A Positive Outlook on the Software Industry

joechang writes "According to this article in Business 2.0, our IT sector jobs are not as glum as we make them out to be. Despite the downturn in the economy, the article maintains that our jobs are as stable as ever, and that pay increases are actually at reasonable levels. In addition, software development is still one of the largest growing industries, and that Billings, MT is a high growth area. Of course, I haven't heard of any of my co-workers taking a job in Billings..."

Comments

Stability?

[Gortbusters.org]

Maybe.... we haven't had a layoff in a few months. No raises or bonuses yet, and we've hired a total of 3 people in my immediate area over the past 3 months.

The real question will be when will we start seeing more hiring to aleviate the huge amount of work loads left on people that held their jobs?

Ah, for the head-hunters to return...

Billings

[Apreche]

If there's a coding job anywhere, I'm down. I'm a CS major at RIT, and in order to graduate I have to complete 4 co-ops. That means I have to work in the industry for 40 weeks, and get paid for it, before I get a degree. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a coding job when you don't have the magic piece of paper on your wall? If there are jobs in Billings I just might go.

If anyone wants to hire me check my resume in multiple formats at

http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=7900141

I don't know what this guy is saying, but if the industry was in good shape, I wouldn't have to pimp myself on slashdot.

Good news to me...

[blitzoid]

After spending a couple years in CS training I was sort of beginning to get worried about the availability of jobs, what with all the horrible news about the IT industry. I still might have to take a callcenter job for awhile first, but hey, it's just a rite of passage.

In the long term?

[00_NOP]

If you believe free software is good (I do)

And if you believe software reuse must come sometime (I do)

Then you cannot think that there will be a strong market for coders for ever - it just doesn't make sense.

Until China and India trains more programmers

[HanzoSan]

Your jobs are secure for only a few more years, then millions more Chinese and Indians will learn C, C++, VB, etc etc and take your jobs.

Software development is like the Mc Donalds job, anyone can do it, theres no shortage of programmers, people outsource now, and with the internet even small businesses dont have to hire you expensive American programmers.

Face it, the jobs are gone, and as soon as your company is in danger and needs to save some money, you'll be laid off.

Re:Until China and India trains more programmers

[stak]

I disagree. I think literacy and problem solving skills are more important to the software engineering community than the fast food industry. Sure anyone can write software that has been trained to. I think the costs associated with training a fast food employee versus a competent software engineer are beyond compare.

Re:Until China and India trains more programmers

[photon317]

Well yes that's true in general, but it doesn't work out well in the programmer field. I consider myself fairly talented. I know a few other people in my area that are also on the "pretty damn talented list", and all of us have had serious job/money troubles in the past couple years at one time or another due to the job market. I gaurantee we're in whatever top X percent constitutes being good enough that you shouldn't have to worry, but we're still getting hit.

Part of this can be explained away with the notion that a few good people will always be lost in such a major wash, and that they'll recover hopefully (and I did recover, so have most of the others). But another part of it, I think, is in the nature of good programmers... A large number of the good programmers out there are the geeky-introvert type, and a large amount of the mediocre to crappy programmers out there are regular extravert joes with social skills. So when the job market squeezes, guess who makes all the good connections with the suits, and guess who's sitting on their ass at home with their 1 friend, a bottle of mountain dew, and their dwindling bank account as comfort? In a highly competitive scare-job time, the lower end programmers have superior job-seeking and people-networking skills to leverage over our heads.

Upswing where?

[HanzoSan]

Why would the upswing happen in the USA? Theres no real reason to hire an American programmer over a Chinese or Indian programmer, face it, we are in an economic bubble and its about to burst. Programming is not the kinda job thats all that special, theres only about a billion Indians and Chinese in line to take your jobs, lets not forget Africa and South America.

Just like we lost all the factor jobs, and the car industry, we are about to lose the computer industry.

Define Reasonable....

[greymond]

"and that pay increases are actually at reasonable levels"

- Speaking as a Graphic Designer who has never been layed off (so far). I have worked at my current company for 2.5 years. Last year we didn't get pay increases - this year we got a raise - 2% flat to everyone... which made my salary go from 40k/yr to 40,800/yr...um so an $800 raise is considered "reasonable?"

Yeah beggers can't be choosers, but things still suck and the tech industry (at least in San Jose) is getting shit on pretty heavily still with Fujistu laying off people every quarter almost and Applied Materials saying they'll cut another 2k jobs... That doesn't sound like "IT sector jobs are not as glum as we make them out to be"

Billings - Probably Not a Good Idea

[Dictator For Life]

A couple years ago there was a factory in Billings that was empty - the company that owned it left town years before that, and ownership of the place fell to the city. Well, eventually, some business or other decided that this building would be good for them, and so they worked out a deal with the city to bring lots of new jobs to town while they would take care of renovating the building themselves.

The deal fell through at the *very* last minute when the city informed the prospective buyer of the building that they would be required to pay the back property taxes on the building.

Yes.

This amounted to no small amount of change. The end result was that the company took its jobs and its money and its tax dollars elsewhere.

Have you ever seen Billings? It's such a dumpy place that I have no problem believing that this story actually occurred (as my father insists that it did). Skip Billings. Go someplace else.

Biz Week ran a "IT Jobs are headed overseas" story

[cryofan5]

....just 2 weeks ago.

ANd this week, they run a story about how we don't need to worry. The jobs will stick around.

Hmmm. Let me see...what are there tactics?

First they run a scare story so that all the programmers will buy the magazine or will visit the website (actually, I don't think that story was online right away).

So, then the business lobbies know that their paid-for congressmen will have to knuckle under to an angry and scared electorate, so they pay Biz Week to run the antidote to the scare story. Biz Week makes out! Mo' money...mo' money....mo' money!

Headhunters

[abigor]

Things must be picking up. I get about 3 calls a week from headhunters, whereas even two months ago I was getting none. Those guys (and women) sure are persistent. This one woman, especially; she has this incredibly loud, brassy voice. I wonder how these people survived when things were at their worst?

open source != free coders

[zrodney]

If you believe free software is good (I do)

And if you believe software reuse must come sometime (I do)

Then you cannot think that there will be a strong market for coders for ever - it just doesn't make sense.

I have to point out that just because the code is free doesn't mean the programmers who understand it have to work for free. Many employers actually develop code and release it as open source, but the developers who do the programming are well paid.

Also, the idea that using open source and software reuse in the future will eliminate the need for talented developers and their paycheck is ignorant.

If anything, reusing prior code is much _harder_ than developing from scratch. It takes experience and skill to understand how the parts from an open source package are to be stiched together into an application. There is no magic open-source button that will make it work for free.

This sort of attitude that "all the software has been written" is a lot like the idea that the patent office should be shut down in 1899 because all the ideas have been thought of.


1899 quote refererence

Billings, MT

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in Billings, MT for 5 years, and am on the verge of moving back there. The place is growing, almost as fast in some respects as the Phoenix/Gilbert/Chandler/Mesa AZ area (where I've lived for the past year and a half or so.) It might not be a huge town yet, but it is indeed growing, and at a rather rapid (and, I must say, disconcerting; but then, I was born in a town of 500 people) rate.
About IT jobs, however, I have no idea. I personally know of a number of equipment manufacturing companies that have started business in the area, including one that does devolopment for CNC manufacturing equipment. But what with the needs of modern business, just about any sort of company can benefit from the services of a skilled IT dude, so it stands to reason that there might be a few positions open, eh?
But then, what do I know. I'm only a welder/machinist/plumber/housebuilder who codes video games as a hobby.

Re:show me reality

[Anonymous Coward]

This article points out that a series of negative news stories in the New York Times led the nation to believe the economy is worse than it really was.

This led many people to change their behavior which actually made the economy worse.

My question is: Does the mention of the word 'recession' by a national newscast lead to changing business plans, changing spending, which eventually leads to lower spending by individuals and corporations, which eventually leads to recession?

Is it right to change your spending plans based on hearing the word 'recession'/'downturn' enough times?

Boy, where to begin...

[Radical Moderate]

This story's got more holes than swiss cheese:
"Last year construction employment declined by 1.3 percent, transportation and public utilities jobs shrank by 2.8 percent, and manufacturing employment slipped by 3.5 percent....Services employment went up 1.5 percent, and finance, insurance, and real estate increased almost 1 percent." In other words, lost jobs in three of the highest paying, productive, employement sectors were partly offset by jobs in the lowest-paying sector (services), and in sales and paper-pushing. If contruction jobs are down and real estate jobs are up, doesn't that mean we have less product(buildings) being peddled by more salesmen(real estate agents)?

Another positive indicator he cites is rising home prices. This may not be so much an indicator of prosperity as it is of insufficient supply. Sure, it's great if you own a house (or two or three), but if you don't and prices are rising faster than your wages, that's not good news.

As for the average salary increasing by 3.7 percent, is that figure skewed by CEOs giving themselves and their VPs huge raises? Did the average guy in the trenches really get his 3.7 percent?

His figure of 2.8 percent growth sounds respectable, but how much of that is real growth? Economists include just about everything in this figure, but investing in prisons, enhanced airline security, etc. does not make us any more productive. Not that it's not worth doing, but counting it as growth is misleading.

It's funny what you can do with statistics. I can't say this article is wrong, but there isn't enough real information there to draw any conclusions.

Why H1-B is not right for the U.S. (karma to burn)

[dentar]

I am an American citizen. (I can hear the flames already. No, I'm not pro-war.)

I believe the H1-B program, as it is currently being implemented, is just plain wrong for the U.S.A. for the following simple reasons:

- Paying a foreigner less than an American just because you can is immoral and racist.

- Throwing a citizen out on the streets, because you can pay a foreigner less, increases the burden on taxpayers, both by taxpayers paying more to support the unemployed, and by the employer contributing less in taxes.

- Corporations, by increasing the burden on taxpayers so they can make an extra buck, are causing the economy to crumble even further. Cities and States must raise taxes to make up for it, increasing the burden on taxpayers even more.

- These same corporations, by exacerbating the recession, ironically, are causing themselves loss in profit. Corporate accountants don't see it that way. This loss doesn't show up on the books, so it is invisible to them. Their view of the world stops at the edge of the ledger.

What to do?

Either:

- Get rid of the H1-B program altogether.

-or-

- (preferred) Make it mandatory to pay H1-B prevailing wages, and contribute to the tax pool, e.g. social security, etc. the same as you would an American.

That would solve the problems of corporations abusing H1-Bs in order to bilk the taxpayers and pocket the profits. There's nothing wrong with making a profit. There -IS- something wrong with making a profit by ripping other people off.

Oh yeah, any of y'all got your money back from Ken Lay yet?

Re:Uhh I live in Silicon Valley

[version5]

> 1. It will cut the number of tech jobs due to war funding.

That doesn't make any sense - the government is about to drop bags of cash on the defense industry and homeland security, both of which rely heavily on technology.

> 2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war

Also false. The younger, less-experienced people headed off to war were never applying jobs because they already have jobs. They are fulltime military personnel. As for the reserves, they'll be back pretty soon.

> 3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries

According to the article:

"As a cyclical phenomenon, jobs moving offshore isn't that important," says Robert Shimer, an associate professor of economics at Princeton. The concern... is based on the misapprehension that if our wages are high and other people's are low, all our jobs will be exported. "It turns out we are more efficient than the people we are competing with," he adds.

Speculating for a moment, I think you may be disproportionately feeling the effects of the recession, more so than other IT jobs. It seems to me that admin type jobs would be the first to go. I've read more than a few /. posts boasting about the posters ability to write shell scripts that do 90% of the administration while they play CounterStrike. Conversely, if a you've had some layoffs in your company and your sys admin is overloaded with work, you could probably suck it up and hold out for a while longer. But if you absolutely had to get your product to market because it looked like the ecomony was turning around, and you don't have the programming staff, that's simply not going to work, you have to get more programmers. In short, the consequences of not enough admin staff are less severe than the consequences of not enough programmers.

Of course that's all speculation.