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!"

Comments

Time for a career switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I will start looking now or perhaps move to India.

Re:Time for a career switch...

[snkmoorthy]

As far as I know India doesn't have an H1B equivalent, so even if you are willing to relocate, it is near impossible.

Re:Time for a career switch...

[JWW]

If you move to India, don't go there to do programming. Go there to start a union of tech. workers.

Wages will be going up very fast. Many of these outsorcers have fairly long term commitments and can raise their prices and renogatiate at will. Plus reports show wages going up very fast in India (a tech. union there would do wonders for this ;-).

Plus, there is starting to be a consumer backlash agains non-english as a first language tech. support. What was bad tech. support years ago is now becoming bad tech. support that you can't understand.

Re:Time for a career switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you around in the early '90's? Defense jobs can disappear wholesale. While you're at it, why don't you look at the percentage of the F-35 project that is going to foreign countries (50%).

Re:Time for a career switch...

[Opinari]

"Many of these outsorcers (sic) have fairly long term commitments and can raise their prices and renogatiate at will..." Not so, at least with my company. We offloaded some of our mundane programming tasks to an Indian firm, and the wages are fixed for 10 years, with only a cost of living increase, and limited merit increases. Otherwise, our company would not have signed the long-term contract.

Re:Time for a career switch...

[Dick Faze]

Yeah, just what the world needs, a tech union. So I can pay 5% of my wages to support the bottom 30% who screw up every job the touch because the honestly suck. No thanks, competition and quality speak, stay out of their way.

I knew I should have gone for an EE degree

[Knetzar]

Or maybe I should go and get my MBA in the next few years

Re:I knew I should have gone for an EE degree

[the Man in Black]

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.

wow i was going to guess...

[stinkfish]

...235,395 fewer!

Programmers == Carpenters??

[MontSegur]

I wonder how many carpenters there are in the US? Most programmers are little more than carpenters who don't have to provide their own tools... "You buy me that shiny 64-bit hammer and I'll *pound* nails with it, Baby!"

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[sql*kitten]

Most programmers are little more than carpenters who don't have to provide their own tools...

I'm sure, had Slashdot been around back in days of Steampunk, there would have been many articles cursing the disappearance of steam-engine related jobs, complaining that these days, steam trains were only used overseas, etc, etc. Meanwhile, the invention of the aeroplane would receive only a passing mention, everyone would think it was cool, then they would go back to complain about the decline in the use of steam technology.

Moving jobs overseas isn't a bad thing. One thing the third world is good at is being cheap labour*. One thing the third world is very bad at is innovation**. Westerners who are good at what the West does - innovate - will be as in demand as ever. Those who can't or won't work to remain on the cutting edge, well, there's no helping them.

* I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, just that it's a historical fact.
** Also a historical fact. Look at where the new knowledge was and is created over the last 500 years, in technology, pharma, media, you name it - in the West. Even big countries like China and Brazil use Linux, for example - they didn't (or couldn't) start from scratch.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[richieb]

Westerners who are good at what the West does - innovate - will be as in demand as ever. Those who can't or won't work to remain on the cutting edge, well, there's no helping them.

This is not really true if you go back in history more than 300 years.

Back then Europe was a third world country. Most of the innovators lived in China, India or the Middle East. Several of their innovations are things like writing, the number 0, arabic (!!) number system, gun powder and I'm sure countless other inventions.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[Rostin]

I've been itching to say this for months, but just *knew* that I'd be modded down for trolling. I had a CS prof in college (before I dropped that major) who said something like, "A lot of people think programming is art or something like it. The question is, should they?" His view is the programming is like plumbing or carpentry. The skill-set to do it is something you can pick up in trade school. The difference between a computer scientist and a programmer is the difference between a draftsman and an engineer, to put it a different way. And I mean a real engineer, not one of those people with an MCSE certificate.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[sql*kitten]

Third-world countries don't innovate because they are hungry and poor not because they don't have the ability to.

You have it backwards. They are hungry and poor because they don't innovate and create value. Even the ones that aren't hungry and poor don't do much by way of actual innovation.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[malkavian]

Yes, a lot of new knowledge has been provided by the West in the last 500 years. If you discount Russia (East) and Japan (East), who have come up with their fair share, then the west has been the main innovator. Actually, most of this has been from Europe (with America really appearing in the sights within the last hundred years or so).
However, paying for the training of offshore people to do the low grade work that has been previously done onshore is a tad dangerous.
All the 'high level' people that understand what the game's about have come up through the ranks of those junior positions to slowly acheive where they are.
The premise of offshoring seems to be "Well, we'll set up the whole of our operations abroad, where it's cheap, and automagically, when we need them, experienced people will join the organisation as we need them.". Except, due to most work at the lower levels being done offshore, thus most training being done there, the experience for the higher level jobs will be required to be performed offshore.
The setup then becomes one of having a shell company in the west, populated by a few suits with little technical knowledge, asking for a product from the real company investment (in workers and experience) in, say, India.

Now, with having few people trained (nobody can get a job in the west, so why study?), and no experience being gained (no job), then the raw ability to innovate in that area vanishes.
Lo and behold, the country that HAS the skills forms their own industries, and makes new products derived from their EXPERIENCE in the old (western initiated) ones.

With sufficient saturation of skill base, and lack of draconian legal restriction, new innovation is pretty much guaranteed. That's how the US managed to kick start it's high tech lead (the "Brain Drain" is still well remembered).

To put this in perspective, the Eastern Countries led development in technology for several thousand years. Only in about the last 500 has it lagged behind (except for Japan which is still at the forefront).
Now, after a period of 'sleeping', the East is beginning to fire up it's technology engine, and get in the 'Innovation' mode.
Definately not good for Western companies longterm, who are taking the short term view of a quick buck now.
And that buck, ten years down the line will most likely vanish into an eastern company who does exactly the same thing for a quarter the price or less.

Your reference to steam engines misses much of the point. Nobody here is crying out about losing jobs on a defunt system.
The point is, that if, once the planes and cars developed WERE actually all made in the 'third world', and all it's engineers and manufacturing were based there when the industry was in it's infancy, then the west would not be where it is now.
India would have the great roads, and the most advanced cars around would be of Indian manufacture. The west would now be playing catchup to the more established Indian markets.

The sad truth is that, these days, companies are run by accountants and lawyers. These are exactly the people who look at what the money does, and NOT at what happens to the world around.
Nobody seems to care about 10, or 20 years down the road. As long as the cash is on the table NOW, and LOTS of it, all is good.

Your premises seem to assume that the world is generally static, and moving one part of an ecosystem and transplanting it to another area en masse will make no difference to either one.
Read up on a good many disasters that have occurred that way.
Computing (and society) mirror nature very closely. The big industries are playing a very dangerous game.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[jjohn]

Are you insane? Hammers, saws and screwdrivers aren't provided to carpenters, but materials that will stay with the customer, like 2x4 planks, I-beams, nails, are. Why on Earth would a programmer, that's not with a VAR, bring a computer to the job? A programmer's tools are nearly all insubstantial (the notable exception being books, but even those are going electronic). Programming is a skill, not a piece of hardware. You don't need a programmer to run a computer. You need the programmer to make the computer do something useful.

The constant equating of programming to an industrial process is without merit and has been debunked before by Fred Brooks, Steve McConnell and others. The construction techniques for software aren't as well understood or as systematized as those known to physical engineers and fabricators. This makes every software project mostly unique, although certainly experiences from previous projects will help the next one. McConnell identifies four legs of software development that must come together to get a successful production. These are people, process, product and technology. In reverse order, the technology piece is simply the OS, the hardware and programming language chosen for the job. The product leg deals with scope of the project, such as listing the required features, inputs, outputs and whatnot. The process bit relates to how the project is (or isn't) managed, risk management and customer feedback. The people aspect comprises the quality of the programmers doing the work. This can have a huge impact on the shipping product.

Outsourcing addresses only one leg of software developement: people. By reducing the cost of this one leg, the cost of the process aspect will go up. It remains to be seen whether paying for more management and process will produce more profitable results than simply working with the native talent pool of programmers. I suspect it won't for most cases. However, there will surely be some outsourcing success stories.

It's grossly unfair to expect the art of programming, which is hardly sixty years old, to be as well understood as construction, which has been a human endeavor for thousands of years. Those managers and market analysts that labor under this delusion are in for a rude surprise.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[RevMike]

So you're saying Europeans are murderous fiends?

Basically yes. I recomend reading "Germs, Guns and Steel".

Actually, the book is Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.

Diamond argues that two cultural families have become dominant in the world - the fertile crescent culture which is the root of today's European and American cultures and Chinese culture which has spread throughout Asia. He further argues that these cultures are dominant for no other reason than environmental and geographic reasons. Both these areas had wild versions of a variety of domesticable staple agricultural products, readily domesticable draft animals, and room to spread out.

Other "root" cultures did not have all these factors. For instance, inidiginous Americans had no draft animals while horse and oxen were available in Mesopotamia. Corn was not readily domesticable in its wild form, and several thousand years passed before the right mutations occured to make corn a good staple crop whereas the wheat, barley, and oats that grew wild in Mesopotamia were easily domesticated. When corn was domesticated, it took a very long time for corn farmers from central America to spread through the deserts of Mexico and the American Southwest to the Mississippi valley. (The great plains are virtually unfarmable without more modern plows and draft animals because of the tough sod.) The Mesopotamian farmers spread far into Russia, the middle east, and Europe before running into barriers.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[rnd()]

I can't tell if your comment was intended to be a joke or not.

Leave it up to businesses to decide who they want to hire. If someone wants to hire a team of Indian programmers instead of a team from California, or a team of Californian programmers instead of a team from New York or Michigan, so be it. It is that person's decision, and he/she will have to live with the consequences.

I'm sure there are a lot of Indian programmers who are all around better programmers than many US programmers. These programmers might cost more than some US programmers, and so businesses might choose them only if a high level of expertise is deemed necessary for a particular project.

If you are a programmer, do two things:

1) Do what you can to make yourself as skilled and valuable as possible

2) Be aware of trends that may make you extinct and act accordingly, even if it means learning new skills.

People have the idea that a human being should only be required to learn one trade during his lifetime and should be able to earn a decdent wage at that trade, whatever it happens to be. That is rediculous.

People have work done offshore becaue the price and quality are better than work done in the US, or at least they seem to be.

sql*kitten is right on target that innovation will remain in the west, and grunt work will flee to places of cheaper labor.

So, if you feel like your programming job is grunt work, be ready for it to disappear.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[gagy]

The sad truth is that, these days, companies are run by accountants and lawyers. These are exactly the people who look at what the money does, and NOT at what happens to the world around. Nobody seems to care about 10, or 20 years down the road. As long as the cash is on the table NOW, and LOTS of it, all is good.

That couldn't be any more correct. I work for the worlds largest company (or so they tell me) and I think the CEO smokes crack some days. This year he said "If it doesn't generate a profit this year, don't do it." I almost snapped. It's not just people that live day to day, its multi billion dollar corporations too. They'll do anything to save a buck, even if it means sacrafacing something next year. As long as this years bottom line looks good, the cost at achieving it is having a reduced bottom line for the next two years. I proposed a great idea for increasing sales, but it would take a year or two to get the return, and that's just not good enough around here. This is also why all programmers are in a rut. Nobody cares about what happens tommorow, as long as today looks good. If it means outsourcing everything overseas, then so be it. I'm lucky because I had enough foresight to get two degrees, one in computer electronics and one in business admin. Right now i'm in Marketing and all my comp. sci friends are unemployed.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[Politburo]

I'm sure, had Slashdot been around back in days of Steampunk, there would have been many articles cursing the disappearance of steam-engine related jobs, complaining that these days, steam trains were only used overseas, etc, etc. Meanwhile, the invention of the aeroplane would receive only a passing mention, everyone would think it was cool, then they would go back to complain about the decline in the use of steam technology.

Your analogy is wholly broken. The steam engine was obsolete, and that is why workers were no longer needed for them, not because the jobs supporting steam engines were being moved overseas. I doubt you mean to say that computers are obsolete, too? And what is the modern version of the airplane from your analogy?

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[Greyfox]

Management doesn't understand the distinction between grunt programmer and computer scientist either. A lot of grunt management will disappear when the grunt programmers are shipped overseas. Grunt management also inevitably dictates that the grunt programmers use the wrong tools for their job, and they try to justify their existance by applying "Scientific methods" (IE: The latest XP buzzwords) to prove that they're actually doing the right thing. Of course, you can prove anything with scientific methods if you start with a flawed initial hypothesis and carefully pick only those methods which will not show the underlying flaws in your reasoning.

The programmers who treat it as an art are usually computer scientists even if all they think they're doing is programming and all it looks like they're doing is programming. Look at any of the developers on the Linux core kernel team and you'll see a guy who treats programming as an art. I know this because I've seen their code. Superficially it looks like they were just programming but you can't create an OS kernel by just programming. Management does not really understand this and will attempt to hire a batch of grunt programmers and then dictate that they write the kernel in Java. And the grunt programmers will agree, set up XP pair programming teams, require test-first design and will still fail.

So the grunt managers and the grunt programmers will get outsourced to India where they will continue to pass or fail at random at a tenth the cost of the same team of Americans.

Here's the magic piece of the puzzle that Microsoft is looking for: OSS projects have such high quality because OSS projects by their very nature do not include grunt programmers. Grunt programmers have no incentive to work on such projects. That doesn't mean that all computer scientists work on OSS projects, but it inevitably means that all OSS projects are populated by computer scientists of varying degrees of skill and experience (Except when a company is paying people to work on the project, that opens a door for grunt programmers.)

Here's another thing you can put in your crack pipe and smoke; large companies will inevitably have a large number of grunt managers who don't understand computer science nor event the business logic of the requirements they're presented. These are the guys dictating that the entire CRM application should be implemented as a set of JSP web pages because that's the latest buzz in the industry. If a small company emerges that has both managers and computer scientists who understand the requirements and can dictate the implementation of their program, they will take market share (and be profitable) from the larger company, even if they're using an all USA based team and the larger company is using an all overseas one.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[kalidasa]

Nope. Use of a symbol to represent the mathematical concept of nothing/null goes back thousands of years. Use of decimal places, on the other hand (which is what historians are usually talking about when they speak of the "invention of 0") goes back to the Hindus. See http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/biograph/bioz ero.htm for more details.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[kalidasa]

300 years ago is 1703. Europe was not a third world country in 1703. Innovation restarted in Europe in the 14th century in Italy. It started to decline in the Muslim world in the 15th century with Turkish hegemony (has nothing to do with the Turks as a culture, but might be related to the Sultanate as a political/social system; see Bernard Lewis). In China, it started to decline with the otherthrow of the Yuan (aka the Mongols) and the rise of the Ming.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[gagy]

Maybe you're sitting a few cubes over from me, and you don't even know it. But isn't it interesting how we both have time to yak on slashdot all day complaining how our jobs are being outsourced, while our productivity is obviously 0? :)

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[tiger99]

Yes, you are quite correct, and that is exactly why OSS projects which reach maturity are almost always of good quality. It is also why M$ will never produce software of good quality, or even if they do, the user interface will be awkward and annoying for serious users.

Most OSS programmers do so to fulfil their own need, they need (say) a good-quality driver for their photo-quality inkjet printer, so they go and do it. they will not like spots and blemishes on their photos, or the truly HORRIBLE colour rendering the M$ driver for one of my printers produces.

The number of small things containing software is increasing, and will continue to do so. There may be a decreasing demand for programming skills in the IT industry, but what about all these clever little things which are produced in what at first sight is a hardware industry? Microcontrollers, embedded web servers, set-top boxes, toys, clever central heating controls (energy efficient), engine management computers (just a few that I thought of...). There may be no big projects (who ever NEEDS a new OS, Bill please note!) but there will be an abundance of small ones. People who understand how to make software interact with the hardware will always be in demand.

This may of course be a symptom of stagnation in the large IT companies (the Convicted Monopolist stagnated at birth of course), with the shift towards small businesses who will produce small, useful things.

There may be falling demand for those who know only VB, or Access (I never bothered to learn either!), or maybe even Java, but I doubt that there will be a loss of demand for the more difficult things, and the need for high-quality, safety-critical software will continue to rise.

As I think you are saying, the mediocre with little interest in the job may need a career change, but those with the determination to adapt will not be short of work. I don't think that absolute ability is all that matters, you don't need to be a super-genius to pick up a few languages and instruction sets to a level where you can get fully up to speed on any one of them fairly quickly. Not so long ago, I was offered a job doing hardware and software design, programming a PIC in assembler. The interviewer knew I could do it, although I have never touched a PIC before. Had I accepted the job, I would have spent quite a few evenings studying the PIC data books..... If I wanted to be a C programmer again (it was a long time ago...) I would go and write a program or two, maybe a bit of OSS, just to get back up to speed. You really do have to be prepared to put in your own time and effort to stay on top.

I can't comment on anywhere but the UK, but we have a desparate shortage of plumbers. It is easy to earn a good living, so I am told. Again, something which you don't need to be a super-genius to learn. I have re-done 3 houses, and my manual skills are not the best. It would not be too hard to get up to speed in that area, for a complete change. I suspect that almost everyone has the capability to learn a second useful skill, possibly very different from your main job skill. NOW is the time to learn something else, just in case, or even for a bit of variety. It may even be fun!

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[kalidasa]

Declines in military power often lag declines in innovation, though. By the time the Ottoman Turks (a later group than the Seljuk Turks) came on the scene in 1289, Saladin was almost 100 years dead, there had been no effective Caliphate since before Saladin, and the cities of Iraq had been devastated by the Mongol invasions. Even so, the Ottomans spread like wildfire until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453; after that their conquests dragged for quite a long time before they were stopped at Vienna in 1683, and repulsed in the 18th century.

As a scientifically active culture, the Islamic world really began to fall behind around the time of the invention of the printing press (which was banned for use with Turkish and Arabic in the Ottoman Empire until 1729). China was damaged by the Mongol invasions, but it was really the Ming isolationism that caused them to fall behind as a scientifically active culture.

Re:Programmers == Carpenters??

[richieb]

As a scientifically active culture, the Islamic world really began to fall behind around the time of the invention of the printing press (which was banned for use with Turkish and Arabic in the Ottoman Empire until 1729)

I forgot the part about the printing press. It's funny, you could say that the Ottoman/Islamic empire began to die when strong protection for "intellectual property" was in place (that is no easy way to copy Koran). :-)

Thanks for the historical details...

Your own fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time get a union.

They don't even have to be run by mobsters or be unreasonable or powerful. Look at SPEEA.

Worst case scenerio is you gain a little bit of appreciation for the uncertanty that faces a lot of factory workers.

The real question

[iamdrscience]

I think that more important than the number of employed programmers and engineers is the number of people that program in their free time. A lot of programming employment opportunities are just soul draining code lackey positions. A lot of the really interesting, creative work comes from peoples' hobby projects.

Re:The real question

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Management actually discounted the lower cost of outsourcing the work to India, but rather blamed the attitudes the local programmers (many of whom wouldn't want to work in that area of the country anyway).

It seems that many organizations use that excuse when people complain about outsourcing. I live in Indiana, and here the Department of Workforce Development was recently forced to cancel an outsourced programming contract with an Indian company after a massive outcry from unemployed developers in Indiana. The "Workforce Development" department is responsible for dispensing benefits and coordinating training for the unemployed. Unemployed programmers, many actively seeking freelance gigs to pay bills after losing full-time positions, felt slapped in the face when the very agency charged with helping them was doing them direct harm by sending lucrative work (paid for with tax dollars) overseas.

The point is that we fought back, and you should too. If your government wants to outsource IT work, you tell them hell no, you won't stand for it. Make them hire local companies. Make them plow the money back into the local economy--your livelihood may one day depend on how loudly you protest now.

Forrester Research? Pffft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone listen to these same clowns who predicted 10 trillion dollars of e-commerce in 1999? I can also pull numbers out of my ass. I believe programming jobs will increase by 20% in ten years from current levels.

Re:Forrester Research? Pffft.

[perly-king-69]

Mod parent up.

I'd like to see some research carried out on the speculation these guys (Forrester, Gartner etc) come up with.

They can't even agree upon present day issues, for example, the TCO of Linux is cheaper than Windows or vice versa.

What hope have they of predicting the future.

Re:Forrester Research? Pffft.

[dabraham]

What he said. To be perfectly honest, I see the fact that idiots are foretelling doom to be a heartenening sign.

As for moving jobs off-shore, way back when there were some great programmers in India who couldn't get jobs at all. Then some company A) laid off ten idiots making $100K each, B) gave the Indian programmers peanuts, and C) got great code back. So every other company started doing it. The problems are that there were never all that many great programmers, and that most of them want more than peanuts now (walnuts at least).

Slowly (far too slowly, but that's business ("free market is an efficient allocator" my left foot (well, alright, as compared to everything else we've tried, sure, but really))) businesses will realize that

1. They didn't hire distinctly better programmers in India than the ones they laid off in the US
   
2. They aren't paying them all that much less
   
3. There are significant downsides to the 12 hour time difference, different culture and language.
   
4. There are significant downsides to the lack of stability/commitment implied by contracting as opposed to hiring people for a while. Your employees are your institutional knowledge. The people you contract with aren't.
   

Oh yeah, and eventually some Indians might decide "hey, we've got money, but we've run out of people that we can even claim are programmers. How about we offer these contracts to some un-employed people in the US. They'll jump at the chance to work for minimum wage."...

In all, I expect this to hurt, but even out and get better eventually.

Are details on who they are calling programmers?

[Shivetya]

The numbers won't mean much unless you can define who they are? I know some web page designers who are classed as "programmers".

Re:Big Deal

[the uNF cola]

Ack. Please don't go into management. If you can't develop, what are your chances of understanding the developers in which you lead? Not that all developers will be great managers, but I like having someone above me who understands what I'm doing though may not duplicate it.

the, err, rest of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

> This sucks. I know that many companies
> are moving work off-shore ...

Why do you think an American deserves a job more than some hard-working, enterprising person in Bangalore [or wherever]? (PS: I'm american.)

Re:the, err, rest of the world

[Qzukk]

Why do you think an American deserves a job more than some hard-working, enterprising person in Bangalore [or wherever]? (PS: I'm american.)

Why do you think a corporation deserves market protection from cheap foreign goods if they're exploiting the lack of labor protection?

If companies want to play the "global market" game, then either A) labor should have tarrifs or B) goods should not. Make it fair for everyone involved. Joe Normal will be able to afford to continue his lifestyle after being laid off in favor of people from Esbotsunania who do a quarter of the work for a tenth of the pay. At hourly wages, he'd probably even be able to buy more DVDs at hong kong prices, more toys for his kids imported direct from china without all those brand names. And afford cheap software written in India by the independent programmers who are not owned by American corporations (or those who defect from their outsourcing agreement and set up a competing shop).

Re:the, err, rest of the world

[pirhana]

>> We need to go back into isolation and let the world see how they do w/o our charity.

Exactly !! if americans had got back isolated, then this outsourcing woud not have happened. I have wrote this in earlier discussions and would say it again. Outsouring is part of so called "globalisation" which is something amrica started , perpetuated and above all BENEFITED the most. More than any other country in the world america has contributed and benefited out of this process. Now you think its not good for you , because it starts to affect YOU ALSO. so it was ok as long as it was destabilizing third world economies and third world job market ? Then regarding charity, I wont even comment about that BS.

Oh, I wonder why???

[JamesP]

1 - DMCA (nuff said)
2 - ***A (FTAA, NAFTA, IndiA , RIAA (for paying 25 million to a scheme that can be defeated with the shift key)

3 - Welcome to the Global World, it's about time America gets their ass pounded by it too...

Will this match the population reduction?

[Knetzar]

Think about it, the Baby Boomers will retire and fewer kids will go into computer science due to the lack of programming jobs.

Hopefully that will reduce the supply of programmers enough so that the good ones will still be able to find jobs.

Re:Big Deal

[Amiga Lover]

> you better start looking elseware What a neat term for software made by overseas contract programmers Elseware

So what will all these people do?

[danormsby]

This is a lot of people changing career. What will they all be doing though?

Will they be:

Professional hover-board racers?

Anti-gravity technicians?

Time-travel holiday sales people?

Not to be partisan or anything

[Alien54]

but I have been sort of intrigued by the graphs seen on this page, based on official government data.

Of course, it is notup to date on the stock market, but I suspect that that may be a shell game anyhow, at least on some level.

Re:Not to be partisan or anything

[Frans Faase]

Interesting graph, but just observing a correlation between two parameters does not proof that one is influenced by the other. Even if there is an explanation, it might be the reverse relation, or both parameters might depend on a third. If I remember correctly, presidents in the U.S. are elected by the people. Likewise, the economical situation is also determined by the spending behaviour of people.

Re:Not to be partisan or anything

[radio4fan]

If I remember correctly, presidents in the U.S. are elected by the people.

Nope. You remember incorrectly.

Re:Not to be partisan or anything

[cgenman]

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.

Re:Not to be partisan or anything

[pavon]

For example, Clinton fed the bubble despite a long cautionary history about preventing an economy from expanding too quickly.

I don't know about that. In his first campain he talked alot about the government investing in the national infrastructure. Then he got elected had some talks with Alan Greenspan, and decided that would be a bad idea for the economy and went back on his campain promises. He also decreased the deficit every year he was in office, exactly what you want to do during a good economy. Perhaps he could have done more to temper the bubble, but he certainly cannot be blamed for feeding it.

From what I understand it was one of the most tempered and drawn out bubble we have had in a long time. I blame the bubble on the tech industry, and the longevity on a wise FED chairman, a president willing to listen to him, and a congress willing to cooperate with the president on lowering the deficit. I likewise blame todays recession on natural business cycles, but will blame tomorrows problems on a president who goes against the advice of a wise FED chairman, and cuts and spends wrecklessly.

Then again, in the macro-economics class I took, one of the co-authors of the text was one of clinton's original (first term) economic advisors, so my understanding might be slightly biast, although I have read other sources.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[Frequanaut]

It's too expensive

Computer Science is not everything anymore!

[Shisha]

Well, for the last two years, I had the feeling that this is exactly the way things are going to work out. This is why after completing my Computer Science BSc. I decided to learn Mathematics properly instead. So now, I'm 6 months away from completing my MSc. in Pure Mathematics and I know that I have learnt things that mostly have not changed for the last 100 years and are not going to change for the next 100 years all that much and so I don't need to worry about what the _next_ big thing will be, because mathematics will always be relevant. It will never be BIG in the same sense as aviation industry was once big and in the same sense as the dot com rush, but it will always be OK.

Of course this does not stop me from getting employed as a programmer if I wanted to.

Too many people in IT because it pays

[Manic Miner]

When I started doing work with computers, and my computer degree, I did it because I enjoyed the work and appeared to have a natural talent. This was the case for most people on my degree course.

A couple of years ago I worked for a UK university and I was so disapointed at the number of people who had no interest in the subject but doing it awayway. It seems that people think you can get a high paying job in IT, so will get the degree in hopes of getting a job despite not having any enthusiasm or talent or skill.

Maybe this will be a good thing, we might see less people going into IT just because they think it will pay well.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[nich37ways]

In a number of printed articles in Australia recently there have been reports of the decrease of people enrolling in IT for this very reason.

I honestly have never been able to understand why someone would choose a career they have no great intrest in simply because they could make fairly good money.

There are a lot of places you can make good money apart from IT but people seem to have got caught up in the IT boom period and thought that IT was the only way to make good money and those not in IT would be at a disadvantage somehow..

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[ScottSpeaks!]

"we might see less people going into IT just because they think it will pay well."

Not if the job counseling professionals have anything to say about it. Every time a manufacturer shuts down a plant around here, you hear them advising laid off workers to get training in "high tech", because that's where the jobs are today and in the future. <sarcasm>That must be why it only took me (ex-analyst, 15 years experience) almost a year to land an entry-level tech support job that pays what I made 10 years ago.</sarcasm> A friend who works for a local tech training outfit moans about all the people in her classes lately who can't even find their way around a keyboard.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[Schnapple]

I honestly have never been able to understand why someone would choose a career they have no great intrest in simply because they could make fairly good money.

I see your point but you answered your own question. My Old Man was a Chemical Engineer for thirty years - never liked or had any real interest in Chemistry, but he did it - because it was a job that would pay well. Hell, I never paid a dime in College, so that says something. The generation before us had that ethic: do the damn job, doesn't matter if you like it - you have responsibilities. Lots of people I knew in College went into fields where they had no interest and took jobs that no one dreams of growing up - they just wanted a career path with money. This is not to say that that's wrong - there are certianly worse things in life than being wealthy - but it does explain motivation.

But I wonder - what are they considering programmers? Are people who do drag-and-drop VB6 and don't code and won't move to VB.NET programmers? Are people who can handle data efficiently in Office considered programmers? I know that the COBOL programmer population is supposed to decline by 15% over the next four years due to retirement and death, how many other "programmers" will cease to be because they themselves cease to be or the need for their position (read: not outsourced, just not neccessary) ceases to be.

Actually, there's another point - a lot of people are VB6 programmers - 3+ million of them last count. There are VB6 badasses out there, don't get me wrong, but there's bound to be a large number of them who are simply put not programmer types and can't hang with newer stuff like VB.NET so they won't upgrade and at some point they'll have to change career paths. 235,000 out of 3 million isn't all that much.

And wait a minute. Quoth the article: 235,396 fewer ... This is a 25% reduction. Is the article saying that there are only 941,584 programmers today? At all? That's crazy - there's like 90,000 COBOL programmers alone. These numbers don't make sense.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious thing that's going to happen in North America is everyone will either go to school till they're old and gray, or open a school of their own. There's nothing left to DO in our advanced tech culture. But we keep using the obsolete ideas of a 'market' and 'work' to force people to run like rats in a maze... So, open your own school. It's perfect, people will always find ways to pay and schools have *no* accountability afterwards. Try getting your money back from a university if you can't get a job with your degree. Good luck.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[mu-sly]

These numbers don't make sense.

Ahh, but they do make sense, because as Benjamin Disraeli said: "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[loginx]

It's also because this hype has been overly promoted on every broadcast 24/7 for the past 5 years...

All I hear on the radio is: "Hey, sick of your job? why not become microsoft certified and make money for doing nothing?!?"

Or on TV: "I was a trucker, never did anything in my life... but then I decided to go to ITT Tech and now after 2 months of distance learning, I'm THE network administrator for a fortune-500 company!"...

People actually buy that bullshit...
I mean... come on.
I also see a lot of people that one day, when it was time to decide to chose a career, decided "Hey... computer talk is cool... I want to be cool!" and also "Hey, I'm pretty good at warcraft III, I probably have some hidden talent for computers, I should go and be a programmer"

I hope they all die.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[stretch0611]

Hopefully it is the programmers that are clueless that will leave. Unfortunately in order for that to happen it will depend on management to "have a clue" which isn't very likely.

I know someone that I work with that can't program for beans (even though she has a masters in Software Engineering) but she sure knows how to "Email." I also know far too many good programmers that have been jobless for over a year which prooves management doesn't know how to tell the good programmers from the bad ones.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[Wansu]

I honestly have never been able to understand why someone would choose a career they have no great intrest in simply because they could make fairly good money.

They want to have a nice home. They want to provide a comfortable lifestyle for themselves and their family. There are lots of interesting things you can do but there aren't all that many interesting things people will pay you well to do.

Re:Too many people in IT because it pays

[Alien_Phreak]

okay... the idea of a trucker programmer is just freaking eery, I can't even picture it (or at least dont want to).

and if "computer talk is cool", i know hell just froze over. I'm a geek damn it... computer talk is dorky and geeky and i'm proud to be both.

now the really sad part is, I've met some coders working on their masters (i'm using the term coder very loosly here) who can't figure out how to do the simplest most basic debuggin on windows.

(now mind you, I said windows... linux i could understand...but if u can't figure out how to configure dial in windows and you're working on your masters.... that's just wrong...)

I probably could go on for ages...(i unfotunately went to a school that still teaches cobol and i'm still quiet bitter about the fact that i've been forcebly truned into one...erghhh.... )

well, that's my 2 cents..

Alien.

I beg to differ...

[Gethsemane]

Remember what Dell just did recently? Most big business's were complaining that Dell's over seas tech support was a farce and demanded english speaking tech support reps that new the nomenclature of IT. There was such an up roar, Dell did move their Big Business tech support back to the US.

I think after awhile with enough uproar from consumers, their slumping tech support award will cause them to follow suit for the average joe as well.

I think we can extrapolate this to all of the other area of IT, especially programming. You still need a high level of written and oral communication to perform your job effectively. That is whyI think this big push for over seas IT jobs will eventually backfire in the face of big business.

Specialize or change fields

[nich37ways]

Note I am in Australia which has some of these problems but nothing it would appear in comparison to America.

As much as it does suck I honestly see the only real way forward for software engineers and programmers is to either move into or start a research and development company and develop highly specialized software or to move into a new area of IT.

Honestly I would prefer if you didnt move into the system administration area, that would be mine, ;)

The only way to keep your job secure is to work in face to face/onsite support or IT management although I am sure some clever CEO/CTO will figure out how to move those overseas as well.

One of the funniest things I read this year was a guarntee from our American management that they would not be moving the software development section from Australia to America from Australia, it was originally an Australian company so we didn't steal any American jobs :)

The real thing I want to know is where will the jobs be that are not outsourced to other countries and why will they be the ones to stay in comparison to those that are sent overseas.

Re:Big Deal

[Amiga Lover]

(damned mozilla)

> you better start looking elseware

What a neat term for software made by overseas contract programmers

"Elseware"

A few years back...

[joostje]

A few years back, analysts were predicting numbers of programmers to skyrocket. They were wrong. Now they predict them to go down. Why should I believe them this time?

To me it looks like they just take the trend of the past 2 years, extrapolate it to 2015, think of a few pages worth of `reasoning' why the numbers go so much down/up, and, hey presto, a new raport available!

Re:A few years back...

[ponxx]

> To me it looks like they just take the trend of the past 2 years, extrapolate it to 2015,
> think of a few pages worth of `reasoning' why the numbers go so much down/up, and, hey presto, > a new raport available!

Are you suggesting there's somethign wrong with that? It's what all the analysts/consulatants/investment bankers seem to be doing, surely it must be right!

I once suggested during an intership that they quote errors, or at least reduce the number of significant figures from 9 to 1 or 2 when predicting market volumes 10 years in the future... all i got in response was blank stares...

crazy world!
Ponxx

Are you in the real world?

[ejbst25]

You obviously aren't seeing what others are seeing. Everyone I talk to who has seen offshoring agrees that basically the company axes entire projects at a time. So, even if the numbers look like 10% of the software developers in your company are laid off...they common criteria for layoffs is not how good you are...but what project you are on.

Is nothing sacred?

[CompWerks]

I just want to sit in my cube, program and interact with as little of management as possible.

I should of known it would never last...

Don't jump to any conclusions

[mcpkaaos]

I seem to remember that not more than 10 or 15 years ago, people were predicting that by the end of this decade there would be such a demand for programmers, due to every little thing in your house having a computer of some sort in it, as to cause a shortage of supply. Well, that just didn't quite happen the way we thought it would. One might say it's due to the .com bust, one might not. The twists along the way don't really matter much. Any way you look at it, the predictions were and continue to be unfulfilled. I wouldn't bet my future on this "new" one coming to pass either. I would presume that these predictions rely heavily on current or near-recent trends (especially when programming could be concerned). Who knows what the next couple of years might bring, let alone the next decade.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[Scarblac]

You've been importing way more than you've been exporting for years now. For a while foreign investors used these dollars to buy up American companies and other investments, but at the moment that doesn't look very promising (and the interest on dollars is way too low). As a result, the world doesn't need any more of the dollars you give them so the dollar is now falling as a rock.

Pretty soon, the rest of the world will be too expensive instead.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[molarmass192]

It got outsourced to India! On related item, I remember when *everything* at WalMart *had* to be made in America but those days are long gone. In fact, you'd have a hard time finding anything at WalMart that *isn't* made in China now.

Absolutely right

[Marxist Commentary]

I have never understood the verulent resistance to unionization amongst the IT folks I know. During the "heyday" of the dot-com era, no one wanted to think about such issues, as you could seemingly skip from one job to another with a seemingly endless step up in salary each time. However, the realities of a capitalist system are inevitable, and the market dried up.

Think of how much better off in terms of job security, benefits, and salary the IT industry in the US could be today had they unionized early enough. Protection could have also been built in to protect the proletariate from the export of jobs overseas. It's truly a shame.

Re:Absolutely right

[cyberlync]

Yup, we would also be limited to the lowest common denominator rules.

My father is in a union and has been for the better part of 30 years. He is very good at what he does and many times his supervisors have recomended him for raises based on merit. However, the union always comes back and says 'If we give him a raise we will have to give joe blow on 2nd shift a raise and he sucks'. In a union everything works based off the lowest common denominator, wages, contract negotiations, everything. There is also the problem that generally everything is geared towards seniority not skill. I would much prefer to work in an environment where my skills are rewarded not how long I have managed to stick it out at a company.

Also I don't want anyone but me negotiating my contract. I am the only one that has my best interests at heart.

Re:Absolutely right

[swb]

IT people didn't need unionization at all until maybe the late 80s or early 90s. Until that point, a lot of IT work was seen more along the lines of scientific-style engineering -- college-educated guys in suits, some with graduate degrees, working with multimillion dollar equipment that looked like and often literally was "rocket science". These were talented professionals who were usually treated as such, and unionization was neither necessary from a job perspective nor considered socially compatible with its workforce.

Once the PC took off, and the demand for PC software soared, there was still too much demand for software and programming for industries and businesses that never had it. Computers were foreign and something like a database required real work, and there was enough of it at high wages that unionization seemed foolhardy.

It was only in the mid to late 90s when "Office Space" style management demanded uncompensated long hours, began seeking guest workers, outsourcing and other mass-production techniques which lowered the once lofty profession to assembly line status did unionization even START to feel like a reasonable conclusion. But even then, there was a sense of denial about joining a union since it made one feel less white collar and more blue collar, which for many has dramatic self-image and social consequences. Furthemore, the dot-com demand for IT workers duped many into believing they belonged to a new priviledged class who simply surfed from job to job or project to project, and that this, like double-digit stock market returns, was just another part of the new economy.

You could probably form a union (or more appropriately, a guild), but it would have to do more than focus on the traditional labor-management conflicts over pay and work rules, it would have to offer something to management, such as supplying members with bonafide skills (no paper MC*Es or others who flooded the IT market in the late 90s), supplying tech support for its members or products produced by its members (a more organized version of on-line support), and so on.

But I don't expect it to happen soon; there's still too many good IT jobs out there, and too much self-identification with white-collar professional status for it to succeed. Although perhaps another 5 years of jobless recovery combined with massive immigration and outsourcing, and there may be a change in attitude.

Re:Absolutely right

[Albanach]

So you go to your boss and ask for a raise because you're good at your job. He says 'no'.

What is he sacks you for _asking_ for a raise? Have you got the money to sue your employer?

How about the guy in the cubicle next to you gets a raise, yet he's no better than you and does no more work than you. You ask for a raise and get turned down.

The boss decides to cut your annual holiday entitlement to 10 days to boost productivity.

Tough. AT least in a union there'd have been someone there to fight for you.

Re:Absolutely right

[cyberlync]

So you go to your boss and ask for a raise because you're good at your job. He says 'no'.

What is he sacks you for _asking_ for a raise? Have you got the money to sue your employer?

How about the guy in the cubicle next to you gets a raise, yet he's no better than you and does no more work than you. You ask for a raise and get turned down.


Sounds like a good time to start looking for something else.


The boss decides to cut your annual holiday entitlement to 10 days to boost productivity.


You should have made sure your contract covered the number of holidays that you could take.


Tough. AT least in a union there'd have been someone there to fight for you.


Maybe, thats by no means a given. If we are talking about far fetched senarios here lets talk about unions stealing pensions or skimming wages or taking dues and providing nothing in return. My father tried to leave the union about a decade ago and the other employees threatened violence. They slit all his tires, keyed his car, etc just to prove that he couldn't leave. He ended up getting the harrasment to stop by catching one of his coworkers screwing with his car and beating the sh** out of them. Of course, these are all far fetched senarios and by no means indicative of the average union.

I am not saying unions are all bad. I am saying that the premise a union is built on is bad. I, personally, am not willing to give up the freedom to dictate the terms of my employment to any third party. This is especially true of a third party that is seniority based and generally caters to the lowest common denominator.

Re:Absolutely right

[SoupIsGood Food]

Most unions are generally geared to represent the laborer, the grind-it-out worker with no special skills, where it makes sense that seniority rules. Those who do show exemplary skill and promise over the long term are usually promoted to management by management... foremen, shift supervisors and the like. But this model isn't the only one.

There are unions for skilled workers... Government employees are usually members. (Don't laugh. Government employees include NASA and Ames and Los Alamos and the like, most of whose researchers are Union.) Boeing engineers have a Union of their own, too.

Even freelance photographers have a Trade Association, which negotiates and sets baseline rates for photo publication and re-use for its members... which is going to be a great deal higher than a solo freelancer is going to get.

The Teamsters or the UAW is not a good model for a technologist union... but such unions and trade organizations exist, and balance skill level, seniority and intra-organizational mobility very well. The days of the hired gunslinger are over... no-one is going to give you a six figure contract for a years worth of bug squashing, no matter how skilled you are. Instead, you'll see your salary rise and fall with the economy, and zero job stability. This is a great thing for management, but it suck rocks over the course of a career... provided you're able to maintain a career, as one long layoff can sideline you for good. (Over 50, with a BS in engineering or comp sci? Try getting a job, any job, that doesn't involve bagging grocieries or wearing a rent-a-cop uniform. Good luck.)

Unions smooth out the bumps... it can be depressing that salaries are lower than non-union workers, but the benefits are better and cheaper, and job security makes up for the loss of the "gunslinger" myth, especially if you have a mortgage and kids.

SoupIsGood Food

Re:Absolutely right

[Eccles]

I have never understood the virulent resistance to unionization amongst the IT folks I know.

Look at the havily-unionized steel, automotive, and textile industries. They're fleeing this country to a greater extent than tech jobs. I would expect unionized IT to have the same effect. What possible protection could a union provide against development shifting overseas? It's already being done for cost reasons, increasing job security et al would simply make moving overseas even more cost-effective.

Re:Absolutely right

[johnnyb]

I agreee somewhat.

Unions used to be good. Today they are not.

Unions are good when there are real enemies and real problems. Think about it, if you paid your Union dues every month, and the Union did _nothing_, you'd be pretty mad about paying them, right? Therefore, the Unions are always manufacturing problems to fix, which usually involve screwing over someone.

I think anytime a Union is created, it should have an end-goal, at which point it will dissolve. There are too many organizations in America today without end-goals, who continue to stay around long after their usefulness is over, but noone has had the balls to say "wake up! It's over!"

Most Unions fall into this category.

Major issues that ought to be addressed

[tomstdenis]

Nash was right... nuff said.

I see this as a "what I want" syndrome that is going to bite people in the ass in the long run.

First off you have the american side of it. The CEOs will ship the jobs off shore, americans will lose jobs and have to go on pogey. So yeah, the CEO makes a short-term profit but pays for it in taxation in the end.

Second you have the foreign side of it. They're willing to sell their time for a heck of a lot less than the americans [leading to the questionable quality issue which is another debate alltogether]. However, in the long run thy're just poising themselves to earn the least amount of money possible. [e.g. no long-term profit].

So really outsourcing is a nearsighted "fix".

However, there are several real concerns. Often software developers are paid way too much for what they produce. $70k/yr to produce buggy programs [re: name the last 10 windows games...] is excessive. Also this is partly americans own fault. Everyone and their brother is now a "computer scientist" [having finished their 3wk course at Devry or what not]. Now the CEOs are just pushing this farther by grabing rice farmers and what not and calling them computer scientists.

So in reality y'all are gonna taste your own medicine in the end!!!!

MUAHAHAHAA

Tom

Re:Major issues that ought to be addressed

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You know, it just occurred to me, the eventually all the customers may move to India, too. Leaving just the Indians to compete with the Indians.

Excellent!

[wackybrit]

Perhaps it's just me, but I think it's GREAT there'll be less programmers. I can't see the amount of programming work dropping significantly by 2015, so it means more work for less people, and perhaps our rates of pay will become more on a par with plumbers, builders, and carpenters once again.. instead of being at Wal*Mart levels.

This is a great market readjustment.

Translation

[lpontiac]

"America and it's corporations will be less relevant to the rest of the world, IT-wise, in 2015."

Something the article didn't mention

[taliver]

There will be fewer people vying for those jobs, according to
this.

So, the jobs that will probably be lost are the ones that suck anyway, the ones that require just painful coding line after line of repetive garbage.

The jobs that will be left will be the high-paid positions of QA-- the ones to go through all that garbage written by the lowest bidder and fix it. O the joy we will have.

For those thinking "I might be in the lucky half"

[Rogerborg]

Are you working in the private sector? Then take it from me: you won't be in the lucky half.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[swb]

Still at least it's not as hypocritical as Clinton's reskilling platitudes when blue collar workers lost their jobs in manufacturing.

While the expected outcome of retraining for some segments of the blue collar workforce (older, less skilled) may have been overly optimistic, the idea wasn't at all hypocritical, it was logical -- a guy that worked with machines might likely have become retraied for running a more sophisticated machine tool or something.

Unfortunately, retraining can't take into account the zeal at which corporate management has decided to move ANY job which pays more than minimum wage overseas. In an era in which Wall Street considers a company with jobs that pay something akin to middle-class wages as having "uncompetitively high labor costs", then there will be nothing to retrain for, except operating the fryer at the local corporate fast food place.

In that reality, retraining is fruitless. But we're racing to the bottom, creating a plutocratic society where government and industry collude to create a handful of very wealthy people and a sea of working poor, with little in between.

My prediction

[presearch]

I predict that by 2015, we'll have 235,00 more error dialogs that say "Some program fail, please you now restart".

is this a joke

[Metaldsa]

Predicting an economy in the year 2015? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I don't even know what kind of software, video games, or equipment I will be using in 2010. Why would they assume to know how many programmers we will need here or around the world in 2015. I refuse to RTFA with an intro like that :)

Exported vs. Going Away

[bitmason]

Assuming that these forecasts are accurate -- a big assumption with this sort of hard-to-predict thing but let's stipulate it is for purposes of argument...

It's not clear to me that the shrinkage is necessarily because of outsourcing overseas as everyone seems to be assuming. Sure that might be (doubtless will be) part of it but it doesn't seem that would be the only trend. In addition, in spite of the increase in the number of computers and things automated, there's also an increase in use of packaged software and tools that greatly increase productivity. A lot more can be accomplished with a lot fewer porogrammers than 10 or 20 years ago.

You can certainly find lots of examples in other industries where far fewer people are employed in spite of higher overall domestic output because of productivity increases.

Re:Big Deal

[I Be Hatin']

Ack. Please don't go into management. If you can't develop, what are your chances of understanding the developers in which you lead? Not that all developers will be great managers, but I like having someone above me who understands what I'm doing though may not duplicate it.

I'd rather have a less-successful developer as my boss than a successful one. At least a failed developer is less likely to micromanage. It's certainly possible to understand what you're managing even if you don't know all of the technical details. In fact, this is what most managers do.

However, ultimately it probably doesn't matter. Management is a completely different position and requires a completely different skill set than programming does. Some people will be good at it and some won't.

Re:Big Deal

[Total_Wimp]

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

Amen to that

[palad1]

I kept on being labeled an elitist when I was at the university advising most people to drop cs and go straight to marketing courses, cause they clearly didn't have the spirit for CS work.

Now, most of these IT Experts are unemployed. One of them followed my advice and became a succesful real-estate agent.

If you don't enjoy doing something DON'T BASE YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE ON IT.

common sense 101

Re:Big Deal

[the uNF cola]

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.

US Dollar crash could be good for programmers?

[wackybrit]

Whoa whoa whoa, where did you read that? There will be less programmers in America.

With the way the US Dollar is going, I'm not so sure.

Indian workers were being seen as 40% cheaper in surveys done 6 months/a year ago (at least, that was the number being thrown around by the media). Now consider that the US Dollar has crashed in value by 12% against the UK pound (and more, by the Euro) in the LAST THREE MONTHS. With the deficits the US is running, and with the Euro presenting itself as a viable reserve currency, I think we could see the US dollar slumping further. This means American workers become more affordable, as Indian workers will seem to be demanding 30-40% more pay (or more, as the Indian economy improves).

The US-Rupee exchange rate has remained reasonably stable for the last few years, but with the giant swings against the Pound and the Euro (both belonging to major trade partners of India) it would not be unreasonable to expect this to change.

Re:Family pressure

[calethix]

"I know one person who finished medical school and disliked being a doctor so much (you have sick people telling you their problems all day and often you can't anything to help them)"

I can't think of anything worse than having a doctor that doesn't enjoy what they do.
My experience has been that programmers who do it for the money alone tend to try to get by with as little programming as possible. Now apply that mentality to a doctor.

Re:Big Deal

[TedCheshireAcad]

Oh come on. All managers really do is tell you to put the new cover letters on the TPS reports, and make sure you got the memo.

My guess...

[tgd]

I won't hazard a guess as to the accuracy of the Forrester article. They seem pretty hit-or-miss on their predictions, which is probably why they keep shrinking as a company.

That said, it doesn't seem unreasonable that there will be a sigificant drop in software engineers over the next ten years. Why? Because there is so much research going into technologies to transform business workflow more quickly into customized (but not custom) applications for managing business processes. There are an enormous number of developers employed doing precisely that in one way or another, whether its a VB program for managing customer contacts, or a staff of Java developers building internally developed applications on data warehousing applications. All of that stuff is going to become much easier to transform from business requirements to final application. Not drag and drop, but a staff of ten may drop to a staff of five or six.

There will be a lot of jobs for senior level engineers, far less than now for entry-level positions. For those of you who are thinking you may be in one of those positions in ten years, well thats probably good or bad. Bad thing is, there'll be fewer positions to fill, but the upside is that it will probably turn the tide of people away from thinking CS is a quick and easy road to a high paying job -- and it'll be easier to progress up the ladder to senior and principal positions. I know a lot of guys now who get stuck with a virtual glass ceiling because the ratio of engineers to senior or principal engineers is so out of whack, companies just don't have that many positions for them.

I suspect a lot of software development positions will become more business-specific, as well. It'll be expected that anyone over a certain level has an ability to understand and work with the business side of a particular corporate structure. Foul smelling unkempt hacker types may have a harder time finding jobs in that kind of a market. But from a reformed foul smelling hacker type, its a lot easier to get laid if you clean up your style a bit. ;-)

Re:My guess...

[CrankyFool]

You almost touched on one of the biggest problems I see we're going to have in offshoring: Entry point.

Lets assume, as you do, there'll be a lot of jobs for senior-level engineers. Lets assume there are far less than now for entry-level positions. Now, *I'm* a senior-level engineer (13 years in IT). I wasn't senior-level when I entered the field, though -- I entered the field by doing data entry on registration cards for a software company and becoming known as The Guy Who Could Fix Macs. I know I'm not the only one.

Skilled industries (everything from programming to carpentry to electrical work) have traditionally depended on mentoring, apprenticeship, and a growth path that starts with you being at the bottom. If we're sending all our bottom-feeder jobs to India, where will our next senior people come from? They're not going to burst fully formed from the foreheads of the current generation.

Re:Why?

[BlackHawk-666]

So I'm guessing that you don't wear Nikes, choose not to buy clothes with a "Made in China" tag, and don't have and Sony/Nintendo/etc devices in your home. Or is your choice to be able to buy all those overseas products at vastly reduced costs and still somehow magically have jobs for Americans too?

Re:Big Deal

[GauteL]

But the fact that you can't code very well does not mean that you can't be a manager.

However, I agree about the notion that moving into management because you suck at what you currently do, might give you a bit of a surprise when you find out that you suck at management too.

extrapolation?

[Ubi_NL]

sounds a bit like this Elvis joke:

In 1977 there were 150 Elvis impersonators. By 1999 there were 35,000. If this rate of growth continues, by the year 2019, more than one third of the world's population will be Elvis impersonators.

Re:extrapolation?

[sopuli]

This reminds me of this joke, which extrapolates exponentially:

When I turned two, I felt a great anxiety. In just one year, I had doubled my age. If this goes on like this, I thought, by the time I'm five, I'll be sixteen.

Unions don't save jobs

[nuggz]

Sorry, if your job can't be done efficiently the only thing a Union will do is sink the ENTIRE company or industry.

Unions can help protect the safety and working conditions, they aren't an answer when the workers just aren't competative.

Regarding "941,584 programmers today"

[brokeninside]

The US Bureau of Labor statistics has numbers from Y2K in its Occupational Outlook Handbook:
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.

Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today"

[Glonoinha]

This sort of puts 1 million H1-B visas issued under the Clinton regime in perspective, doesn't it? 195,000 (six year visas) per year for 5 years is right about a million.

Now we know why nobody has a job. One million programmers, and one million H1-B visas issued.

Anybody that voted for Clinton, it tech, and is unemployed - guess what, you did it to yourself.

Think I'm joking? Look it up.

Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today"

[the Man in Black]

So I looked it up.

I voted for Clinton, in tech, and I'm unemployed. I also have a decent grasp on the facts. The H1-B program was started to meet a need in the United States. We had companies with massive tech needs and not enough workers to fill the positions (I know, sounds crazy today, doesn't it?).

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,

What happened is, companies started tightening their belts in the face of our brand new shitty economy. It occured to a lot of them, "Hey...why don't we just hire a bunch of H1-Bs instead of American programmers?". This was possible because at the time the number of H1-B visas issued was still at dot-com levels. The law states that a company can only hire an H1-B to fill a slot if the compaqny is incapable of otherwise filling that position. So corporations got creative, posting jobs with ridiculous requirements for a paltry salary. Leave it out there for the required length of time, go to the Department of Labor crying "We can't get anyone for this job!", and bring on the H1-Bs.

Nowadays, an even cheaper alternative to going through all that is just to ship the whole of your IT operations to India, no muss no fuss. Which brings us to today.

I know it's certain peoples reflex to breath heavy and blame Clinton for everything, but you need to step back from your Fox News rhetoric for a sec and examine the facts.

Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today"

[Glonoinha]

Everybody I know wants a Ferrari in my garage and a supermodel girlfriend, but none are willing to pay $250,000 for either - that doesn't mean that there is a shortage of Ferraris or supermodels, nor does it imply that the government needs to take action and make damn sure that everybody gets a Ferrari (destroying the value of the Ferrari and cars in general in the process.)

It really doesn't matter why it happened, or how the Clinton regime justified it. Trust me, there were enough programmers in the 90's to get the job done, and via organic growth (ie, American college graduates coming out of college with C/S degrees) we would have been able to handle the load. The Clinton administration sold you out, which is funny because you eagerly put them there and support them to this day.

Boil it down. Look at the facts. One point three million H1-B visas issued. One point three million software engineers/techs currently working in the United States. Pretty simple math. If Clinton hadn't been in office, it wouldn't have happened and you would still have a job. A good job at that.

-Nowadays, an even cheaper alternative to going through all that is just to ship the whole of your IT operations to India, no muss no fuss. Which brings us to today.

Perhaps had the floodgates not been opened bringing us the brown tide, this wouldn't have been the case.

And those are the facts. Boil it down to simple numbers and those are the facts. And yes, I hold Clinton responsible - completely.

Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today"

[the Man in Black]

OK, I just took a look at your previous posts and realized that you're maybe about 15, and probably hear your daddy complaining about Clinton over the breakfast table or some similar shit, so I'll cut the argument short.

The total number of H1-Bs issued being roughly equivalent to the total number of techs working today doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with anything, unless your assumption is that all tech workers currently employed are H1-Bs, which is obviously untrue. Not to mention that H1-B visas have a 2-year expiration date last I checked, which means that (barring extension) all the visas issued during Clinton's campaign have expired.

But let's not make this a Clinton thing, because I know Bill O'Reilly and the gang can go on all day about what fantastic time we're living in and how underhanded and deceitful the Clinton administration was, and how we'll be much better off with another 4 years under Bush etc. etc. etc. Let's also not make it a money thing, because my point was never that I feel I should be paid outrageous amount of money for the services that I offer. The current tech layoffs are not about outrageous employee salaries, they are about the fact that you can offshore your department to India for pennies on the dollar of what you're paying your employees. Even if we were all capable of doing our thing for $20,000 a year, we can't compete with India and China in that respect.

From a neo-conservative dickhead standpoint, this seems like a good idea: slash the bottom line, get myself a nice fat bonus, the hell with all the workers that I'm laying off as long as we get the job done. I realize that this type of person doesn't have a lot of respect for the middle class, but I think in 5-10 years we'll see that the middle class is the strength of this country. Tuition is skyrocketing, yet recent graduates can't get jobs. Middle class parents who can barely afford to send their kid to school in the first place are having to make hard decisions; the house or college. If there's no real value in that degree, this decision becomes simpler. Middle class bankruptcies are at record numbers, the number of citizens that can even call themselves middle class is rapidly dwindling, but the Dow is up given that companies are starting to see the profit margin from firing everyone.

Hopefully when you're old enough to vote, you'll have more perspective on things.

Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today"

[jafac]

And Bush did nothing about it.

He's had 3 years to roll this back. ANd hasn't.
So those who are in IT tech, and unemployed, and voted for Bush, I'd like to send you a jar of vaseline for Christmas.

Outsourcing beyond continents

[Dr. �]

Here in Denmark we notice the same trend: To some extend, programmers will get out of job over some (5?) years. This is partly due to the fact that low-level or predefined systemdevelopment will be done in Easteurope, India etc. We see this happen already.

Instead, Denmark will become a place for project managers, systemarchitects, consultants and other people, who focus on the business and the client itself, not on the actual production.

Re:Outsourcing beyond continents

[chooks]

Instead, Denmark will become a place for project managers, systemarchitects, consultants and other people, who focus on the business and the client itself, not on the actual production.

If all the programming jobs are not in Denmark, then where will the Danish project managers, system architects, etc... get their experience?

It's a slippery slope. That's all I'm saying.

But the economy is recovering!

[zerofoo]

Does anyone actually believe that? I watch CNBC all day and these guys seem to believe that these one-time earnings gains are going to continue. These gains are mostly from off-shoring work...not from "top-line" growth.

The economy is still very much in recession. I don't care what the Bush spinsters say. Employment is the number one indicator of economic health, and our economy is terribly sick. Sure the official number might be around 6%, but that does not account for under-employment. How many software guys do you know that are working either contract positions, or not working in IT at all?

I predict a slow Christmas retail season, a corporate earnings drop-off next year, and higher unemployment numbers after the full impact of off-shoring jobs really takes its toll. Companies will soon realize that off-shoring jobs is a one-time gainer strategy, and not one that will provide long-term growth.

-ted

Straight-line extrapolation is accurate?

[stankulp]

Since when?

Five years ago they did a straight-line extrapolation to predict federal budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. I don't see them anymore, do you?

Nobody can foresee the future. There are 10% as many telephone operators now as there were 40 years ago, handling ten times as many calls. Is that a bad thing?

Over that past 40 years I have seen engineers in high demand and engineers stocking grocery shelves. If it's bad now, give it five years and it will be good. If it's good now, give it five years and it will be bad.

That's the way it goes. Everything is not good all the time.

If you blow your brains out during the bad times, you miss the good times that are just around the corner.

Re:Straight-line extrapolation is accurate?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I definitely hear you on that one.

You can't extrapolate todays numbers out 10 years. These figures do not take into effect deflation on wages that would occur if these numbers were true. More people chasing fewer jobs drops wages in the US. At the same time wages increase in offshore destinations as the standard of living increases. The labor advantage of offshoring is reduced, if not eliminated.

It also doesn't take into effect the inevitable backlash against companies that practice offshoring. It's not bad now, but once it's known that what would have been our economic recovery is being diverted to some third world country, and you will see protectionist politicians elected in 2 seconds flat.

Another wild card is the tax situation for these companies. At present they are playing a shell game with the present tax system. If the US were to adopt a VAT tax, then these overly long and complicated supply routes with rediculous markups would cease. If we were to tax profits for business performed in the US as opposed to profits for business within the US, the advantages of offshoring diminish. No more companies closing it's US headquarters and opening a new one in Bermuda, and being completely exempt from US taxes.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

[markxsd]

I've been doing Consulting for the last 10 years. I've worked with (am still working with) lots of customers over that time and I think that the prediction is accurate. I just don't see anyone with big expansion plans for IT right now. And I don't see anything on the horizon that will change that. Most customers are happy enough with their current IT that they don't want to spend big any more. The ERP is in place. The online presence is in place. The board room question that's being asked is "WTF is IT doing now?"

The fundamental fact is that there are too many people in IT for the total budget available for IT spend. That means it's going to be tough for many. There will be little time to work out who is the best person for the job. In this climate, being good at your job is no guarantee of employment or a reasonable salary.

Overseas outsourcing will become less attractive because employers can get away with paying jack shit for local employees by relying on the over-supply of people who don't want to believe that the CS degree isn't worth anything to anyone any more.

virtual feudalism

[listening]

Abbe Mowshowitz, in his essay "Virtual Feudalism," in ACM's Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing, predicts a system of political authority centered in private, virtual organizations and based on the management of abstract forms of wealth (rather than land ownership). The potential loss of jobs cited above is a possible consequence of Mowshowitz' virtual feudalism marked by diminished living standards, social disorder, and conflict between old and new regimes. A hopeful upside of such social changes is that individuals too can learn to exploit virtual organization.

Lack of CS Education, market correcting

[alexhmit01]

Look, pre-dotcom, the number of people entering the computer science fields was DECLINING, and demand was going up. Beyond qualitative measurements like caliber of programmers (people that love computers vs. learn in school without the passion to excel), this results in the salaries moving up and fewer people employed than if more people entered the field.

Is there any reason to be shocked that when salaries go up because there aren't enough people in the field that more people will enter the market? It just so happens that the people entering the market aren't in America?

Most college grads make $20k-$25k in entry level jobs. Entry level engineering jobs were traditionally in the $45k-$50k range (adjusted for inflation, I'm looking at the last few years). Entry level programmers were making $60k-$75k out of college.

That is a market out of whack. That pulls more people into the field and they happen to be overseas.

The problem isn't just salaries and cost-of-living, our exploding taxes/regulations (particularly payroll) tax is problematic. While rates haven't been rising (except in 93), the costs are relatively higher. For high-wage jobs, the comparison is no longer Western Europe (where the lower US cost structure provided a competitive advantage) but non-Japan Asia, where the US cost structure is higher.

Remember, to "outsource" you have to hire people on your end that can oversea outsourcing (MUCH more skill involved than being a lead developer, you have to speak geek to people in a different time zone, so you can't walk over to their cube, the spec needs to actually make sense or you lose a day or two turn-around with info requests), pay for the management on that end, and pay for the counter-parts overseas that speak English and understand the requests from the client.

It is really expensive to outsource. People talk about the salaries being 10%-20% of the US, but somehow the cost savings are in the 20% range on company financials. Want an easy way to fix that?

Drop the "employer-side" of the payroll tax (there is 14% cost savings), and reduce employee taxes by 6% (and cut salaries accordingly) and all of a sudden, there is no cost savings to oursourcing.

To keep the jobs high-paying in the US, you simply have to get the costs of doing work in the US down.

For every dollar that the company spends on you (forget overhead), you are lucky if 55 cents makes it into your bank account.

The good thing, is that when these companies overseas get more demand, salaries will go up. This will eat away at the cost savings. In addition, the non-oursource members of society will start to decry the "rich" over there, and adopt a punative tax structure like ours, and the advantage will go away.

After NAFTA, certain manufacturing companies that were going under in the states anyway set up plants in Mexico for labor-intensive and capital-light production. Within a few years, wages/costs went up in Mexcio, and those plants shut down and the work was outsourced to Asia. But in the mean time, Mexico has joined the global economy.

Labor-intensive proceses will always move to cheaper locations. It puts more profits in US companies that use it, and salaries move up. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the US will find a new innovation to replace the 20 year old microcomputer to build our next waive of growth.

Alex

The goal!

[mabhatter654]

The goal of Programmer/IT right now should be how to move the industry from Corperate types to the model that Doctors, Lawyers, and accountants have! Or even the model that Pumbers, Electricians, and Carpenders have. They all share the fact that in spite of huge technology advanced, they are still basically one-man shows. Expecially look at Electricans plumbers and such...While "anybody" CAN do certian work on thier own, at some point or another, EVERYBODY has to call in the pros in those fields when they get over their heads. Even after 100 years of mail order houses, you still see a huge number of them still build by hand one-at-a -time, just like software.

The key for the industry would be to figure out what features of those other industries can be "enhanced" or "embraced" in programming. OSS can be the solution to such a problem, but it has to get big enough to knock down companies like MS...who have commoditized software to a fault. the neat thing about it though is that programming is a "market" and as more people get laid off from the "megacorps" they go out and start the next revolution without the old players. Look at how HP, Apple, NVidia, etc were founded...and realize that it should be about to happen again!

Been here before

[HangingChad]

If you've been in the IT industry any length of time then you've been here before. Anyone remember the "death" of mainframe programmers? Companies scooping out large pits out behind the plant to bury their COBOL and FORTRAN coders. It's a good thing they didn't cap those pits because a lot of companies had to dig some of them up. Partly because of Y2K and partly because they were still using those systems 20 years later. Overall we survived the transition to client-server and PC think.

Remember when FrontPage came out? That was around 94-96 time frame(?), right about the same time every night school on the planet was offering "webmaster" *snicker* certification. Everybody and their dog was calling themselves a web developer. But it never nicked the market for people who could produce really professional looking high-end sites. Then came the marraige of web sites with a database back end and db skills separated the webmaster employed from the rest of the pack.

If you've been in IT a long time you're used to being a techno-chameleon. There will always be new things coming along that will open up new markets. And even if it doesn't, even if I finally transition out of IT into a different kind of business, look at the technical advantage I have. I can build my own web sites, know how to market and promote them, write my own db's, program my own applications, or tweak OSS apps to do something specific for me, run my own network. It puts me miles ahead of my peers in any other line of business.

20 years in IT and analysts keep coming up with the same crap, like some karmic manure spreader. Just keep your head on a swivel, bank cash when times are good, and don't get boxed in thinking the only way to make a living is working for someone else.

By 2015 computers will program themselves....

[gatkinso]

...and Kazaa (!) will have long since launched the nuclear strike...

Thats good for programmingdom

[mnmn]

An overwhelming number of programmers, software and web developers I know went "yeah I know Java". They dont really have a clue about real structured programming as in the Linux kernel, almost never heard of code optimisations and look great in a tie.

Universities are churning out students of ADA, Pascal and Java, most of whom applied to the university thinking of the good fortunes of being in IT around 1998.

I doubt many of the developers of the applications in sourceforge will be in this number. A market booms, you get hundereds of thousands of extra golddiggers, then it goes bust, the golddiggers leave, the ones dedicated to the art stay, the market booms again, the golddiggers return, the experienced ones make good money and buy McLarens.

Fewer programmers mean a guy who can port Linux or NetBSD to a specialized ARM MCU will be more in demand, and will not get laid off like today. It by no means means the cults and culture that churn out the code for sourcecode will disappear.

Gloom and Doom

[Odonian]

OK, granted tech jobs are going offshore. But I've been in this long enough to know that the reality will not be as horrible/scary as all the predictions. Anyone remember the "Japanese will take over the entire electronics industry" panic of the 80's? Everyone predicted that there would be no more chip design anywhere but in Japan. That didn't happen. They certainly are a still a big competitor to the US electronics/semi industry, and things did indeed change here, but new things came out of it and I don't think the fact that the US doesn't make memories or TVs anymore devastated the tech industry here -- quite the opposite. How about the NAFTA "Giant Sucking Sound" of jobs going to Mexico? Unemployment didn't skyrocket due to this as some predicted. The US economy adapts and changes based on the external environment.. it will continue to do so IMO.

Re:is Open Source part of the problem?

[vidarh]

This logic doesn't work in a free market. In a free market companies will not be competitive unless they choose the most efficient alternatives as long as there are competitors that will. Lack of open source only benefit large corporates, for which writing software in house for reuse can be done once with minimal cost averaged out over the business, while large corporates are not where the majority of people are employed.

Without open source, companies such as IBM, with hundreds of thousands of employees would share within the company and lower their costs, while the thousands and thousands of smaller companies that employ the majority of people would find it harder to compete because they would have to pay more salaries to write all this code themselves.

By reducing the competitiveness of small and medium sized companies, these companies would be less profitable and be able to pay fewer people.

While being inefficient will make a company need more people, it also reduces that companys chance of expanding and even of surviving, and hence is longer term bad for employment.

Society is much better off with increasing efficiency, as it increases capital return on investments which again makes it more worthwhile to invest in new ventures or in expanding existing ventures, and makes it more worthwhile to hire people.

Based on your arguments, developers should work as slow as they can, because it would result in a need for more people. However all that would achieve would be to drive those companies out of business or reduce their growth and prevent them from hiring more people in the long run.

Error message from 2015

[HarveyBirdman]

"Dr. Ganesha has detected a negative karmic dispensation in your system. This state of digital being was unexpected, and most likely the work of Narada, the mischief-maker. Please, under the graces of Krishna, restart your computer to restore balance."

Oh, and Narada, the mischief-maker is not to be confused with Mentos, the fresh-maker.

You'll always have a job if you have a clearance.

[BulletProofMonk]

A security clearance is the closest thing to lifetime guaranteed employment that I know of.

Re:Big Deal

[inode_buddha]

There's an article at CNN/Money that says "The jobs most at risk require fewer skills, are automated, or are highly portable. (emphasis mine).

In my case: I'm a skilled US steelworker, trained at own expense (welder/fabrication) and I've seen my career degraded by management continually pushing the desired skill level down to nil over the last 15 years. Enter foreign competition during the same time. Recently (last year) I started going back to school for comp sci.

I now believe that [begin sarcasm] it would be OK to flip burgers and mop floors for 80 hrs a week if only Uncle Sam didn't call it "middle class".[end sarcasm]

Seriously, I don't think this kind of crap will end until the economy implodes under the weight at the top. Until then, there will be fewer and fewer "middle class" people who can afford the products/services so hyped -

gtg now before I get violently pissed, even. And BTW, I'm a non-union republican feeling your pain ATM.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[davie]

You remember when Wal-Mart claimed everything was made in America. Apparently you missed the part where they got busted for fudging labels or some such and silently dropped the "Made in America" scam.

lets off-source all business consulting!

[peter303]

Business consulting like Forrester, McKinsey, Deloitte-Touch, etc. does not require a physical presence in the USA. Hopefully all these people will be outsourced to Asia, where consultants are much cheaper.

S/W Engineers vs Programmers

[ReusableCoder]

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...)

Re:Big Deal

[the uNF cola]

There's a difference between steelwork and programming. The tools get more advanced or better at a faster rate than steelwork.

I'm not saying that steelwork is easy. Shit, I can't do it, so I'd be the first to hurt themselves. There are a few perceptions of programming. One is the science, another is engineering. A third is simple programming.

The science will live on for a long time. It's coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing stuff "better".

The engineering.. it's the architecture and making sure things run like well oiled machines in real life.

The simple programming unfortunately, is what's getting deported or seen as easier. Anyone can become one of these. It's the learning of the simple things and applying them. Writing a program to do factorials, writting something that throws some data into a database. Even web-applications. It's menial programming.

Stuff like writing a web browser, an OS, a painting program, an mp3 player.. HARDER stuff that takes some research and analysis of how it would be implemented for everyone's best interests will always be in demand. It's what gets released as shareware, sometimes freeware (winamp) or opensource, but more of the good ones tend to be commercial.

One partial explanation ...

[jc42]

Most big business's were complaining that Dell's over seas tech support was a farce and demanded english speaking tech support reps that new the nomenclature of IT.

Funny; I've heard a related but different explanation for the exodus of programming jobs: We have to farm out most of the development to other countries, because most of the world doesn't speak English very well, and you can't develop software in the US that works in any language but English.

Actually, my response to this tends to confuse them. I argue that there's no problem finding people in the US who can handle other languages. The problem is that American management is generally contemptuous of foreign languages, and won't support development of UIs in any other language.

This is based mostly on personal experience. I'm not fluent in any other language, but I know several well enough that I could produce a UI in them. And I have the sense to ask native speakers for criticisms and suggestions for improvement. (And I know how to find the native speakers. ;-)

But when I've suggested such things at work, the response invariably is to simply pretend that I didn't make such a pointless suggestion, and go on discussing important topics.

There is a common belief among Americans (and which is rampant in American management), that the rest of the world is learning English, so there's no need of any other language.

One of the real frustrations with working in the US is the difficulty of making even 8859-1 work correctly. Thus, I have guest accounts on machines in Finland and Sweden. When I copy files to my Mac Powerbook (using rsync or tar), the marked letters in the file names often come out garbled. When I copy a directory back, those garbled names appear on the remote machines. Macs sold in Scandinavia seem to work fine. But no amount of digging around in Help or FAQ or mailing lists seems to come up with anything that works for my machine. I'd have to recommend that if you want to develop something that works in Finnish or Swedish, you should not use a machine sold in the US market. (Windows machines are even worse, with their bizarre file-name transformations, though I must say that stuff that I develop on linux and *BSD machines seem to work fine when copied to Finland or Sweden.)

Computers are becoming common all over the world, and we really need UIs in whatever languages the customers speak. It should be no surprise at all that software development is moving out of the English-only American enclave.

Re:One partial explanation ...

[HiThere]

Every country speaks a "non-standard" language. Australian is quite different from British, e.g. I don't know that Britain still contains mutually unintelligible dialects of English, but it certainly did before radio was widespread.

That said, the reason for two different editions of books generally had more to do with tax laws than dialect. When one compares two versions, the differences are generally at most minimal, and frequently missing. But the cover price can be quite different nonetheless.

Spoken English is generally not as reqular as written English, however. And it tends to evolve vowel and consonant shifts quite quickly, though currently the media are tending to homogenize these into a few major dialects.

What's more important?

[splinterBR]

You know, based on all of these cock-eyed predictions, I think the most important thing to take out of this posting is that there's only a half-million people in Wyoming. Seriously, any slashdotters from Wyoming out there??

No crash like Snow Crash

[DCheesi]

Looks like Neal Stephenson was wrong: "microcode" is not one of the things we'll be known for in the future. He was right about the "pakistani bricklayer's idea of prosperity", though. Oh well, at least there's always High-Speed Pizza Delivery...

Re:better off

[silverbax]

This is a great idea, but it isn't easy for everyone to 'do what they love'. Can you honestly tell me that every single person working at Wal-Mart should quit their job, put their kids well-being on the back burner while they pursue some other career, like being a champion checker player or a country music singer? Please.

Maybe, just maybe, a better solution would be for corporations and business owners to develop a better long term strategy around making their employees happier and more content in their jobs.

It's the Data That Bugs Me

[aml666]

I am a programmer who understands companies wanting to get cheaper labor. Let's face it, Indians are getting good, Russians where always good. Soon China will take Indian jobs....blah... blah... blah.

Here's my problem. I don't want my Credit Information, Health Information, Criminal Records.... in a country that does not have to abide by the laws of the United States.

I know that their are bad people in the US, but if they get caught, they go to jail.

Business 2.0 Agrees With You

[Faramir]

Unfortunately you can't read the article anymore without paying, but they make a pretty convincing case in the Sept. issue, showing how some models predict an increase in the # of computer-related jobs (they claim the tech sector will soon return, if it hasn't already, as the fastest growing sector in the American economy). Couple this growth with baby boomers retiring, and you get a very tight labor market.

You see, though some of us might not see it everyday (including me), apparently a large percentage of today's programs are baby boomers who are nearing retirement. Starting in a few years there will be large percentages of the programmer population leaving the job pool. In recognition of this, many large companies are already returning to handsome bonuses and good pay.

Having said that, I do suddenly realize that there is a difference in terminology. I shold not talk about the "number of programmers" here, but rather the "number of IT jobs." That is, include project managers, MIS directors, and all kinds of people who are technically oriented, may do some programming or other admin, but are not strictly speaking programmers. So also keep that in mind with this article--how broadly do they use the term "programmer?"

Re:Business 2.0 Agrees With You

[balut]

Here's the article outside business2.0.

Look on the bright side!

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does not say that there will be fewer jobs worldwide, but fewer in US. This is simply a result of companies moving to places where the salaries are lower, like India which has a giant population of well educated engeneers and programmers willing to work while you sleep.

So, what can you do? Look on the bright side, why don't you just move your self to some pleasant place where a lower salary still makes life pleasent? Relocating yourself will put you in the first row since you are not only well qualified but also know the language and the buisness.

- I wouldn't mind a relocation to say Rio de Janeiro, less pay, more sun and more beautiful girls... Hey, anyone, I'm willing to dump prices to do this! Go surfing in the day, go programming in the night, this must be life!

And remember, money is worth nothing untill you spend them!

Re:Programmers == ARCHITECTS

[scovetta]

I would disagree strongly. Programmers are more like architects (the good ones, anyway). I walked past a room in college teaching VB programming. That's carpentry for the most part, but the line that separates "Make me a web-site in front-page and put in a message board" versus the more advanced stuff is a line that management NEEDS to see. Some companies treat their developers as stock-- these companies seldom produce the same quality products as do companies who realize the dynamics and creativity that is required to engineer a product, and not just put it together. M

Prediction on Forrester

[MrWa]

At the current rate of decline, I predict that Forrester will no longer be a company by 2005.

Arabic numbers were an INDIAN invention.....

[Salgak1]

Actually, the Arabs only POPULARIZED the "Arabic" number system: it came from India, originally, and was adopted by Arab traders, who saw its' ease of use as a clear reason to move to the "Arabic" numbering system.

Even the Muslims say so. . .

Re:Whatever happened to...

[kiatoa]

Are there any resources that are "just sitting there" today? In our highly populated world there are no such resources that I know of. As for the spirt of your question I suspect you and I have different values. A coding guru cranking out some complex code to solve someones problem, a CEO making tough choices on how to address changes in the market, an actor bringing a story alive on the screen, or a truck driver delivering goods to my door, all these and many more contribute to the economy in a fundamental way. In many cases the land speculator or land holder is actively keeping the resource from being used to increase its value. This actively harms the economy(*) and benefits no one except the land holder. I do not value land speculation because I believe it harms the economy.

(*) The classic example of this is the empty lot in a city or the lot with a broken down building on it. The owner is holding out for windfall profits (i.e. speculating) and meanwhile people who could be profitably utilizing that land or building are kept from participating in the economy.

Programming requires constant thought/creativity.

[Futurepower(R)]

I think that programming requires a lot of expertise. I'd like to find someone else to do some programming for me, but I find that there are too many decisions that affect the quality of the product each hour that I program. I have not been able to find someone else capable and interested in making those decisions.

In my whole life, I haven't seen even one perfectly designed program. I haven't seen even one perfectly designed web site. For example, I was just looking at the Creative Labs web site. There is no large photo available of the products! Creative Labs says, "With over 200 million sound cards sold, Sound Blaster is the world's most trusted PC audio brand." (Under the heading "UPGRADE to Superior Stereo Audio Quality".) After all that business experience, Creative Labs doesn't even provide useable photos of their products.

What will be the result of the work of bored Indian programmers, who are bored because they have to follow some poorly developed specifications, and have no control over the design of the program, and no way to talk to the customer? Eventually the code will be a tangled mess, and will be thrown away.

In the 70s, hiring PhDs was very popular. Then companies found the drawbacks. PhDs were not willing to do the tedious work that exists in every project. Hiring offshore programmers is popular now, but I think companies will slowly begin to realize that good programming requires a high proportion of extensive thought.

And there are fewer farmers too

[hughbiquitous]

A century ago, something like half the U.S. population worked on farms. Now it's down to a couple percent of the population, if that.

Let's say it went from 50% to 5%. Does that mean that 45% of the work force is unemployed?

Of course not. The environment changed and people adapted. Those who did not adapt, perished.

What did that 45% do? They got jobs in new fields that never existed before... In the last 100 or so years, we have seen the dawn of automobiles, airplanes, assembly lines, radio, TV, telecommunications, and computers. We have seen the government expand without bounds - the dawn of the income tax, the Social Security Administration, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and so on. Those areas have been responsible for creating a couple of jobs now and then...

Anybody who is intimidated by this forecast is not interested in ideas, success, prosperity, or progress -- just drawing a check and playing with toys.

Put another way, imagine a village in a remote corner of the world. This village is five miles away from the nearest water. A good samaritan comes in and drills a well for them so they don't need to spend literally all day just meeting their basic needs. Do the village water boys fret because they are losing their jobs?

That said, I don't put much stock in a 10+ year forecast like this. These folks don't even know what happened yesterday.

Bottom line: your cheese is going to move, but you don't yet know how. Learn to adapt - learn to think - and don't get too comfortable.

Why I did engineering..

[xtal]

I started university right when things were getting crazy in IT, for better or for worse. I was sitting in my physics class in high school when I realized that there seemed to be hordes of people going into Computer Science, and I didn't think it would be particularly difficult to get through. Then I got a test on basic electronics back. I did very well; a lot of other people didn't. So I figured what the hell, I'll try the electrical engineering thing instead. I do embedded systems and communications work mainly, although I've dabbled in a bit of everything. There is more work than I can deal with in a small town, working on automation projects - the kind of projects that make companies competitive with third world producers. Show a CEO how he can turn a 10 minute process into a 2 minute process multipled out by thousands of units and I'll show you how to make yourself a nice little income.

Right now, CS/IT employed people could benefit from getting organized and professionalized to the degree to which engineers are. Engineering associations look after things like H1B visas (although I'm not an American), and other political policy matters that can directly impact your life. There seems to be an inability of extreme reluctance to do this though, largely because I suspect there are a lot of extremely good programmers without (formal) qualification.

I'm not talking about unions - historically engineering associations have been very outspoken in this respect, but then again, historically engineers weren't employees for the most part, either.

I've always drawn a distinction between programming as art, and programming as a matter of business. Art doesn't always make you money while you're alive.

Simple Statistics to a Complex Issue

[Badgerman]

IMHO opinion, and IANAS (I am Not a Statistician), I'm suspicious of this report. It sounds like they applied simplistic methods to an insanely complex issue. At BEST, it seems to be a "if current trends continue" report, that in short says "if everything stays the same, this'll happen."

That, of course, is NEVER the case.

They're trying to extrapolate a complex system with lots of variance with simple trends. It's meaningless. It ignores politics, aging, innovation, lack of innovation, economic shifts, and bloody near everything else.

A few examples from my own experience:

• Some development requires intimate knowledge of process, company, and individuals. You can't outsource it (you can try, and I've seen it backfire).
  
• Technology is evolving as well. You have to find people that can and are keeping up.
  
• Coding is not the only skill you need to get the job done. Someone that can pound out simple VB is going to be very, very limited.
  
• Security. Sending jobs to other companies means you loose control. Some industries won't like that.
  
• Hidden costs. Outsourcing can have a lot of hidden costs, like the above, and more.
  
• Predictability. A programmer at your company is in your sights, under your control.
  

The sad part is people are going to look at these simple numbers and base important personal and business policy off of them.

What's the future? Hell if I know. I just don't think anyone else does either.

Programmers = Carpenters, & Analysts = Archite

[TopShelf]

The best thing IS-types can do is to get out from their cubicle and get engaged in their place of work. I've seen too many colleagues who just wanted programming requests left in their intray and didn't want to work actively with the users. That kind of relationship is easily outsourced, as opposed to the person who understands not just the code but the working process that it supports. Once you've achieved that goal, users will want to have you in the room when critical decisions are discussed, as opposed to being thousands of miles and several time zones away...

Re:Time for a career switch... ... back to college

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. If you're this cynically and jaded, academia is not for you! Tenure is hard to get and most schools now have PTR (post-tenure review), so "lifetime employment" is a romanticized vestige of 20th century academia. Assistant professors are expected to get six-seven figure grants to build "centers" to do "research" on projects lasting from 12 to 30 months! Most of DoD and all of ARDA/DHS are 12-18 month projects. NSF is falling in love with biomedical stuff ala NIH.

If you think acadmia is nirvana, you're mistaken. Better to stop feeling sorry for yourself, get smart, find a niche, and develop a real product that you can charge money for (skip the OSS kool-aid).

Going Out of Business USA

[cluckshot]

It really isn't hard to figure this out. If one man is forced by his government(by taxation) to markup his labor 150% and another doing the same job does not have to do this, the choice between who to hire is absolutely clear!

Imagine two canned drinks of equal brand etc. You are the consumer. One machine selling charges $1.00 the next door machine charges $2.50 for the same drink. I am reasonably certain almost anyone would buy the cheaper one all other factors being equal.

This is the choice in Computer Programmers. The US programmers must mark their wages up 150% or more to pay the US taxes on their wages. We can go into why and all those other issues some other place. They have to do it! The issue here is that nothing else is going to happen but the decline of US Jobs until the USA fixes its tax system to account for the taxation differentials in the rest of the world.

Many people do not realize just how true this illustration is. The compounding of the US Income Tax actually makes this markup much higher than I have stated. (4 Layers takes it to 93% of Gross or a Markup of about 1200%) When it is reversed out even at the 150% rate most US Workers are cheaper than their foreign Competition. Yes the USA Labor is Cheaper, it is our TAXES that are so DAMNED expensive.

With the war situation and many other issues there is little prospect that the US Congress will lower taxes much any time soon. So Americans had better get ready to put up the "Going out of Business" sign on their government shortly unless they wake up and fix their tax system which was debased by NAFTA and GATT and the other "Free Trade" agreements.

I am sure some people will not cry at the prospect of fiscal ruin for the USA but I would suggest that it is nobody's interest and is not a good prospect. This points out the arrogance of those who dismiss the issue as unimportant or just a change in the economics of the world. This is in fact a trade war against American Citizens (and green card holders) by the United States Congress!

Re:Going Out of Business USA

[matdodgson]

You are an idiot. It isn't taxes that's the problem, it's the relative standard of living. Living in the USA on US $10k / yr is extremely difficult - living in India on the same you live like a king.

Re:Going Out of Business USA

[Strykeforce]

Not that everyone already hasn't roundly discredited this theory, but it's not taxes (whatever this "4 layers of 93% = 1200% mumbo jumbo is, I have no idea) that make US labor so expensive. While taxes play some part in it, the major difference is cost of living. This is why US companies outsource to countries such as India with a roughly comparable income tax to ours - 20 to 40 percent, depending on tax bracket. US companies still have to pay corporate taxes on any profits earned, so those taxes do not figure into the equation.

US labor is more expensive due to the cost of living. I would hardly take a job at the same wage Indian programmers are getting paid because I can't buy groceries as cheap as they can, or live in a house for as cheap.

You are correct in a change in economics in the world; 20 years ago outsourcing technical jobs would have been almost impossible because of the capital requirements to test and build products, the high cost of communication and goods transportation, lack of an educated workforce, and trade barriers. However, this might be bad for individuals (sadly, including me) but not for the country as a whole. Society is better off as a whole due to the basic economic theory of competitive advantage.

While "Free Trade" agreements do have serious problems - for example, labor is cheaper in India in part because US corporations don't have to worry about pesky things such as unemployment insurance, safety, environmental restrictsion,and a host of other workers' rights there - in principle they do benefit rather than harm to this country. Your complaint about the tax system is misplaced; the government's main culpability in this is helping guide the country to such a high standard of living that we have priced ourselves out of many labor markets.

Re:Time for a career switch... ... back to college

[N3WBI3]

Thanks Bush! Thanks Congress! Thanks for giving big corporations huge tax incentives to move overseas!

It was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA and GAT into law (after Clinton promised not to during his run for pres).

Thanks for giving the wealthiest 5% huge tax cuts so they'll never know near-poverty, like I do.

Everyone got tax cuts and that wealthiest 5% of Americans still pay nearly half or the US tax base. Also for someone who came close to six figures a couple of years ago to be near poverty now does not say allot about how you managed your money.

WTF is $1700 going to do towards tuition? nuttin

Its a good chunk of tuition at an Undergrad school you don't have a right to college money for school take the money which covers the fees and be glad. if you flip burgers 40hrs a week in the summer you can earn most of the years tuition and if you work 10-15 hrs a week in tuition like I did you'll get the rest and beer money to boot.

e first American president to START a war. The first American president who detained American citizens, in the United States

Lincoln did not start a war?, LBJ did not start a war?, Clinton did not drag the US into Kosovo? BTW Lincoln also detained without charging people, and without due process but why let history interfere with your rant.

Do you know that we are holding over 660 men at Camp X-Ray, in cages, like dogs?

Really being allowed to practice, your religion, 3 squares a day, seeing an imam is being treated like a dog? I am against camp x-ray but moronic exaggeration is not going to help.

So, thanks to the 49% of the country that did vote for Bush, and those who still support him, we have a hitler in office.

Its called the constitution, and the Electorial college system, gets over it. Its designed to make urban and rural area equally politically important if Gore had managed to win his own state it would not have mattered. That's it compare Bush to Hitler, its so clear to me now Gross use of slander for those you politically disagree with has shown me the light..

My job in IT, and countless like them are disappearing - and whats most disturbing is that our industry is only 35 years old! Only 10 of which did our industry emerge from specialized functions to become an sizable group, and already we are sent out. So thank you, America, for sitting back, watching your reality TV and 4 hours of sportscenter every night and allowing all this to happen. It's the fault of both parties and both wings, Republicans wrote NAFTA/GAT and Bill Clinton Signed it. Bill Clinton allowed the Chinese to get computer and rocket technology that should have stayed secret. And finally its your fault for bitching about it on slashdot and not registering voters, and pumping for a third party candidate who cares about the US (this excludes the Greens).

IT Dinosaurs

[MountainLogic]

What I expect to see more of is a net global reduction of IT jobs. Currently, every business seems to have a custom network configuration, a bunch of custom legacy application, etc. At some point somebody is going to start offering off the shelf solutions for most businesses. We really should not need network admins. It is a sign of immature technology. I'm sure that 75 years ago a large business needed an army of engineers to keep their phone and pneumatic tube systems working. These days offices are wired at move in by a contractor and given little thought afterwards. The standard "Office Suite" has matured to the point where the IT gives it little thought. Before VisiCalc/Lotus/Excel doing financial work required a bunch of work by programmers. Today every MBA is a spreadsheet jockey who has little use for a programmer to do his number crunching. The rest of the office computing environment needs to become that simple to use. The network should be a part time task of an administrative assistant, not a professional network administrator. Computer hardware should be the job of a supply room clerk ("Do you want your standard issue computer brick in grey or black?").

The next wave after offshore will be outsourcing all IT functions to outside vendors. After that comes COTS (Commercial Off The Self) solutions. COTS means the end of IT departments. I'm sure that many will argue that their business "needs" custom inventory tracking software because their business " really" is different. How many MBAs do you see demanding custom spreadsheet programs? The truth of the matter is we should not need IT departments. We need programmers. Very very good professional programmers at that, but we don't need droolers writing VB front ends to badly written legacy Cobal inventory programs. Businesses need IT as bad as they need IT departments to go away.

A better way to measure this

[dstone]

235,396 fewer Computer Programmers... wow, that's half the population of Wyoming!

For those whose base unit of measurement is not 'Wyomings'... if we lined those programmers up head-to-toe, they would stretch approximately 250 miles from Silicon Valley out into the Pacific Ocean heading towards Asia. At that point, of course, many would drown.

Alternatively, if the computer programmers were laid end-to-end, the chain would be longer than 4,000 football fields. Of course, it would be dangerous leaving so many nerds lying down in fields if football players were around.

Somewhere, the lawyers are finally laughing

[dstone]

Lawyer A: "What do you call 235,000 fewer programmers by 2015?"
Lawyer B: "I dunno."
Lawyer A: "A good start."

Who is producing all those Indian engineers

[wintermute42]

There is one aspect of the discussion of offshoring US software engineering jobs that I have not seen discussed much: where are all of these Indian software engineers coming from?

India has been and remains, by US standards, a poor country. The roads are terrible and inadequate. The electric power infrastructure is so bad that companies than can afford it have their own power generation. Hunger is a big problem and much of the Indian population is still agrigarian. Violence inspired by religion is not uncommon and the ruling party in India makes use of this violence near elections. India borders Pakistan, which is considered by many the most dangerous country in the world because of its political instability and nuclear weapons. In short, India is not a country that can afford a first world level educational infrastructure of high schools, colleges and universities.

India does have the famous Indian Institutes of Technology. These are world class schools that have classicly sent Indian students on to graduate schools in the United States and Europe. Howver, IIT only graduates a few thousand students a year. In addition to the IIT grads there are Indian students who graduate from Universities in the west.

As the US and European job markets have turned bad, some Indian H1-B visa engineers are returning to India. However, it you add up all of the engineering graduates from IIT, Indians who went to foreign schools and the returning H1-B visa engineers, the sum does not seem to be sufficient to supply all of those jobs that are being moved from the West to the East. So where are all these people coming from?

Some are coming from what I call the "Matchbook School of Computer Programming". These are the kind of schools that used to advertise on the back of matchbooks in the United States. They teach basic Java, Visual Basic and ".NET" programming. Their students have no background in algorithms or design, but they can crank out simple software, especially GUI software. I've noticed that many Java programmers in the United States seem to have little command of algorithm design beyond the use of the class libraries, so the barrier to entry for Java programmers seems low.

Obviously I have no statistical information on any of this beyond the speculation I've listed above. I am certainly not writing that the problem does not exist. I am just trying to look at the real issues, with as little histeria as possible. Although much of the focus is on India, my guess is that the real problem is the combination of a set of lower wage countries: India, China, Russia and Eastern Europe. The combined number of skilled engineers (e.g., a software engineer who actually knows what N * log(N) means) is a significant threat to the US work force.

There is a lot of thoughtless blather in this whole discussion. Not only regarding the issue of where all these foreign engineers are coming from but also regarding the course that US engineers are supposed to take. The classic line, echoed in some of this discussion is "retraining". But no one answers the question: toward what? This is because no one knows.

Sometimes it is easy to forget why I went into this field long ago in the days of the punch card. I went into software engineering because I love it. I am still not ready to give up on my field (perhaps this makes me a dinosaur slated for extinction).

I have spent over twenty years building my skills as a software engineer and computer scientist. This is a hard and demanding field. I constantly read articles and books. I writes software not only at work by in my free time. Good software engineers, who can not only engineer complex systems but actually write clearly to document these systems are rare in any country. I still hold out the hope that there will be jobs in the future for people with these skills, although I admit things look bleak now. But these are bleak times. The question I try to answer is: what is a factor of these bleak times and what represents structural change?

Re:You'll always have a job if you have a clearanc

[computechnica]

My last boss retired from the USAF with a Masters degree in compsci and experience in about 10 different programming languages. If it weren't for his Top Secret clearance he would probably still be looking. I myself just started a MIS to go with my Compsci so when I retire in 4 yrs I'll have something else on my resume.

All good up here, eh?

[DougMelvin]

Through first hand experience I have learned that quite a few US firms consider Canada as a viable "off-shore" source of tech work.

I amaware of several small-time IT consulting firms which have been bought out by US firms as the average salary here(when converted to US dollars) is damn near half of what the same person would demand in the US. Add to that free health-care and a government which loves to hand out billion dollar contracts Canada is fast become the "off-shore" location of choice.

High corporate tax

[Hoser McMoose]

You are correct that the US does have a low personal income tax rate (not the lowest, the article you quote specifically states that Hong Kong has lower taxes), but that's only part of the story. The US corporate tax rate is actually quite high. This may seem a bit odd since one of the real selling points of business in the US used to be it's low corporate tax rate, but that is no more. Even many of the countries that are often called "socialist" or even "communist" countries by many Americans, ie Canada, Sweden and Norway, have lower corporate taxes than the US.

Here are some numbers for 2002. As you can see, only Italy, Belgium and Japan have higher corporate tax rates than the US. The main thrust of the problem is that the US corporate tax system hasn't really been updated in ages while most other countries have reduced their tax rate singificantly since the mid-90's. The above article also briefly makes mention of corporate tax avoidance, something that seems to happen in the US more than most other countries. It suggests that the somewhat dated corporate tax laws almost tend to encourage the "creative accounting" practices, with Enron being put forth as the obvious example.

Cost of living isn't the answer that you're looking for, it's the lower cost of doing buisness that is pushing companies to countries like India and China. Certainly the wages of the workers has a lot to do with it, but that's far from the only thing. If low worker wages were the only requirement for these things then everyone would move their business to Africa where wages tend to be the lowest. On the flip side, we also aren't seeing the rates of job loss in places like Hong Kong where the cost of living and workers wages are very high.

The Expatriate Option In India

[cmholm]

Let's say you've decided to follow the jobs, and want to seek out a software development position in India. As it turns out, there are a number of resources on line to assist you in your quest. A slashdot poster has provided links regarding visas , and a little searching on Google can turn up info for the low down on the cities you might want to work in.

The upshot: theoretically, it's possible. Now for some reality.

Visas: The Indian government slots visitors in order of preference: persons of Indian hertitage, other persons, Pakistanis and Afghans.

If your ancestry traces back to India, there is a special visa program for you. It's assumed that you've picked up some skills out in the world, and India wants to encourage you to bring 'em home to develop the nation.

If you are of other nationalities, a work visa is available. When applying, you must present documentation from an employer that they will be responsible for you. Good luck on that. If you're bringing a lot of capital and a business plan, well, that's another matter. Your visa must be renewed every year and a half or so.

If you are Pakistani or Afghan, it's obvious they don't trust you, and you'll have to submit considerable additional documentation.

Work Environment: Universities in India are pumping out a lot of tech grads, and there aren't yet enough jobs for all of them, although regional labor shortages do occur. Ergo, there's a lot of competition for jobs, so unless you were lead architect on the NT or Linux kernels in your last position (and if you are, you aren't getting outsourced, yet), don't think you're a shoo in. In fact, for an employer to even go to the bother of hiring you, you'll need to show a truly sterling CV. After all, it's a major business risk and pain in the ass for them to bring you in country in the first place. As an aside, there seems to be opportunity for Japanese speakers now that firms are seeking to tap the demand for outsourcing from Japan. You'll working in a 1.5m square three sided cube, if you're lucky. Some up and coming companies claim to respect that employees might have a life beyond the office, which should tell you what the norm is. When a contract is finished, you may find your ass back out on the street very quickly, just like in the States, and the social safety net assumes you've got family to lean on. You do not want to go broke in India.

Renting: As a foreigner, you can't buy property. There is a wide variety of rental properties, ranging from mansions and modern high rise condos you couldn't afford on a San Jose salary, to the very pits. You really need to do your homework on this. Even though you may be working on an Indian pay scale, land lords will assume you're loaded, so it would be a major plus to bring an Indian friend to help you negotiate.

Getting On Line: The Indian government has only started moving to open up the infrastructure. In the meantime, brother, welcome back to dialup, and it ain't pretty. Getting regular phone service enabled can require several trips to the telecom office, with a side trip to the switching station to introduce yourself to the technicians. Getting dialup on that same line means more money, and more delays. Count on the link being noisy and unreliable. ISDN is available in some areas, but usually isn't linked to a TCP trunk(!). Switched 56k and up is available in some locations, but even 56k is well over US$1000/month. This might be an ideal environment to start an 802.11b freenet, but the equipment