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

show me

[Undaar]

Show me a stable job, and I'll show you a...umm......resume.

Fool's day

[DigitalDragon]

Hey.. This story should've been printed on April 1st.. Too early.

Wheat from chaff

[stratjakt]

The .com boom got a lot of people into programming in IT because the "wisdom" of the time was telling them that's where the money was.

I was in university during the rise of the .com boom, and watched my classes fill up with people who had never used a computer, had no passion or interest in them, barely passed their courses, but were just sweating it out for that big paycheck at the end of the tunnel.

Myself, I've always been 'into' PCs, since I got a C64 as a wee kid. I have a passion for it, I enjoy it, I consider it my calling.. I couldnt imagine doing anything else.

So when the bubble burst, I'd imagine the people who got into computers who didnt care about computers simply left. They went and started new careers doing whatever. Some are slow to learn, as we've had a steady stream of employees who have absolutely no interest in doing the job. But they're eventually learning that the free lunch is not to be had, and they're moving on.

I'm still here. I get paid to do what I love (write code and troll on slashdot). I'm not worried about losing my current job, it's in an industry niche that wont go away. But if it came down to it, I'm confident I could find another.

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!

IT is as bad as it seems.

[luwain]

I've been "in the business" for almost 30 years as a programmer, Analyst, engineer etc... and I have NEVER seen the IT sector so bad. Usually it would take me between 4 and 8 days to get a new contract. After my last contract ended at Lucent in April 2001, I ended up free-lancing for an entire year, finally finding a job with a military contractor in April of 2002. Many I know in the industry haven't been as lucky. Agents who were getting rich during the 90s, are calling ME asking for leads. In actuality, things are worse than the media is making it out to be. People are losing their houses. People are losing their minds. People are compromising to pay their bills. I know a highly skilled Software Analyst who made $200,000 during the glory years, take a job where he has to commute an hour for $50000 working as an in-house network admin... These are not isolated stories. When I was at Lucent in Holmdel, there were some 7500 people in the building. Last I heard, there were 800 left, and there were stories that Lucent was going to give the building up. (That huge building in Holmdel used to be symbolic of the glory of Bell Labs).
It's bad. It's very bad.

Stop the fear

[hargettp]

I think collectively we are all afraid our jobs in IT (or in software, period) are becoming commodities: cheaply paid programmers outside the US are replacing us, open source software is drying up the revenue streams traditionally associated with software.

But it's not all hopeless. There is a way out, a way to prevent becoming the victim of commoditization. There's one skill that almost by definition will never be a commodity, and strangely enough, I had a friend at Microsoft put the idea in my head. The only way to succeed in software (or services, that tag-along so often accompanying software revenue) is by focusing on innovation.

It's that simple. Think about it for a minute: are you maintaining a bank withdrawal application for a large bank, or are you creating protein folding algorithms to run on a massive grid? Are you building the latest revision of the corporation's brochureware website, or are you designing a web-based logistics tracking system for a freight carrier? Are you working for large body-shop, or did you finally decide to start the consulting business you've always wanted? Pick the job opportunities by their potential for tapping into your capacity to innovate, and you'll never go out of style.

Don't give up. Yes, the run of the mill jobs will inevitably go to the cheapest service provider. But innovation is limitless; that's one of the lessons of the '90s that unfortunately seems to have been lost when the money ran out. And it was the money that ran out--creativity doesn't go anywhere. Innovation: do you got it?

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.