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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.
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
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 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?
Anyone considering becoming a programmer should consider getting an easier job as a coal miner.
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
Waiting out a recession is never enough. There's always jobs for smart people. I would suggest that people in school forget about timing the job market and start thinking about doing the classwork necessary to become a good entry level devloper.
http://www.kylefreeman.com
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.
...
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.
Go to http://www.h1b.info to learn how to stop corporations from giving away all of our jobs. Despite the thousands of unemployed American tech workers. Evil CEOs and their cronies keep bringing in cheap labor from 3rd world countries.
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.
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?
I am replying to a troll.. but...
M$FT is still making huge profits! There was a tech boom and bust cycle, and 100k+ jobs for "assembling software components" is not a sustainable thing.
BTW, Richard Stallman started the FSF close to 20 years ago. Linux actually was also a buzz word that resulted in the biggest jumping IPO (where we are currently posting).
S
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
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
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'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.
Come work for the government, with me :-)
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
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. ...
I live very comfortably.
I'd suggest you pick one story, and stick with it.
I've put almost a decade of of my life into computers. I'm just realizing now that I can't get a decent job. I could go work at McDonalds and almost make as much as I make here. I'm seriously considering a job outside of the computer world, and putting computers back on the shelf as a hobby again. I can't support my family on what I make. The factory down the road has a higher starting pay than what I make now... its starting to get really tempting. :-/
Can all fish swim?
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.
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.
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
I think they meant discomfort in one's job situation, i.e., always being a little afraid of being behind the times. That's not the same thing as being uncomfortable with one's overall lifestyle.
well at least on thursdays - seems to be the favorite layoff day around here
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
My guess is he was referring specifically to being comftorable with programming languages...
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.
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.
System administration. There's only going to be more corporate WANs and servers as time goes on. Pretty soon, being a sysadmin will be like being an HVAC technician.
I imagine that software engineers would have an even easier time at system administration, where their powerful coding skills could allow them to automate their work to a much higher degree than the average MCSE.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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)
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'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*
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.
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.
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'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.
"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.
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 ----
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.
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
My plan is to just stay in school until the economy gets better
At the rate things are going right now, you might want to start thinking about grad school. I wouldn't expect any drastic changes in two or three years.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
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)
All about me
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, according to his logic he lives comfortably, but keeps on the cutting edge of programming languages (instead of letting himself get comfortable with one language that could become obselete).
Makes perfect sense to me.
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).
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!
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.
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
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
So you are irritated by anything you don't understand? How quaint.
Look, honey, a simpleton.
illegitimii non ingravare
So we should get paid more.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
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.
Ha, ha. No.
I'm just tired of having to deal with people who think that building a doghouse (i.e. writing silly programs on their computer) qualifies them to design a skyscraper.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
So, we're in a slump. Get a new job and ride it out. It won't last forever. If you're like most people, you'll be working for at least 40 years!
Yes people are outsourcing all over the place, etc. In my mind, they'll always come back for quality work that they can't get anywhere else. I'm just glad that shitty ex-Accoutants who took a VB class aren't getting $100/hr anymore.
T
P.S. I'm also having no problems getting a job in a reasonable amount of time.
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
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 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.
Ah, but some might say that the definition of an engineer, as a profession, is regulated by government. And in the US, that definition includes the passing of a two phase exam separated by 4 years of internship (engineering work of progressively increasing responsibility supervised by a licensed professional engineer). This holds true in many other countries as well -numbers may change, but the idea is the same.
In the eyes of the state (and hence, the courts), if you don't have a "P.E." behind your name, you are not an "Engineer," as you may not advertise your services as an "Engineer." You may be a programmer, a mechanical designer, or a housewife (aka domestic eng*), but you're not allowed to sell your services as an engineer. Your company, or the company you work for, may not have the word engineer in its title without a majority of the partners being an engineer (this is typical of state laws). If you disagree, please send a letter with your company name to the National Society of Professional Engineers and your state engineering board...they'll be happy to set you right.
The problem with engineers is that there's no name protection. Everybody and there brother claims to be an engineer. Sanitation Engineer instead of a trash collector? Domestic Engineer instead of a house[spouse]. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer? Don't see to may of them with a P.E. on their sig line.
Engineering is fine, but the computer and information industry may be in a down trend.
Overzeetop, P.E. (since 1995)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is where I have been. I busted my backside to support kids when I was in college. I dropped out to take up the computer call several years ago. I spent many many many nights and weekends studying to become a Unix System Admin. I bided my time, and took chances. I worked my way up (albeit, probably too quickly) from help desk to NT Admin to Integration and Architecture towards my goal. At that point, the bottom fell out, and I spent 8 months and 2 states looking for work. Now, I have debt out the ass, and a job paying far less than half what I was earning prior. Got my job, though. SCO.... I wish I had finished my degree in English. At least I would have an option. Teachers can go anywhere. While they don't get paid a ton, I'd of known the ceiling going in, and would have lived my life accordingly. (women + your $$ = debt debt)
Yeah, I am burnt out on computers. I ate, drank and slept computers. And now I am stuck. And no, I can't get school loans for school, as they are about to default, as I've no money to pay, and my now ex used all our grace periods before when I had the $$.
Note to all kids: stay in school. please!
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
That's why it's called "work" :)
A few of my better friends at work get severly upset or depressed that they are making extremely good money doing mundane tasks. I used to be the same way. My manager put it into perspective, however, by stating that the work we do is key to the running of the business, and while it may not be the most appreciated job of the century, it most certainly is a high-ranking job.
I've looked at work differently ever since.....
Karnal
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.
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.
Yep, look for companies that do this and don't buy from them. A favorite here on /.: Intel. The worst part is when they tell you in business update meetings that they're going to expand their hiring in Bangalore, while at the same time laying off people here in the US.
lower paid people from other countries to work at higher pay than they might otherwise get..
... what? You say they're getting paid well. But they're not all. They're mostly in very poor countries so they can be easily exploited.
And you base this on
We need an international minimum wage and minimum working condition standards. Without that globalization is a death spiral where jobs keep moving to wherever they'll pay less.
Globalization doesn't do anyone any good if it isn't REALLY helping the people that get the jobs to be able to buy the stuff WE make.
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
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.
Exactly. Not only that, but there's lots of software fields where hobbyist programmers simply aren't interested in writing free (or Free) software, and an intelligent company would spend their time pursuing those fields instead. I don't see a lot of open-source EDA programs for instance (Cadence, Mentor Graphics, etc.).
But if you make a product that tons of people would like and then give it an astronomical price, don't be surprised when someone writes a free version. In this guy's example, he complained about BugZilla. BugZilla was developed to help the development of Mozilla, a very large open-source project. What does this guy expect, all the thousands of developers (paid and unpaid) to go out and purchase ClearDDTS contracts for thousands of dollars per seat? Obviously this is a product with a large appeal but a ridiculous price tag, and it got superceded by a free replacement. Too bad. If some developers could make a similar product for free, Rational obviously was charging far too much.
There's always jobs for smart people.
Come to Silicon Valley and say that. I dare you! You'll have a crowd of unemployed people chasing you down the street.
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!
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?
Not really. They are pretty academic, and are not really focused on the overall IT worker profession. They actually do lobbying, but the main thing they seem to be concerned about is increasing government funding of scientific research. Well OK, for the segment of IT workers they are, that makes sense, but they do not reflect the overall needs of IT workers. I think IEEE-USA, USENIX/SAGE and the ACM have positive aspects, but they also have negative aspects as well. For one thing, many of them are funded by the same companies that are funding legislation that screws over IT workers in Washington. These corporate sponsors muscled the ITAA-USA into toning down legislation efforts a little bit back. These organizations have good aspects, but they are not the be-all, end-all.
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.
>My company has lost around 10000 customers ever
>since an open source version of our project was
>released.
Add value then. Provide a better solution. Compete! Don't just give up. Geez, what do you wanna be... a monopoly?
Whatever.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
"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.
I base it on supply and demand. The exact figure is irrelevant. But there is nothing particularly special about Americans, no particular reason why 3rd worlders cannot do the same job for a thousand times less money.
I have a friend (in a 3rd world country) who makes less than $10.00 a month. He manages to survive. But I think he's actually smarter than me. Why should he have to make so little just because of an accident of birth?
He would jump at the chance to make even $5.00 a day. For him it would be an improvement--a very big one. A global minimum wage would just introduce more unemployment into the world (just as it always does to the extent that it's not so low as to be irrelevant). It (any minimum wage) is an absurdly simplistic solution to a complex problem. The results are predictable.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
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.
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
http://www.radiofreenation.net/article.pl?sid=02/1 2/03/0426254
also at: http://www.altnewsring.com/jobs.html
Essentially, if all of the H1B visas were revoked, you could have jobs for all of the unemployed tech workers.
Story telling time:
Back when Henry Ford was starting to build cars, one of the famous things he did was to yes, work his workers hard, but he also gave them wages far above what was normal for the day and age. This was to help prime the pump of demand for his product. If you had a country of poor people, then no-one could really buy your expensive product, and you would never have a mass market. Thus it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well.
Fast forward to the present day, where you have this quote: "We're trying to move everything we can offshore," HP Services chief Ann Livermore told Wall Street analysts.
And you wonder what will be left in the USA if everyone is working in MacDonalds. The USA is the Greatest Market in the World, but not if everyone is reduced to flipping burgers because of the lack of anything better.
The SeeSaw of Economic forces may take centuries to balance out. In the meantime, all we have is the great sucking sound of jobs getting sucked out over seas.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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:
And whom, pray tell, do you you plan to manage? Programmers in India or food service workers?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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
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
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
So it's narrow-minded to be opposed to being replaced by cheaper labor in a third-world country? Let me guess, you live in Bangalore... Must be nice living in a country with no laws against pollution.
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
He didn't say there are always jobs for smart people in Silicon Valley!
There are usually jobs available, they just might not be what you want to do or for what amount you want to get. If you can't get a job, try starting a buisness (it is always the best time to start since you don't have anything to lose!)
--Joey
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.
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
I haven't looked at the other replies, so I don't know if this has been said already. Still, here goes:
Interesting post, if astonishingly racist.
Essentially, if all of the H1B visas were revoked, you could have jobs for all of the unemployed tech workers.
Oh, so it's the 90's. America discovers it has educated a generation of complete fuckwits. Unfortunately the tech bubble is in full swing and even scraping the bottom of the barrel, the tech economy is unable to find enough people to babysit IIS servers and something has to be done. So, H1B gets introduced and America gets access to the fruits of functioning education systems - like India's. Happyness all around since we are now flooded with curry eating geeks know how to do their jobs and are willing to come to work without being given a BMW first.
Remember the calls to get H1B's extended? The calls to get more of them issued in the first place?
Of course, the bubble bursts and geeks are being laid off in their tens of thousands. Oh no! The highly efficient and cheap curry eaters keep their jobs while the ivory league boys, who know the world owes them at least $100k/year, get hoofed out with their stock options shoved up their arses.
Your suggestion? Deport the curry eaters. Brown faced little bastards are taking jobs away from good ol' American boys.
You smug fuckers. I find it increasingly obvious why it is that Mr Bin Laden and Friends choose to pick on you. You can't just invite these people in, make them your friends, make them your colleagues, and throw them back to somewhere that doesn't have fresh running water as soon as it suits you.
Now, this is of course a grossly broad brush to apply to an entire country, and may not actually apply in your case (it's not clear from your post whether you believe in this shit or not). I also appreciate that there are copious exceptions at either end of the bell curve. I've heard some not pretty clueless H1B stories knocking around too.
None the less, the basic thesis is racist.
Bite me.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
If you had a country of poor people, then no-one could really buy your expensive product, and you would never have a mass market. Thus it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well...... [snip, snip] ...The SeeSaw of Economic forces may take centuries to balance out. In the meantime, all we have is the great sucking sound of jobs getting sucked out over seas.
Most of the world lives in dreadful poverty. Imagine what is possible if all of these unemployed or underemployed masses could be put to productive work making good wages.
If more people overseas work, then I have a chance to make money by selling them stuff. Eventually more work gets done worldwide and we're all wealthier.
Even if everyone in the USA is reduced to flipping burgers at McDonalds, such jobs are still waaay better than what most of the world faces. Although its tough to raise a family working minimum wages it is still possible and your kids can still get an education and a chance at a better life. Compare that to the lot of most people in places like afghanistan, zimbabwe, DROC, etc.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
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/
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
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
Ah, I'm just feeling bitter today. Looking for a new job after 24 years is a hassle.
What a bullshit ! Where are you got those numbers? Or you've been working in indian bodyshop, right?
Normal american companies have less than 5% of H1-B workers usually and those numbers are declining. It's just too much hassle to hire H1-B engineer now..
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
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.
I thought that the number of CS majors was consistently DECREASING over the past two decades..?
cpeterso
That's called a "Straw Man" argument. This line is especially telling:
Your suggestion? Deport the curry eaters. Brown faced little bastards are taking jobs away from good ol' American boys.
In case you missed it in whatever fine school you were educated at, here's how it works:
1. Joe makes an assertion.
2. Charlie casts Joe's assertion as something else.
3. Charlie's cast of Joe's assertion is wrong, therefore Joe's original assertion is wrong.
You're Charlie. Good day.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
the version I heard in grad school was...
what did the theoretical physicist say to the experimentalist?
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
I'll bite...
Now I fully understand where you are coming from. Put the way you just did, it makes the parent poster's comments seem racist. But...
I feel that it is any government's job to take care of its citizens first. I agree that suddenly revoking visas would be incredibly rude and cause great difficulty for any of those affected and probably should never be attempted. However, imagine that the situation were even more drastic - great depression style. I believe that the government would almost have to do something to make sure the American citizens were first in line for domestic jobs. Tax cuts for companies keeping job onshore would be wise also.
I don't think you can view the idea of revoking H1B's as racist since the people targeted are not of any specific culture/race/age/religion - they are all foreign workers with a specific type of visa. Lame and incredibly inhospitable? Yes. Racist? No.
-matt
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.
Separate states? You must be joking...
Of course, states (and locales) in the US
have their say in minor issues, but even
things such as "drinking age" are usurped
by the Federal Gov't, inasmuch as they
tax first, and ask questions later.
Considered harmful.
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 deal with DDTS every day and you really don't need it...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
If the world per capita income goes up, they will call it inflation and prices will rise. It's a bitch. The world's natural resources are not going to increase because those in 3rd world countries are working, the wealth as a whole of the world is not going to increase because of this. Rather it will prevent the concentration of wealth to a few large powerful nations (such as the US) and divy it up. This is good if you live in a 3rd world country... it's very very bad if you live in one of the countries that's well off.
ummm... we DID win over india, where have you been? read the headlines again ;) t ml?tid=163
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/26/238204.sh
The grasp of english displayed here is obviously not that of an american... then again, given the educational system here...
Good old Lester Thurow. (Or, as others came to call him "Less-than Thorough").
The zero-sum economy is one of those wonderful humanist myths. It comes from the same scientific fatalism that attempts to make every person just a cog in a machine, without any independent choice. (Ergo, the wise, all-knowing leaders who somehow are above this limitation can make the decisions we can't make for ourselves)
Think about it: an economy depends on a collection of individual choices. If enough people refuse to work, or refuse to work as hard as another group, then of course the economy will have trouble. If the government siphons personal effort into non-productive areas, then of course that economony will be strained a little more. But, if everyone works hard, even though they might be "stealing" jobs from one another, the end result is a much more healthy economy than if everyone is carefully protected in whatever mediocre position. It's not rocket science.
In fact, it seems history has proven that the more you limit individual choice, the more you limit your economy. Interestingly, this seems to compare well with work in distributed "swarming" algorithms, etc... in the computer world: you can't absolutely predict the outcome, but it is possible for a swarm of automonous units to do things that could not be accomplished with the old-fashioned 'top-down' approach. (Read Michael Crichton's "Prey", for a good intro to these concepts.).
Thurow isn't the first economist to be a negative boo-hooer. There have always been experts crying that the end is near. Thomas Malthus, back in the 18th century, predicted that within a few decades the world would no longer be able to sustain economic growth, and massive starvation/anarchy/whatever would occur.
These people have all failed to see that through hard work and ingenuity, human beings have consistently managed to do more with less. And, willingness of individuals to work hard, while sometimes affecting others in negative ways, temporarily, has an overall effect of lifting the total economy. Take three people living on an acre of land. If all three till the ground and grow vegetables, they will be much better off than if only one does. If you force the most successful vegetable grower to stop until the others catch up, then the net result is...less vegetables. It's not rocket science.
Anyway, for more than 200 years, Americans have experienced an economic freedom that was unheard of anywhere in the world. For this reason, of course, tough-minded individuals who didn't mind taking their chances emigrated from all over the world to the U.S. I'm not trying to paint a completely rosy picture. Of course there was repression, but that always involved *restricting* personal choice. If we had not repressed women or certain ethnic groups, I am convinced America would be even richer now. But I believe the end result was undeniable: freedom produces more wealth than restriction.
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.
Your first point:
... he also gave [workers] wages far above what was normal for the day and age... [because] it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well
Essentially, if all of the H1B visas were revoked, you could have jobs for all of the unemployed tech workers.
Is debatable. You can't compare a graduate from India Institute of Technology to an unemployed MCSE. But that isn't my main point... what I have issue with is:
Back when Henry Ford was starting to build cars
I'm not sure where you read this, but from all accounts I've heard, Henry Ford *tried* to pay his workers low wages.
But they all quit.
After less than a month on the job.
Assembly line work was so bad compared to the other work available at that time, Ford just couldn't keep workers. I'm not talking about one or two people leaving after a couple weeks - I mean EVERYONE - the total employee turnover rate was a couple hundred percent as year. The situation was so bad that it was worth it to pay higher wages just to keep people around.
He paid higher wages because it was in his short-term interest.
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 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
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
Thank you very much for caring enough to post, and to show some emotion in the issue.
That said, I am NOT the author of the original article in question. I merely summed it up for those who do not feel like reading the original, which is lengthy.
Also, If you check out the H1B Hall of Shame at Zazona.com, you can see the documentation for the numbers.
I think it is fair to say that a million jobs would go far to solving that jobless situation in America.
The basic philosophical problem is as follows: When there isn't enough to go around, who do you choos first?
This is the nasty social issue. Should I volunteer my friends and family to starve so you can live high on the hog? no? or merely even live? Ah, a nasty question. Sorry to say, I am a selfish sort. My friends and family come first.
It becomes like all of the other flame wars, like emacs vs vi, etc. - except now lives and livelyhoods are on the line.
Feel free to call this racist. It is merely a survival point. Yours as well as mine. If we can not find a better solution, then someone winds up having to lose.
And it is driven by the economics of the companies using the workers against each other, using them like pawns in their economics games. It is no fun being a broken pawn.
My ultimate point is that the companies, instead of investing in well paid workers because this will build the overall market, are destroying the overall markert for the sake of short term gain. This is in the long run suicidal, not just for the companies, but for the well being of the country that most people in the world want to immigrate to.
if the major business is flipping burgers, we got a problem.
I actually think that a major factor to the problem is the corporate culture, but that is a diatribe for another time. but you may want to check out this link:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountabili ty/porter_township_ordinance.html
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
I actually found your arguement interesting until you had to invalidate it with such a stupid comment as:
I find it increasingly obvious why it is that Mr Bin Laden and Friends choose to pick on you.
It's such a pity that someone of your _almost_ intelligence had to blow a perfectly rational statement with a nonsensical emotional statement. As such, I now question your credibility (and I'm certain I'm not alone).
Please KEEP YOUR EMOTIONS out of intellectual discussions.
America was targeted because it's the apex of the productive world. We're the best of the best (economically) and as such we were targeted. For you to make a statement (even remotely akin) to the fact that we "deserved" to be targeted, or that "innocent civilians" are a logical target is absurd and nothing less than stupid.
And as such, you've invalidated your arguement and demonstrated that you and your posts deserve no respect in the intellectual realm what-so-ever. Please keep in mind that I'm not posting this based on any "racist" notions either, "Dave".
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
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
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.
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.
It's such a pity that someone of your _almost_ intelligence had to blow a perfectly rational statement with a nonsensical emotional statement.
I find it hard to separate the two, apologies. That being said, this was fundamentally an emotional response. It would help if I ate lunch before posting to slashdot too. After all, ten years from now someone could be mining slashdot posts to decide who the infidels are.
For you to make a statement (even remotely akin) to the fact that we "deserved" to be targeted, or that "innocent civilians" are a logical target is absurd and nothing less than stupid.
Hmmmm, I suppose it could be read like that, but it certainly wasn't the intention. Look at it this way: you live in a cave, you basically control twenty thousand religious fanatics, you want to beat on someone. The USA is the most obvious target by a factor of ten. Once you start to look more closely at the USA's actions as a nation, then it doesn't take too much work to get a proper deep seated resentment going.
Now me, I don't live in a cave and (actually) don't have a resentment against the US. I travelled in the US after graduation and discovered that your 'brand' abroad doesn't match up with reality. That the sheer weight of numbers and the width of the bell curve mean that for every burger munching tub'o'lard (cliche overload, but you know what I mean) there is an equal and opposite hugely pleasant human being. Some are still my friends.
And as such, you've invalidated your arguement and demonstrated that you and your posts deserve no respect in the intellectual realm what-so-ever.
Uh, yeah, OK. Intellectual realm and emotional are entirely different things. I don't get it that straight, sorry.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
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.
Corking. Racism, WTC and the US government pissing with the affairs of the world are all emotional issues. I'm glad you've identified it as such and come at it/me both barrels.
...for instance, or...
There's so much in the post I should reply to, but also have a jerking off appointment to keep, so I'll attempt to keep it short and to the point. A bit.
I don't think you had any friends or family in the WTC, did you?
No. A friend was starting work in NY a couple of days after, and she was there spending a week or so sightseeing. So we had an interesting day assuming that every form of communication going into or out of New York was at full capacity and that's why we'd not heard from her.
And I realized that I wasn't laughing anymore, I was horrified. So fuck you.
Fair enough, it was horrifying. Several thousand ordinary people lost their lives. The only thing you actually have is your life, lose that and that's the whole banana, for all eternity. The knock on effects are equally, if not more horrifying. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people lost a mother, a brother, a best friend. These people are going to be absolutely gutted for years to come. So, yeah, fuck me.
But loads of people have read this as a kind of "I think you deserved it". Ahh, no. I'm just saying that it's increasingly obvious why it's your country that's getting it in the neck. You know it too:
start paying attention to what the CIA is doing in South America
if you want to point a finger in that case, try pointing it at the US government for backing them against Russia
Yeah, that too. All in all I think numerous people are getting bored of losing their children to weapons that say "made in USA" on the side. Sure, American citizens aren't firing them, but we all know where the money came from. Why, exactly, does the US government insist on pissing around with everyone else's affairs?
BTW, I guess I'm a racist, an asshole, and a spoiled rich kid because I don't agree with you, right?
No, you've got well considered opinions based on the world as you see it. Nothing wrong with that.
I know that I'm going to burn some karma for not being so nice about it
Screw karma. Not like you can eat it.
America discovers it has educated a generation of complete fuckwits
And I would hazard a guess that you're their poster boy.
One of my favourite things about slashdot, people assuming I'm American.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Great Britain? Headed down the crapper, dude. Have a look at what they did with Singapore.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Back when Henry Ford was starting to build cars, one of the famous things he did was to yes, work his workers hard, but he also gave them wages far above what was normal for the day and age. This was to help prime the pump of demand for his product. If you had a country of poor people, then no-one could really buy your expensive product, and you would never have a mass market. Thus it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well.
Wow! Your economics teacher is in tears right now. Let me get this straight. You seriously think that paying the miniscule fraction of the US population that worked in his factory a little more money helped get the entire country richer to the point that they could all afford the cars that small percentage of workers produced at the higher prices? You seem to have drank the Reaganomics kool-aid.
Mmmm.. Donuts
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?
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.
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.
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.
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."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?
The author is probably referring to Professor Norm Matloff at UC Davis. Do a Google search on him and his paper, "Debunking the myth of a high tech labor shortage".
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
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?
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
As usual, the devil is in the details. The fact of being able to afford the cars was only one aspect. you can argue free advertising, and paying for the cars defrayed the cost, etc. but there's more. to quote from something I found on the net:
- On January 5, 1914 Henry Ford's announcement of the
incredible $5 dollar/day plan swept the newspapers across the nation. The Detroit Journal announced, the surprise of the labor leaders and the consternation of manufacturers, Henry Ford announced on Jan 5, 1914 that a minimum wage of $5 dollars/day would be instituted immediately in the Ford plants, along with a profit sharing plan for all male employees.
Happy Now?Not only did Henry Fords new deal shock the nation, it sent a tremendous number of workers to Detroit. For the next ten years people would do anything to become a worker of one of Henry Ford's plants. It was unheard of to be offered $5/day by any automobile company. In fact the average salary for most was a mere $2.50/day at GM and Chryslers. But Henry Ford's $5/day plan was truly an illusion, it allowed for greater control of his workers. It was said that "The 5 dollar/day plan was an important early attempt at implementing a corporate welfare program." Ford wanted to see his company prosper, his employees were a part of this company.
The development of the Sociology department would allow Henry Ford to exploit his employees private lives. "Employees were advised by investigators on how to live in order to receive his/hers share of the profits." The result of this was a tight knit community with no corruption. This department also monitored the daily happenings in the plant. In fact, the department had over 1000 informers who would notify the department if any stealing or illegal plans were taking place. Social workers conducted extensive interviews on subjects ranging from household finances to sexual patterns. It was stated at that time that, the intrusion into workers lives, in the minds of Ford officials, was a small price to pay for increased wages, efficiency, production, and in the end profits for the Ford Motor Company.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...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.
No. If all of the H1B visas were revoked, companies wouldn't hire less qualified US workers, nor would they retrain. Instead, millions of jobs would move overseas almost instantly, where most companies already have development centers.
You see, if it were up to companies, they'd like to have workers work overseas anyway--it's cheaper. Bringing them to the US is a perk, something that helps them attract the best. Revoking the H1B program would merely give companies the excuse and incentive to do what makes financial sense for them anyway.
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.
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.
- 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.
The US government meddles in everyone's business because we want our oil supplies and reserves to be as large as Saddam's when the shit hits the fan and there isn't anymore oil to pump.
What if hydrogen-based technologies, electric cars, and everything else doesn't come through in time?
Let's face it. Every country's government does what it can to give it's own citizens the most, or at least it should be. The way the US is going about it is wrong, sneaky, and underhanded - I agree. But every battle is tied to maintaining relations with those in power of the oil, taking out drug cartels whose money goes to those trying to stop us, simply taking those out who control oil and taking it, or stirring up coups and revolutions to put those who see it our way into power in distant lands. The US is a puppetmaster.
Just my thoughts on a shitty topic, I rarely bother to think about. Call it ignorance, or call it peace of mind.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Note the Quote from the HP rep cited in my original post. Which is my point.
The line you object to is a one line condensation of a multipage article by someone else, who is more emotional on the subject. I took that and developed it further to look at the reduction of the population of technology workers as a long term trend.
It is part of the larger scene of short term thinking sabotaging long term prospects.
A Professional Football player might have a job for 10 to 15 years. In the tech industry, It now looks like that for a similar 10 to 15 year career, you need to spend 4 to 7 of it as a student, since by 35 or 40, you are dog meat and over the hill.
Try paying off your school loan in seven years after college. Definitely fits into the Lack of Fun category.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
Why should I care more about you loosing a cushy job than somebody starving in Zimbabwe? Hey I got my job and I'm gonna keep my job. Why should I care about you?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Back when Henry Ford was starting to build cars, one of the famous things he did was to yes, work his workers hard, but he also gave them wages far above what was normal for the day and age. This was to help prime the pump of demand for his product. If you had a country of poor people, then no-one could really buy your expensive product, and you would never have a mass market. Thus it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well.
That doesn't really make much sense. If Ford Motor Company was a massive company it still would not employ more than 5% of the population. If those were the only people who could afford cars his business would fail. Furthermore, if Ford he had competitors that made cars a little cheaper, Ford wouldn't even monopolize that 5% of the market. It would make more sense to payhis employees exactly what they asked for and drop his car prices so that many people could afford to buy the cars.
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!
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.
Of course this is not limited to Engineers. Take a look at this story abouty Maytag closing a factory for cheaper labor in Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/national/26MAYT. html
People are very unhappy. Except in this case, it's a factory town, and entire families are getting nailed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Er, I was actually referring to Classical Greece and Rome though...
--Dan
As a practicing EE, I recommend you find yourself a new major while you're still in college. If you really like technical stuff, you may be better off in something leading to a career as a researcher; I'm giving a little thought to pursuing this myself. Something in a pure science like biology (biotech is big right now) probably.
I'm not trying to dissuade you from engineering to protect my own career, because it wouldn't help me at all. My company is already talking about moving our engineering to Bangalore and China because it's so cheap. I think engineering as a profession is pretty much doomed in this country, and I don't see any kind of future for my own career after I hit 35. I merely give you this advice in the hopes that you won't make the same mistake I did in listening to all those assholes who promoted engineering as a career when I was younger. My own company (a major semiconductor manufacturer that Slashdot hates), while talking about moving our engineering jobs to Bangalore, is also trying to get us to go to schools and encourage kids to take up engineering. Why?! I'm thinking about getting into this program just so I can tell all the high school kids what a crock this career is.
I forgot to add in my last post; I see that you're hoping for some sagely advice from older engineers, and want to go someplace where you can learn valuable skills from them.
After working at two small companies, I was excited about coming to my present job because I thought I'd have some older (guru-like) engineers I could learn from at such a large, well-respected company. Boy was I wrong! There's no engineers older than 35 here, and those that stick around that long are on the management track, and will soon be spending their days in meetings and have no clue about the technology they're managing. My own manager even admits this point-blank. It really took me a while to get used to the fact that I knew more than everyone around me, and I'm really no expert at all.