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Tech Jobs Projected to Double by 2010
netbsd_fan writes "Today's Chicago Tribune has an article that claims that the number of coding jobs will double by 2010, and computer support jobs aren't far behind. It's hard to believe since I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday. Could this be a turning point in the labor market?"
That would be great. In the meantime, I'd be happy to see tech jobs return to their former level, let alone double.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I'm unemployed so getting first post wasn't that hard.
But I need a job now!!!
Hacking the Network
Double of nothing is still nothing. Sorry.
I think I shall change my job in that case ;]
They may have a point. But computer users are becomming smarter and smarter.
Back in the day people charged out heaps just to plug a computer in or reinstall it. Nowdays everyones a computer technition and can do it themselves.
Surely they will just invent some AI version of software with a nice point anc click interface (more so than there is now) that creates all the software you need!
/sig
Not that I have a problem with that...
Great this after I just changed my major away from computer engineering.
In other news, the population of Indians and Chinese living in the U.S. is expected to double by 2010.
Hmmmmm....
Funny how over the last 2 years my department went to a third of its size...from nearly 40 at the height of the boom to only 12...and now it's going to take 7 years to double current numbers? Looks like a lot of techies are gonna be out of jobs for awhile to come!
My company is moving locations and intends on laying off everyone who doesn't want to relocate...let me tell ha how excited I am!
I was a fool for thinking that an ISP job was a stable gig...
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
where will these jobs go? as globalization becomes more present, i'm certain many other developing nations will be more economically viable choices when it comes to the employment pool.
I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday
... "Posted by: timothy"
I'll bet $100 that this line was the clincher that got the submission posted.
Hmm
I'll double-down.
because of this prediction more people will go into computer related fields, and thus the job market will again "suck".
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
More Coders = More Bugs More Bugs = More Tech Support Guys More Tech Support Guys = More Confused People More Confused People = More Montiors with fist sized holes in them
100% growth might happen, but not in the US.
I hope that I have enough Top Ramen to last until then.
We're hiring...
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
whatever
It's hard to believe since I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday.
My guess is that the demand for windows specific programmers will be essentially non-existant in the future. Cross-platform apps will undoubtedly rule everywhere, even the desktop.
No doubt they will do what they did with most other things.
Employ a bunch of children to program things in some sweat shop for 2 cents a day.
/sig
Coming soon: Plenty of jobs Despite today's grim talk of `jobless recovery,' experts say several signs point to an upcoming shortage of talent in the workplace--and a bright future for job seekers. By Rebecca Theim Special to the Tribune Published April 13, 2003 Rising unemployment, a steady increase in the number of "discouraged workers" and constant talk of a "jobless recovery" have disheartened even the most determined job seeker in the past two years. But against today's depressing employment backdrop, economists and demographers steadfastly predict that we're on the brink of a significant labor shortage. Experts contend the reversal of fortune will be driven by a convergence of trends, including the steady retirement of Baby Boomers (with much smaller generations following them into the labor force), tighter immigration policies and an economy that increasingly demands better-educated, more highly skilled workers. "When you're sitting there without a job . . . it's a difficult scenario to believe," said Sylvester Schieber, chief economist and director of research for global human resource consulting firm Watson Wyatt. "But when you look at the labor market's underlying numerics, the picture is relatively clear: if anything, we've got less surplus labor now than we did (in the early 1990s), which means the economy doesn't have to heat up nearly as much as it did then for us to be in a much tighter labor market." In a recent report studying the U.S. labor force, The Aspen Institute, a non-profit think tank, pointed out that while the native-born workforce between the ages of 25 and 54 grew 44 percent in the past two decades, that demographic is projected to have zero growth between now and 2020. "With the labor force leveling off in the next 20 years, every worker will be needed," the report concludes. And in a recent study, electronic recruiting analyst Interbiznet projects that between now and 2010, for every new member added to the workforce there will be 2.6 new jobs created. The report projects steadily increasing labor shortages across virtually every job function--from management to maintenance. The only thing experts can't seem to agree on is how quickly the boom will arrive and how dramatic its arrival will be. "It's not a matter of `if,' but absolutely a matter of `when,'" said Jeff Taylor, chief executive officer of online job site Monster.com. "Will the current economic downturn and uncertainty over terrorism and Iraq mean the peak will happen later than some of the earlier predictions? Maybe. But you can't get away from the reality that the only difference between now and the booms of the early 1980s and late 1990s is that we will have much smaller numbers of workers going forward." Certain professions and industries already are feeling the pinch. The growing shortage of health care professionals--particularly the already well-publicized dearth of nurses--will develop into a more serious problem as Baby Boomers age and increase the demand for health care. Of the 30 occupations projected to grow the fastest between 2000 and 2010, 17 are healthcare-related, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. These include imaging technicians, registered and practical nurses, technicians, pharmacists and even medical billers and coders, according to a 2001 First Consulting Group report done for several non-profit hospitals. Belying the current battered state of the information technology sector, the fastest-growing occupation in the next decade is projected to be computer software engineer. Another area of opportunity is government services because roughly half of the U.S. government workforce is expected to retire in the next five to eight years, according to both Taylor and Schieber. Opportunities will not be limited to white-collar occupations. The country already is experiencing shortages in specific occupations, including collision mechanics, truck drivers, kitchen and bath designers and plumbers and electricians, according to Roger Herman, a workforce consultant and co-author of "Impending C
Despite the current situation, I don't think anyone could realistically predict a long-term deterioration in the tech industry. Regardless of the whether your Nortel stock is doing well or not, technology is just too important to today's economy, underlying business activity in nearly every sector. If it can drive down cost, or provide a competitive advantage, it will be valuable longterm. I'm sure that I'm preaching to the choir here, but technology isn't going away...
Further, as worker productivity increases in the longer term, while natural resources become scarce, it seems clear that an increasing proportion of our output will have to consist of services and 'intangible' (e.g., information) products.
Either that, or we'll all be unemployed and starving...
It's hard to believe since I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday.
;-)
Hard to believe? With a name like netbsd_fan, it's amazing they lasted as long as they did
no mention that this is a reg required site (at least for me)
Yeah, but it's not so bad in academia. At least here, when we're hiring for programmers (which we can't now because of the budget crunch) if we have equally qualified resident and international candidates, we have to give preference to the resident candidate. No offense personally to chinese or indian programmers, but it's been my experience their database experience isn't good enough (we don't use fox pro or OSS dbs, which is all the experience they seem to have) and I find when it comes to coding they don't like to document, they do no preliminary project specifications but sit down and start programming, and have really bad programming habits. Besides, I like candidates that speak fucking english so I can understand it.
word.
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
Jobs are about to double, but not in the USA!. Tech support and programming jobs around the world will double by 2010, and even if it does double in the USA, the more it doubles the lower our salaries.
I'm sorry but soon programmer will be what teenage kids do, like mc donalds of today.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
with the discovery of a large black rectangle near Jupiter
I graduated with a Computer Engineering degree at the end of Decemeber, and after three long months of searching, I finally got a great job and am starting tomorrow. According to some of the recruiters I've talked to in the past couple of weeks, they are starting to see an increase in the number of jobs available in the field. If I can get a job with little real world experience in a town that has had hundreds (maybe thousand) of layoffs in the tech field, things must be looking up.
My last day was Friday. I'm not sure if I can spend four more year listening to people complain.
My organization has grown from 5 to 25 programmers in the past two years. However, the last 20 hires are in Shanghai at $800US/mo. When computer jobs expand overseas there is no real benefit for professionals in the USA.
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
Hopefully other people out there are as skeptical of this as I am. While there is no doubt that tech fields will rapidly expand over the next 7 years, people are clammoring for good news of any kind right now. Note the "Saving Private Lynch" effect; one young girl is found alive amidst the chaos of our Gulf "War" and suddenly we hear about her ad nauseum. I support the troops and her courage under fire and capture, but hopefully the military can use some of the really wacko media folks as shock troops. In this case, we still have no decent news on the homefront worth talking about, so by the same effect the Tribune may be trying to boost confidence this way.
New programs will have to be developed for all sorts of things but in this economy the applications are not likely to be as readily profitable and hence I doubt that they will be pursued so quickly. This report sounds almost like one from about two years ago (saying that coding jobs were going to double by 2003) got dusted off and re-numbered with double the difference in between. Are there any blindingly new applications out there that will have such growth over the next few years that it could cause this? Again, it sounds as though it may be little more than propaganda du jour, especially given the number of people with coding skills still not coding because of the tech crash. What will be the net increase of coding jobs by 2010 compared to March 2001? August 2002? And how many people who have found work elsewhere will leave their current jobs and go back to coding? Many of the newest jobs will be sapped up by college kids and the unemployed, providing a ready pool of applicants regardless of jobs created. Would we even notice the increase in the first few years given their predictions?
Now if they were to include protein programmers in this category, I would agree. There is a new field of "programming" where individual DNA sequences and amino acids are going to be genetically tailered en masse for research. It is already happening in universities for research but not enough places in the ordinary world for the everyday joe to know what's going on. With protein design still in its nacesent stages, however, it will not truly take off until more consistent results in said field emerge. And in this case, proteins with as many flaws as Windows can still prove useful if only as drugs that mimic something biologically made and block its target for whatever reason (like blocking a receptor that causes blood vessels to grow as a means of treating cancer).
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
We are experiencing what will be later known as the beginning of the second tech bubble.
Remember:
What happens if total money is a constant and jobs goes up?
Yes, I can see jobs doubling by 2010, because I can definitely see salaries halving by 2010. Folks making $60K today, in 7 years, will be making $30K plus some adjustment for inflation and cost of living -- probably about $37K given a 3% rate.
If only salaries had been forcefully halved in 2000, a lot more folks might have kept their jobs, instead of that lucrative job title change of "professional unemployment collector."
Ain't that a bitch.
-- Dossy
Dossy's Blog
Sure, the market has taken a negative turn, but the inventive and forward moving spirit of those who love technology will continue to thrive. Recessions happen, and suck, but lets face it, technology is where its at. I still believe that software engineering, as a career, has strong prospects for future growth. If companies wish to get out of their current holding pattern they are going to have to grow their technologies very soon.
[FromTheMorning]
Sure, I hope there are more tech jobs in the future, but does anyone still trust these 'economists?'
Shouldn't they have predicted the initial tech fallout? Almost none did. In fact, when have they ever been right?
Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I'll believe this one whan I see it.
+1: True
Yes, if you're working for free.
I predict that in 2010, there will be a so-so sequel to a reality that didn't happen in 2001.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
I too recently got rid of the last of the WIn32 guys. Funny -- they *refused* to learn/understand Linux, BSD, etc.
I am hiring though. Unix knowledge a *MUST*.
double where exactly? In bangladesh? the philipines?
ya sure, but that doesn't do me any good.
Computers are very good at deductive thinking, while humans are very good at inductive thinking. Some times deductive thinking may get boring for humans, while computers never get tired. More and more of all deductive tasks are being performed by computers and humans left with the design part. That's because computers are very bad at design.
So be sure that you are in the design oriented IT job, not the deductive thinking one.
Hopefully your entire sector will disappear and everyone will learn from web sites and chat rooms run by AI bot-professors.
I would like to be positive but I was laid off last October. I have a master's degree and have only had 2 job interviews. I did get one offer for sum that is laughable. I guess there's more competition than work. It seems all this country wants are "how may I help you"-McJobs. I don't see this trend changing with current dingle-berry in office. Oh well, how would you like like your burger???
I would not be surprised if programming job opportunities doubled in less than 3 years!
The catch is, you need to move to a third word country to get one of those new programming jobs, or at least be willing to work at 3rd world rates.
That is the unintended consequence of connecting everyone everywhere. Now employers can hire anyone from anywhere.
So this will be like every other industry moving away from the cottage to the factory... more jobs with lower wages.
i imagine that the number tech jobs will double in 7 years time but most of the growth will be in overseas IT sectors and not only in the US.
The reason being that a growing list US companies have been sending their IT contracts over seas to get their work done cheaper.
That overseas experience will not dissapate by the time 2010 comes about, so i can imaging that a proportion of the future boom will be drawn to other countries
Huge amounts of indian workers flowed into the country with H1B immigration status. In short, if you can program or do tech work you can live in the US as long as you work in the industry (or your h1b ends). This is factor in why no one can get a job in the silicon valley area. Lots of people were displaced. After all the H1B's end, a lot of people will have to head back to India. This will open up a lot of jobs. This isn't like 20-30 jobs, it's like hundreds of thousands. I'm living in the bay area and it's funny cause jobs are so hard to get now. Entry level stuff requires like 5 years experience (isn't entry level about not having experience?) It's a rough time for some of us!
That's my opinion of course. Any experts around? Can anybody point at an article written 7 years ago that predicts the end of the bubble?
My $0.02
Coding jobs will double by 2010 after we finish cutting them in half in 2003.
But unfortunately the amount of available techs waiting for a job will treble and there will be even more techs out of work.
As linux and Mac make further headway, the gay porn industry will increase many orders of magnitude.
redundant?! fuck you
and tell me who made you that offer for the sum that was laughable ? It probably isn't laughable to me.
The traditional approach of in-house techs for companies doesn't work in a large company becasue the numbers people want to mess with the formula. They see the potential for consolidation which reduces the number of peope needed to support your network. Then they see cheaper programmers available in India or China or any one of several countries with decent education and low pay. So they export those jobs.
Eventually, they see a few ex-techies managing the people who used to be hot stuff making too much money to repeat decisions made by the senior management, and replace those with accounting types.
Remember in most companies it is the overriding goal of Finance to reduce costs. The other parts of the business bring in the profits. One way to reduce costs is to standardize jobs so they can be filled by less talented people with lower earnings.
There will always be a tech industry, but I'm not so sure with outsourcing and globalization that there will be a large American tech industry. The trained monkey jobs may be the last few left.
And so you know who's talking, I'm a VP of IT who worked his way up from general geek over the last 18 years. I've seen the trends play out and I just don't feel good about the future of our industry.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
cancel cable,
move into a trailer,
eat only ramen noodles and tap water,
and cut way back on my social life (um, nevermind...)
I could just about make my savings last til then.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I thought it was a massive black hole near Uranus.
:)
Sorry, it was a cheap shot for cheap laughs.
If I wasn't so lasy I would link in http://www.goatse.cx but bah, that's probably redundant
As for jobs - every day I go to bed praying that the Paki's and Indi's start a massive shooting war, destroying every bit of build-up Dell, IBM, all the fscking investments they and the other big wigs have been building over there the past half decade or so. Nuke em all, let God sort em out. Sorry, but that is about what it is going to take to bring jobs back here to the US. Well anything other than McJobs... I am surprised that this thread hasn't devolved into another one of those, and please don't use this as an invitation to become one.
But I'm not bitter.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Of course they will double by 2010. Only problem is they will all be farmed out to underdeveloped companies where labor is cheap.
...will be in India, or wherever anybody is willing to code for $1/day.
I'll just have to settle for my $8/hr PHP scripting job for the next 6 years...
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
funny
I think it is completely totally fucking tasteless to post a story that says something like "i just laid two guys off"
you're so fucking proud. Yea it's a fact of life. But you boast about it like you take joy in it.
Sod off bitch.
Will the doubling even return the number of jobs to the pre-2000 level? I suspect many organizations had more than halved their IT depts.
Now they're projecting a big turn-around in the labor market 7 years from now. Next they'll start wailing about a severe shortage of labor.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I found in my job search that my longevity in the field was a problem. In general, years in the saddle directly translates into dollars. So its actually easier for younger less experienced yet well exposed candidates to land jobs because their lower cost.
So I would go in for a job that was a perfect fit for my experience, plus I could bring so much to the team. But never heard a thing. After talking with headhunters and other recruiters, it was clear that companies were looking at dollars first. In fact, I almost didn't get the job I have because they didn't feel that I would be happy with what they'd be willing to pay. This is true, but hey, its better than the nothing* I was making before!
In other news, the people I know in the VC arena say we're in year three of a six year slump in the IT industry.
Its great that you found a good job right out of school.
*Actually, panning $25/hr doing odd contracting work, when I could get it, and only then if I could get the client to pay up!
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
By 2010, The CEO of The United States of Microsoft (USM$) will in desperation allow Open Source Software on a controlled scale after global uprising due to a worldwide security breach that leaves all computers of the USM$ Licensed Nations and their users under control of the terrorist group known as the "Penguin Underground" who appearantly exploited the "Universal DRM" utility that provided root access designated to "trusted authorities" of the USM$ to monitor user activity and insure the well being of all Intellectual Property Worldwide. This group will be on a volunteer basis as an offshoot of the Neighborhood terrorist Watch and authorised tto create software to fight the terrorist threat.
In other 2010 news: The corporate practice of employee cranial augmentation is suspected of casing a global health threat according to reseachers after a 2 year study into the prolonged effect of implants in users selected worldwide. In a presentation to the USM$ Scientific Work Group, Dr. Yacob-Saleem Okawa Miller has alleged that Cranial Implants can cause Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) due to degradation of the cellular structure of cloned stem-cells over a long period of use. At the time of this report the Fedaral Department of Biotech has stated that it is unaware of any such negative effects but will "look into the matter".
Heh...
The great thing is that in 8 years, NO ONE will remember any such predictions and if they do, they'd come across as idiots for beleiving a word of it.
So hey... I can believe programming jobs will double by 2010, but I'd wager largely that the average wage would rival a starbucks employee. C'mon, let's face it, by 2010 a 10 year old will be able to program a simple website and database... of course under the authority and watchful eye of the USM$ Web Services Bureau Youth Education Program.
does 4 years of Solaris & Linux plus Oracle & MySQL count for anything(also, finishing a Cisco CCNA course)?
"Sleep deprivation is no substitute for caffeine." Untold Lessons in Life
HAHAHAYOUARESOSHUTTHEFUCKUP!!!
Seriously, do so.
This isn't troll. A troll-post just tries to ruin it for everybody. Try and claim that against me here.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This is pure ITAA propoganda. This story comes out every year in a slightly different form. Even at the height of tech layoffs they were babbling on about how many IT jobs there were and how there wasn't enough workers to fill them all. The reason for tell these lies to so they can get congress to expand the H1B and H1 visa programs. The H1B limit falls back to 65,000 this fall so they are starting to put out these articles to lay the basis for claiming a shortage and the need for more importation of foreign workers.
Look economic downturn is only temporary. Everything will bounce back, sooner or later, hopefully sooner but who knows. At that point we'll create more jobs than were lost and then we'll lose some of those and the cycle will continue. If you don't like the volatility of this industry though, you could always look at a change of profession i guess.
Derek Greene
My guess is that, as tech workers are willing to settle for significantly reduced salary and benefits, the number of tech jobs will start climbing again. So the article is probably right in its assertion that the number of tech jobs will increase.
While the American IT economy deteriorates into near nothingness, the Indian economy grows by a factor of 250%... carry the one... that works out to about doubling, yeah.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
It's hard to believe since I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday.
Perhaps in the dot-com bust of 2011, your firm will lay off its last four Win64 guys.
Carefully read the article, and you will see that the majority of quotes deal with "expanding your skill set." That's good advice, even in the best of times. But the quotes are coming from persons who directly benefit from unemployed IT workers going back to school or testing for certification, so-called workplace and staffing consultants.
Times are tough all over, and you can't begrudge these people for trying to create business for themselves, but in these tough economic times, it seems irresponsible for the Chicago Tribune to report this as news. The article represents nothing more than opinion which a lot of people currently without work will misinterpret as fact and act upon, waiting for the predicted boom to occur.
Luckily, I am still employed, but I know that if the current economic conditions don't change for the better, I will be looking for work in a few months myself. It seems to me that one of the most irresponsible, even stupid, things that I could do now is to dip into my savngs to "improve my skill set" because a bunch of experts with books to sell have convinced the Chicago Tribune that there is another high tech boom just around the corner!
My mortgage doesn't care how up to date my skill set is. Neither does the grocery bill each week. I sympathize with those who are looking for work. I'll probably be doing the same thing in a few months, and I think the smartest thing any IT worker can do right now is prepare to get through the here and now, and not these boom times that are part of imagined future.
not like the fake lol where you just type it and have no real reaction. I LAUGHED.
I wonder how they project people who write in scripting programs like perl or php, to do in the future. It is some damn useful stuff, which is virtually the only type of programming that I do at work.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
When I started at my current place, out site had 22 people (including manager) supporting 600 people and probably 800 devices. That was 5 years ago. Three years ago we went down to approximately 9 people including the manager. This was not a surprise because the company was a contracting company which went down in business. It lost almost half it's staff by that time but maintained most of the devices. Money was almost non-existant and new PCs were a dream in most people's eyes. About 2 1/2 years ago we bid for a big project and gradually gained back 200 people to bring the user population back up to 500. What happened to the IT group? Nothing.. in fact, if two people hadn't left we would have had to lay off 1 or 2 more. Odd, considering the amount of work just increased 40%. Cut to beginning 2002... we are given extra money to hire two more help desk staffing contractors.. renewing tentatively every two months. Cut to 2nd quarter 2003.. those two help desk positions are now full time. We have 10 people. And now there will be double the positions? I don't think so... People learned and won't go down that road. If they can do less with what they have now, they'll keep it that way. And if they do.. it returns the staffing levels back to the way it was 15 years previously... now.. how screwed up is that??
no, smartass.
In response to the question asked in the write-up, "Could this be a turning point in the labor market?" - no. This isn't talking about some specific turning point (and indeed most posts are currently noting that people feel the current workforce is so diminished that a doubling of jobs isn't much growth at all); rather this article is talking about a general demographic trend. We're entering the time period where the baby boomers are starting to retire, and the generations that follow after them do not have as large of a population. According to the article, "between now and 2010, for every new member added to the workforce there will be 2.6 new jobs created."
The title "Tech Jobs Projected to Double by 2010" comes from looking at the table provided at the bottom of the article where it states that the occupation of "Computer software engineers, applications" will grow from a current 380,000 jobs in 2000 to 760,000 jobs in 2010, or 100% growth. Note that that's job growth between 2000 and 2010, not between today and 2010 - so think about employment levels in 2000 instead of today; I know our company was twice as large in 2000 as it is today. The table actually lists 9 different jobs that I would call "Tech Jobs" that have pretty healthy growth rates - the tech slant in the article is that while all jobs are growing (in part due to baby boomer retirement) technology jobs are growing faster than any other jobs.
The implication of the article is that because this job growth rate will lead to a tighter employment market than was seen in the 1990's we will someday soon (well, someday before 2010) see the type of high wage growth and high starting wages in the tech industry that were a signature of the 1990's boom. All due to supply and demand in a labor market where people are retiring faster than new people enter the market.
My personal concern is that as this occurs the cost of Social Security will skyrocket (due to all those retiring folks), and if our federal budget keeps going the way it is we're going to end up with very high taxes that could offset the benefits of higher wages. (Of course, this will end up screwing the poor more than anyone else, of course, because payroll taxes aren't progressive - everyone pays the same percent no matter what.)
On a positive note (for those of us who call ourselves employees), this article should be a wake up call to employers to start treating their workers well, or they might have major problems in 7 years. With all the blogs, messageboards, and websites (F*ed Company comes to mind) that are storing a record of how companies treat their workers, you will end up paying tomorrow for the sins you commit today.
I'm an EE major, and I'm hoping that all is well when I get out of school. EE is more broad than CE or CS, so.. I think I should be fine (I actually just switched out of CE for that reason)
Are EE's experiencing this downturn too?
Chicagoland area?
Here's what a well respected REAL economist has to say about the coming labor market.From Amazon:
t h/fc/btw 21203/mishel.htm
...
The Myth of the Coming Labor Shortage: Jobs, Skills, and Incomes of
America's Workforce 2000
by Lawrence Mishel
Lawrence Mishel, Ph.D.
Lawrence Mishel is the Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute and
specializes in the field of productivity, competitiveness, income
distribution, labor markets, education, and industrial relations. He is the
co-author of The State of Working America, a comprehensive review of
incomes, wages, employment, and other dimensions of living standards
published biennially.
He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, an M.A. in
economics from the American University, a B.S. (Magna Cum Laude) from
Pennsylvania State University and has been published in a variety of
academic and non-academic journals.
his testimony before the house:
http://edworkforce.house.gov/hearings/108
he publishes the bi-annual and highly respected State of Working America.
Here is this year's copy.:
1. The State of Working America, 2002/2003 (State of Working
America, 2002 2003)
by Lawrence Mishel, et al (Paperback - January 2003)
vs.
Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People
by Roger E. Herman, Thomas G. Olivo, Joyce L. Gioia Official Biography of Roger E. Herman, CSP, CMC
Roger Herman holds a BA from Hiram College, where he majored in Sociology,
and received an MA in Public Administration from The Ohio State University.
Prior to starting his firm, he gained almost two decades of experience in
sales, management, and staff positions in both public and private sector
organizations.
(excuse me.. is this the same as saying he WORKED for a couple decades?
'Cause quitte frankly, that describes everone on this list , too. But I
digress...)
In the public sector, he served as a City Manager (CEO of a municipal
government). During the Viet Nam era, Roger served as a Counterintelligence
Special Agent. Roger founded the company in 1980.
(intelligence during the Viet Nam war.... ok.....)
He would like for you to buy his audio tapes from his website. He may be
selliing baseball caps too.
Couldnt' find that he had testified to anyone
Hmmm..I think this is a no brainer folks. To me it looks like these
globalists HAD to say SOMETHING to a book with a title like The Myth Of The
Coing Labor Shortages.
companies will be spending exactly the same amount of money..
think about it....
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
April Fool's Day again!?!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
don't forget to sell blood, brother - you don't need 6 pints - 3.5 ought to be enough.
Hail to the Thief, baby!
didnt you hear we are phasing out computers. They take up too much power and are dificult and confusing to operate. Time to bring back paper!
ahh, nothing like working for the govt, where the first tech bubble burst is still 20 some odd years in the future. Gotta love the pace of the govt.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
That's because most of the people in their 50's and 60's will have retired.
I remember a slashdot article about a kid under 18 who contributed to the darwin project. He was barred from contributing when they found out his age.
Seems like its a bit sooner than expected.
I saw interesting articles about Cobol/Mainframers being needed, since no schools are bothering teaching those outmoded languages and operations despite the fact that most major corporations still use mainframes for the 24/7/365 mission critical stuff.
This suggests that because of a shrinking work force there will be greater demand for people to fill the large number of open positions. This doesn't mean that those jobs can't be sent to cheaper overseas locations. In fact, there will be far greater incentive to do so with sky rocketing labor costs here do to a shrinking work force. Sure, the number of employees needed will double but that doesn't mean they'll all be working in the US.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
but was quickly snatched up by the Indians, recession continues."
So, let me get this straight...
By 2010, we should double the current tech jobs... so 2 * 0 = 0
How convenient, why not be bold and say they will triple!
Or, is 2010 supposed to be when the tech job sector will return?
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
I'll have my physics PhD then. So, if there are no openings in research, I can always go back to do some lame code monkey job.
World population will hit 7 Billion by 2011. So all those extra tech guys will be working for Total Information Awareness keeping tabs on all these new terrorists.
Where do I sign up?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I saw where Afganistan just graduated their first programmers. I've got to get out of this cave/cubicle more often.
Assuming the predictions hold out, how many of those programming jobs, which the Tribune lists as the single biggest growing job need, are actually going to be filled by programmers in the US instead of being filled by cheap programming labor from overseas?
A computer programmer per the BLS, will:
A software engineer for applications per the BLS, will:
And a software engineer for systems will:
The BLS also mentions that a job as a software engineer is only likely with at least a bachelor's degree in a related discipline.
Of course, the Tribune also has a CYA article in which they explain that the hype may not match reality. They explain that you cannot compare the statistics showing the jobs that will need to be filled to the numbers representing available employees because an employed person can wear two hats and knock two items off of the needed jobs list.
Gee, they can predict the tech economy out to 2010, but their weather guy can only predict to next Friday. What's up with that?
-ted
The jobs will probably be gobbled up by the Indians. Not that I mind because I've met some really bright persons, not to mention cool friends. But I've also met some really dumb and undeserving Indians. Would you believe I met this Indian who is a MSCD but DOES NOT EVEN KNOW what a while loop is?! Or what about a 'C++ programmer' who doesn't even know what STL means, and who insists using char[] instead of string because it's according to him 'a dumb concept'. Worst part is that they have a job meant for other more deserving people.
I call their bullshit.
Blarf.
And what country will our corporations whore our jobs out to next? Hell we might as well outsource politicians.
and now they called you a troll!? I think /. needs a regime change.
It was directed to goatse.cx
Don't bother to cut and paste, but I wonder how someone mananged to redirect a M$ site there.
And what would these brilliant prognosticators have said in 1999?
$VC =~
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
Hardware design is only where it is manufactured. Very little manufacturing is done in the US anymore.
May I suggest opening a restaurant? You have a better chance of making a living in the US than being an engineer. Electronic engineering is dead in the US.
The huge numbers of indian workers whom I have worked with, came here on H1B visas and are citizens now.
I bet the vast majority of Indians that you know came here with H1B visa, have by now become citizens. This was the case for all of the indians that I've worked with in the past.
Actually, as US citizens they have the best of both worlds. They can stay here and earn more money then most could even imagine. Buy houses outright in India, and take month long vacations to India.
It was kinda unreal, but when someone went on vaction to, let's just say india, they would use all of their accrued sick leave. Now, when I spent the evening in the emergency room on July 4th, and the afternoon at a specialist, I got a plesant note from my boss's boss saying that sick leave was only to be used when you are actually sick.
but besides that optimistic prediction - the comment about laying of win32 guys was a bit tasteless.
did they get laid off because they only do win32 or it was simply because they can't code for shit?
i hope it was the latter. but i think it was very probable that it was otherwise.
what's worse, when this guys start interviewing, they will find this new wave of ridiculous interview and qualification process that is all the rage among employers nowadays - eg: asking the same newbie questions that you pose to new grads [what method does such and such when using JDK v1.1.8] and disregarding the years of experience behind the interviewee [uh, i see although you have done Delphi for 4 years, you havent been doing it for 2, so i don't think you can do this maintenance job]
stupid. ridiculous. and LIZARD-SHIT.
What they don't mention is that these jobs will be filled by third world countries with programmers that work for 1/5 of what we do ...
Quick, what do you get when you double nothing?
Finding God in a Dog
My personal concern is that as this occurs the cost of Social Security will skyrocket (due to all those retiring folks), and if our federal budget keeps going the way it is we're going to end up with very high taxes that could offset the benefits of higher wages.
I think most people would agree that the US's current Social Security program is non-sustainable. I pay Social Security, but I don't expect to see any of that money when I retire in 30+ years. Fortunately, I am a pessimist and I'm planning for retirement without Uncle Sam's "help". Many of my coworkers are not US citizens. They must pay Social Security too, but they are not legally allowed to collect it (unless they become US citizens).
Does anyone here think that the US can or will phase out Social Security within our lifetimes? I understand that current Social Security recipients need to get paid, but I hope we can phase out this "benefit" so I can keep more of my paycheck each month. We could significantly increase Joe Sixpack's take-home pay without cutting "taxes"! We wouldn't need cuts in "taxes" or budgets (except Social Security). I'm not calling Social Security a "tax" because, supposedly, I will later get my money back, though the government will get to keep my compounded interest.
You can find more information about the US federal budget at federalbudget.com. The US spends more on Social Security that it does on the Department of Defense! Social Security spending is #2, close behind Health and Human Services at #1.
cpeterso
$20/hour? Damn. I'm getting ripped off! I make 11$ CDN to do helldesk.
I agree completely, on all points made. In fact I would like to see the H1B program eliminated completely in favor of a program making it easy for anyone with certain kinds of skills (engineering, medicine, computers) to easily get green cards and become citizens.
Sure it increases the number of people competing with us for jobs here, but the key word is 'here'. If they remain in third or second world countries they will still be competing with us, but at cut rates because of lower cost of living. Bring them here and make them good capitalists and consumers like the rest of us. America will be the better for it, and the rest of the world the poorer.
But, as it stands, the H1B program is more like bondage than anything else. It means that the workers are not competing fairly for work in a free market. So we have all the problems and none of the benefits of an America bound brain drain...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Well, we've seen that a 10% drop in sales leads to a 20% cut in the work force. My guess is that work loads will need to triple for the number of jobs to double.
...for good coders.
I've been coding for twenty-one years. There always has been and always will be a shortage of good coders. The problem is there are too many average and way too many poor (or awful) coders. 95% of the people who write code shouldn't have been hired in the first place; someone should take them out back and cut their fingers off. Bad coders can write bad code faster than average or even good coders can fix it. Ads in the paper for a small busines looking for one coder bring somone in who sings the sweet song and their code eventually works. Then after that joker leaves, someone else comes in and and looks at what they've inherited. It's almost better to not take on that work.
Ever been billed out for $125 to fill in behind someone who turned on the manure spredder while they were coding?
The bottom line is lots-and-lots of people like to code and think they are coders, but they simply are not even average coders.
***Sterilize them so natural selection takes over. ***
"Be more sensitive to where job opportunities will happen, what you want to do and what you should do to prepare yourself for those jobs."
... wait. Oh that's right, remember WorldCom? They promised stuff too.
I honestly cannot trust any analyst that sits behind a desk and "writes" about what he/she thinks will happen in 7 years. 7 years!!! I can't even tell you what clothes I'm gonna wear tommorow, let alone that Computer Engineer/Software (whatever it is) is going to double in the next 7 years.
This is one person's opinion. Albeit a positive one. But hey, please don't get my hopes up and then disappoint me. I'm already down cause I'm a new grad with not much experience, trying to get a job.
Bah! I resent the entire Hi-tech industry ... damn I'm so bitter.
But I know what I want to do. It's Networks, It's Telecom, It's
Am I the only one who read it "Steve Jobs Projected to Double by 2010" the first time?!? One Jobs ought to be enough for us already....
nuc134r m4n
If I understand correctly, you replace the experienced people, with recent graduates. This lowers salaries. However, does this really reduce costs?
In reviewing code written by less experience co-workers, I have seen obvious improvements for readability, maintenance, debuggability, and performance (performance is secondary - except where it is needed). Personally, I review my own code for these type of improvements and when I can, I improve it.
I will surmise that it may reduce costs over the next 3 months, however, that cost reduction will be replaced with increased costs for maintenance, and finally a complete redesign because the code that has been developed is just too difficult to manage.
Sure, tech jobs will probably double in the next seven years. But tech salaries will probably be halved.
Face it, my six-figure-salary career is going to become the equivalent to that of your average librarian, cashier or even mechanic.
I think the mechanic analogy is probably the best. There is little difference between your average mechanic and your average computer/software/techie engineer type - other than one is physical and the other is not.
Does your average mechanic make six figures? Hell no. Is your average mechanic treated by the public as anything more than a barely-literate high-school drop-out (even if they aren't)?
If you want a respectable career where you are considered a valuable professional, find something else. The writing is on the wall for us.
I'm in chicago and need a gig.
-jpeg
Barring any major domestic disasters, maybe they are right. I hope they are..25 years old and a booming job in the field.
I don't have evidence to back this up, but I have a nagging suspicion that the H1-Bs were displaced at roughly the same rate the rest of us were. The struggling job market has leveled the playing field somewhat, in that most of us are willing to work for lower wages, as long as it'll pay the rent. Since that's really the complaint that we had against H1-B workers, doesn't that make us all just as appetizing to a greedy employer?
I could be mistaken here, and if there are statistics showing that the layoff rate for H1-Bs is significantly lower than it is for US residents, I'd like to see them. But making such claims without solid evidence puts us on a slippery slope towards racism.
Everyone is talking about IT positions. The real story will be the full time positions that are offered in the workforce. Just about all of the full time positions will be part-time related with no benifits. Companies just want to hire someone to complete a task and pay them. Forget about anything elese. Guess what.... The wages will also decline to a point of low wage earners. Gen-X's are going to get really screwed. It's really based on the amount of activity in the market place. Which at this point of time, based on previous history. Is at an all time low. When is the last time anyone has seen a nation wide project? I'm not counting the War in Iraq.
I guess I should work on becoming a CEO.
This article was written to try to get people to buy technology training. In reality I expect most companies to be reducing the staff of their IT departments to try to become profitable again.
Computer systems these days are built with more redundant and more powerful components that are easier to maintain. Most companies have switched away from the Windows 9x line which saves a awful lot of time dealing with stupid desktop issues. We have also seen the change to web-based software which is getting cheaper and easier to implement and support every day. It is now possible for a small group (3 people or so) to manage a large pool of inexpensive web-servers (20-50) which supports a huge application used by thousands of people. This model is increasingly being used and it works well and saves bundles of money. This, combined with companies new-found zeal for cost cutting will drive the numbers of IT professionals down in the coming years.
My advice is if you aren't in IT, don't try to get into it unless you are really good with computers. If you are in IT but aren't very good at it, think about finding another career. The future in IT may not be very bright.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I took course in heavy machinery controlling (Cranes, Bulldozers, Payloaders etc...) and I expect to make just as much. Paid overtime, what a luxury! :>
J.
>I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday.
But you did have Win32 coders at slashdot?
I thought you guys were about open source?
Anyway, the arrogance of the statement is amazing.
The editorial board must be in some sort of competition - who is pissing off more readers.
This is a good example of the type of immaturity that happens to be by-product of the slashdot community. Of course it's not just the linux people. Chaulk it up to Human Behavior I guess :)
... and pigs will fly.
;)
These jobs will be avaliable to you if you live in India, Russia, Taiwan, Singapore or Malaysia
If you ask me, some mysterious person way up the ladder still feels that programmers are making too much money, so they're going to force market supply saturation by bullshitting folks approaching higher education into pursuing programming careers.
I tell ya, some people won't be happy until programmers are considering assembly line jobs as an alternative.
Hell, I am thinking more and more that I should have just majored in business in college.
It would have been an easier major, and would have lead to a manager's position. I have seen so many problems brought on by decisions made by management.
Let us all agree, the few jobs that will never be outsourced are the ones at the top.
So does this mean I should seriously consider switching careers to become a software developer?
I've been kicking around the idea of going back to college and getting a second Master's degree, this time in something useful like Computer Science. Anybody think it would do me any good in this job market? Or will it be just as useless as my MA in psychology?
This could be the driving principal surrounding the success of such online communities such as this one. I can say whatever the hell I want and there's no immediate consequence except for my own consciousness.
Unless of course, you have an active imagination and you think there's some evil hacker out to get you 'cause they don't agree with what you said. Then there could be trouble.
My experience is that there is a lot of diversity among my Indian coworkers. Some of them aren't so good, and others are wonderful. It's unfortunate that there aren't enough jobs for all of us, but I'm not sorry they came. They're my friends now. They've become "us".
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Oh yeah.
A headhunting company was predicting 1.5 million new tech jobs by the end of the year.
In February, 2002.
Christ. Who's that gullible?
But, hey, I just got my CMBF certification (Certified McDonalds Burger Flipper), so what, me worry??
Just what the business world needs, yet another manager.
1. Get laid off
2. Wait till 2010
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/magazine/13UNEMP LOYED.html
The above article talks about a guy whose former job position was "vice president and a director of interactive marketing for Rapp Digital" currently employed as a sales person at a Gap store.
Talk about diversifying your skillset!
At the risk of sounding cynical, isn't that exactly the same thing that was said in the late 90's, shortly before the dot-bomb?
I will believe it when I see it.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Given that everyone is exporting the jobs to Asia, and how many H1 visa's are issued in this country, I don't think it will have much of an impact on job placement in this country. Although, I think the CEO's will do good.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm not saying that programmers in other countries are not good - far from it, some of my most respected co-workers are from India.
However, the whole "All coding jobs are going to India" propaganda will really amount to nothing over then ext few years. When companies discover how inefficient it is to communicate work overseas, then you'll see the whole outsourcing thing quietly shrink and jobs pick up wherever there is IT work to be found.
Frankly, companies cannot even develop efficiently in-house yet. Why is it suddenly so much better when all the work goes out of the company? At least in-company work had a chance to be done efficiently by people in the know.
What companies need to work on now is not figuring out where to have the work done, they need to figure out how to make employees stay at a company longer so they can get in the groove quicker.
This somewhat rambling post brought to you by lack of sleep.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Could it be because of Indian workers?
If I remember right, this was Mayor Quimby's way of diverting the townsfolks attention away from his tax hike, which was to pay for Springfields new Bear Patrol. Blame the Immigants I say!!!
Being on H1B myself and having most of my friends who are on H1B gone home due to job cuts that cut them first... not official statistics by any means.
It's clear that at one time America benefited from a prosperous manufacturing industry and led the world in efficiency. Then the Japanese came in with cheaper labor that worked longer hours at higher throughput. Then everyone else followed suite and America has all but abandoned manufacturing.
Now the information technology industry was built and grown on American soil. Even now most software is written in America and a vast majority of the infrastructure resides here.
But it's time for something else. Everyone else has figured out this whole "programming" thing, too. We need to move on and capitalize on the willingness of other nations to be our labor.
The point is, you would not have been able to see those problems brought on by decisions made by that management if you had just went to business school. Don't become part of the problem. Get your engineering experience and then manage, not the other way around.
I don't graduate until 2005, so maybe I can ride out the job shortage. But this news doesn't mean that all you pre-meds should go and change to CS. As the article notes, health care is going to grow even faster. My mom's a nurse, and she's never been more secure in her job.
"That is the unintended consequence of connecting everyone everywhere. Now employers can hire anyone from anywhere. "
So why can't all these "out of work" techs turn that to their advantage? Networking in the "job seeking" sense, and if one wishes to start their own company.
I just got a call from a recruiter who worked with me 2 years ago who's now a dir hr of a new co.
Well bud, why not type in www.eet.com and check it out fer yerself.
But at least you'll know how to fix your own AM transistor radio when you're cruising around the park dumpsters.
"I'm sorry there is another word for that - "Slave Labour". I don't care if it just an internship you are providing a service to the company and as such should be getting paid. Even if it is just minimum wage."
Sorry! He can't do that. He's "Too proud".
... disgusting
In Soviet Russia, tech jobs double YOU!
It may be boring to you, but the simple fact is that the US (as well as Europe and Japan) are going to have real problems with funding their retirees, because there won't be enough people working to fund them. Unemployment won't be an issue for those of us still in the workforce, but the level of taxation will be.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This kind of article is pure hype. No one knows what tech jobs will be like in a year, much less 7. I tend to think that articles like this are promoted to get more people to become techies in hopes of glutting the job market so companies can offer lower salaries. One thing is clear: Right now, the job market for techies is lousy. In Silicon Valley there are 50 - 100 thousand engineers out of work, many for over a year. There are no signs of the economy improving. And don't count on any phony voodoo from the Bush camp. They're only interested in helping the wealthy get even richer!
$VC =~ /lemming/
I can't stand the suspense. Is it a match, or not?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
"Work is work. Being in a poor job position doesn't preclude you from getting something else later."
Strangely that works for businesses as well. Selling their products or services for well below cost until the consumer suddenly has an altruistic seizure and decides that they should be charged more. Sheer brilliance. And with the rest of the world doing same, said business just might hold out long enough to make it to that magic turning point.
but most of the work will go to H-1B's. I'll still be shit out of luck.
if you happen to speak Indian and reside in India that is...That's where all our coding jobs went to, not to mention our entire help desk structure. "We will be sporting tremendous financial losses soon I am afraid."
:)
#5 is alive
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
What the f*ck were you thinking? That makes it all the more harder for the rest of us! Keep your damn employees so they don't flood the market with useless people and maybe I can get a freakin job! sheesh!
But then the Strowger automatic exchange was invented.
the job market as bad as stockmarket?
A blog I run for the wealth
I'm well aware what employment is for, however "Do you know what is a laughable sum? $0.00. Anything else in a time of job shortage is good. Just because you can't get a job being lord high muck doesn't mean you can't move out into other areas, and man if you're on your last bagel you will do anything." that's not what you said. You might have ment something else, but. To put this and the other post I replied to in perspective. People have a lot in common with companies. They have expenses (food, rent, clothing, shelter, etc). They have investments (education in all it's forms previous, present and future, etc). And they may even have taxes, and dependents (shareholders) Now in either case would it be in any way benificial to "sell" what's being offered "below" one's break-even point? What about break-even? What does that do to the future? Sounds like "anything else" isn't the wise point you thought it was. Everyone's "break-even" point is different and advice that worked for business A will not always work for business B or C. Pride may have nothing to do with it, but practicality might. Keep that in mind next time you judge others.
Economists have successfully predicted 8 of the past 5 recessions.
Colleges and these tech schools seem to think the internet is this amazing job producing field. It's not.
The 90's dot com boom was a speculative bubble .
Although I think you might be joking, you have hit a valid point by mentioning the fertility of the lands in Africa. The problem is, thanks to a combination of politics and incompetence, those fertile lands are just sitting, not producing a thing. Add to this that despite the fact that Africa is vastly underpopulated compared to other continents, they are struggling to meet their food requirements. Mozambique, for example, has some of the most fertile land in the world, yet has to import food. The only possible solution is a combination of education and forgein investment, but with African leaders so hostile to the EU and US, who will invest?
We don't want to get caught in a situation where there are high paid tech. workers.
double zero is still zeros...
:-)
basic math, i guess. take a look at economy in europe, and guess where its gonna skyrocket ?
sky is downward here
someone just swapped dictionary pointers.
perl development, linux admin 200+ renderfarm
western 'burbs.
http://resume.tolldog.com
-Tim
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
"It's hard to believe since I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday."
That's right. Win32 guys... or are you too dumb to get the message?
Gilad.
Stupid lazy U.S. colleges pushing computer careers is stupid too.
Lets get back to making cool shit!
"After all the H1B's end, a lot of people will have to head back to India. "
H1Bs were brought in mostly by multi-nationals who have offices in India and China.
Why train a new person to replace the H1B in America, when you can hire the same H1B for much less abroad already trained!?
Outsourced to India? I mean, my old man currently has job security simply because of some law that does not allow his company to hire anybone on a green card without first hiring a US citizen; but he's still only one of a handful of US citizens at his workplace.
Now I will just need to wait 7 more years on top of the 2 years now for a new tech job!
I deleted my sig years ago.
Tech jobs in my local area fell by 80% recently. So we'll end up in 2010 with 40% of the jobs we had here last year? Whoopee!
Was there ever a doubt that this was the motivation behind globalization?
by 2010, the number of slashdot workers will double. the number of repeated stories will double, and the people complaining about repeats will double. the number of first posts will also double
my blog
It's interesting to note how many people from the United States on /. and other boards are complaining about the lack of jobs in the tech industry. It seems that although jobs elsewhere pay less, there are far more of them.
Here in South Africa, the tech industry hasn't been through a so-called slump, in fact, the job market is probably better now than it was in 1999. The difference I see, though, is that most people here are talking about programming jobs. Going by pure numbers, most tech jobs here are either in networking or hardware.
Even at our company, which isn't a tech company by any means, we have 4 full time techs working on the in-house system (post-sales, customer relations, operations, call tracking) written (mainly) in Java and Python, and doing general network/system admin.
Friends that I met at Unisa who graduated with Computer Science degrees haven't by and large had any problems finding jobs, although it seems that more experienced people are sought after in more advanced areas. But the so-called lower-end jobs (and yes, I know that there are more advanced sub-divisions of each of these, but I'm talking about entry-level to mid-level) - Networking, System Admin, Hardware, Support - are pretty easy to get into.
We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop
...they *refused* to learn/understand Linux,BSD,etc.
Same situation here...
Likely for the best the way I see it.
If one can't adapt to new technologies, one has no business being in the industry.
It doesn't matter which end of the Windows-vs-Linux debate you side up with.
Only a fool believes "The Linux Thing" is going to go away.
the New Deal did not revive the economy or substantially lower unemployment.
Tech workers need to accept lower pay, employers need to realize that workers will accept lower pay.
This won't matter a matter a damn to *you* if employers are still allowed to fill the gap by importing workers from (or outsourcing jobs to) cheaper foreign labour markets, instead of opening up appropriately skilled, appropriately paid jobs to older workers at home.
Employers love employing young people (they're cheap and gullible, full of energy and ready to give 110% to make their mark). Older people are avoided because they know what's fair and what isn't, and they are more inclined to demand higher pay since those who have been successful usually have financial commitments.
This is an area that badly needs legislation and **every** tech worker in the Western world needs to lobby hard for this if they don't want to find themselves permanently downsized by the time they hit forty-five.
In the UK the new Labour government started out with an education campaign to sort this out. "Old Enough to Know Better" went the slogan. But it disappeared without a trace. I wonder why. Next thing we knew they were relaxing the work visa requirements.
The first post is marked 'redundant'... ...that's just not funny.
Dude, where's my Karma?
The gartner group estimates that 38% of all IT jobs currently are outsourced to oversea's comapnies and that is expecting to grow over 50% during 2004!
Its going to get alot worse in the future as the remaining companies who have "expensive" American workers will feel the pinch of competition from those who outsourced and now sell there products cheaper.
http://saveie6.com/
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Typical American, free-market competition's good as long as it doesn't adversley affect American companies.
Hypocrit!
In short, if you can program or do tech work you can live in the US as long as you work in the industry
I wish this were so, but it's not. I've been wanting to move to the Philly area to be with my SO for quite a while now: I have five years of programming experience, a first-class bachelor's degree, a good breadth of theoretical and practical experience in areas ranging from coding for handhelds to sysadminning for dozens of people... but in all my searching, none of places I contact will consider H1s. Often they haven't even replied. (And it's not like I'm from somewhere that speaks a completely different language: I'm British.)
But perhaps it's different on the west coast.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
"That is the unintended consequence of connecting everyone everywhere."
Actually, 'commodifying' labour was one of the primary goals of globalisation.
>It's time to take a few more risks
How is protecting local industries taking any risks?
The FBI is hring..
and Microsoft is still hring contractors so they can lay you off in a year or 180 days which ever they pick!
Wasn't Microsoft one of the authors of the H1B law?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I'm happily employed (though I wouldn't mind seeing more visitors to my Ewan Photos site), but as an early Dice member I've kept my daily search running as a means of keeping up with the market. .02 worth...
Over the last couple weeks my matches have gone from an average of 10 a day to almost 80 a day. I don't think there are THAT many new positions opening, but it at least indicates that there are a few more positions that are of high enough caliber to make the recruiters salivate. Just my
GOP_in_48 writes "Today's Chicago Tribune has an article that claims that Gov. Dewey actually defeated President Truman. It's hard to believe since DuMontNBC just cited exit polls showing Truman the winner. Could this be a turning point in the election?"
... don't believe it, if it's in the Chicago Trib.
Point is
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
This is just a little too coincidental. Now, I wonder who paid for that article: HP, Sun, IBM, Merrill Lynch, BoA?
You need to be careful on what you mean by 38% outsourcing. A lot of that is outsourcing American IT jobs in America. While India has grown, it is not yet that big.
Further, based on direct contacts with Indian outsourcing firms, there are two other phenomena of interest:
1. Indian outsourcers are hiring American front-ends.
2. Indian outsourcers are starting to do their own outsourcing as the Indian labor pool becomes more expensive.
Things that are outsourced tend to be the more "mechanical" jobs, requiring less innovation. Therefore, if you are supplying only marginal value with your current skill set, rethink.
I would not be surprised if programming job opportunities doubled in less than 3 years!
This will certainly be true for Linux programming jobs.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Windows future is .Net. If Windows programmers are not already moving to .Net, they need to ASAP!!!
It has a rather depressing article about three middle-age professionals who have been unemployed for several years. Two have technology backgrounds, although only one appears to have anything approaching a hands-on technology job.
Regardless, the whole personal downward spiral was presented, including ugly spousal relationships, disappearing financial futures, McJobs, and so on.
One guy had a job as some kind of "New Media/New Economy" guru, one guy had a PhD in physical chemistry but became an "IT Consultant" and another guy was a banker.
The banker was in the best situation, kids college funds and his retirement were pretty squared away, it was mainly maintaining his current standard of living that was at risk.
The New Media/Economy guy (who has a set of computer books, "Einstein's Manuals" or something, written pre-Dummies) seems fairly finished. He's working at the Gap for $10 and it seems unlikely that his particular speciality will ever be revived.
The IT Consultant was hard to judge. He's obviously smart (PhD), but what kind of an IT Consultant is he? He was one of those guys that moved into IT in the 90s from another tech field and probably got pretty advanced positions due to his educational background and general intelligence relative to what was available in the job market now. The bummer for him is that he's looking for those same, $150K jobs and they're gone forever. If he was looking for techmonkey work he might do better, but it wouldn't support the $2.5k mortgage.
What I can't decide is if the economy is permanently shrunk or if the "new economy" portion + excessive profits part only. It's scary, anyway.
I don't know about you, but getting my CCIE wasn't easy, and I'll throw my skills up against any "programmer" any day.
I get very tired reading about people who assume that programmers are somehow the elite. bleh. you're monkeys at the keyboards.
EOM
I see it now:
Company: We have all these jobs, but can't find anybody qualified here in the US. Issue more H1B so we can fill these jobs!
Government: OK, obviously we need to keep advertising in the US about getting tech training, since there are no qualified applicants here. (STAMPS FORM). Here are your H1B's.
Company: Thanks. (Hires a bunch of H1B applicants). (Cuts half of the workforce, all "overpaid" US citizens).
[REPEAT FROM TOP].
MORTAR COMBAT!
Well, fix your broken resume.asp link on your webpage.
Enough said in the subject.
I'm one of those ^D greybeards (48). The shop I'm in now has 4 US citizens and 8 on-shore (US) Indian contractors and another 5 offshore in India. These guys are paid $20 / hour (sans benefits). We're equal opportunity: we'll offer you $15 for J2EE/Oracle stuff. :-;
We use IM (btw, the offshore team works the cateye shift to accomodate us) and netphone to keep in conduct business. We expect a software drop every day.
I think the industry is a death spriral for we keyboarding types. I feel like a machinist in the 1960's when computerized milling machines killed this skill. In addition, cheap communications has killed the economics of the well paid computer guy: smart guys are a dime a dozen, machines cost nothing and as we all know, the knowlege is in the documentation for all to pick up. I just hope I can make to 67 (20 years - doesn't seem possible).
I do expect to be driving a school bus sometime.
Welcome to age of lowered expectations. The 90's will *never* return. ...jlg
meant to be running things by then? then we humans can read books and play outside...
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
I was one of the two "Windows 32 guys,"
You insensitive clod!!!
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I'll be lucky to still be employed in 2 months... and I've been looking, but my own opinion at this point is that my salary is probably an issue (although I don't really consider $81K outrageous for an experienced Sysadmin, in this market I'm sure there are enough unemployed to be willing to take $60k for the same job).
Then again, I'd consider less depending on the company... to get away from the boss that calls me a f-ing a-hole on a regular basis, because I refuse to kiss their ass.
On the bright side, I made a point over the years to sink as much as I could into my house.. to the effect that I paid it off last year after about 11 years. So my only expenses are taxes, insurance, bills, and food/gas. Knowing the end is coming, I've been making a point of banking as much as I can for the inevitable. I could survive for a few years if I needed to.
I've seen too many people who make good money and have to live "high-on-the-hog". Yeah, when I started out I bought a small house w/ a $1200/month mortgage, which was tough at the time but got easier over the years. I have some friends who were loooking to buy a house... 4500 sq ft for *two* people. They are taking home over $8k/month between the two of them, and have no savings. Or another guy I know who'se $300K house was suddenly appraised $100K higher in this housing boom, so he *borrows* another $80K to put in a heated in-ground pool... and then loses his job. Passes to the local swim-hole would have been far cheaper.
I'm actually looking forward to being unemployed for a while. I've got friends to visit, and I really want to re-evaluate the whole IT thing... maybe switch careers. It was nice while it lasted, but its just too stressful and cutthroat right now to be worth it.
...But they'll all be farmed out to India... and for a lot less than I'd be willing to take to relocate to India...
Although, perhaps I can make a lot of money building the network backbone to India that will allow this to happen on a large scale.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Youve never worked help desk, have you?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
That is the unintended consequence of connecting everyone everywhere. Now employers can hire anyone from anywhere.
No, this is a totally intended consequence of integrating the world's markets. Do you really thing stuff like NAFTA was dreamt up as anything but a way for companies to get cheap labor? It certainly hasn't provided any benefits to the citizens of North America w/r/t increasted availability of goods, more stable markets, better market competition, or what have you.
Cute thing is, if the US tried to enact legislation to protect its workforce (yeah right, not until Americans realize that billionaire oil tycoons are not, and will never be 'just regular Joes like you and me'), the WTO would probably slap it on the wrist for obstructing free trade.
I think you're overstating the case here. Outsourcing isn't just about the third world.
I'm an American living in Hungary. According to salary.com (at least) my line of work pays between 70-120K per year in the SF Bay Area. That's pretty consistent with what I've made there as a consultant, and what my friends there are making.
Now consider Budapest. Hardly third-world. About to join the EU. Highly-educated IT workforce, most speaking really good English in case it matters. Excellent infrastructure in most parts of town. A decent number of both natives and foreigners with serious IT experience in Western Europe and the USA.
Half of the above-mentioned salary would get you the equivalent spending power here, and in many ways a higher overall quality of life. Even with the ridiculously high taxes.
And Budapest, by Central-European standards, is a very expensive place to live.
I'm sure some version of the above is true for places like Bangalore too, though I haven't been there.
(And yes, a fair amount of outsourcing comes here, albeit more quietly than to, say, India.)
So when a company is thinking about international outsourcing as a way to cut costs, we shouldn't think it's always like Nike making shoes. For that matter I fully expect to see a lot of growth in regional outsourcing within the USA, once more infrastructure reaches the more rural areas.
This has been the case for a long time, and certainly predates the current economic downturn. The flip side of it is that, especially in IT, you still want quality and you still need some chain of personal relationships (and trust) in order to get it.
I think it's a good thing.
(
This Like That - fun with words!
And since this is offtopic and I don't want to lose my Karma, I will now post this as an AC.
/. censorship framework.
You lost your own argument you dumbshit, you post something supposedly meaningful as AC.
Why? I know when I have mod points, I never waste them on ACs, either good or bad
Who gives a shit about PeeWee's playhouse mod points? What, if you get 100 you get a Bozo button?
I wish there were a way I could specify that I never even see posts from Anonymous Cowards
Your loss junior. I read the posts for my own enrichment. I don't filter out the AC's because that's where a significant percentage of the meaningful info resides.
I have no interest in ever reading anything from anyone too chickensh*t to use their real pseudonym
I, and apparently others, feel just the opposite. I find the AC posts to be on the whole, more valuable because they are written by individuals above the fray who don't buy into the infantile
I seriuosly doubt that claim.
The largest problem I forsee is to many kids getting into this field simply because they are being told by there colleges that it is easy money, easy to get a job, and easy way to hot cars and big houses.
There are entirely way to many people out there getting into this field. Everywhere I look there are 1 year programs that are churning out thousands of people yearly into a market that doesn't have room for that growth. In my town alone I can think of about 6-7 institutions that trun out "qualified" IT people yearly. Programers, Net Admins, Web Developers, the list goes on and on.
These people flood the market and make the jobs more and more scarce. The number of jobs isn't going to double. The number of people that want the jobs is going to more than triple.
Seriously. I don't know anyone who's kid isn't "going into computers".
it's a scarey world we live in.
The only solace I can find in all of this is that the majority of these kids don't even know what linux is. They don't know a server from a workstation. And they don't know C from java. They know enough to fake it. And it is this incompetence that will continue to make me look better and keep me employed...I hope...;)
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
The big push is to require fewer support people in the IT market, continuing the current trend of 'do more with less'.
While I've not read the story I admit, I don't see that trend changing, regardless of what some columnist *believes*.
Speaking form the standpoint of a person that has felt the crunch first hand...
While i agree there will be more devices and services in the future, that doesnt mean you have to have more people to support/develop them...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
-Mark Twain
FYI
There have two 3-year periods, then renew annually. the annual renewals were added so that too many migrants dont leave during the current slump.
The total number of jobs may double. The total amount of salaries paid to IT people will stay constant.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
The market for IT jobs from where I sit has not as much become stagnant as it has become more demanding for people who understand the domain in which they are working. For example, I work for an aerospace firm. This company would, under no circumstances, hire an IT professional unless that IT professional had an understanding of the business. After all, it is FAR easier to train an aerospace engineer how to be an effective coder than it is to teach the coder how to understand aerodynamics, propulsion, and thermodynamics. If you understand your domain, you are infinitely more valuable than if you can present yourself as "just a coder".
I don't know what publications you were reading, but I remember reading a lot of articles on Fortune, Forbes, C-Net, the Economist, WSJ from a variety of people who were very skeptical about the "new economy" and predicted a fallout withen a broad span. Everybody knew it was going to end. Nobody knew when. Most didn't care because there was money to be made.
That's not to say these same publications didn't also publish articles pushing the irrational exuberance.
Most people knew that they were seeing a rare event of prosperous times and that it would all have to come to an end eventually, but nobody wanted to pull thier money out of the stock market just yet.
I don't know what you expect from economists but if they could predict the ebb and flow of economies as precisely as you expect, don't you think they'd be using that information themselves or selling it at a premium?.
I'm not suggesting you blindly take an economists prediction as the gospel, but maybe you should be paying attention to thier explainations for thier predictions so you can polish your own prediction skills.
Lastly, I don't trust people by default:
* If I'm sentencing someone to prison, it's my burden to prove they are guilty.
* If someone is trying to win my trust, it's thier burden to prove they are innocent.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
10 years from now, we won't need held desk guy telling people how to turn on and off their pc, because the population will know how.
We are unfortunate enough to have a phone number 1 digit out from a major TV rental shop. On a regular basis we get the following call:
"my tv broke down"
"you've got the wrong number dear - you need to dial 012 - not 013"
"no - not my phone my tv - it broke - its just fuzzy"
"nothing to do with us, you need to phone 012, not 013! - is it plugged in?"
"is what plugged in - who are you???"
People are stupid - they need support - dont foget that - theres money to be made out of it!!!
BLOW JOBS PROJECTED TO DOBULE BY 2010 (Thanks to Logitec's USB electronic mouth.)
Best Buy can have you arrested
Looks like it's time to start training the Afghani's. :-)
That's been clear for years. One of the first uses of NAFTA was to scuttle a rule saying that Mexican tuna couldn't be imported, because they were using fishing methods that weren't safe for dolphins. After an immense public effort to get that rule passed. Ever since then it's been clear to me that this is "of the business, by the business, and for the business", forget the people.
Notice, the Mexican tuna could have been allowed in if the producers had been willing to follow the same standards that were required for US fisheries. But by invoking NAFTA they didn't need to. The WTO is just an extension of the (un)principles of NAFTA to the entire world.
You didn't think people were demonstrating against it for any minor cause did you? These treaties remove local controls from businesses. They forbid you from saying "you have to run a clean house to operate here, but if you do, we'll give you first chance at the local customers". They primarily benefit companies that can operate most cheaply by destroying a local area's environment, and selling the product in areas that haven't been destroyed. (This destruction comes in many forms. Environmental is one, but economic is another. You are noticing an economic ravaging, but it's really the same kind of thing as the environmental ravaging that's more obvious. And the same rules that facilitate one, facilitate the other.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Cute thing is, if the US tried to enact legislation to protect its workforce (yeah right, not until Americans realize that billionaire oil tycoons are not, and will never be 'just regular Joes like you and me'), the WTO would probably slap it on the wrist for obstructing free trade.
That doesn't matter. If the WTO takes an aggressive stance against U.S. policy, the U.S. gov't will just ignore them, or attempt to sideline them, as is their usual strategy when dealing with unresponsive world bodies.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Tech jobs covers a wide area. I'm quite certain that the demand for some will raise. But which?
I doubt that the demand for programmers will ever again reach it's old levels. Too much of the basic work is now complete.
I doubt that the demand for systems operators will recover. Systems are being made easier to administer, and less buggy.
I doubt that the demand for trouble shooters will recover. More and more of the information is becoming "common knowledge".
I can't really call most help desk clerks tech jobs. Most of them seem to just operate off of a check list. (A good first step, actually, but they need more flexibility.)
The demand for gene sequencer operators will surely at least double, but that will still be a small number.
In the short term, growth is surely going to be happening in system and network operations and configuration. That can't be postponed long without severe repercussions.
Hardware maintenance and repair is another field that's bound to experience a short term recovery. But recovery doesn't mean back to pre-collapse levels, and short-term doesn't mean long term. Long-term I put the prospects as similar to refridgerator repair. (If it's broke, replace it. It's cheaper than fixing it, and you get the improved model.)
Web monkeys are probably already in the upswing. But expect the job to become progressively commoditized.
Perhaps I'm looking at the wrong jobs?
Metallurgy specialists are undoubtedly in demand, e.g. Doesn't help computer folk much, but it's clearly a tech job. My suspicion is that tech jobs will more than double, but the area won't be particularly in computers.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This stat doesn't mean much, even without considering context.
100% growth over 7 years is only 10% growth per year, which, while above the rate of population growth, is hardly burning things up.
This is a little higher than most stats you see like this, that cry doom because something is projected to double in 10 years. That's a 7% annual growth rate, again not a barn burner.
Lies, damn lies...
20 new jobs then???
---
The Chicago Tribune article looks like a press release for the same people behind the glut of H-1B's.
Now, does it take into account the export of jobs to third world countries?
some time before 2010, the market will have been reduced to a single programmer. he will threaten to quit unless he gets help, so they will re-hire the last guy they had laid off, doubling the number of tech workers.
Liberty uber alles.
Since I earned my CS degree 20 months ago, I have been underqualified for every computer job I have applied to (how many new grads have 5-7 years experience?). But every time I have applied to a non-computer job I have been told I am overqualified. Most employers would not explain what they mean, the two who did essentially said that I could earn so much money as a programmer that I wouldn't stay so they won't hire me. Never mind the fact that entry level programming jobs are harder to find than proof of creationism.
I woult think that an employer would be pleased to pick us somebody with my skills and thinking abilities for $15 per hour, knowing that in today's economy I'll be around for a long time and they could even get tech support or in-house apps out of me at that price. But such has not been my experience, which leads me to wonder how all these programmers I am told are leaving the field find their jobs...
After reading the article, I am again struck at how vague reports such as this can often be. For example, it lists system admininstration as a field with increasing demand but doesn't mention administration of what architecture. I'm of the opinion the probable increase in admin roles will be related to the ever-increasing implementations of Linux in the workplace. That said, what programming languages do you expect to be most needed in 2010?
Don't Laugh.
Ok, better. Looks fine now.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
check out this WSJ article courtesy the star-tribune
h tm l
http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/3820380.
Larry Ellison, dedicated salt-water competitive sailor and sometime CEO of Oracle, says we're at the high-water point for software jobs right now, with the future being support of a decreasing number of commercial apps.
everybody party, tech rules....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If you don't like that outside of US people also want to live well - get over it.
Do you want to repeat a faith of all previous nations who have been trying to get their world domination? Do you know what's happened to them?
Less is more !
Let's kick the smart people out after they've helped us out and built relationships with people here so businesses will be forced to higher people who have lived here longer. Absolutely stupid!
We should be doing everything in our power to get smart people to move to the US. It's what has made us strong in the past.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Tech jobs actually aren't declining much numerically. The job problems were are having are entirely due to:
Poor immigration policies(any other developed country would have sent H-1b's home as soon as their was local unemployment).
Poor policies to encourage investment in human capital.
The US at this point has extremely high property values and a byzantine system of capital allocation which means only larger companies have good access to capital(which means managers do anything possible to stay on certain lists).
The US supports an enormous number of people in professions like accounting and law-very large compared to other comparable developed countries
(the US has 50 times as many attorneys per capita and 20 times as many accountants per capita as Japan).
Basically it is possible to produce virtually any kind of skilled worker in question cheaper somewhere else than in the US. The combination of US tax structure and inflation of property values means the US isn't really competitive in anything--except it has a pretty fair level of natural resources per capital and some populations with some unique technical capabilities.
The thing is, this kind of massive immigration discourages local investment in skills and transfers wealth from those that invested in skills to various corporate and political elites. It isn't just software engineers-the latest fad is to import nurses.
The net result? The US citizenry gets apathetic and discouraged because there really isn't much point in investing in education when external competition is given citizenship rights as a corporate perk.
Now, I can see how those that own property and have interests in major corporations benefit by these practices. I fail to see how this has benefited the broad public.
That doesn't matter. If the WTO takes an aggressive stance against U.S. policy, the U.S. gov't will just ignore them, or attempt to sideline them, as is their usual strategy when dealing with unresponsive world bodies.
I don't buy it. Your suggestion does not line up at all with the activities of the US government in the past.
If we quit listening to the WTO telling us how we can and can not restrict trade, we'd no longer be able to go to the WTO to force other companies to import stuff of ours that they don't want, like fuel additives that cause cancer (Canada), or BGH-laced cow products that fuck up peoples' hormonal systems (European Union).
Given the (as I see it) somewhat socialistic bent of
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Well, now those of us whose parents still don't feed us can afford to buy Mexican tuna and wear Vietnamese sneakers. It'd be nice if we could save the dolphins and Ho Chi Mihn's grandma could have a potty break, but at least I can eat and don't have holes in my sneakers. Thank Clinton for NAFTA, the WTO, and cheap labor!
Depends on the job. Not all of us program database frontends and order entry systems. I work for a company that builds medical instruments. Until a few months ago, my department (SW development) was actively hiring (we're now fully staffed) and employees are offered a nice bonus if they recommend someone who gets hired. So I asked a few people, but the result surprised me: people are scared that "what if I have a bug in my code and it kills someone?"
Forgetting for a moment that it's unlikely that such a major defect would get past our QA processes, I was really surprised that people would rather stick to doing boring, easy work than interesting, if more involved development.
I've often wondered how many people stick to coding where defects have little importance rather than take a more interesting job where errors are more critical (and so your code is scrutinized, more thoroughly tested, etc). In other words, taking the path of least resistance. IMO, those are the types of jobs more likely to be moved overseas.
i just moved from California to Saint Petersburg, Russia. I was thinking that getting a sysadmin/programming job in linux would be cake here since typical Russian companies can't afford Microsoft licenses.
bzzt, wrong!
it turns out that most Russian companies don't pay for licenses anyway, so they all run MS products.
someone please tell me that Moscow is different...
So use it to your advantage. Do you know any competing rental shops that would give you a referral bonus for sending potential customers their way? Do you tell the people calling what services your company offers? Some of them might turn into customers for you.
Think like a businessperson: use every contact to your advantage.
...because I'm running through our savings rapidly right now, acquiring new job skills in tech school while praying for a co-op offer. Hell, make that even an interview.
I keep pointing out to my wife that my continuing school to its completion is going to be the difference between at least $40k/yr to start vs. $5/hr flipping burgers. She's getting impatient and I'm getting nervous. Not a good combination.
Does anybody have a sense for how much slack there is in the market right now for related IT professions like network support and database support? I'm currently concentrating on program but a couple of faculty members at school are suggesting / warning / encouraging me to widen my horizons even if it means another semester or two. (And probably a Sallie Mae loan, and maybe a divorce too...)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
The word Fuck used as every part of speech -
First saw the poster is a 'shoppe' in Korea...
To me, this sounds like a reasonable extrapolation of a trend that's been evident for many years: when increased computing power makes it viable to use IT to manipulate information for profit, that's what happens, and firing-up new applications in that context needs coders to build them and tech support to deal with the SNAFUs until each particular new app (and class of app) is well understood[1]. Add in the post dot-com depression in the IT area and it's almost a no-brainer of a prediction - I'd be more worried if the authors hadn't reached that conclusion and had good grounds for scepticism.
(Dr Hu, an old fart who will have thankfully quit the IT business long before 2010.)
> " Could this be a turning point in the labor market?"
Nah. It's a turning point in TALKING about the labor market. In today's brave new world, you only have to talk about something to win an election; you don't have to actually do anything about it.
--Hi. I'm in Portland and it's raining. This appears to be a permanent condition.
With the decrease of tech jobs and the overwhelming amount of techs out there, what are the unemployed ones doing in the meantime? Just curious because I graduated with a CS degree and had a steady job for 4 years and now am a mail clerk. I think it's time to go back to school and major in something that will always be around, even though programming is what I really love to do. I should have kept it a hobby and strictly that.
If you're good at math/science in general, in a lot of parts of the country, the job market for high school teachers is pretty good. Schools are DESPERATE and hiring vastly underqualified math/science educators.
HS teacher is my backup if this job ever goes sour. Will give me more time to focus on my hobbies and maybe start up a small business for myself once things improve.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Heh. Good point. But the real math behind this is just about as silly: to double in 7 years, the industry would need to grow CONTINUOUSLY at about 11% annually. That's huge! According to the latest NY Times magazine, there has been more like a 17-25% staff reduction recently. That's more like LOSING 11% annually! I can't see any trends to indicated this would turn around so extremely any time soon enough to double tech jobs within 15 years, let alone 7.
Your suggestion does not line up at all with the activities of the US government in the past.
Sure it does. Just recently we have utterly ignored the UN's stance on Iraq, and attempted (pretty successfully) to marginalize their importance in the middle east. NAFTA, which we sponsored, does assume many of the functions supposedly provided by the WTO. Namely trade agreements between nations.
The minute the U.S. gov't decides that the WTO no longer acts in it's interest (over-all, not just in some cases), it will work outside the organization, thereby marginalizing it. The government may even take steps to destabilize them, if the they prove sufficiently intractable. For precedence, one can look to the League of Nations. That organization died because it was sidelined by the U.S.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Excuse me, but the U.N. and the WTO are two entirely different bodies with very little (if any) overlap in terms of powers and responsibilities. It's relationship with the U.S. government is also entirely different.
The same for the League of Nations - one is meant for political stability. The other is meant for maximizing free trade (thereby maximizing economic efficiency (usually at the expense of reduced equity)). The Powers that Be have much more to gain directly from agreeing to do whatever the WTO tells them to do. Yeah, they may have to kowtow to the WTO (in ways that don't really affect the people making these decisions) every so often, but it also means that whenever another country wants to put trade restrictions on U.S. goods, the U.S. can also go cry to the WTO.
So yeah, you're right that the U.S. could use the mass of its economy to destabilize the WTO, but I think it's ludicrous to think that it will.
actually Ottawa, ON.
Beauty, eh?
"Sleep deprivation is no substitute for caffeine." Untold Lessons in Life
I don't think you understand what I am trying to say. Let's carry the company analogy further, say the company discovers there is little to no demand for it's products or services, what does it do? Does it just shut up shop until the next time its services might be required or does it diversify into areas which can support it through the tough times.
Having spent some time on the streets I can appreciate the value of a dollar earned, it doesn't matter how it was earned just so long as it was earned. This is what I am trying to say, if you can't get a Sys-Admin job or something else that meets your quals, then either move to an area that can or start looking at other industries.
So what if there are tons of jobs in South Africa?9 6.jsp)
For God's sake, South African men are raping babies out there in hopes that having sex with virgins will cure them of AIDS.
(Don't believe me? Read this. http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,472
There are most certainly a whole host of other problems with living/working there, starting with the fact that just about any country on earth (except Canada and Australia) has a lot less respect for life and liberty than the US.
That and nowadays they are issuing all kinds of travel advisories to Americans (you can thank the Second Gulf War for that).
I would not trust South Africa (or most other nations, for that matter) to provide stable roads, access to food, adequate and fair law enforcement (which is itself shitty enough in the States), accessible medical care, and so on. And I'm not trolling, nor am I saying everyone else is in the Stone Age... I could envision moving to Britain, France, Australia or Canada.. but not South Africa.
But no matter where you move to, you are going to face a lot of changes in your life, starting with what human rights you have, that even the prospect of going from chronically unemployed to gainfully employed, does not make up for the loss of stability in all these other areas.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Savings passed on to the customers my ass.
... what will that equalize to?
Someday we'll all be negroes
For God's sake, South African men are raping babies out there in hopes that having sex with virgins will cure them of AIDS. (Don't believe me? Read this. http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,4729 6.jsp)
These are awful facts for sure, but if you think that South Africa is the only country where rape happens, you are very sheltered.
There are most certainly a whole host of other problems with living/working there, starting with the fact that just about any country on earth (except Canada and Australia) has a lot less respect for life and liberty than the US
Care to explain this? From what I've seen, Australia is the censorship capital of the world, and just as Dimitri Skylarov or Kevin Mitnick what they think of the USA's attitude towards human liberty.
That and nowadays they are issuing all kinds of travel advisories to Americans (you can thank the Second Gulf War for that).
I would not trust South Africa (or most other nations, for that matter) to provide stable roads
ROFTL. You've never been to South Africa, have you? I go to the USA, Canada, UK, and New Zealand on business semi-frequently. I would hold South Africa's roads up favourably or at least comparably with any of these.
access to food
Please tell me you're kidding? Or are you really that ignorant?
adequate and fair law enforcement (which is itself shitty enough in the States)
It's a problem in most countries. Admittedly, this includes South Africa. Just go to K5 and read up on the latest article on American justice.
accessible medical care, and so on
Medical care in South African private clinics (which anyone in South Africa with medical aid (medical insurance) has access to) is top notch, in fact, better than I've seen in the UK (had to go to hospital there once). I can't comment on the Canadian/American health services, since I've never experienced them firsthand. I've heard that medical care is pretty good in Canada thanks to Medicare, but reports vary wildly about US medical care.
And I'm not trolling, nor am I saying everyone else is in the Stone Age... I could envision moving to Britain, France, Australia or Canada.. but not South Africa.
Just out of curiousity, how many of those countries have you actually been to? I wouldn't move to France if you paid me, I'd be fairly happy in Australia (it's remarkably similar to South Africa in a lot of ways, especially with regard to way of life), and I absolutely couldn't take the British or Canadian climates. But I do like Canandians, and not only because Canada is one of our company's biggest overseas markets:)
But no matter where you move to, you are going to face a lot of changes in your life
Agreed
starting with what human rights you have
Spoken like someone who is either very sheltered or very ignorant, or just overly patriotic.
that even the prospect of going from chronically unemployed to gainfully employed, does not make up for the loss of stability in all these other areas
Personally, I don't think there'd be a loss of stability in these areas. And I have been to Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, most of Europe, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and the Far East (Malaysia, Thailand, Japan). I haven't been to South America or Central America yet, but I am working on it :) I don't like to make judgements about other countries, since even after visiting you've usually only seen some facets of the particular country, but I definitely don't like to comment unless I've at least been there. Certainly not only on the strength of hyped up media reports. I don't think you're trolling. I just think that you need to get out more. The world is a lot bigger than just the USA, Canada and Australia.
We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop
> --- All Of The Above --- >
CCIE's to start make well over 100k/yr, or much much more depending on additional certifications/skillsets (financial securities certs, CISSP, etc). to have your compliance certs (securities firms) and your CISSP, on top of a CCIE, will garner you 200k/yr easily to start.
Please don't confuse the years of work and study that go into a CCIE with a CCNA, or your pathetic time making pong games out of christmas lights at college.
EOM
Though interestingly, I tend to do that a lot when typing english but hardly at all while coding.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Barter system , and going underground .
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Bypassing corporate america
I think this is the solution to the problem
On another topic I posted setting up Coop Wireless Networks
to bypass the corporate greed structure that routes users
thru one point of presence to save cash, but ends up with a
cable modem network with dial up latency levels
Equally Coops like the rural community could bypass the
corporate structure
You have to be careful in your barter system to not make a
competing monetary system or you attract the attention of
the treasury dept, and the IRS
This is workable though, Coops have existed in the US for decades.
I think I am about to spend some time with google...
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
There were at least 8 people I worked with who had bought at least one house in India, and of those at least 3 had two houses.
I just wished that I had as much disposable income as they did.
Are usually, newer ones inwhich the gothcas are not as well known.
Take Pascal as an example, Pascal was a cheaper technology, and was taught at most colleges. Many companies started writing applications in Pascal, only to find that Pascal didn't handel some rather critical operations well. Some chucked their code, others continued using the Pascal code.
From what I understand, MicroSoft is an example of the latter. They developed Windows initially with Pascal, found that it just couldn't do the job, and started recoding parts of it in C.
Was too quick with the submit button
1) which do you think is cheaper.
2) An experienced programmer would be able to reconize the gotchas faster and either determine that the new technology is unsuitable or a work-a-round sooner.
Yes, I agree with you, and that is the route that I have been going down.
The real problem as I see it is that management percieves its development staff as part of the problem. Unfortunatly, they will make decisions that will benefit them the most, and not the company. Classic examples of this is the amount of outsourcing that occurs, and the rampant merging of companies when the internet bubble was collapsing.