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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..."
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...
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Free your mind.
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.
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If anyone wants to hire me check my resume in multiple formats at
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticl
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.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
I am a filthy pirate.
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.
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.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"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"
Ave Molech Setting
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!
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.
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
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.
11*43+456^2
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?
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
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:
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.
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