has the person who wrote this article talked to anyone older then say 35? From talking to co-workers in who are in their 40's-50's I have realized that the market has gone in cycles like this for decades (of the 40+ year old engineers I have talked to all had been laid off at least once and all had done at least 2-3 differnt languages and system platforms, if not more), programming languages and engineering platforms come and go. If you want to stay in this field more then 5 years you need to evolve and learn. But the big point is this isn't something new, sure there are a few diehard IBM mainframe types, but they are the exception rather then the rule. As for the guy quoted as saying he spent more time in school then on the job needs to get back up and get another job, or learn another programming language. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and MOVE ON!!!!!
I'll be dead. I don't think I'll really care too much.
Reading reports of engineers and programmers being laid off is discouraging for all of us to hear, to be sure. But what role did the now-umemployed people play? I think the wisdom of my research professor is rather appropriate for this situation.
When I first started working for him, he told me that when he asked students what they wanted to do with their degrees, 95% of them said that they wanted to program. They didn't say they wanted to work with networking or image analysis. He had worked in the industry before, and he told me that employers are looking for people with specialized knowledge, but not necessarily in languages; they wanted knowledge that could be applied to languages.
So someone that has specialized knowledge would be very valuable in the industry, while someone with specialized knowledge AND good programming experience would be extremely valuable.
With some appliable knowledge under one's belt, perhaps the many threats to one's job will be, at the very least, reduced somewhat significantly.
memcpy( &yourFace , &myFoot, sizeof( myFoot ) );
Sorry. Sizeof(foot) > sizeof(face). Would you like several toes cut off first, or shall we let them overflow into the nearby machinery?
but from what I have seen, its the smooth talkers and those in position (i.e. Daddy is a big wig) that stay on while the actual experts leave. It is more of a fraternity atmosphere than a professional business. I've seen people who were never given a moments rest because they were always called in to fix the problems caused by others... they were the experts everyone relied and depended on. Yet they were the ones laid off and "ironically" what was left were the useless bags of shit that merely absorbed resources.
In Philadelphia there is an excellent school called Drexel University. You do a 5-year program to get your BS/MS and you perform 3 6-month internships at real companies. Im currently working on my last coop, and im currently working two other part time jobs where i work as a consultant for ecommerce/web development projects. My pay is excellent for a college junior, and im sure it will be more than that when i graduate in a year.
Philadelphia isnt the engineering/IT capital of the world, but a college kid with 3 IT jobs will tell you that the article may not be completely accurate.
In the CS business they have this weird fetish for youth.
That's because they know they can work the holy crap out of you for long hours with little pay and the nebulous promise of "advancement" that never ever fully materializes, and young folks right out of school are either gullible or desparate enough to buy this tripe hook, line and sinker.
in the aerospace field.
I work in a place where the big crisis is that all of our old engineers are close to retirement or already working after retirement age. When these old guys go, the rest of us are going to be royally screwed because they can solve a problem with a casual glance that would take us less experienced engineers weeks or months.
I think the majority of you have a perception of wages and unemployment which is not in tune with how the economy is and how economists see things - how yous say it works is not how it works, and almost all of the economist specialists who know how these things work will agree
First off regarding not being employed - in a free capitalist market, not being employed is ALWAYS the choice of the employed person. 100% of IT workers right now can be employed if we want to. The thing is, many do not want to work for any wage. The economic reality is, if everyone not working right now wanted an IT job for minimum wage, they could get one almost instantly. Of course, it would be almost impossible to live on a part-time minimum wage, but every unemployed IT person can have a job. I keep hearing that unemployed IT people who according to the posters have poor/medium skills get fired and they can't get employed now. Well, they can get employed, they just choose not to, often for rational reasons (eg. can't live on part-time minumum wage).
This is economics 101...everyone can get a job, it just might literally be not enough to live on, like minium wage...so once we have that settles we have employed people and people desiring not to work the offered wage. These people actually help keep the offered wage high, supply and demand shows if they all decided to work industry wages would fall. So the problem is not with employment, unemployment and so forth it is all about wages. Even someone virtually broke would pay people a penny a week to do their chores for them. The problem is not employment it is wages
That said, industry wages went down for the first time in a decade recently. A lot of people here nod in approval like this "should" happen, but they ignore the contributing factors like the ITAA's pushing of H1-B visa cap raises, FLSA, section 1706 etc. I wonder how low they think wages "should" fall before they start deciding to do something about it, by which point it will probably be too late, since the ITAA was well-organized already on this years ago.
Stop talking this economic crap like you know what you're talking about! Pick up an economics book and read. People are unemployed because they choose not to except the wages offered. This is economics 101. You people have misperceptions about how economics works and are making poor economic decisions because of it and are spreading your incorrect economic ideas to others. If we had more people joining the fledgling IT organizations which put out correct economic analysis, this wouldn't be happening.
- Most major colleges use English as their medium of instruction. So the students don't just study the English language, they also study their economics, science, and history in English.
- Most businesses (not just the IT industry) use English as the medium of communication. My dad worked for years in a cement company, and every last memo he ever wrote was in English.
- With all the languages that exist (most states have their own), English is really the only common thread. Most college grads are also comfortable with Hindi, but Hindi is less commonly spoken in the South. As an aside, it is not unusual to witness a conversation where one person is speaking Hindi and the other English without either even realizing it.
Just about the only "language" an American might usefully learn to communicate with Indian colleagues would be British English; that way you won't get shocked when we ask you for a rubber...(For those not in the know, a rubber is an eraser in India, but a condom in the States.)
Back when I started working for The Phone Company, we had real offices. No longer....
SHIT MAKES ENGINEERS!
One big nation isn't really the solution.
Just look at America itself. We are "one nation", but we are "seperate states". That is what a world nation would become. One big "governing body" with continent based "sub governing bodies".
How is that different from what we have right now? There would still be border disputes. There would still be trade wars and heavy competition.
Nothing would change by shifting borders.
The thing is, we are talking about a world economy here, not just America's. America is making use of off short workers which results in their own workers seeking different employment. At the same time, American companies feel they are driven to this need to use off-shore workers because the competition is steep and any advantage would help their business stay afloat or move forward.
We as consumers demand lower prices for everything and we demand more for our money.
In short, we create our own spiral of economic decline. We are stuck in a catch-22.
To improve, people must be willing to buy more expensive items and pay more for less.
Companies must be willing to shoulder the costs and overhead and hire locals as opposed to off-shore workers.
All levels need to be addressed. Simply cutting corners at one level or asking people pay more without all sides doing their parts only speeds up the spiral.
It is hard to do and with the way businesses are leaning these days, it will be a long few years, if not decades, before we're "really" out of it.
Winged Power Photography
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
That about covers it.
Yeah... must be the rich people! Yeah... let's blame the rich people!
T
P.S. Without the "lazy parasite owners", the "lazy piece of shit can't-survive-in-a-free-market-because-I-suck union worker" wouldn't have a job
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I feel comfortable learning new things. I LIKE learning new things
I like learning new things IF they provide benefits. However, much of the churn in "new things" is purely fad. Rather than, "gee, this will greatly simplify the coding process", now it is, "Oh great, what did those PHB's sucker us into *this* time."
First off what kind of engineer are you referring to? It may be true that software engineers lose value as time goes on, but most other engineers gain value over time. Sure, new tools come along and you have to stay current. And some engineers do a bad job of this. But in general, engineers straight out of college know almost nothing. That's right, nothing. They can calculate but haven't worked on any real problems. They're smart and talented but their value can go almost nowhere but up.
How do I know this? I am an engineer with a degree from one of the best universities in the US. Your typical engineer coming out of school you doesn't know dick about how engineering is done in the "Real World". Over 75% of the engineers I meet out of school don't know squat about statistics, CAD/CAM, machining, finance, accounting, FEA, DOE, quality, testing, manufacturing or programming. Not to mention the soft skills like working in groups and managing projects. These are skills you generally get a tiny exposure to in college and then actually learn on the job.
This is not to slam these very same engineers. They're smart people and they pick things up quick enough. But until they've done it in the real world, they aren't very valuable. This hiring manager has it completely backwards. In general engineers with lots of experience are much more valuable.
The more I see people leaving the industry, the better it will be for those of us that stay. Stay competent; stay *at least* up-to-date with your knowledge; and stay *hungry* for whatever opportunities that come down the pike. Just step around the carnage and bodies on your way to your next interview, instead of letting them scare you away.
No offense to the H1-Bs that come to this country seeking better wages, but there's more to engineering than being able to operate validation software...
No offense to you, but there's more to architecting software than running around in a room, playing with lego, and hitting yourself over the head with a skillet.
But, of course, being American you wouldn't know that because your education system absolutely sucks. A 4 year degree in the US gets you the equivalent of 2 years study in any European country.
Oh, sorry, you didn't mean to start a fight? Right. Well, get off your stupid fat bigoted ass and learn a little about the world around you. Or happily accept that you're a bigot. Pick one. Live it. Love it.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
People keep talking about globalization purely in the context of jobs leaving and international competition effecting them. It also presents many new opportunities.
Another aspect of globalization that nobody seems to be mentioning is how valuable langauge and inter-cultural competency skills are now. Companies need Americans who can work internationally. I know people are being highered more on the basis of their bilingualism than their moderate technical/business skills.
Learn Chinese. Learn Spanish. Be willing to go work overseas.
"In a typical business, those who understand the technology don't control it, and those who control the technology don't understand it."
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I started working as a programmer 35 years ago. I am still working as a programmer and software architect, and making good money, but I do worry about the threat of the export of programming jobs.
I have been a manager, director and CTO (of a 2000 person company), but I prefer technology and have been fortunate enough to do it.
One of the problems with engineering careers (including the part of software work that can truly be called engineering) is that it is done by teams. That means that individuals are too often treated as replaceable assets. This is not conducive to job security!
Another problem is that the field of software development has people ranging from tinkerers to highly schooled professionals, and all in between (in several dimensions). Thus any programmer can call himself a professional or a computer scientist, when in fact many are neither. This is very confusing to non-technical people and employers.
Simple coding from specifications is not engineering. It is a craft similar to carpentry.
Most software development is not computer science, and computer science is not even science. The field is split between mathematics and engineering, which is also confusing.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Undertaking is labor-intensive. Qualifies for H-1B (legal) or could go the underground illegal route.
I agree completely.
:-)
I just wanted to add a little advice to those who are encouraged to pursue engineering degrees: you will be very much more employable with a B.S. if your degree is electrical or mechanical (vs. computer, industrial, aerospace, civil, general, or nuclear. I can't speak for chemical, it's pretty different.) You can study anything you want, you can still compete for the jobs you want (and get them!), just don't limit yourself unneccesarily.
Oh yeah, you need to study hard, too
I know an awful lot of new lawyers stuggling at $40K-$50K with large student loans. If you arent from a name school, you may not get a lush partner track.
American productivity skyrocketed in the past thirty years. What happened to US real wages? Less than they were thirty years ago. Why should people work harder if there is no financial incentive to do so - when every penny of every dollar of wealth created by extra hard work goes into someone elses pocket? There is no reason, and anyone who works for free is a sucker.
Maybe when one of the lazy parasite heirs, who is taking profit from the workers while doing nothing, whom has demanded increased productivity which has happened to 0% benefit of anyone but themselves, gets up and works a day in their life will I listen to their complaints about not working fast enough. Until that day, they can go fuck themselves, or their little toadie sycophants who defend them due to their natural submissive lackey nature.
Many new doctors are stuck working for HMOs with their ardorous paper trails and cost cutting. With large student loans and lack of capital to go indpendent they are stuck as employees.
And what is the second most popular H-1B industry after IT? You guessed right- medicine- interns, nurses, etc. The floodgates are opening!
One way for job security is to write everything in assembly. That way no one is going to blame you for writing slow code.
;)
Oh yea, and make it self-modifying code
I think the details of scientific studies comparing programmer job life spans to that of professional atheletes should be looked into.
Several posts already posted touch on the topic, but it basically comes down to this: You will lose your job eventually. Perhaps not now. Perhaps you already have. Perhaps you will years from now. But you will. And quite likely, soon.
And what happens? Is your career over when you lose your job? Do you suddenly find yourself unable to do what you've been training and gearing up to do all these years? What you HAVE been doing all these years?
Most likely not. Unless you've had a lobotomy, been drugging up, or had a recent accident depriving you of long/short term memory.
Seriously, losing one job is not the end of the career. The two are seperate entities.
Say you were coding one day and they say "time to go. We're closing shop". What's your first response? To curl up into the corner and die? Hell no!
You first response as a professional is to start typing up that resume, getting it to the head hunters or businesses, and at the same time, finding some temp work to do on the side... or collect unemployment.
The jobs are out there. Either as a vacancy or through your own will to create a job for yourself.
No openings at companies? What about freelancing? What about self-employment? What about different types of companies offering similar kinds of jobs?
It is ridiculous to think that just because we're in hard times that people are going to suddenly lose their skills and their career will wither up and die.
No. What normally happens is that people tighten their belts. They assess what they have and work from there. Be it to acquire more skills to get a job or to adjust for slightly different jobs. But that core of who you are and what your career is doesn't change because of losing one job.
With professional atheletes, it's a messed up knee or spine. With programmers and tech related careers, its your brain.
So unless you've recently suffered massive brain trauma, it is unlikely that your career is over.
Winged Power Photography
As a senior electrical & computer engineering student, this entire topic has me depressed and scared to death.
Is there any sort of consolation people that are currently in the industry can give people like me?
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
But not all of those are unions. The AMA and ABA are, like you said, professional organizations. Doctors get laid off (ask my friend's father), lawyers get laid off (ask ex-lawyers from many tech law firms). The MLBPA and NHLPA, of course, are essentially unions -- they all go on strike every once and a while to get more pay, better benefits. (Thus, please don't call them "professional" organizations -- there's something about tha bastardliness of going on strike for more millions of dollars that doesn't sound "professional.") But doctors and lawyers cannot go on strike. No one negotiates for their higher pay or better benefits.
So, which is it? The union or the professional organization?
I, for one, like it when the worker actually has to be better than everyone else, has to sell himself a little more, try harder. It's called "getting ahead". I don't seem to have any problem doing it and I came from nothing (no money, no inheritance, just hard work)
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
As far as I can tell, that crunch is now. I graduated with a BS in CS in May, and haven't had any luck at all nailing down a programming or an IT job full time. Lots of part time filler.
I could merely be biased from my own lack of success, but I know of at least two others who graduated at the same time from the same university as I (Maryland) in the same boat.
And this is in a reasonably active tech sector, greater DC. The time is now. I agree with the rest of your post, except to note the fact that programming for joy doesn't pay the bills.
Look ma, I'm a
If they get more, we lose some. I am sorry, but I want to keep what little I have. Tough for them, good for us. Life is cold.....
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Dode, you're talking about a country with a President that let's corporations open a PO Box in the Bahamas and then says they don't have to pay taxes in America anymore. Guess who is left with the tax bill.
And in that environment you're surprised about how the corporations are behaving?
I see a lot of complaints about the skills of 'real innovators' vs either H1B's or overseas labour but it comes down to cost. A bean counter sees a cost for running a programming department. A bean counter sees the cost of running the project overseas. Sure there will be wrinkles at first, but if it cuts costs 20%. Hell, it reduces a percentage of the company to an operation cost as opposed to headcount.
It's our jobs being shipped overseas this time. It's not an autoworker in Detroit out of work because of increased foreign competition, a shoemaker, etc etc etc.
What a nasty vicious circle. More companies do it to save money, other companies have to follow simply to be competitive.
Yes! That is the point. The United States was formed according to its constitution for the general welfare of its citizens. Citizens of the United States are entitled to (deserve) the protections that our government should be granting to its citizenry. This ought to include some level of protection of our economic base in order to maintain our national prosperity.
Corporations who benefit from the special privileges granted them by American law ought to be held accountable for actions that are distructive to the American economy. We have a right to expect some level of corporate responsiblity that extends beyond merely maximizing shareholder value.
The American middle class has been losing ground gradually due to competition with the world economy for the American consumer market over the last several decades. The typical American family has kept pace only because families are now two-income rather than one income as they were 40 years ago. But they will not be able to keep up the pace much longer. If corporate American destroys the legacy of Roosevelt and turns the American middle class into just another exploited worker pool as is the case in much of the rest of the world (such as Bangalore for example), then not only America, but the entire world is in for hard economic times. It may not be world wide depression, but it could be a completely unnecessary stagnation with the whole world economy looking much like Japan's, and result in a dimished standard of living for everyone. We can do better and America ought to lead the way.
Your claim that there is no unemployment problem, only a problem of potential employees choosing not to accept a low-enough wage to become employed. This might possibly be true in a pure market setting, but we are not dealing with such a pure situation. There are a multitude of additional factors on both sides of the potential employment agreement.
Let me mention but a couple of these factors.
A potential employer considers far more than the cost of the potential employee when making a hiring decision. Does the employer have more work than the current staff can complete? Would the additional work that more staff would complete increase revenues, in other words pay for themselves. There are plenty of companies where the answers to these questions are no, and thus there is no opportunity at any price.
Potential employers when considering a candidate also pass judgement on whether that potential employee will be a happy contributing member of the company. Frequently an extremely qualified candidate willing to take a major pay cut will loose out to the less qualified candidate. The issue here is that it is assumed that the more experienced candidate is far too qualified to truly be content with the position, thus even though they may indicate they are willing to take on that position at the offered (extremely low) pay rate, the potential employer will choose the less qualified candidate on the assumption that that individual will be happier and thus a better contributor.
The are plenty of other considerations that come into play in a potential hiring situation. These, though, illustrate that a great engineer with excellent credentials willing to work for very low pay may still be unable to secure a job.
Yes, he's an American. And as a result, if he were to try to do the same job for less than his Indian counterpart, he would be unable to pay his rent. Hell, he'd probably be unable to pay for his car, much less his apartment.
The cost of living in the U.S. is much higher than it is in India. That's why his Indian counterpart can get away with being paid so much less. It has nothing to do with what the guy in the U.S. is unwilling to do and everything to do with what he's unable to do.
There is a huge injustice in all this: companies are able to shop around and find the cheapest source of labor worldwide, but the labor is not allowed to move in response to the shifting demand. So the person you're responding to can't move to India to take advantage of the greater demand for talent there. Despite his years of training and experience, he can't offer his services competitively because immigration laws of other countries prevent him from doing so, just as immigration laws in the U.S. prevent many from attempting to satisfy the demand for labor in the U.S. (not that there's much of that right now).
For the "global economy" to truly work, people must be able to move as easily as the demand for labor does.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
For many years working for US Defense Dept. was a dicey career choice but now we look like friggin' geniuses.
"This is the USA. Start your own business if you don't like your current position. It's called grabbing your sack and doing something for yourself rather than having someone hand it to you." This sounds word-for-word like the kind of spiel Amway gives at Baptist churches. Maybe you should post "Work at home, be your own boss!" flyers on lampposts. "Otherwise, move to a Socialist country." Well actually, the US has been unable to train engineers, which is why people educated in countries with socialist education systems (China, India) have been moving here en masse to do US IT work. "I, for one, like it when the worker actually has to be better than everyone else, has to sell himself a little more, try harder. It's called 'getting ahead'. I don't seem to have any problem doing it and I came from nothing (no money, no inheritance, just hard work)" You like when a worker has to be better than every other worker? So every worker has to be better than every other worker? This sounds paradoxical, maybe you see the world like a Escher sketch where everyone sits in the so-called high seat. As far as trying harder, productivity skyrocketed in the US over the past three decades, all of the extra wealth went not to the workers creating the wealth, but to the owners. I am speaking of the profession as a whole, and you seem only focused on yourself. Well fine, but most people don't want to hear you speak about yourself, since they don't care.
nt
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
There are people posting here who consider themselves programmers, but who haven't had the word 'programmer' in their job titles 'for years' (in their own words). So, just because you aren't called 'programmer' doesn't mean you aren't just that. A true statement. Now, as a corollary to that, I would have to say that putting the word 'engineer' in your title doesn't make you an engineer in the 'old school' sense if you are merely a programmer writing application programs, maintaining servers, doing NP-hard math calculations, etc. All you're doing is computer 'science' or, more trendily, IT. To me, engineering means you design new (touchable) technology, do actual physical experiments, or write programs that model physical systems (on that last one, you have to do the actual physics, not just the memory management). Granted, my definition blurs between traditional engineering and hard science, but those two are in a common league very separate from the computer geek professions. Now, I'm not undermining the importance of what most of you guys and gals do, but I read Slashdot all the time and I get very tired of the discussions on 'engineering' having their scope limited to computer science and IT professionals (even worse, I hate the credulous embrace of 'New Scientist' articles). But what can I expect? That's what most of you do, and everyone's world tends to revolve around what they do. As for the slashdotter who posted about starting salaries and said that PhD's didn't get you more money, here's a tip. You must not be talking about the same 'engineering' I am, because an MS in aerospace, nuclear engineering, or experimental physics will only start you around 50 grand or so at a national lab, but a PhD in those things (if you get with the right lab) will start you at around 90 grand. Of course, those jobs may involve code writing, but also they include a lot of physics and mechanical intuition that IT, computer science, or pure math training won't get you. That's my rant.
In my case, I get some extra work because I
know something about health care data. I'm
also trying to get more familiar with MPEG
details for possible work in the world of
Digital TV.
It's great to have generalized skills with C++,
or Linux, or whatever. It is more useful to
be able to apply them to more specific
industries; especially one like health care
that is not going away any time soon.
I read a study that like 3% of this country's
GDP goes to health care data management (aka
the massive bureaucracies of our insurance
industry).
....so that we do not have to worry about it...but instead they are just facilitating the job losses in order to reap bribes, err....campaign contributions from plutocrats and CEO's etc. I say we try a few for treason (in a recognized court of law), and then, if found guilty, hang 'em by the neck on the Washington mall. What say ye?
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
At least you got to work 6 years. You have some experience and a good degree. As such, you have a good chance at further employment.
Nortel is or was a big company. Alot of folks hoped things would be better for Nortel. Somehow it just didn't work out that way.
I hope Nortel hangs in there. As a company, they are suffering from the same downturn as we all in the tech industry are.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Awwwwww, poor economy thieves. they're exploited? fuck them. If they want to take away our money and jobs, they can handle being treated like dog shit. If I were in management I'd be doing it to them with a huge fucking grin on my face.
Remember how they sold us NAFTA? That for every low-paying job that went overseas the economy would create a well-paying job to replace it?
I always thought that jobs in the IT industry *were* those well-paying jobs.
But look at what they did with the H-1B. I think it's funny that the name sounds so much like what you'd name a bomber aircraft, because that's exactly what it did to the hi-tech job market here in America.
Bastards!
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Personally, I didn't enter the high-tech field because I wanted to. I did it because that was who I am. I wouldn't have been happy (relatively) if I had forced myself into another profession.
Wherever you go, there I am...
I'm sorry, but I have never seen a pro football player with a 25-year career on the field.
However, in my profession, 25 years seems to be normal. At least that's what I and many of my co-workers celebrated this year; 25 years as a professional computer programmer.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
That was great. :)
Ryan Patrick Harris (maxter)
http://maxtersbox.net University of Michigan
I'm a freelance engineer so I tend to be unemployed all of the time (everytime I finish a project). As such, I don't tend to be too sympathetic to unemployment sob stories.
Most companies are just starving for good talent. They have complex systems that they don't understand and business problems that must be solved. It is very difficult to find good people. If you can help then they are all over you.
There is all this opportunity out there but you have to find it or it has to find you. You have to network. Most technical types don't like this but you have to spend time developing the network and keeping in touch with people. By keeping in touch with people, they will think of you when they need problems solved. You also get a good idea of what people need and you can try to tailor your talents to the market's needs.
Stay flexible and be willing to take on things outside of your core abilities. You have to get in over your head every once in a while to learn. The more you do, the more you can do. It is a self perpetuating cycle.
If you are a young engineer or are in school, don't despair. Its not all doom and gloom out there. There will always be opportunity out there. You just have to work to find it.
If american industry keeps shipping Jobs to foreign countires, there will be no rich Americans to pay for those products. Easy-peasy. They are sacrificing the future of our country for the momentary gain. Good for India, bad for us.
Of course, it's all us Americans who are at fault for organizing Unions and the like and elevating the plight of the worker. If you all can get ahead by being exploited, more(less?) power to ya.
~Hammy
I've been reading through a lot of the comments and there has been a lot of malice toward new college graduates in engineering. The argument is that we are taking away jobs from the more experienced because we accept lower pay, have no social lives, and are exploited easier.
Why is this? What would you rather us do?
Obviously, we can't all leave the field or simply change our major if we are still in college (this is my case)
We don't want to take your job. In fact, we would rather learn the ways of our new professions from your vast experience. But what are we to do in order to end this cycle? Please, give us some suggestions and advice, because we are simply doing what seems logical. We get our degrees, search for a job (and not for a huge salary, mind you, for we do not expect a huge salary for our inexperience), and progress in our field.
If you may, please give us advice. Us new college graduates are simply doing what seems most logical to us. We are graduating from college and going out into the real world for the first time. Everyday we hear news about how bad our economy is, we hear our chosen profession does not have job security any more, our president is saying we are going to war. Before, we had a long term idea of what the next ten years of our life would be after graduation and beyond, but that is not so anymore.
Again, I reiterate, what should you have us do? We are all in this together, young and old. We do not want to take your job away and we do not want to be laid off as we age either. So please, give some advice!
The export of jobs effects the supply and demand of employees. As employers find more people overseas, the demand (and salaries) for American employees drops. I can assure you, the export of jobs has most certainly effected your bottom line.
Is a CS-grad really just a programmer?
I don't think so. If you do have a diploma, you did not get it just for programming, you got it for critical thinking and developing new technologies, not implementing other peoples ideas.
When I am finished with University, I will certainly not be programming, I will be inventing! (hopefully) If I wanted to program I could do so right now.
What is your opinion on this?
Of course, during that time I've known about five extremely talented programmers that are still doing it (most of the 10-15 other good ones now manage programmers, departments, etc.), and about 100 degreed CS pukes who could write code, but not think their way out of a paper bag where data and business processes are concerned that lasted maybe a year and a half.
And about a hundred more that were good but gave it up because of stupid management and or burnout.
So seven years seems about right.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I wouldn't be surprised if
a) this guy's dad is a wealthy business owner
b) this guy is 21 years old
c) he is from a top-10 city-state for per capita income
he talks just like someone that's never seen reality.
Who says you could create a valid test for admins?
As if.
Yeah, let's all go get MCSE's. That'll prove something.
Pshaw!
effect != affect
loose != lose
alot != a lot
Please, please, please proofread. Don't make me resort to hyperbole or cliche.
After getting quite a bit of well deserved criticism, including one guy who offered ITAA a $1000 bounty to find his unemployed programmer buddy a job, they released an update scaling back their optimistic outlook. They still spin the industry as an under-staffed career option among other rosy interpretations. The problem is, these reports are relied on by all sorts of people who have a very real effect on my career opportunities:
I agree. Ever notice on some cop shows how they pair up a younger person with someone older? I think the engineering profession would benefit a great deal by doing something similar.
I've been programming for the most part since 1976, and I really enjoy working with younger people. Often I've been the trainer, but I've also learned plenty from the "youngsters!"
See my blog at tomwhartung.com for my resu
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How about an Engineer with a few government clearances? Does anyone think this makes the job market easier? Less likely to be layed off?
Your "solution" seems to be to kick poor people back into poverty, shut the protectionist gates behind you, and thumb your nose at them like some latter-day Scrooge. My solution is to build a socialist society where workers on one area of the earth's surface do not need to be divided against workers on another area of the earth's surface due to the inefficiencies and irrationalities of capitalism. There is plenty of food, clothing and shelter to go around.
Female Prison Rape in NY
i used to be a computer geek by trade, now i sell insurance. go figure.
Also, I'm an anglo male. Woo hoo! We get everything, you smelly wog!
If you're a lawyer or doctor, you can always say you're "in private practice", just as technical people can say they're "consultants", or journalists can say they're "freelancing". Sometimes that really means you _are_ in private practice, while sometimes it's a more cheerful-sounding term for unemployed. On the other hand, if they're not getting paid work, lawyers can be doing pro-bono work, and computer programmers can be working on open source. US medical malpractice laws make it much tougher for doctors to do volunteer work if they're not also doing paid work, though perhaps there are government clinic opportunities.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
> Awwwwww, poor economy thieves. they're
> exploited? fuck them. If they want to take away
> our money and jobs, they can handle being
> treated like dog shit.
you don't get it, do you?
the whole point of having special short-term work visas that are tied to ONE employer is *precisely* so that they can't say "No" to crap wages and lousy working conditions...they say "Yes" or they get sacked and deported.
the simple, angry response is to say "Fine, these fuckers deserve it"....but that's stupid. it's cutting your nose off to spite your face because by introducing a pool of labour which can't afford to say No, management are undermining YOUR ability to say No, too. i.e. divide and conquer is the name of the game.
the fix is NOT to treat these workers like dog-shit, but to require that *all* workers have access to good wages and good conditions so that YOU don't have to compete with people who have no choice but to accept being treated like dog-shit. compete against that and YOU will have no choice either.
this is why unions were first formed over a century ago. those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
you don't have good wages & conditions now because management are benevolent. you have them because workers formed unions and fought hard & long for the things you take for granted now - <40 hour working week, safety in the workplace, no child labour, termination pay, holiday pay, sick pay, freedom from unfair dismissal, etc etc etc etc etc. none of these things were granted as a gift, they were won with hard (and sometimes violent) struggle.
What fucking career?
Where you want to be for now is on a mature or maturing project with positive & preferably increasing cash flow -- not last decade's technology but last year's. Maintain the code, fix the bugs, add features, help customers, support sales & marketing and you'll still have a job when times get better and then you can make use of your new skills.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Between people who *are* programmers and people who *heard* that programming was a good way to make money.
Personally, I'm with you. My career path was laid down the moment I started breaking into the math lab in high school so I could spend more time with the Wang 720b programmable calculator...
It had a card reader! I mean, sure we had to *punch* the cards with a pencil, but that was what history class was for!
Clear, Dark Skies
You should write HTML by hand. If you don't you're a fucknut. All HTML should be written by hand, since it's the only way to know what the hell is going on.
During the last ice age Asians walked from Siberia to North America. During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries millions left Europe without much more than the shirt on their back and came to the US.
Labor has always been mobile among the motivated.
Chemistry is changing as a career too. It used to be a similar situation with chemists: get your degree, get into a good company, makes lots of dough, good job security, cruise into retirement. But nowadays, companies want Bachelor degrees for management and hire technicians with 2 year associate degrees for doing the bench chemisty. Have a Masters or Ph.D.? Well, you just priced yourself right out of a job. If you're going to get a graduate degree in a technicial field, you have to graduate from the best schools to MAKE A LOT of money. Why? The big companies send their recruiters to the big schools. Why? These schools have stict enrollment requirements. Why? The schools get better students and the companies get better workers. Also, if your graduate advisor has a good program in engineering or science, he's likely to have a boat load in federal grants, and patents, and connections to big industry.
If you are truely passionate about what you do, income can be relatively unimportant. I've noticed that many companies want people with a variety of experience, doing a little of this and a little of that, so that they can shift you around to different job classifications as market conditions dictate, or even, terminate you if necessary.
If you want to remain in Engineering or Science with a masters degree, find a small company who needs a talented person who can grow with the company, just don't expect that you'll be driving a Volvo, BMW, or Audi sedan, settle for a Saturn instead.
Another note, there are no more stable professional jobs where you start a job and retire 30 years later, unless you work a union job ON THE LINE for an automaker. Job security does not exist anymore, for anyone.
Think about starting your own company as an engineering consultant, or selling some kind of product or service.
I'm nearing completion of a CS degree from KSU. Its a fairly respected school, although not nessecarily for CS. I like it here, and we certainly try to teach a broad spectrum of information. Accreditation requires that we teach many things and offer a variety of graduate level courses to students. Things like algorithm design, image rendering, numerical computing, compiler design, operating systems, etc.
I'd say so far the most educational class with respect to software engineering has been Operating Systems. The discussion of the hows and whys of various computer systems really sheds light on how the software works under the box. Caching and locality will be forever imblazened in my mind, if I was to learn a single thing from it. Not the class in "writing UML specifications and automating menial tasks via more menial tasks."
I think part of the problem of trying to teach GUI design and user interfaces and data modelling (I'm assuming this is more akin to describing the domain of the data rather than data structures) is that its not nailed down with any certainty. The GOF Patterns decribe things that are fairly simple in non OO languages. I'm thinking especially of OCaml (a language we used to write interpreters and a rudimentary compiler) here. Writing a decorator is as easy as writing the decorating function and using List.map . A lot of technologoy and speculation has arisen over the design and engineering of software, and it changes so quickly that its really hard to nail down the moving target for any textbook analysis. Sure you could make The Mythical Manmonth and Programming with Agile Practices but that doesn't make them right.
Another thing to consider is that a doctor spends about 8 years in school just to get a medical degree. What you've described sounds like a Dr. in Software Engineering, possibly Software Engineering management. As a newly graduated MD, there is The Way(tm) to do open heart bypass surgery. If you've done it once you can do it again. Additionally, even MDs specialize. A surgeon is not the same as a pediatric specialist or an endocrinologist. Thats not something you just "pick up" on the job. I hope.
Software is its own beast dissimilar in ways from all other things. Its quite possible for the specification to be the implementation. That in itself is fairly unique.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Wait... tears brimming in my eyes, memories of John Lennon's "Imagine," the smell of incense... and then.... BAM! Reality strikes. Human nature in its current state precludes your solution.
In the meantime, we need to keep our own engineers working, or else they move from cutting edge, to bleeding edge, to scabbing edge, to old scars that nobody wants anymore... Not a great way to reward all of that hard work, IMHO...
Learn the fricking name of the place. It's McDonald's.
Geez. If you are going to mispronounce the name of the restaurant as Mac instead of Mic, at least learn how it's spelled.
Either that, or just spell it McD's.
"MacDonald's". Sheesh. Lazyspeak. I hate that shit.
I don't think anyone dominates the computer science field. The most visible spokespeople are mostly young to middle age, Linus, Tim Berners-Lee. Oh yes and quite a few of them are imigrants. So yes lets put Linus on the first boat home, then all the descendants of imigrants and before too long all that will be left will be a bunch of native americans and some empty casinos.
So before folk get too shirty about how H1B visa holders are taking their jobs think on this. Three years ago companies like mine simply could not find US citizens to hire with the skills we needed. The choice was to move the engineering operations overseas or bring workers to the US.
I am not that keen on outsourcing code development, and I have heard enough horror stories of outsourcing to ultra low wage countries to know it is not a panacea. But if I can't bring the workers I need to the US there are plenty of English speaking developed countries to choose from.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The "lazy-piece-of-shit-can't-survive-in-a-free-market -because-I-suck-union-worker" has a job because he fulfills a consumer demand. "lazy-parasite-owners" on the otherhand, inflate their heads, blow their own horns and otherwise pretend that they are nescessary while looking down on the people that actually do work.
Consumers pay "lazy-parasite-owners" for products and services instead of the workers because the "lazy-parasite-owners' have managed to insert themselves between the workers and the consumer. Period.
This will change over time though.
As jobs move to india, the economy will rise there, causing prices to come more into line with the US prices, and then salaries there will be forced to rise there too.
At that point, labor will have to either find a new 3rd world country to exploit for cheap labor, or move back. If salaries are the same between countries, it's more cost effective to keep the job in the home country. (It's also a lot more effective because a long distance programming job, even without a language translation, is very difficult.)
I really feel for my fellow Electrical and Computer Engineers.
One of my professors in college advised me, some 5+ years ago, to go into power systems engineering. Although I was very reluctant to do something that was thought of as "low-tech" by fellow engineers, I took his advice. Since Graduation (almost 3 years ago) I am now one of the fortunate souls that is actually GOING somewhere.
Almost 60% of the engineers in the Power Industry (Utilities mainly) are going to retire in the next 5-7 years - maybe sooner if there are "early-out" packages given.
The good news is that the Power Utility Industry is not "low-tech." As a matter of fact our industry is going through a very "high-tech" growth period and my co-workers and myself are always having to attend seminars on new devices and systems.
I frequently email my professor a big "THANKS" because without his advice, I might be struggling too!
JB
Seven years is twice that of other professions like nursing. The average male nurse lasts three years while the average female nurse makes it to 4.5 years.
Well we're living here in Allentown.
And they're shutting all the networks down.
Out in San Jose they're killing time.
Filling out forms.
Standing in line.
Well our fathers dodged the Vietnam War.
Spent their weekends selling door to door.
Met our mothers at a bad disco.
Asked them to dance.
Grooved with them slow.
And we're living here in Allentown.
But the slackishness was handed down.
And it's getting very hard to stay.
Well we're waiting here in Allentown.
For the Pennsylvania we never found.
For the promises our CEOs gave.
If we worked hard.
If we behaved.
So the MS certifications hang on the wall.
But they never really helped us at all.
No they never taught us what was real.
Java and Perl.
Linux and TCL.
And we're waiting here in Allentown.
But they've given all the funding to clowns.
And the stinking landlords crawled away.
Every techie has a pretty good shot.
To get at least as far as Marc Andreeson got.
But something happened on the way to that place.
They hired a bunch of Indians in our place.
Well I'm living here in Allentown..
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting very hard to stay
And we're living here in Allentown
Lots of government workers are negatively productive for the economy - their main jobs are interfering with business, regulating things that shouldn't be regulated (like who can be a barber or what color you can paint your house, as opposed to what you can pour in the river), or their jobs are collecting taxes from businesses, which is an economically bad decision if you've got progressive income taxes, because you're forcing businesses to make decisions that are driven by tax policy, not market needs, and forcing them to hire huge numbers of people to handle their tax issues (I've seen estimates that businesses spend about 40% as much keeping track of taxable activities as the US Federal government collects in business taxes.)
Then there's the serious opportunity cost of having otherwise-productive people working for the government - every engineer who's designing military aircraft isn't designing civilian aircraft or more efficient automobiles (which if you want to be nationalistic about it, helps your country's automobile industry and helps cut the need for imported oil, and therefore the need for military aircraft), and isn't designing better refrigerators or wall-sized televisions or solar energy generators or cleaner oil refineries or computer keyboards that don't cause carpal tunnel problems. Even things that look productive, like medical research, are often making up for the damaged caused by other government activities, like the FDA regulations that bring the cost of a new drug in the US to over half a billion dollars, which restricts the development of less profitable drugs, makes medical marketers more important than medical researchers, and raises everybody's cost of health care significantly.
Some government activities are acceptably non-productive - people who do disaster response training and hanging out when there aren't disasters, legitimate national defense requires a lot of training to look intimidating so people don't invade you (but tempts the military to invade other people), legitimate police work involves a lot of cruising around looking visible and a lot of time finding people who did bad things to other people.
Then there are the evil folks in government - the people who run the Drug War in all its aspects, the people who develop nuclear and chemical and biological weapons and their delivery systems, the people who extend militarism around the world, whether it's US or Pan-Arab or Ex-Soviet or Chinese, the people who run secret police departments in their countries, the people who provide military and financial aid to foreign dictators or to governments with death squads. The last time the US military protected the actual US states against foreign invaders in any major action was the War of 1812 - Pearl Harbor was in a colony we'd conquered for some big agribusinesses, the Confederate invasions of Pennsylvania were in response to the US attempt to reconquer the Confederacy, and Pancho Villa was arguably not a major war (though I'll let you win that argument if you want to push it.) All of the US invasions of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines were colonialism, and while US support for England in World War II may have been justified, World War I was definitely not.
I'm not blameless here - I used to work in the military-industrial complex with the government as my main customer. I didn't do weapons systems, air traffic control was theoretically produtive (we didn't win many of those projects, and I've ranted elsewhere about the FAA's incompetence at managing projects of that scope :-), some of the disaster recovery planning was potentially productive and I rationalized that most of the bureaucratic-communications projects would be built by somebody so it might as well be done well and efficiently by us rather than less efficiently by somebody else, but a lot of that was just bullshit rationalization, and eventually I transitioned over to doing honest work. That didn't mean that some of it wasn't cool.... Some of it really was. But nobody should have been doing it. And it's surprising how easily you can get dragged into supporting the Dark Side.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A senior software engineer is well worth her higher salary, especially if she has remembered to maintain her technological knowledge.
-- Imperial units must die --
Not to mention that he seems to be a bigot. Don't believe in anything? Fine. But that doesn't mean that people who do have no valid beliefs.
I WAS an engineer, but the market kept declining so I migrated into computer science. After my company went through its firing phase they replaced everybody with Indian, Chinese and one Russian programmer. I bet they all get paid far less than me. Hmmmm. I hope they don't call me to conference room 1E - that's the one by the front door and it is used for only one purpose....
I was just asked to leave the company I have been working at for 6 years, with no severance and no explanation. I couldn't have been from the vast collection of 13-yr old kiddie porn I kept on our web server, so it must have to do with a shift in company attitudes toward older employees. See, I am 67 years old. Yet I am as young at heart as any twenty-something in the company and just as clever. Even my girlfriend is young. 16, in fact. And though she was my boss's intern and niece, I felt it was appropriate to show that I am still have the same vitality and passion that my coworkers have.
Just the other day, a coworker was stumped as to how to our web services to our back end systems which still execute COBOL. I was vastly disappointed in the response to my idea of just switching all our web server code to COBOL for language consistency! Hah! It shows that experience is valued very little. This one 42 year old whippersnapper even suggested we switch to this "XML" doohicky. Everything is "eXtreme" to these youngsters these days. X-games, XFL, XML. Someone please explain why XML is more extreme than just good old plain ML?
This other young whippersnapper pretended to be an FBI agent and pretended to talk with my boss to - get this - "subpoena evidence on our web server" hah! They'll try anything to get me unsettled.
I have been in the Software industry for well over 24 years. There have been many bad times in the economy over that time, yet this is the only time that I've seen this industry in a full out depression. I can not guess where it is going, nor when it will start getting better.
In the past, as the economy turned from bad to worse, software folks actually did quite well. This was because bad economic times meant having to do more with what one already had. Since people saw hardware as the asset a company already had, they would invest in major software improvements to make better and more complete usage of that hardware.
Today we have hardware so cheap that we have the equivalent of a supercomputer sitting on desks of those recently laid off as that hardware cost much less than the people using it or the people programming it. Companies that are hurting badly buy more hardware in the hopes of reducing the number of people they employ.
The whole world seems turned upside down and who knows what it will look like when we come out the other end.
I do believe that things have to get better for the following reasons:
1 - Businesses need to change and evolve to grow. Even businesses in trouble work at change as that is the way they will dig out of the red ink.
2 - Business processes are increasingly integrated with Software. Thus, to change the operations of a business requires change to software.
Right now companies are postponing change, trying to hang tight with what they have right now. That can not last forever. When companies decide they have to move forward, then software development will have to pick up to support that change. And that means a better market for software professionals.
You see, I was an engineer too, but I knew certain tricks of the trade yall didn't know. Like every now and then, some guy would give me a call and I would be like "yeah, let me tell you what's REALLY going on in our company." and I would be all like "our source code is shit and if I were you I would short the stock..."
and they would all be like "well what assurance do I have from you that the stock would go down?"
and I'd all be like "well how about if I trash our fucking web server mr. analyst man?" and he'd all be sayin "you would do that? well if you do that, we can guarantee you 10% of the proceeds"
shit, and I'd all be like "whatever, man, yall better listen to my flava yall know what i'm sayin?"
man, like 2 weeks later I be gettin these checks in the mail for hundreds of thousands of dollars, know what I'm sayin? Sheeit, all you got to do is burn dat source tree to a CD and mail that bad boy out to some mofo and you be getting big ass checks, know what I'm sayin?
"The cost of living in the U.S. is much higher than it is in India. That's why his Indian counterpart can get away with being paid so much less. It has nothing to do with what the guy in the U.S. is unwilling to do and everything to do with what he's unable to do. "
Well said. I would actually welcome the opportunity to move to certain parts of India. It seems there is no "inverse" of the H1 visa, for people who want out of the US.
Anyone who would willingly choose to program in Perl is absolutely incompetent, and deserves to be out of a job.
Man, you sound like the sick one. You're the
one that brought up race. Why do the defenders
of H1-B always try to play the race card? To
get sympathy? To feel better? I suggest
you seek counseling and re-examine your mind.
Not every one that disagrees with you is racist.
Bring up racism is a very sick reaction.
Case in point:
My fiance and I are about to get married a few months from now. She spent 8 years in school to earn her Masters. She now makes about $18K/yr, margianally more than a burger flipper.
As for me, I've got my Bachelors, 10 years of Unix under my belt, tons of experience, a wealth of skills, and quite a few career accolades & certifications. I have been out of work since April '02. If it weren't for my unemployment benefits, i'd be on the street. To make ends meet, I sift through junk at computer scrap yards hoping to find something worth selling on EBay.
The cashier at the 7-11 on the corner is fluent in XML. He can't find a job, needless to say. He's now reduced to making $8.50 an hour handing out cigs and lotto tickets.
When I started as a contractor here in town in Fall 2000, my department was comprised entirely of highly skilled, educated American workers. I earned $43,600/yr, well _under_ the 10-year industry average for my skill set. Had the dot-com tornado of shit never happened, I would be making upwards of $70-75k/yr.
By the time I got the axe in the department where I worked, every single engineer was replaced with a six-pack of Hindus, Nigerians, and other cheap labor. The entire department is now composed of largely of unskilled, inexperienced and uneducated foreign workers, many of whom can't even speak English clearly. Every single one of the highly skilled, highly educated American workers is out of a job, the first time many of them have been unemployed in the past 20 years. The quality of the products they make has cartwheeled straight into the crapper.
Here's a little example which points out what i'm talking about. One of my floor leads instructed me as to how to hook up an SSA drive enclosure for testing purposes. Attach the cable, and screw only one of the two posts in. "Shouldn't we screw both in?" I ask. Nope. Mbutu Kwanzaa says that letting the cable dangle there in the connector is fine. Two weeks later a problem occurs, nobody can figure out why. The company drops everything and flies a team of British engineers out here to inspect the gear. They're absolutely horrified at the condition of the testing gear. Everything is a fucking mess. They couldnt believe what they were seeing.. Specifically, the fact that we were instructed by this Nigerian moron to leave cables half-connected to the enclosures. It all added up to an *enormous* waste of time, money, and resources...All because they fired a guy who knew what we was doing for $45k a year, and replaced him with a shithead Nigerian who worked for bread & donuts.
It cost the company well over $30k to remedy this one particular problem, one of many which occur like every fuckin month. Work in England stopped while the shit was hammered out here in the states. Airfare. Lodging. Relo. And it happens every...fucking...month.
If that doesn't summarize the H1-B problem in a nutshell, I don't know what the hell will.
Bowie J. Poag
Welcome to Globalization.. Americans.
Perhaps they would have been successful for call-center tech support jobs at big ISPs, but 7x24 shops have a real incentive to outsource to non-US companies, because it's easier to train someone to work day shift at your branch in India or the UK than to get someone to work night shift in California, especially in a boom economy where anybody who was halfway competent at a night-shift job got an extra resume line when they tried for a day-shift job at their next employer if you didn't have one. In general, unions can't prevent outsourcing or even get significant membership unless they're really offering added value both to businesses and to employees, which in environments like this they might have been able to do, like providing stability and better training for employees. But they weren't fast enough to build unions during the boom of the late 90s, and they didn't do it during the slump of the early 90s either, or the computer boom of the 80s either, so I'm skeptical it'll take this time either.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I studied physics in college. Went on to join this little company called Microsoft. Worked at that for 13 years and now I am happily retired.
Seems like the same people who bitch about Microsoft are the same people who bitch about losing their jobs.
I just want to say thank you very much Bill Gates for letting me participate in your dream.
The founder fathers of the United States were RACISTS. It's amazing how SICK ONES could build the foundation of an amazing country that these brown faced aliens want to destroy.
What you are describing is called 'globalization'. And it is the US that initiated it. Unfortunately, rich countries will suffer the most because the law of offer and demand will bring balance between the poor and the rich.
By the way, no one stops you going to India or any other place in the world. But it is your choice not to go there, because that means an 180 degrees turn in your life. I would certainly not go.
Why do you think the White House is cracking down on the Internet?
cpeterso
An advisor at my school told me that if you're majoring in a computing or engineering field, you may want to pick up a few minors (or another major if you can afford it) in other non-scientific subjects. Having a minor in business, accounting, psychology, or pretty much anything else supposedly makes you a lot more marketable than just stock programmers. Plus, it's a hell of a lot of fun. Definately a great (productive) break from programming all the time, which certainly gets old after a while.
I thought that the number of CS majors was consistently DECREASING over the past two decades..?
cpeterso
the version I heard in grad school was...
what did the theoretical physicist say to the experimentalist?
If I seem mean or uncaring I appologize, but, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE !!!!
Look around hasnt the last 30 years pretty much trashed the idea you should expect a large corporation to take care of its employees ? If you expected to settle into a cosy little sinecure for 30 years and retire early if you played your finances right think AGAIN !!!.
The corporations aren't just to blame here. Sure they are rapacious incarnations of greed but thats what they are supposed to be. What did you do to protect your own future ? If your'e "AN ENGINEER" what have you "INVENTED".
Simply put even when I was in college back in the 80's there were a hell of alot of people that were there because they felt there was a fat paycheck at the end of 4 years. They had no passion for their subject. Took no joy in the work, and only saw themselves moving into engineering management after 4 to 6 years in the trenches.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
The Music stopped theres not alot of chairs to go around.
What am I saying. If you sell your soul for cash theres probably not going to be joy for you even if the deal works out.
The moral is make certain you find work that your'e good at and love. Quality always finds a market, and good work is always in demand.
Here's some things I've learned in my short technical career that I hope will help me if I get laid off.
1. Keep learning new stuff. Take advantage of tuition reimbursment even if you already have a degree. Teach yourself some new technology, programming language, or OS. Take advantage of any voluntary training your employer provides.
2. Be willing to relocate. Not just within a small area, but at least partway across the country (500 + miles)
3. Be honest about your abilities and humbly brag about what you can do
4. Even though you may know a lot and may be better than most applicants, get a certification like MCSE, A+, Oracle, Red Hat Linux, etc.
5. Be willing to change industries. I've been in IT in the fields of education, utilities and pharmaceutials.
6. Work as hard looking for a job as you would on the job. This means 40 hours a week 5days/8 hours.
7.If you are looking for a job, have people double check your resume and cover letter. Don't have a form resume or cover letter. As much as you can, taylor each resume and cover letter to the job you are applying for.
8. Be willing to take less pay or lower / rank position.
9. When unemployed (or even employed) expand your experience by volunteering your tech/computer abilities to churches, schools, non-profit organizations, or even a small business.
10. Don't openly complain, but you can be honest if it's been tough.
***
BTW, our company may be looking for an AS/400 programmer with 1 - 3 years experience. If you don't mind moving to central illinois (or already do), email me: lowell@lowellporter.com
This would make sense if he lived in say something like Germany, where the government takes care of its citizens. But you never get anything for free, Germany doesnt have the same free market as America, so you have a greater chance of striking it rich here, but you have to give up something in the process. What you give up is government protection, you have no health care, no free or near free tuition, etc. etc.
In reality, or rather, in other countries besides America its not ludicrious for the government to care for its citizens and make certain that they are employed and not losing their jobs overseas or to foreigners.
Still, the ultimate solution is elusive. Is free (gratis) software a bad idea, or is it just establishing the true value of the code at $0? IMO, there's a bit of naivete going around where paid programmer A produces a free version of the software programmer B is paid to make, and B likewise frees A's work, and both are somehow surprised when they end up unemployed.
This monograph pointed out that programmers and certain classes of engineer are "in high, out early" careers. The author suggested 3-6 years was about as long as one could expect to work before switching to management, or being replaced by new, low-priced juniors.
It hasn't changed much since then: only a small number of companies (mine, notably!) actually like having experienced engineers.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Please explain the benefits to society of working faster than jobs become available. You'd rather that they finished each job in half the time, then spent the other half on welfare waiting for another job to appear?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I refuse to believe that social and economic interaction have to be net zero-sum games. I think there are several *negative* sum games going on, and I believe, though I rarely encounter it, that there are potentially positive-sum game possibilities. This may well be futile in the face of an apparently negative-sum universe, but I am going to keep the faith.
I have all the tickets. BSEE in 1970, MSCS from Stanford in 1985, first programming job in 1967. One of my algorithms is in every machine on the Internet. I have three software patents, two of which generate substantial royalties. I've produced two boxed products on my own. I run several web sites, one of which has thousands of lines of my Perl code on Linux inside it. I'm currently writing a real-time computer vision system in C++. I've done everything from mathematical proof of correctness to business data processing. I've run big data centers and managed programming teams. I've had my own successful business.
And I'd be terrified if I had to find a job in Silicon Valley right now. Employers want somebody whose whole life revolves around J2EE or .NET, and they expect to pay them around $35K.
Do you shoot people down all the time? Do you believe you are superior to other people? Are you easily irritated by questions from inferior beings? Do you think everyone else is stupid except yourself? Do you have a hard time relating to other people? Are you lacking social skills? Do you surround yourself with people who share the same ideas as you? Do you laugh at other people's misfortunes? Will you one day find yourself completely devoid of any meaningful human relationships while you still justify your existence out of a myth of genetic superiority?
You people make me sick.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I deal with DDTS every day and you really don't need it...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I wasn't planning on posting to this story, as it's old and I'd rather go jerk off in the shower, but sometimes monumental stupidity needs to be attacked ( esp. when it's moderated 4, yeah, burn my karma for responding ) : /.ed, didn't bother w/ the other ), but the poster said nothing racist. Having an opinion that isn't all nice and cozy to a different civilization doesn't make you racist. Racist is yelling "fuck you nigger" or "goddamn fucking crackers", or hurting someone because of their race, or something of the sort. I'm getting really tired of people trotting out the race card over everything that involves borders or cultures. I'm against global capitalism because it deprives everyone, not just the ivory league boys, who know the world owes them at least $100k/year those assholes are gone in a few years anyways. If you want a global economy, have a global government. I don't mind sharing my neighborhood with Brown faced little bastards are taking jobs away from good ol' American boys. I do mind sharing it with nigger crackheads that harass my girlfriend when she comes to my apartment, then hide when I come out the door with a pipe. I mind sharing it with ignorant flag-waving rednecks who can't think beyond what the boob tube tells them. And I don't like little whiny liberals who start talking about what we owe the world, and conservatives who start talking about what big corporations have done for us. If you give a shit about the world so much, start paying attention to what the CIA is doing in South America, and what these business interests are doing in your backyard, not talking shit to real programmers and sysadmins who don't want to lose their jobs. That's the problem I have. I don't give a fuck about the Middle-Eastern guy who runs the gas station across the street while getting his degree in CS. Actually, I encourage him ( he's a pretty cool guy ). And, BTW,
Interesting post, if astonishingly racist
bullshit.
I didn't follow the links ( the 1st was
I find it increasingly obvious why it is that Mr Bin Laden and Friends choose to pick on you
I don't think you had any friends or family in the WTC, did you? I laughed when I first heard a plane hit the WTC, as I consider a large part of what it stood for to be corrupt capitalist greed. But then I thought about the people who weren't trying to hurt anyone, the people who weren't 5M a year CFOs playing the game, the people that were just trying to live. That had that taken away. And I realized that I wasn't laughing anymore, I was horrified. So fuck you. I hope you have to watch your friends and coworkers while they call their family, trying to figure out if they were there or not. And I hope you spout off that shit in a bar somewhere, in front of someone whose mother burnt to death in it. I know that I would break your face for saying that, I'd love to see what they would do. BTW, if you want to point a finger in that case, try pointing it at the US government for backing them against Russia, not at the people who died because their government is corrupt scum. It's okay for other countries to have corrupt governments, because they're underprivileged, and it's not their fault, but god forbid we have one, eh?
Basically, what it boils down to is I'm sick of people supposing that America has a duty to the rest of the world that it doesn't have to the people of America. I hate our government, I speak out actively against the things that are done wrongly, but I stand behind my community. As much as I'm a weirdo geek who spends ten hours a day tinkering with computers and reading computer books, and get a lot of looks when I go to the store ( I'm covered in tattoos ), I try to do the right thing. I am largely courteous to my neighbors, I don't worry about their skin color, I work hard, educate myself, and above all try to live up to the standards I set for myself.
BTW, I guess I'm a racist, an asshole, and a spoiled rich kid because I don't agree with you, right?
I really got a kick out of how you tried to be very nice and polite while still taking shots at the poster and everyone else in sight. I know that I'm going to burn some karma for not being so nice about it, but so be it. I don't piss away my time with kid gloves. But, Dave, you were right about one thing :
America discovers it has educated a generation of complete fuckwits
And I would hazard a guess that you're their poster boy.
Dave, bite me.
Derek
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
This makes me laugh.
People need to live within their means. There is no reason that you need to go out and spend 20-30k on a brand new car, when you can buy a slightly older one for far less.
You don't have to live in a mansion with astronomical rent either. Get a little place that doesn't cost much.
It's called living frugally, and many people have learned how to do it.
I make $25,000 at my current job, and I have NO problem paying the bills. I even have a little extra to spend every week.
Nope. You're wrong. You're not unable to pay rent, just unable to pay rent in a place you'd be happy in. You obviously haven't seen how any H1B Indians live in the US. Their standard of living is low. Very low. They generally don't have cars (try the bus). They live in shithole apartment, 2 or 3 to a bedroom. They make their own food. They are willing to live like that. That is the difference.
but classroom can provide a clear direction and help filter the stupid stuff from the essential stuff
Yeah right! My first CS classes taugh me java!
Not only is it not essential, it is not useful.
(This is not a joke, mod me funny if you want, but Java is lame in almost every way.)
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Your "solution" seems to be to kick poor people back into poverty, shut the protectionist gates behind you, and thumb your nose at them like some latter-day Scrooge.
This is where I note that India is pretty protectionist. They love to sell us stuff, but they don't want to buy much. When their standard of living rises, they will buy more stuff, but probably not from us, since we don't build anything anymore.
Other poor countries have discovered that, by building native industry and trading in an equitable fashion, they can raise their standard of living. It's just that idiots like Mugabe get all the press.
y solution is to build a socialist society where workers on one area of the earth's surface do not need to be divided against workers on another area of the earth's surface due to the inefficiencies and irrationalities of capitalism.
Congratulations, you ahve invented communism! It works great, until you involve humans.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I got into comp sci for the wrong reasons. I like to help people and I was a student consultant. Felt great rescuing someone's term paper from a junk disk. I eventually got a masters in comp sci, then 12 years doing mostly sys admin and help desk jobs.
Maybe I burned out, but I now hate it, feels meaningless to me, unimportant. I have pushed myself and made things work well, but with little or no job satisfaction. I prefer close interaction with people but as I do more and more advanced work in th field, I spend more and more time alone in windowless basements playing with small beige boxes. Only hearing from people when they have a fire to put out. They never see or appreciate my best work. Very close to hell for me.
So, at 40, I am changing careers, starting over from scratch, going back to school for health care, probably nursing. This is the first career-thing I've had any real enthusiasm for in years. These days, that motivation does not seem like a luxury at all. If my heart isn't in it, I just can't do it.
They say we all change careers several times in life. If you feel like a square peg in a round hole, it might be time for a real change. It's hard to know when to jump and how. I'm fond of personality type testing, like Myers-Briggs, for one example. The best book I've seen on finding your passion is called "The Pathfinder".
All I can say is: follow your passion.
=brian
I agree with what you said (enough to mark you as a friend in my prefs), but I think the main difference is the type of moving target. Fundamentally, the body doesn't change, but our understanding of it expands. Computers and software (or rather the set of problems which software should solve) are constantly changing. The parent thread (whom you responded to) made a nice analogy supposing if the liver were replaced by a new organ.
Maybe Doctors have more longetivity and market value because they are inherently respected as learned people. Our profession(s) still have the public image of code slingers. Software development is an infant discipline and we may be comparible to the barbers who also did dentistry on the side. I don't mean this as an excuse in any way, but rather as an observation and hope that software development finds its footing like other professions. Afterall, the need for software isn't going away.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Some guy from Ensenada or Tecate moves here and starts working for a guy his brother knows, eventually works his way up, starts a business running a taco truck, starts sending money home to his mom, brings in his cousin to drive the truck while he gets another one, has some kids, it's the same story everywhere; that's also how they got off the farm and into the big city in Mexico before they moved here. New York City's the same way, only the people moved from somewhere else, or all those Slavs and Germans in Chicago.
In my case, instead of moving 500 miles to work in a restaurant, I moved 2500 miles from New Jersey to work in the computer / telecom business, and I've been working at big companies rather than starting my own like a lot of my friends did, but it's really no different. I also got here during the post-computer-boom slump, when Silicon Valley seemed a bit past its prime, before the Internet Marketing boom hit, back when Ross Perot was ranting about the Great Sucking Sound of that era.
But I'm an American, so the only people who wanted to see my citizenship papers were the Motor Vehicle Goons (because California's governor didn't think it was safe for people to drive if they spoke Spanish), and I could already speak Computer Guru (Geekish wasn't around yet) as well as speaking some Businessdroid and lots of Bellhead, so I had some of the important languages down. (I could also speak Ada, Algol, .. C, ... X Windows, Yacc, but nothing starting with Z.)
The Internet boom was a bit different - because the Internet means that anybody can work with you from anywhere in the world that they wanted to, everybody moved here to Silicon Valley, driving the cost of real estate to silly levels, forcing us all to get higher salaries and work in little cubicles, and the pace of the boom forced lots of people to work 16-hour days, staying inside instead of enjoying the great weather and scenery that was half the reason for moving here. Now that it's over, and all those telecom companies built infinite-capacity fiber optic networks before going bankrupt and selling them for pennies on the dollar, maybe we really _will_ be able to catalyze world economic development a bit more. Hiring thugs like La Migra to tell people they have to live somewhere else other than here won't let you steal their jobs - it'll just mean they'll export them to Bangalore or Shanghai.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
LOL. It seems to work well for various species in the insect world however.
In my opinion engineers are not seeing the big picture. Coding from the day you graduate to the day you retire is not a realistic goal. A recently graduated engineer has a few years where their responsibilities largely consist of coding. As a Jr or Sr engineer you come to work, make sure your projects are on schedule, do your coding and go home. That is it however there is a turning point where an engineer is asked to be a manager - that is where this article breaks down. It assumes that all engineers code for the rest of their life. Most engineers will move onto bigger things at which point they are no longer engineers but managers. If you are one of those people who do want to code for your entire life then you will probably be passed up by some fresh recruits out of college or an engineer that has enough street smarts to be moved into management. I guess the real question is - does coding have a short lifespan? In my opinion yes but if you have enough ambition to learn how a business works outside of the world of coding then you have a great future.
If everybody has equal skills at everything, sure, whether you're doing creative work and the other guy is digging ditches or the other way around is a zero-sum game. But if both of you can be productively doing creative work, there's more interesting stuff in the world, though fewer ditches. Usually that's a good thing, and if both of you work on designing more efficient backhoes, or better shovel-sharpeners, you'll cut down on the number of days people have to work to get their ditches dug. On the other hand, if you spend your creative energy designing nukes, that's a negative sum for everybody, and if you spend your time designing video games, more teenage boys will spend their time fragging their friends and less time kicking soccer balls at them, but they'll be having a good time. :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Funeral Homes control the local market as much as Ma Bell controls your local phone service. So I really take it that you must be kidding, because it's not as easy to get in that business as some may perceive.
Linux at home
Sorry to burst your bubble on this one, but you might want to try taking a fresh perspective from what it's like on the outside, where many of us are.
After graduating at the top of the class from an IT college, I recently applied for a development job at a bank. They liked me in the interview, and I scored in the top 2 percentile of the aptitude test. I could develop for both Windows and Linux, could handle a half-dozen languages, had worked with a bunch of different databases, built a search engine, etc. My only drawbacks were a lack of relevent paid experience and not graduating from a university program.
After killing that aptitude test, they still said, "Sorry, nothing for you yet."
Dedication, smarts, craftiness and talent doesn't count for shit these days if you don't have any experience or aren't sleeping with the right people. We're talking about an industry where products can be replicated at close to zero cost and fine-tuned by amateurs. Developers are expendable, and are treated as such.
You have made the clasic mistake of assuming because you are lucky everyone else is too. While it is true that too many people got into computers several years ago who had no buisness in computers, that does not mean that there are plenty of jobs for people who are good at computers. Those hiring have no good way of knowing who is good. They have a stack of resumes, and they don't tell you a thing about how good the auther is at programing.
You have a job. Me, and several hundred programers that I know do not. Some of them are in the group who shouldn't touch a computer, but many are good or excellent programers.
I have not giving up on computers. However I need to eat and pay my bills. Since nobody will pay me to work with computers, and I don't have the personality to sell myself (if there are contract jobs...) I've been forced to take a job in construction. I'm not alone in that choice.
P.S. anyone want to hire me?
There's a such thing as penny wise, pound foolish.
Now, this isn't to say that there aren't good direct hires from India. There certainly are. Many of the issues I have with Indian programmers are actually generic problems with all contracting firms -- i.e., the fact that they represent their employees as having more skills than they actually have, and charge the client for improving the skill set of their employees. It's just coincidence that most of those contracting firms hire large numbers of Indian programmers... their quality would be equally shitty even if they were hiring Americans. Hell, the Department of Interior has so far spent $500 million on a trust management computer system that does *NOT* work, and I could have done the same thing with less than $5,000,000 total budget INCLUDING the actual deployment. But the consulting firm had no incentive to ever actually finish the system, not when they could continue milking the government teat... not that this behavior is confined to government work. One of the reasons K-Mart had to declare bankruptcy was a failed IT deployment by one of the Big Name consulting firms back in the 90's...
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Some of you have drawn analogies or contrasts to the field of medicine. The reason why medicine is comparatively organized compared to computing is that the human body is not evolving anywhere nearly as fast as computers. The human body doesn't sproud a third eye, a second nose, or doubles its average heartrate every 18 months. The evolving computer sees new networking protocols, new peripheral port types, and new form factors so often.
One day, computers and networks will be vaguely distuinguishable and will become such a huge mess, it will take med-school level study to understand how to maintain and treat these systems. Only then will the field of CS attain the kind of professional prestige.
Everybody speaks about H1b visas. What about the
O1 (oststanding scientist) visa holders, do they
steal American jobs or not?
O1 is a much better visa than H1b. H1b can only last 6 yeaars, while O1 is without time limit.
The requirements for O1 are of course higher.
A PhD degree + scientific activity proved by works published in peer reviewed journals.
real estate. As long as the population of America keeps growing then real estate will be a winning investment
Sure the union people will tell you that union means quality. However when you look closer you see a system the does nothing to reward quality, and everything to reward minimal quality. Unions demand that everyone be paid not based on how they work, but how long they have been around. Work in a union shop for 30 years and you will make a lot more than someone who only worked there for 5 years, even if you specalised in just one thing, while the 5 year guy can do every job in the shop faster than you, and achive better quality along the way. This isn't to say all unions work that way, but many do.
Don't forget politics. Unions generally donate heavilly to the democratic party, which is fine if you are a democrat, but if you work in a union shop and are a republican (or other party), you have no choice but to give some of your money to the democratic party.
I'm not against unions in general. However before you join make sure you know what the downside is.
Great theory, except the Dept. of Defense hardly cares about steel these days. Much more about software and remote sensing. Plus, we don't need as much untrained labor to feed the infantry either.
If you are an instrument and controls engineer at a refinery, you are both. You would install pressure and temperature sensors on tanks, boilers and pipelines, install speed controls on big honking pump motors, then wire them all to networked terminals running industrial software such as Labview or Wonderware using an industry specific LAN such as HART or Foundation Fieldbus.
The poets have been used to having to be plumbers for thousands of years.
In some respects, you are right, but historically, artisans, especially painters and sculptors, were commissioned - that is, they lived off their art, provided they had the skill to do so. This was back when art wasn't mass-produced, and when people had an appreciation for the work that went into it (and when the economy, such as it was, wasn't nearly so capitalist).
--Dan
Everybody speaks about H1b visas. What about the O1(oststanding scientist) visa holders, do they steal American jobs or not?
O1 is a much better visa than H1b. H1b can only last 6 yeaars, while O1 is without time limit. The requirements for O1 are of course higher.A PhD degree + scientific activity proved by works published in peer reviewed journals.
Observation: The majority of contractors doing business with the government are incompetent to program their way out of a boot prompt. They view government work as a way to suck on the government teat, and they stretch it out as long as possible so that they can continue sucking on the government teat. The end result is usually a project that's 100 times more expensive than doing it in-house, and potentially a project that never works. For example, the contractor that the Interior Department hired to fix the Indian trust system has so far spent over $500,000,000 to create a trust computer system that doesn't work -- something that I could have done with a small highly focused team for under $5,000,000, *INCLUDING DEPLOYMENT*.
A government employee, on the other hand, has no incentive to drag the project out. He gets paid the same whether the project is finished or not, so he might as well finish it so he can get some free time to lean on his shovel (grin). Virtually every worthwhile piece of software that has ever come out of government was created by government employees, not by contractors. The contractors are invariably political hacks who get the job by wining and dining the right bureaucrats, rather than by producing a better product for a better price.
Story: I was at a (government) customer site doing a computer survey so we could do a quote. The IT director kept asking me about computer systems at home. Finally, it dawned on me that what he was asking was whether we were going to pay a bribe -- give the IT director and his top staff free computers for their homes. I kept on pretending I wasn't understanding, and let the boss know. He didn't pay the bribe. We didn't get the contract, despite having the low bid.
The next contract, he had learned his lesson. The right palms got greased, and we got the contract.
That, my friend, is how government contracting works, and why outsourcing rarely produces cost savings for government. (Au contraire, virtually every study shows that outsourcing increases costs of providing government services). For example, in my home city of Scottsdale, Arizona, our fire service is currently provided by Rural/Metro Fire and Ambulance. Proponents of ending the city's contract with Rural/Metro have shown that the city can reduce costs by 10%, while providing better service, by instead going to a city-owned fire department like most of the surrounding cities. This conclusion was arrived at by examining the costs of surrounding cities' fire departments compared to what Scottsdale is paying Rural/Metro. The biggest thing was the amount of profit that Rural/Metro makes off of Scottsdale... thus the 10% cost savings from using government employees rather than contractors to provide fire service. The City of Gilbert, once they kicked out Rural/Metro, for example, is *STILL* paying less than they would have paid Rural/Metro if they'd continued their Rural/Metro contract.
Note that many of these arguments apply to *any* outsourcing that isn't tightly overseen by competent people, not just outsourcing by government. It's just that government outsourcing is uniquely suited to this sort of corruption, because the employee doesn't have to worry about driving his employer into bankruptcy -- when was the last time you saw a government go bankrupt?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
So work somewhere that requires more education. During the last IT recession, I worked as a school teacher for three years. I got back into computers by (tada) going to work for a company that did educational software... they wanted my teaching expertise, and didn't care that my computer skills were (supposedly) rusty (which they were not, BTW -- I'd been *teaching* Computer Science, for cryin' out loud!).
Point: If you have to change professions because of a temporary IT recession, choose one where you will be able to write software to address that profession's needs, and use that to work your way back into the computer biz. I chose teaching because I'm a long-winded buzzard who enjoys communicating (heh), but really, any profession could have had similar good things happen. Even plumbers need software to manage their plumbing business, after all :-).
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The cost of living in the U.S. is much higher than it is in India. That's why his Indian counterpart can get away with being paid so much less. It has nothing to do with what the guy in the U.S. is unwilling to do and everything to do with what he's unable to do.
And you think this is because it's a different country? It's because the cost of living and living standards are different. It's the exact same thing with working/living in New York City versus working/living in Idaho.
Maybe it's time H1-B haters realized that their job is becoming more of a "commodity" and lose their sense of elitism.
The answer to that is a definite and emphatic NO. I love programming. Binary runs in my blood. In these tough times, I myself have worked for free at times, just so that I can see what I can get my computer to do, and to see if I can solve any task asked of me. I was laid off recently myself and have had to work at Domino's for a while to pay the bills, but all in all, I think there will always be things that need to be programmed...even if it doesn't pay what it did a few years ago. Good luck to all those who are in a bind, used to the nice lifestyle of a 20-30 or higher per hour job, but forced into other places for the time being. BTW--if anyone needs a php, basic, c, linux or windows, programmer, email me at jdyerjdyer@yahoo.com.
I was a civil engineer and construction inspector. I've been on both Union and non-union jobs. Not only was the union work better, I felt much safer (having heavy equipment flip a couple times on some non-union sites makes one generally nervous.)
Sure some stuff unions do protects workers who aren't as good, but they're better paid but they get training to do good work. Yeah its more expensive, but ask yourself do you want someone with training putting up buildings?
Your assertion is patently wrong.
Its all over. Maybe those of you who had the choice of being a doctor or an engineer and picked engineer because there was less schooling required should now go line the litter box with your BS degrees and apply to McDonalds. If Mom and Dad will take you maybe you can move back with them.
My flat earth argument wasn't meant to say that the round earth arguments are complicated, but rather that things aren't always the way they seem to the casual or naive observer. That even applies when it both seems really obviously true and/or everyone you know also thinks so. Maybe quantum physics or relativity would have been better examples, even though I remember my bewilderment when first confronted with the round earth theory at age 5 or so.
The most similar example to the free market example is evolution. In both cases highly organized and ingenious systems develop from much simpler roots, with no planning or thinking force behind it. "Spontaneous order" just doesn't make sense to the casual observer, and as we know both many people refuse to accept both the evolution and free market concepts.
I like your professors normal language ambition. Too many people don't really understand what they're learning, they just repeat phrases and formulas. But as you say, some complex sounding things actually are both complex and counter intuitive. And I claim that this is one of them.
There is a lot of relative poverty in the US, but I'd say that the "wealthiest country on earth" label is very real for 60-80% of the population. And especially so for the software engineers this discussion is about, many of whom make $100K or more per year. If they/we have been knocked down a bit earnings wise, that is a setback for the few rich, not the poor masses.
As to your final comment about morality. If you don't care about morals, there are several far more profitable careers than software engineering that are open to you.
I went to a vocational school for 2 years learning CAD. Durring my second year (which was tediously boring from day 1), I found out that they had converted it into a one year course, and so all teh first year students were doing the same work I was in a matter of months, whereas I had to work my ass off doing mind-numbing work jsut to get where I was. So i got my damn certification,a nd went to apply for countless jobs. i finnally get one, and not a month later, I was hardly doing any CAD at all, instead they had me in charge of the engineering end of a $2 million account. Keep in mind, that I was 18, and had NO office experience prior to this job. Two months later I get fired because of office politics, and the fact that a co-worker feared that I would replace her one day, thus she did everything she could to get me in trouble. I was so pissed off by it all that I went and joined the Air Force. My advice to anyone still in High School is: Make sure you're the only one who can do your job. Technology is changing so fast that a formal education means nothing. I've seen guys with NO certification of any kind do better int he engineering field than guys who spent 4 years in college. mainly becaue the guys in college are obsolete within 2 months of graduating. My prediction is that in 10 years, Engineering will be what burger flipping is today. Avoid it at all costs.
I'm guessing that the pages you build are not that complicated. I used to agree with you, I thought you had to write all HTML by hand. Now, I think you need to know HTML but writing it by hand is just a PITA.
uh...
Hey does Saddam have weapons of mass destruction or what?
OK, I see your point. My dad was USWA and we lived in the appalachians, so unions were a way of life.
You have stated a problem. You have no solution. H1Bs aren't going to join a union because they don't understand the concept of being treated fairly by their employer. India still has the fucking caste system, for Christ's sake. They don't BELIEVE they can have a better life because Krishna or whoever said they couldn't in the Bhagavhad Gita [I'm sure I butchered that].
Today's IT community has bought into the Republican lifestyle of "I am a mere worker serf, you are my capitalist lord" so deeply that they will never organize, because $15 in dues a month is money that THE MAN IS TAKING FROM THEM. They have been beaten down by years of being told that unions protect the bad workers at the expense of the good. Plus, people who sit in front of PCs all day are necessarily out of touch with reality.
So what's the solution? I don't think there IS a sane one. Short of disbanding corporations by force and going back to cottage industries and a barter economy, I don't think there's any way to put power back in the hands of labor. Regulations? People are so afraid of government regulation thanks to assfucks like O'Reilly and Liddy that they would vote against Jesus himself if he came back and ran for president.
So what's your answer?
Too bad they don't hire anyone without Top Secret Clearance in thier pocket already!
Let's see, '76 I took Fortran as a junior in HS, and the next summer I got a job programming in Basic (after perusing a Basic book for a few days). It only paid $2.50 an hour, but I probably would have been willing to do it for nothing just for the experience (ok, maybe I wasn't smart enough to see the value in that back then).
Back then I could devour whole language books like reading a novel, and retain most of it. Now, some of the bits fall out and I have to keep the docs handy until I've used the constructs a few times. Of course, now I don't always have to read everything because I know what will be there and I can go right to the specifics I need once I know the basic structure.
The best people are learning and teaching all the time, whatever the level of experience. I've also worked with people who are threatened by anyone who know more than they do, and those people are to be avoided at all costs.
I'm a unix/security consultant and although I consider myself lucky, I haven't had a problem finding work after i got laid off from my permanent job, but then again I live in the bay area.
Consider the slight micro-chance that the reason you don't have a job is because you sound like a jerk. Lobby against H1-B's and whine if you want, but I really doubt that's the only reason no one wants to hire you.
p.s. It looks like not all "Hindus" are idiots...3 of them sorted out the 13 line algorithm to detect large primes this past year. Beats the hell out of US mathematicians, I'll tell you that much.
Yes my good cousin (he really is my cousin, lol) the entire technology field (IT related specifically) Blows.. and theres not much thats going to be done about it. Ive been through countless jobs where know-nothings get the higher pay just because they have a paper.. and hands on experience guys are tossed. though, once in a while it works the other way, and if you find yourself in a situation like that, try to make it work. having the ability to adapt to the IT changes as they come can make you very valuable, yet is rarely noticed. Every field has its level of BS,.. but IT is definately the worst.
1) Your social class
2) The impact your downsizing is likely to have upon the stock price
3) How cheaply you can be replaced, or, conversely, how docile you remain in the face of doing the replaced workers' job(s) for your same or lower pay
And coming soon to castes who have imagined only minorities and the poor have to "volunteer" for our glorious armies:
4) Your suitability to serve in Bush's wars
As a footnote, and out of fairness, let me concede that Bush is far from wholly responsible - our present plight is due to Clintonian/Friedmanesque "market economics," of course (for more on which see the brilliant and quite amusing "One Market Under God" by Thomas Frank). Bush is merely presiding over an accelerated form of the illness, blindly making matters worse with massive tax cuts for the rich, massive military spending, and massive collusion with corporate crooks. That he's done so with the help of Democrats should not be forgotten...
don't confuse your profession as a "unix guy" with an engineer.
engineers are different than computer "science" kids.
You get "Boom and bust" in career fields.
... high salaries, reasonable working conditions.
In the 80s and 90s, software development was seen as as desirable field
Immediate results: Kids flock into Computer Science at college, and at the same time, companies start learning how to get software development done in India etc where salaries are low.
Result of that: Huge surplus of CS majors, just as the demand for them goes through the floor.
Someone deciding to major in CS now must be either (1) Really stupid or (2) Wealthy enough not to need to work for a living.
What makes you believe that India is any less restrictive about letting people into their country than, say, the U.S.?
My point is that for the market to be truly free, the labor needs to be as mobile as the demand is. No more, no less. That means no immigration laws in a country, no discriminatory practices, etc. But things aren't like that, are they? That's the problem.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I just graduated from a 2 year software engineering community college program. Out of 100 people who started, only 10 finished. Of those 10, I am the only one with a job.
The other 9 all say that they are going to go back to school and finish up their CS degree.
Fools.
I currently work for a major financial institution as a network admin. BUT I WAS LUCKY!!!!
So: you think you'd have no problem paying the bills if you were making $5,000 per year? That's the kind of salary you're competing against when we're talking about companies eliminating jobs here in the U.S. in favor of offering those jobs in other countries. The people who take those jobs do not immigrate into the U.S.: they live in their home country and pay their home country's cost of living.
Think you can compete against that without moving out of the country?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
We're not talking about H1-B's. We're not talking about the job becoming a "commodity" while remaining within the same country.
We're talking about the job becoming enough of a "commodity" that it can be, and is, offered in some other country instead of in the U.S.
The difference between moving between states and moving between countries is that you don't have to deal with immigration laws, passports, etc., when moving between states, but you do when moving between countries. And it's moving between countries that would be required for the talent in the U.S. to compete head to head for jobs offered in other countries.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Actually, the caste system has been illegal since Indian independence from British rule in 1947. As to where exactly it came from, I don't know, but neither do you. One H1Bs shy away from unions is that they have more to lose if the bargaining backfires -- deportation and loss of face back home, where people aren't familiar with U.S. labor and industrial relations.
Take a look at this highly significant (p less than .01) correlation between autism rates in the year 2000 and prior immigration from non-western nations into industrial states.
Seastead this.
"Out-of-work programmers and IT project managers who are struggling to find employment might want to take a cue from a group of 2,000-plus IT marketing professionals who have created a virtual job board aimed at helping place them in hard-to-find jobs."
The big online job boards are dead, dead, dead. Real jobs are being posted on alumni egroups and niche boards like Software Product Marketing eGroup.
With shrinking budgets and a plentiful supply of candidates, recruiters and companies are no longer willing to pay big hairy job boards that return thousands of ill-suited candidates.
So boys and girls, time to join forces and create an "open source" job board.
However, you cannot seem to debate it. All you seem to be doing is twisting his words and injecting 'racist' terms, not to mention a whole shitload of prejudice against Americans, and a bit of good faith in the educational system of a country that, for all intents and purposes, is flat on its ass, economically.
Whose words were that, precisely? Do you even realize that not all H1B visa owners are Indian? No shit. And that invalidates your entire point. The whole goal of offering a work visa (instead of making them naturalized citizens) is to keep it temporary.All I have to say is: Try sales. Why? You get to solve incredibly complex problems for customers, find new applications for technology, and most importantly, your pay is viewed by management as being directly related to revenues coming in the door. You also get all the perks, you can travel if you want, and most importantly, you get paid mad jack. It's as rewarding as programming was (I used to be a C/x86 assembler guy) and the hours are much better.
There is a downside: salespeople are accountable. Slow/no sales = you are fired.
-- $G
I don't know where this came from - I first saw it a few years ago on the late and much lamented Canopus forum on Compuserve run by Will Zachman back when he was independent. He's now taken Meta Group's shilling and made it to Vice President. If the author of this is ever found, credit will be given:
Many years ago, before I finally connected with my present employer, I found myself 'between jobs' with a family to support. I found a temporary job as a laborer at a local Landscape-Nursery and quickly found myself very involved with Landscape work in this area--it was March, and the winter had been very long and hard.
It happened that at that time the Aerospace Industry in this area was going through hard times and had laid off a lot of very highly educated people. Some of them decided to work at the same Nursery where I was working.
It also happened at that time that the Nursery did a lot of drainage system work for individual homes in the area. For those who have never done this work, this is most likely the dirtiest possible type of work a human being can do. Lacking large equipment, we needed to manually dig trenches through various layers and types of soils and gravels, sloping it properly, refilling with drainage materials, and so forth. Then we replaced the sod and supposedly it looked like we had never been there. We worked mostly in an area that has clay soil, and we could not be clean working in clay soil levels filled with undrained water.
Now to set the scene. One rainy day, because I had been in the Nursery Business approximately one month, and because I had been on crews which had installed maybe five drainage systems, I was given a small raise and put in charge of a crew of my own. Three guys, laid-off AeroSpace Engineers all, were to work for me! Two of them had Ph.Ds, and the third a Master's Degree. Together we were going to install a drainage system at a large private home in the worst-drainage part of this area-- worst-drainage due to the clay soil.
Aside from the weather, which was terrible, it was a very nice day. These guys were easy and pleasant to work with, and they were there to work. We finished the back yard in good time, had gotten ourselves unbelieveably filthy in the process, and we were pretty well along with the front yard, all of us together in the trench, when a well-dressed young woman with a young boy in tow stopped to watch us for a while. We continued mucking and rooting around in the trench, not presenting a very pretty picture, and the woman with the little boy just continued to stand there and watch.
After about fifteen minutes we heard the woman say to the little boy: "If you don't study hard in school, this is what you will be doing when you grow up."
At that point four grown men collapsed in the muddy trench and started roaring with laughter. I'm sure the lady never knew why.
isham-research
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
This was back when art wasn't mass-produced, and when people had an appreciation for the work that went into it (and when the economy, such as it was, wasn't nearly so capitalist).
You say that like it's a good thing - but what actually happened was the local aristocrat would levy taxes on already-impoverished workers through threat of violence from his private army, and spend the money on frivolous baubles and trinkets.
Study the history of the French Revolution and you will understand just why that particular system of patronage is neither economically nor politically sustainable.
What never ceases to amaze me in these fucking hard economic times (I actually earn less than imported high tech workers, which is why I have a job) when people complain about foreigners etc etc working for less while IT workers and Engineers have been spoiled to death over the last 20 to 30 years, is that people always look for someone else to blame, instead of realising that life is fucking hard and trying to adapt to it.
Christ, over here in Europe, the Germans are pissed as hell that their government has just issued in a wave of tax increases, with all businesses bitching about how this strangles motivation and inovation. But most people, while pissed, realise that the fucking bills have to be paid, those bills including things like the German national medical aid and unemployment insurance. They're also cutting military spending. Power to them. This is plain financial sense. I do absolutely not understand how people can find Bush's tax cuts for the rich and huge, enormous military spending good in any way. It might boost jobs in the military sector but, for the love of pete, your tax money pays for all of that, not withstanding that his $40billion increase in military spending is more than a lot of countries have in total every year. Your pres should be looking after jobs for his people, not spending billions on strange anti-nuclear-missile technology against terrorists who fight with fucking kalashnikows, car-bombs and box cutters.
Someone further down posted this:
"We recently were accepting applications for a vacant position. We were FLOODED with resumes from web developers. They all went in the trash. Why? Because they were a dime a dozen and didn't have the overall skills to support our customers. We wound up hiring a guy with good GENERAL skills, because those can be broadly applied to our diverse environment."
This is why I got my job, I've been an IBM, and Wang (remember them) operator, PC-software salesman, Mac-DTP guy, Multimedia programmer, Web coder, Linux and Win admin apart from being a part time nurse, a windsurfing instructor and a bassist in a punk band. I speak six languages fluently and have lived in 5 countries. I will work for crap money if it means I get a job. Stay flexible and learn as much as you can about everything. Flipping burgers is something that keeps you alive and it is not to be laughed at.
and this:
"There is much garbage code out there, largely caused by too many people coding "Fast Food" type development tools. Can somebody please tell me why it takes a 2GHz processor and 512MB of RAM to show me my appointment calendar? Then crash while I'm looking at it?"
This is such a piece of truth in this this pig lazy, fuckstupid environment in IT today. I admin a Linux and a Novell box at work and the BS Novell supporter asked me why I do all the admin at the console, and I told him because it's stable, fast and doesn't bring the machine to it's knees. My boss laughs at me using vim for scripting yet dies from heart failure because bloat monster word friggin ups and dies on him in the middle of some BS document, with formatting that a 5 year old could do with html or Tex.
I love his comment so much that I'll repeat it: why does a calendar require a 2GHz machine with 512MB RAM to run and then crash with monotonous regularity?
Probably the fact that it allows a naturalised citizen to become its president. The main opposition is headed by sonia gandi who is an italian,
(C/C++/Assembly Personal) -> RPG -> VB -> C/C++ -> ASP, Javascript, XML HTML -> C#, ASP.NET
I've yet to take a paycut to move onto new technology (knock on wood). I've always been able to make significant jumps to the next salary grade by jumping companies. Now with 11 year son the job, I'm pretty much topped out so I can't expect very much more salary than I already get. Just wondering why you had to take a pay cut. Did you offer to take a pay cut to get into the new technologies or did the companies demand you take the cut to get the job?
It's as if you became a doctor and 2 years later no one had a liver anymore. They all upgraded to a new organ, about which you know nothing. All the learning about the liver you did and the exams you passed on it mean nothing.
That's the exact reason I ditched MS Windows for good! I'm learning all about Linux/OSS from here on down since a year ago and I'll never go back. I won't take a Job where people won't listen to me when I talk about the OSS alternative solution to their problem is.
Figure this:
I will never ever again have to learn another OS.
Why should I waste my time and energy learning something about a patient that changes his liver and entire guts every odd year? He out to be ruled out by evolution very soon anyway. And that's the truth!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
In fact there are more than two parties in the United States of America , but only two are funded by the biggest companies. These companies pay good money to have laws made. See contributions
...are under the severe threat of starvation for the next harvest season within the next year in afrika. Those poor bastards are in what I would refer to as "deep shit". Us here debating on Inet are what I actually would refer to as "Pansies".
And now I'm gonna have an XMas cookie to my lucky ass that just got laid off and still is alive.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
....your proud of the fact that you can get tech jobs not solely for your technical competence, but because you are able to bullshit and schmooze your way around much better than the average geek?
And a true geek who believes in actual merit is supposed to take your advice why again....?
I mean I consider myself well read as well. I do love sci-fi but its not my limit. I've read everything Shakespear has written but if I were going for a tech job I'd never mention it. I would want to get hired based on my CORE competencies, not because of some offtopic book that I read.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I seriously doubt he even investigated the possibility. Many foreign countries welcome skilled US labor. Of course, most American workers probably lack the language skills or cultural adaptability to take advantage of jobs overseas, and they are often not willing to work for lower wages or under working conditions in other countries.
For the "global economy" to truly work, people must be able to move as easily as the demand for labor does.
The fact is that most people don't want to move anyway, even if they have the opportunity. The way to address wage differentials is much simpler than moving lots of people around: ensure a good standard of living around the globe. That way, companies have no "low wage" countries to move their production to.
while unions sound like a good idea, they can force the company to pay high wages to all workes - even the not-so-good programmers. How else can you explain how unions got common dock workers in California $63,000 retirement pentions? That may sound nicem, but think that it will raise how much it costs companies to use the docks, which raises the expenses of the company, which cuts into what they can spend on their employess, which can lead to them cutting jobs or lowering salaries
and why should that be? Perl is great for use as a system/network admin. It runs on most platforms, is fast, and if you already know shell should be able to pick up quickly. There are many things we write compiled programs for where I work, but for many tools & scripts - Perl does a great job
How about we let our American engineers become more creative to justify the salraies they are used to instead of artificially re-inforcing their industry by using anti-capitalist and anti-immgration policies?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It may well be true that our lifespan is being shortened, but it's up to us to maintain ourselves and our marketability.
Why do football players and other athletes 'time out' after 6, 7, 10 years? It's because that for which they are paid - their bodies - aren't performing as well as they once did. Fact of life. Believe it or not, the same applies to us, just as it does for everyone else.
Programming environments change. Languages change. The 'hot topic' of the day changes. 10 years ago, ASP, JavaScript, VBScript, XML didn't even exist. Now, those things can drive a global company's online presence - and I'm still talking about web technologies here.
Universities teach their students the basics and the theories, and all that degree gives you is a running start, to learn the specifics of whatever that first job is. But what we ALL need to do is keep running. Too many people get a job get comfortable, and don't bother to keep running, keep learning, keep current. When the next big thing comes along, in order to justify paying us over that fresh graduate, we need to be MORE ready to start work. It's our responsibility to pursue education, certification, and training.
Your company might not pay your $6k training bill, when later they can pay a $40k salary instead of your $50k, $60k, $70k, whatever.
Don't kid yourself - we get hired and fired based on cost-benefit analyses, just like everyone else. Don't blame the companies - they're here to make money, and they're not hiding that from anyone. Even if they have some other agenda - making a difference, improving the environment - that company goal can't and won't be accomplished without meeting the bottom line.
Our job - our responsibility to wives, husbands, kids, pets - is to seek out those things that make us better than new college graduates, to seek out those things that make us better than exporting work to those lower cost-of-living countries.
Don't sit in the dark and curse the light. The lifeline of technology is moving, and the decision is on us to move with it or not.
Well, Americans have a higher cost of living, and therefore it the American government's responsibility to do whatever is necessary to preserve a better economy. And therefore, foreign workers should be very carefully picked.
- A Federal pension
- The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) which provides employees with a pre-tax savings plan similar to a 401(K); and
- Coverage under the Social Security system.
You're saying that the USGS is lying? Well, not according to the Office of Personnel Management's Retirement page. Granted, the pension component (the Basic Benefit Plan is pretty meagre -- eg., if your salary was $60,000 per year, and you'd worked for the government for 10 years, you'd get $6,000 per year pension -- but hey, that's still better than private enterprise, and you'd still qualify for social security and have the TSP too, so it's better than a $0 per year pension (what you get from private enterprise nowdays).Send mail here if you want to reach me.
You know, I hate this conception that all engineers are EE/CPE types. Sure. I'm in aerospace, which may not be a growth industry but certainly isn't one in much danger of stuff being outsourced. American companies still have the edge in experience, know-how, and institutional momentum. While Dan Goldin did his dead-level best to kill NASA, it's not quite dead yet, and between the public and private sectors there's a lot of need for know-how. Of course, the fun thing about aerospace is that, unlike the computer world, the new hires are treated like dirt for a reason--we really don't know crap. We learn a lot of basic conceptions in school, but there's so much OJT that it's not funny. I worked for my current employer for almost three years before graduation, and I'm still way behind on the power curve. It always amuses me, though, to watch people hit the big trends in technological fields. I'd tell a kid coming into school these days to major in civil engineering. We're going to need a lot of those folks soon, and they might as well get in while the getting's good.
-- Geof F. Morris
The jobs were advertised at a lower scale, but the technology was something I wanted to learn. The sticky point is that they ask for salary history; I give it to them, then they're skeptical that I really want to make less money. I have to convince them that the trade off is worth it to me.
This sounds word-for-word like the kind of spiel Amway gives at Baptist churches. Maybe you should post "Work at home, be your own boss!" flyers on lampposts.
No, it's the words of respectable American people that don't want shit handed to them.
You like when a worker has to be better than every other worker? So every worker has to be better than every other worker?
Yes, it's called "competition". It's a hell of a lot better than the go-to-school-for-6-weeks-and-never-learn-a-damned
This sounds paradoxical, maybe you see the world like a Escher sketch where everyone sits in the so-called high seat.
Put down the crack pipe. Have you ever had a job?
As far as trying harder, productivity skyrocketed in the US over the past three decades, all of the extra wealth went not to the workers creating the wealth, but to the owners.
Productivity != Hard Work
Just because people have been more _productive_ doesn't mean they're working harder. My professor in school had to flip binary switches to program! I was more productive in school than he was. Was I working harder? NO. I had _better_ _tools_.
And as far as the Marxist "wealth going to the owners" thing, I started with nothing and was making more per year than both my parents ever made combined by the time I was 26. So, pick up your bootstraps and get a fucking job. Work hard. Get ahead. Stop sticking your hand out and NO, McDonald's is not responsible if you dump hot coffee on your crotch.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
The "lazy-piece-of-shit-can't-survive-in-a-free-market -because-I-suck-union-worker" has a job because he fulfills a consumer demand. "lazy-parasite-owners" on the otherhand, inflate their heads, blow their own horns and otherwise pretend that they are nescessary while looking down on the people that actually do work.
Wait until you get a little money in your pocket. See if you're still spouting this shit. Maybe, you'll even have enough money to sign in and not post as a Coward.
Consumers pay "lazy-parasite-owners" for products and services instead of the workers because the "lazy-parasite-owners' have managed to insert themselves between the workers and the consumer. Period.
The worker can leave and get a new job. It is a market economy, you jackass. People hop into the unions because they can get good pay when they're young. They take advantage of the system. Then, when they get older, all they do is bitch about how they can't get any more money when they're doing the SAME FUCKING JOB they were doing 20 years ago!
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Please explain what you're talking about. I can't tell from the contex... oh wait... you didn't put any context in there... nevermind...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Wrote software for 24 years straight, laid-off last August, then recently started a new job after almost 5 months on unemployment.
I think I'm really good. BUT, the only reason I have a job now is luck. The market is terrible, and not just for those lacking skills or experience. You can apply to dozens of jobs where you think you're a great match, and not even receive a phone call. Three months later, you'll notice that the job is still being advertised.
I don't play with legos, or hit myself with a skillet.
Doesn't sound much like a fight; more like a struck nerve. I'm not fat and I've been around the world twice.
Sounds like you're pretty sick of running validation software.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
> Is there any sort of consolation people that are currently in the
:-)
> industry can give people like me?
Sure -- as a newbie fresh out of college, you haven't been pidgeonholed yet.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Anytime this topic is ventilated here, there always seems to be lots of smug posters who believe their skills are so great that they will be spared long periods of unemployment, or as is more common, underemployment. This recession is so bad they may have an opportunity to test their theory. Older, i.e. > 40, engineers seldom say such things. Most of them have already explored their employment prospects.
My 45th birthday is a couple weeks away. I'm a top notch analog circuit designer and a fairly good software developer. I've been fortunate to have been employed since my first go round at college. I've changed jobs a half dozen times and changed career once. By just about any reasonable measure of success, I've done well. But I ain't cocky about it. Yes, I have good skills. I'm hard working and versatile. Those are necessary conditions but they are not sufficient conditions for continuing employment.
Now, all you guys who think you're in command of your destiny, listen up. There's lots of stuff that is beyond your control. Through no fault of your own, you may find yourself out of work. I personally know dozens of good programmers who have been unemployed and underemployed for more than a year. Several of them are better developers than I am. Why? Luck of the draw. I'm fortunate enough to be working for a stable company. They aren't and that is the difference.
So go own thinking what you will. One poster claimed he'd had 4 jobs in one year. He also clings to the belief that keeping his skills up to date will always save him. His strategy is essentially to burn his candle at both ends. That is a temporary solution at best. He will soon burn out. Even if he begins to budget his energy, he will find that his opportunities will diminish as he gets older. The sad fact is engineering is no longer the lifetime career choice it once was.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Read John Locke.... labor adds value to objects. A pentium chip is worth way more than the raw materials that went into making the chip... same with a can of coke.
The more people who are working, the more total value there is in the economy. The only way to beat poverty is to get more people working and adding value to the economy.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I think you're missing the point of the argument. A company that started in America, using American labor to bootstrap itself into existence, owes a certain duty of loyalty to the people who created its products and infrastructure. It is disloyal and petty to use people to build your company, and then discard them when it is convenient for you. Furthermore, there is another issue at hand. If you employ, say, 500 people to man your manufacturing, engineering design, and IT departments for x number of years while your firm is growing, then you are returning that number of salaries to the communities that fostered your growth. In other words, you are supporting your local community, and by extension, your nation. If you then turn around and fuck your community and nation over by taking those jobs overseas to gain an Indian Discount(TM) you're demonstrating that you're not worthy of the trust that was placed in you by your community when they allowed you to grow large in the first place (for example, many manufacturing firms are granted tax breaks, assistance in setting up their infrastructure like power cables, data lines, and phone lines, water and sewage, and so on).
Do you see my point: it's not that there's anything wrong with Indian engineers. An engineer is an engineer. But there are basic issues of right and wrong involved -- moral issues, if you will. Socrates would consider this a question of piety. Which is the more pious action? Lining your pockets with an extra 10% profit and destroying the livelihoods of the very people that made you who you are? Or supporting your community, showing gratitude for what they've given you? Think about it.
Having said that, Wired ran an article in which people in India's government and educational system were interviewed, and they said they were deliberately targeting the IT industries of first world nations in hopes of making the world dependent upon them. So you can also look at this as an economic war. Perhaps exporting jobs to India should be considered an act of treason?
Sorry to bust your bubble.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Good one! This thread is FILLED with self-aggrandizing crap....
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
I'm the OP. Sorry I'm still an Anonymous Coward - maybe someday I'll sign up...
Anyway - I wanted to add something to my earlier post. In our business, I'm running into computer people who are relatively new to the corporate programming scene. They have two common problems.
1. They learned how to write programs in school, but they have a very difficult time applying that technical skill to the business at hand.
2. These programmers often have the delusion that my C++ and HTML class make me a computer professional. They don't know command line, they don't know interfacing, they don't know databasing.
In reality, it's the ability to learn new skill sets as your business changes that make you valuable to a business. You have to KNOW YOUR BUSINESS before you can apply your technical smarts to it. You have to be willing to give up old technology for new as the business and the industry in general demands it. (example follows) It's not enough to know how to make a web page. You need to make a web page that gets the business message across. Its not enough to know how to install Windows. You have to install Windows and make it work for your business. It's not enough to write a great Visual C program. You have to write the program that your business can actually use to be more productive. The list goes on...
Someone said that programmers have poor spelling etc. I agree. I've seen it hundreds of times. The professionalism, as well as interpersonal and communication skills are REQUIRED to be a good I.T. Person. Otherwise, you're just a good programmer.
Sad little man.
Get up. Go outside the door. Experience a world with more in it than you can understand. Try not to characterise people except into those that see the world anew every day, and those that try to make each day into every other.
People like you.....well you make me sad really.
Look up.
It is unavoidable: the India/Pakistan situation must be resolved and the only true resolution is force.
Cliff Stoll wrote about this phenomenon years ago in his "Silicon Snake Oil". He said something to the effect that where he lives, in Berkeley, he can get any number of people to write web pages for him for $5/hour, and a fair number who are willing to do it for free, just to learn. However, if he wants some plumbing work done, forget it. It's going to be at least $75/hour, if you are lucky enough to find someone who is available.
For about 20 years, popular culture in the Western world has held up high-tech careers to be some sort of panacea, with considerable success in promoting this notion. Now we are overrun with folks who heeded the call and now want to work in high-tech, while the number of openings is dwindling. Simple economics takes hold. I don't see where all the mystery is.
I've worked in the business for 15 years now, and I still shake my head. I'm thinking that if things get bad enough for me, I will look into going into the trades, for the reasons Stoll mentions. Everywhere I've been lately (western part of the continent) tradesmen have been in short supply.
Overall, I fear we may be entering a phase of what Canadian activist Maude Barlow calls "competitive poverty". All of the macroeconomic arguments about why this won't work are true, but nonetheless, it seems like it will happen. Folks in the US who are worried about the situation in places like Columbia should pay attention: It's coming soon to a neighbourhood near you (hyper-wealth and hyper-poverty and nothing in between, see also: concentration of capital).
Larry
It still cared a great deal about it 6 years ago but things may have changed since then...
I have been sitting here sick with the flue reading the various posts, interesting.
To begin for those who wondered as to the basis of the stats, H1B Hall of Shame. It seems the goverment stopped keeping stats after 2001 but did allow for the possible trippling of these visas. The numbers, .. well go look.
In Jesus Christ Super Star, Jesus proclaims that he cannot heal everyone. there are just to many of them. Extrapolating, how big is your life raft, and who do you want on it. Do you take care of your own or do you arm those who compete with you with higher tech giving them chance after chance to destroy you. Understand, we are talking about our families or their families, with dire consequences for individuals and families in and out of the work place. A Boston stat I saw once was 4 years to Aids on the street. So death is possible, and Bush just cut off how many from unemployment. Most are our intelligencia which means that this is an attack against the infrastructure and intellectual capitol of this country, coring the economic apple from within. This is war. These prople are not your friend, this is a resource issue. Do not speek about these issues around work, this is survival and truth is the first thing to go. For survival, people will lie cheat or steal, whatever it takes. Read my "poem" at alt.newsring.com Our Children or Their Children. I know it still needs some work, but you have to start somewhere.
Regarding racism, I have not had problems that I know of with non-white individuals. Surprise most were Canadians, many of which were formerly expatriated Northern Europeans. They actually seem to have arranged to have me fired for writing Jobs, Jobs, Jobs - Self funded Industrial Espionage. This left handedly brings me to the posters who accused me of racism. We deserve Bin Laden? Did I get that right. Interesting, foreign nationals in tech will use anything including Congressional and Senate bribery, to take your job. This is business. Capitolism for those who forgot is based on markets and hence marketing. Marketing derives terms such as market penetration and target markets from WW II battlefield statistics. Business is warfare, and if the CEO's of America want to play the game "The Emperor's New Clothes, do not be surpised when some foreign national decides that he can pay a higher bribe to the stupid American politician [what cost power - with few exceptions, almost all power is derived], after all it is just good business.
Look, for those who did not read my article, Congress with the exception of one man is taking foreign money to give away American Industry to internationalists faster than we can create jobs, these actions lower wages as much as 40%. This isn't the worst of it look at Lee, Los Alomos and Clinton, you can give away Nuclear secrets, targeting, miniaturization, rocketry, etc. Why not your and my jobs. Remember the Republicans won't even say anything about it, so jobs ....
I have developed a number of techniques to raise computer processing speeds by possible order of magnitudes involving breaking the egyptian numbering system and I am told by counsel that I may not discriminate against non-American workers so as to keep the tech in this country. Check out TechnologyCandyStore. Some counsel at Peobody and Arnold Boston said if I take my tech to the net, there is no national security. Who are the stupid people who make such laws, or is this internationalism, I do not remember voting on whether the United States should become part of Mexico, Canada or otherwise give up our sovereignty, and since when should the rights of Americans be discriminated against over foreign nationals.
Who are these stupid leaders:
A leader who does these things is a parasite and not a true leader.
Sincerely,
Richard Dunn
In closing, I went to the Doctor today, an Irish immigrant, I am out of unemployment, medical runs out at the end of January[wife laid off to]. She told me that this has been going on with white engineering class males beginning in 1987. She told me she would give me medical at $5-10.00, I told her I would owe her big time if I needed it. I told her what I wrote, she said I was not wrong and agreed to give me medical anyway. I told her I was sad and grateful, but that it was a resource issue. She said she knew and was gone.
I once walked away from a process that made tritium, someone will understand the humor. To those who took my future, I did not come hunting you, you came hunting me. This is an appeal, I need help, I own "radiofree"[almost everystate in the union].[com/net/org]. I have a web page for almost every town in America. If I have a business plan the bank will give me $1-3M. This is why some are afraid of me. If I get traction I beleive we cant take this country back. It is obvious we have been infiltrated and targeted by Internationalists.
Richard Dunn rdunn@radiofreenation.com
[free speech is not free, it needs you support, www.richdunn.com, or... going,going,...]
Fired for Pro-American writing like this, on my time.
Not Left, Not Right, But Center (tm)
Not Democrat, Not Republican, But American (tm)
Internationalism is Anti-Americanism (tm)
FreeTrade is Anti-Americanism (tm)
FreeTrade, Rich man's greed, produced the Irish potato famine, 3/4 M dead.(tm)
Current Immigration policy is economic warfare against America's intellgencia
and poor by the wealthy.
Start somewhere: Boycott foreign made sneakers, economic treason is not stylish.
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Er, I was actually referring to Classical Greece and Rome though...
--Dan
I manage a team of developers in the US and India. My two bits:
I think a lot of Indian companies would welcome skilled, qualified workers -- and get them a very high quality of life indeed. Whether you can adjust to the place (after all, most places in India are HOT! -- although airconditioning would be pretty much ubiquitious) is another matter.
Visas for European and North-American citizens in India is a CINCH. (read: the government doesn't have the balls to say 'no'.) Hint: check out the number of Russians/East Europeans in Bangalore these days. What do they know that you don't? :)
Yeah that made a lot of sense you little twit. Could you string along any more clichés to somehow enlighten me? God, you suck.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
exactly right. I'm an aero engineer, (with 6 years experiance) and next month my main source of help and inspiration retires at 65. He can't work CATIA very well, but for everything else he's a legend. I'm making sure I get his home phone number...
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
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