Slashdot Mirror
235,000 Fewer Programmers by 2015
RonMcMahon writes "According to a CNN Money article, Forrester Research is predicting that there will be 235,396 fewer Computer Programmers and Software Engineers employed in 2015 than there are today in America. This is a 25% reduction in the number of positions from today's depressed numbers. This sucks. I know that many companies are moving work off-shore, but wow, that's half the population of Wyoming!"
As far as I know India doesn't have an H1B equivalent, so even if you are willing to relocate, it is near impossible.
We actually did it to ourselves.
First we made information networked and portable so that anyone is capable of working with it at any place.
Then we actively promoted "free" software that we work on for no pay. We actively promoted others to use "free" software and to produce it themselves.
Now we act surprised when others are capable of writing software in other countries and are willing to do it for low wages.
Survival of the fitest in this case means we ACTIVELY WORKED at making our jobs less valuable and our presense less nessesary. I'm not saying this is a bad thing; we just reap what we sow.
TW
If I remember correctly, presidents in the U.S. are elected by the people.
Interesting theory. I guess that depends on your definition of "people."
Personally, I feel that the state of the economy is due to the combination of the policies of the sitting president and the president that came before them. For example, Clinton fed the bubble despite a long cautionary history about preventing an economy from expanding too quickly. However, a sitting president is most definitely responsible for the federal deficit that is racked up during their administration, as they have direct control over such policies.
The ______ Agenda
It doesn't take a prior expert in the field to micromanage. It also doesn't take a fool not to micromanage. A good manager should know when to step back and when to get involved. But when my manager gets involved, I want him to fully understand what's going on and prevent bad things from happening, and encouraging the good.
My current manager isn't the most cluefull, but he's a good guy with good management skills. I try to make sure he understands w/o a doubt what i'm doing and why i'm doing it. Not to an atomic degree, but to a good general one.
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
585,000 computer programmers
697,000 software engineers
And that doesn't include the 887,000 systems analysts, computer scientists, and database administrators, some of which are almost certainly working in programming positions.
However, given that these numbers (1,282,000 computer programmers and software engineers) are from the year two thousand, before the massive layoffs of the past few years really started happening, the 941,584 number doesn't seem all that out of the ballpark.
Modded funny, but an MBA from a decent, fairly reputable Business School WILL take you places, regardless of your skillset. Plenty of people who don't even need them get them. We as techies turn up our nose at management, but one thing you'll notice is that, while we're all getting laid off left and right and our wages whittled down to nothing, managers and executive salaries are going up.
El riesgo vive siempre!
A security clearance is the closest thing to lifetime guaranteed employment that I know of.
According to the US Dept of Labor, from their 2002-3 Occupational Outlook Handbook, s/w engineers "are projected to be the fastest growing occupation over the 2000-10 period" while employment growth for programmers "will be considerably slower than that of other computer specialists, due to the spread of pre-packaged software solutions".
If you're worried about your job security, start learning more than just programming languages and APIs. (Of course, until we have a proper accreditation system, anyone in the s/w industry can call themselves an engineer...)
Even the Muslims say so. . .