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Tech Employment Drops Sharply In 2004
Cryofan writes "According to Information Week, the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that
the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has fallen 15% since the first six months of 2004.
According to IT World, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
Microsoft and others were right about OSS. It destroys jobs and is flatly Un-American.
You people have reaped what you sowed.
Not "IT Professionals". That was the old term.
Could it be that IT professionals have moved up in organizations, and are now VPs, and such, thus they may not consider themselves IT when in fact they are, just with better titles? This is the case for me, where I started out being the only IT guy 10 years ago, and now considered more, but still doing IT work as well.
I don't really call myself an "IT Professional", even though I run the network, and in the middle of producing new applications for the business. I am sure this is not all of it, but I can't help but think its not all doom and gloom.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
...everyone is losing their jobs in nice, whole numbers. Keeps the statistics nice and pretty that way.
Uh, I don't know, did you reboot your windows yet?
I don't have windows
Silence...
Well, the article should be about all the disappearing American jobs. Only a finite number of jobs exist in this economy. Once critical mass is reached - the number of jobs which have been offshored - cascading unemployment results - even those /.ers whose grasp of math (and arithmetic) is pretty weak should be able to comprehend that! (Neocons and NeoJacobins who read this column will, of course, respond in the negative to this - using that silly nonsense that offshoring of jobs magically creates more jobs - neurons not included with remarks like those!)
These 160 000 must have been people who were there for the money, and when they saw it didn't pay *that* much, they dropped.
Thus, the percentage of real enthusiasts among IT people must have raised.
perception is reality
Relax!
- during the dotcom, a lot of folks called themselves 'IT professionals' but were hardly anything like it at all.
- the number of it-pro's itself is completely irrelevant : maybe they learned something new and make a living now. What counts is the percentage of unemployed it-pros versus all it-pros, and the number of unemployed it-pro's versus the global unemployment percentage
summary : this article doesn't mean shit.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
You'd think that software patent law would be a major cause of job loss in the USA. I'd be surprised if that wasn't a major contributing factor to this drop?
According to Information Week, the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years.
;-)
In other news, the number of IT professionals getting laid has increased, mainly due to lying about their geek stereotyped profession
I feel sorry for all those people who've lost jobs. Perhaps there's not enough innovation going on? Nah probably the Economy.
The number of jobs is always created at a faster rateaverage annual percentage growth) under Democratic Presidents then Republican Presidents
Here's another chart with the same data
You can get the raw BLS Establishment survey data here
No, the practice of trying to make every quarterly financial report add up to the right number by either firing half your work force or doulbing their numbers is what ruins lives. Sometimes it's so blatant the two above acts are only a single quarter apart.
by education levels. Are the programmers who were laid off college educated or did they take, "ITT teaches you how to write a web page and use visual baisc" type programmers? Is there demand for a masters/phd? The numbers probably mean very little of themselves without a breakdown of who is employed/unemployed. Maybe demand for college graduates has increased, but demand for Devry/ITT flunkies has plummetted. Hard to tell.....
Most computers are being used in offices and in homes. These are folk who, three years ago could get a PIII 700 running Win2k and Office. What reason do thy have to upgrade? What new features are on offer?
Hardware may be moving with leaps and bound, but at the desktop application level we aren't seeing that sort of progress. Nonetheless, things like 64bit computing with faster processors and obscene quantities of RAM will open up real-time desktop video editing to the masses - that might see a whole wave of upgrades. VOIP might see some big changes to POTS, but only if it can offer something new to encourage folk to upgrade. And, of course, we still haven't seen reliable speech processing, possibly the killer app but is there really a huge improvement from ViaVoice of 1999 to the software on the market today.
Frankly there's no reason to upgrade, and unless there is there's going to be a dwindling source of jobs in a consolidated market.
Am I unreasonable to see a lot of this as an overdue correction in the IT labour market? For a while here in Australia at least it seemed that someone with a 6 week vocational computing course could earn $50K+ doing front-line support. That wasn't a realistic or sustainable situation, and is certainly not reflected in any other industry I can think of.
But while you wait for those wonderful free trade jobs to be created, you can get pretty skinny during 50 years of flipping burgers or being unemployed.
In the end we all die, so let's just ahead and keep the jobs we have now, instead of waiting for some magical free trade, lassiez faire, Ayn Rand, globalization outsourcing bonanza. Huh, whattaya say?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I know a lot of former coworkers who have lost their job in the last year or two, and almost half of them are no longer doing tech work. Is it because the market is that bad? No, its because they were hired into technology even though they were underqualified during the tech boom, and now that its over and there isn't insane market pressure to hire anyone who can string lines of code together they've moved on.
I'd suspect thats the biggest group of people no longer in IT. I have most visibility in design and software development these days, but I'm sure the same is true for network/system administration.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with it, either. Most of the people I've known who did the major career shift after being layed off are much happier now. In a market where the people getting the jobs are reasonably qualified, its got to be hard to go to work knowing you can't really do what you need to well.
A company that sacks 500 programmers needs 500 more VPs to manage all those progra... oh wait that doesn't make sense at all!
I think you'll find the CIO calls himself an IT professional too, and that you are the exception rather than the rule in calling yourself non "IT Professional".
Even if it does represent people climbimg the corporate ladder, its not a ladder, its a pyramid with fewer jobs higher up than lower down.
So even then, it would represent fewer jobs.
This is seaonally adjusted.
It peaked March 2001 at 3,718,000
It's now 3,170,000.
Data
the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has fallen 15% since the first six months of 2004.
Wow! That explains a lot!! I wonder what Microsoft is going to now that they know that many of their programmers were really Art History Majors.
Every script kiddie will call himself "IT professional". A real pro knows how much knowledge is ahead of him and how little they posess, so they don't dare to say "I know it all"...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Outsourcing consultants with mod points?
Your guess is as good as mine. But that sure was NOT flamebait!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Here goes the last of my karma...
I think the whole open source movement is part of the cause.
What other industry would provide its services for free, then act surprised when that industry no longer generates enough money to justify lots of workers and high salaries?
In the long run, I suppose things are cyclical. The industry will shrink to a level small enough to support itself in a "free products" environment. This will probably lead to somewhat fewer people working on opensource products, thus increasing demand for IT people again... and so the sysle will continue.
I wonder if the US counts unemployment differently than everybody else. In some markets, 3% unemployment would be classed as overemployment.
Can anyone enlighten me?
They are really baffled by the drop in unemployment concurrent with a drop in jobs. I think that quite a few people simply said: "Do I want to make lousy wages working 80 hour weeks in a high-stress deadline-driven environment? Or I could work 40 hours a week as a plumber and make more money? Hmm..."
The argument that "not voting for Bush" is negative is incorrect. He makes it easy to hate him.
Vote for change.
According to the article:
"Meanwhile, U.S. IT jobs continue to move up the IT skills ladder. Demand increases for workers with the skills needed to design, customize, and utilize IT applications, particularly in the lagging sectors and among SMEs. Some of the transformation in types of IT jobs in response to global sourcing of software can be seen in detailed occupation data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 1999 to 2002 (last available data), the number of "programming" jobs in the U.S. earning on average $64,000 fell by some 71,000. But jobs held by application and system software engineers earning on average $74,000 increased by 115,000. Thus, even as it increases the number of IT jobs, global sourcing of software and services changes the nature of IT jobs, moving them up the skills ladder and diffusing them throughout the U.S. economy."
Manuel Student of Life
Just because there are these excellent software packages and tools available freely doesn't mean there is any less need for skilled IT professionals to implement them for companies. No company is going to just take Cyrus IMAP server and stick it on a server without a sysadmin to make sure it's installed properly and is functioning the way they want it to, and in many instances they will also have developers customising it to their own needs.
Also, I don't think that software companies are doing any less development. IBM, Novell and others have thousands of developers working on Open Source projects, and they aren't working for free. Plus, Sage and other proprietary software isn't going away, and it never will.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
This is what you get for shipping jobs overseas for the lowest bidder. Paying your own citizens an honest wage may cost your company more money, but it also is an investment in the nations present and future. I am not fucking kidding, so don't mod this as funny because its not. I would love to get my hands around the neck of people like Dell, who used the hard work and ingenuity of Americans and then shipped away 30000 jobs so he could make EVEN MORE MONEY. I call bullshit on all these assholes. I live in Austin, Texas and you can't find a job to save your life. Sure you can probably get a job at Wendys, but not one that will pay a living wage. Pure capitalism is no better than pure communism or facism. 32000 jobs were "added" in July. They won't say how many were lost, will they? And there is a very good reason for that.
I consider myself a geek, but have taken a functional title in my workplace. The work I do is still quite technical, but I now supervise a (tiny) staff and have some management responsibilities. I am more involved in the "line of business" but definitely not divorced from geekly things. This gives me the two important things: knowledge of this business and of my workplace I wouldn't have as a "strict" geek, and the abandonment of a title that carries the stench of death associated with the fact that at any time, the job could be sent to India.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
.... is that bits and bytes don't deteriorate, but only can be made obsolete with newer hardware technology and that has a limit to, as far as the consumer market goes (typically the gaming industry is where to look for advancements)
.... But where the market is in better using this abstraction calculator within the industry and field of your non-IT position, so as to improve your own productivity.
There is also programming techniques, languages etc. that make things easier and easier to develop. The dot net core technology for example is a sum of the majority of programming concepts and data types put together in a non-conflicting manner, so that any language created to be compatable with the intermediate language (the point of translation from human based to machine based) can make use of the dot net run time engine. Point being: the field of programming is stablising in concepts and datatypes.
Then there is the point of programming, to make complexity easy to use and reuse by the users of that complexity, via automation of the complexity, and this is recursive from the assembly programer to the end user putting some script (VB?) to automate sme task of theirs.. Where the essence of this "make easy to use and reuse" will most certainly lead to a "working oneself out of a job" result. (NOTE: Unless you take the MS attitude of "making people need you" and accept the resulting manifestation of the "user frustration function" in teh sum product)
The field of computer technology and programming are very young still, younger than still many who helped get it going. And it will grow up beyond the sand box bully of MS mentality.
From a technology point of view, there is a limit as to how complexicated you can make this "abstraction calculator" where the rest is really up to the end users to decide what all they want to figure out with it or use it for.
SO, where all this is leading is to the REAL and GENUINE "New Economy" where the market is not of IT or programming (though there will allways be a genuine profession of software engineering -- not the more popular psuedo coding)
To draw a picture:
What would the many industries and fields of, do with computer technology of such ease of programming and depth of complexity as one might consider the holodeck (star trek).
The new market is not in reinvention or psuedo coding, but found beyond this. The virtual reality integration of all we have, in detail, so as to go beyond the limits of our IT/programming methodologies of today. Like how we went beyond teh limits of roman numeral accounting when we adopted the hindu-arabic decimal system with teh zero place holder.
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they hide is vital."
- unknown
And the drop in "IT" jobs coincides nicely with the release of Win2K.
I'm sure the increased used of Linux in the last two or three years hasn't helped keep the "I'm an MCSE. I'm here to reboot your server" crowd employed, either.
In other news India has a growth of 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has risen 15% since the first six months of 2004. According to IT World, the number of employed Software Engineers increased by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 725,000 to 856,000)."
How odd to see posts that try to blame the open source movement for this decline! Surely the outsourcing to overseas concerns of some of these jobs is having more of an impact? My perception, however flawed it may be, is that people need to decide whether or not they like the idea of allowing the less developed countries to draw work away from the more developed ones and if they do not, find ways to put the pressure on those making the outsourcing decisions. Perhaps in this regard the open source developers are more of a solution than a problem. Even Microsoft can't compete with "free" and we in the west get to maintain a ready pool of IT professionals bad economy or not.
In one case, a friend of mine was laid off at Lucent two years after I was ER'ed. She along with 29 other people in their department. 5 were retained an extra two months to train exactly 30 folks from Poland how to do their old jobs. Programmers in Poland are as cheap as programmers in India. China programmers are even cheaper!
I'm currently way underemployed as an sysadmin and customer service rep ("hello, may I take your problem report"), paid to work only a few days a week, but it's a job (which will likely die off this year).
I don't plan on ever getting back into a real paid programming job. 4 years of BSCS, two years MSCS, and 25 years of experience worth nothing, well, maybe worth "Welcome to WalMart!"
"Offshore development is the best way to prevent going to war," he said.
It's quite amazing what people were predicting back in the year 2000, and what a contrast is from now.
There's a particlarly interesting old news article here.My favorite part is:
By 2004, IT professionals will interview employers so stringently that 40 per cent of employers will substantially miss recruitment goals
(link was taken from Brainbox article)
The answer to your question is in the second sentance of the article:
Read further and you will see the breakdowns by job category. Some are in more demand. Others, such as systems analysts like me, are in less demand. The net effect is an increase in the number of unemployed who call themselves computer professionals. If they had learned another trade - or had jobs - they would have answered the Census Bureau survey differently.
I've noticed that IT skills are now necessary requirements for roles in other areas. Employers are less often looking for just a programmer, but a statistician who can program, or a physics graduate who can program, or a graphic designer who...
Where once you would have hired a programmer to implement the specialist's work, you now expect the specialist to comprise the IT specialist's role as well.
I'm currently doing some work in data analysis, but they want me to do the SQL work on the databases myself (the cheek of it!)
That point made though, I don't think this accounts for major falls in IT work availability. I think if there are such falls then they are more a result the market being flooded with muppets who think they can program (done the correspondence or the nightschool course) and that less and less work is needing to be done from scratch. We have MS Office, we have Postnuke, we have Dreamweaver templates and anything else you might want, requiring only the barest customization.
My advice is to get good at a supplementary field (maths is always good) and get yourself into something that requires more skill than the college course kid can fake in an interview. Go for jobs with people who take things seriously, not the ones who are looking for someone cheap and can't tell the difference between you and the muppet.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Something must be wrong with the data. . .
The economy is doing wonderfully since the big tax cut. All those wealthy people who recieved thousands or even millions of dollars from the government went out and created jobs with that money, right?
I'm sure there are tech jobs being created, because there's a new McDonald's going up near my house. The new fryers are pretty high tech, so the fry cooks must be qualified IT professionals right?
And never mind the jobs report. Thirtythree thousand jobs is a shitload of jobs when you think about it. Besides, it was just a blip. The overall trend line is definitely on the upside, and we're sure to see some positive gains in the second half.
And I'm sure we'll see real cheap oil any day now. Just as soon as that Yukos thingie resolves itself. Or when we drill in ANWAR, as God intended.
You're all a bunch of pessimists, especially those of you that have been unemployed for longer than six months. And it's your pessimism that is dragging the economy down. So cheer up. Got that unemployed people? You're the problem and the American people aren't going to put up with it much longer. Get a job, hippy.
Oh, yeah, I'd blame it on Open Source, but it should be obvious from the above that I'm too ignorant to know what Open Source is.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You wrote:
>>>
Success is not a RIGHT. It is earned through taking risks and working your ass off. Not every plan pans out, but I would rather fail trying than sit around and wait for somebody to "give" me a good job.
>>>
OK, just suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off this past 3 months, and I take your advice to just "work my ass off". But you seemt o forget that there are also 131K other Software Engineers also laid off, who you say should do the same thing--just work their ass off. That worldview of yours is the Achilles heel of globalization/neoliberalism: we are all just supposed to "work harder" each successive round of outsourcing. But you seem to forget we are all competing against each other! And the numbers of laid-off increase with each round of outsourcing! Hello?? Ponzi scheme, anyone?
Are you familiar with the "Turtles all the way down" anecdote that describes a certain logical fallacy? For the edification of those who have not heard it, here it is:
>>>>
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a
public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the
sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection
of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at
the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish.
The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is
the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever, but you can't fool me,"
said the old lady. "It's turtles all the way down!"
>>>>>>>>
That type of flawed logic is the basis of globalization/laisseiz fair/neoliberal/free trade economics; and it really just amounts to a system of concentrating as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I think a lot of this is just self denial, a way of psychologically dealing when bad things happen to other people that could just have well happened to you. You just tell yourself that you're different and that can't happen to you. Ask any outplacement counselor and they will tell you that one of the big problems is people going into shock because they all thought it wouldn't happen to them.
The plausible stats I saw were:
- A 4.5% decline in the IT labor force since the peak in 2001. (IW article)
- IT unemployment currently around 5.5%, down from 6% recently, and up from 3% in 2000-2001. (IW article)
- "The overall number of people employed in computer-related occupations in the U.S. dropped by about 9,000 people from the first to second quarter." (IT article)
A lot of the other stats are based on random labelling of people (e.g. "computer programmer" vs "computer analyst" vs "software engineer".. the IW articles cites an 8% increase in the latter), and a relatively small sample. If nothing else, the reported 60% increase in IT managers should tell you something about these surveys.If we're just going for shock-the-readers headlines based on these stats, try this one:
InformationWeek reports that according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there's now one manager to every 1.85 computer programmers. At current rates, managers will outnumber programmers in a few years.
(InformationWeek reports 341k managers vs 632k computer programmers.. but that report based upon those numbers is obviously misleading.)
The folks I work with stopped calling me an IT professional some time last year... using instead the more apt term "IT Asshole".
Burn-out does that to you.
Don't we see this every year as the millions of employed college kids go off for summer vacation. I know that this drop is a lot higher than normal, but it seems that around every May the news reports a dramatic drop in IT jobs. Then, around every August, it reports a steep increase in IT jobs.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
And I bet that you will not even vote!
Yep. My company has been profitable every quarter of every year - but not profitibal *enough* for wall street. So, they usually fire a few thousand this time every year and impose a hiring freeze the rest of the year.
The fall in IT jobs has been nothing but a good thing IMO. It has gotten a lot of the unqualified, paper certified, no experienced, bullchip tossing idiots out of the industry. I've been doing SysAdmin type work for nearly two decades and I still don't have any certifications. I lost one job after 9-11 but my experience level kept me busy enough to pay the bills with contract work for 6 months until I found another regular gig. Now I'm making even more income that ever.
I still have no certifications. Experience is the trump card.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
This is more about the economy than about OSS. The economy is taking good jobs and creating Minimal wage jobs. Basically, we are still in recession.
just not here (duhh!).
And it is not just the IT industry whose jobs
are at risk. The problem (IMO) started with
financial institutions moving bill processing
offshore. Help center jobs followed suit.
Data entry/keyboarding jobs moved offshore.
Currently many of the xrays that your doctor
may use in diagnostics are being interpreted by
a foreign radiologist. Many of the mundane
architectural design jobs (like portions of
big shopping centers) are also outsourced to
offshore. Even the states are jumping on this
bandwagon -- the unemployemnt & welfare accounts
of at least 28 US states are being handled off-
shore.
Welcome to globalization. It is the inexorable
movement of high dollar cost jobs to those
geographic regions with the cheapest labor pool.
Imagine the consternation of Mexican labor being
replaced in their own country by cheaper Asian
workers, only to then have their plant(s) shut
down, disassembled, and shipped overseas. What
we are seeing in the death of the middle class
in every "advanced industrialized nation", but
most predominately here in the USA. That boost
in your 401k valuation may even have come from
your own job going offshore.
If you don't want to get used to the continued
destruction of the middle class, you need to
light a fire under your politicians, and start
organizing shareholders against the "fatcat"
corporate interests. Those "fatcats" have a
vested interest in going offshore for their
labor -- it puts more bonus (blood) money in
their pockets.
Bottom line: the job situation in IT is absolutely awful. A lot of educated and experienced professionals can not find decent work. Take a look at the job boards, companies are asking for a list of requirements a mile long, and paying a janitor's salary.
I can't believe anybody has the gall to print these alarmist "BSCS graduate numbers are declining!" articles. Companies don't want BSCS's they want slave labor. Such labor can be in the form of:
1) H1B visas
2) Jobs exported overseas
3) USA citizens forced to work for reduced wages.
I wish I had the fore-sight to go to law school and specialize in IP litigation, that is going to be where the money is. Instead of making money by being productive and/or innovative, we'll all make money be suing each other.
I'm open to any career change suggestions. I have a degrees in math and business. But it's been a long time. I've worked in IT for 24 years. There is a lot I like about IT. But, it gets old being treated like a dog to kick around.
One of the points that is being bandied about is that only low-level jobs are being lost. Now that may soothe the minds of some, but they are not thinking it through. To say that hi-level positions are available and maybe even growing might be good for those who are in the industry and have good credentials but it is taking its toll on the future group of IT professionals in the future.
Kids out of high school will see this turmoil and stay away from IT (become plumbers as one guy said), this is how the brain drain works at the macro level. Without a steady stream of new talent, the US will lose its competitive advantage (if it has any left at this point).
Most economists would say that job shifting is a good thing to the overall cost of production and therefore good for the consumer in the long run because it would allow for lower priced goods, but they are forgetting that every action has external cost borne by the society and in this case it borne by the US educational system which will see lower scores on math and science skills as students see even less of a need for those skills; heck they are only going to be plumbers anyway.
To be sure, we are losing those low-level positions, but I am quite sure that no CIO ever made it to the top without starting in one of the low-level positions.
--laz
"Just remember, it takes a village idiot." -- The Motley Fool.
It's like we never learn in this country. Dependence on foreign oil isn't bad enough, now we're dependent on foreign manufacturing...actually shipping entire factories including specialized equipment overseas. Now we're exporting mind share. Economists be blowed, I think this is a really dangerous trend. It's not being xenophobic to suggest that too much reliance on other countries, for anything, is a really bad idea.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A Colossus With Weak Knees
By Paul Craig Roberts
If George Bush and John Kerry were aware of the problems that await the next president, they would be vying to throw the election, not to win it.
Job loss at home and failure abroad have already written the script which will sweep away the next administration.
Recession could return by the inauguration before the economy ever regains the jobs lost to the 2001 recession. Second quarter 2004 economic growth came in 20% less than expected. The consumer is showing weakness, and crude oil prices have reached record highs. Personal savings remain low by historical standards.
On August 3 the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that seasonally adjusted real per capita incomes declined in June to levels below those reached in April. Total personal real spending declined 0.9% in June to the level of last February.
As the Bureau of Labor Statistics made clear in its July 30 report, the US economy is suffering not only from weak job growth but also from a loss of better paying jobs.
Only 65% of the 5.3 million workers who were laid off from long term jobs during the first three years of President Bush's administration were reemployed by January 2004. That means only about 3.5 million of the 5.3 million laid off workers were able to find new jobs during two years of economic recovery.
Of those who found new jobs, 57%--about 2 million workers--took jobs paying less than their previous positions. About 1.2 million of the workers who found new jobs experienced pay cuts of 20% or more.
It is really disturbing that this job loss may have occurred in the absence of a recession. The conventional definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. However, on July 30 the Bureau of Economic Analysis released the revised GDP data for 2001, and the recession, as conventionally measured, has disappeared. The revised data does not show two consecutive negative quarters, and for 2001 the economy grew 0.8%. Did we experience not only a job loss recovery, but also a job loss nonrecession?
There was no recession in the second quarter of this year, but BLS data show 131,000 fewer American computer software engineers employed in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2004--a decline of 15% in three months. Employment of computer scientists and systems analysts declined by 51,000 in the second quarter. Employment of computer programmers fell 16,000.
Despite the horrendous job loss, the unemployment rates for software engineers, computer scientists and programmers fell, which suggests that technical professionals are discouraged and have ceased to search for jobs in their occupations.
The decline in high-tech professions in the US is also reflected in the collapse in computer engineering enrollments in America's premier engineering schools. Over the past several years, M.I.T., Georgia Tech, and UC Berkeley have experienced computer engineering enrollment declines of 43%.
More unprecedented bad news comes from the Internal Revenue Service. For the first time ever, the real incomes of Americans shrank for two consecutive years. In 2002 Americans repor
Seastead this.
Sectors don't drop 15% employment in three months without making some splash. Smells like the BLS made some changes to their report rather than a real change in employment here. My bet is that those missing jobs were shuffled to another category. I glanced through the BLS website, but I don't have the time yet to verify whether this is the problem or not.
Don't worry. It's just that the business model has changed. Not so many people are willing to pay for your services anymore. It's okay, you'll adapt. You have to. And anyway, you really should be doing the work you do because you love it. If you're doing it for the money, you're not really a [insert job title here] anyway. You're a sellout. Best of luck!
And, I am not an IT Professional. I am a COMPUTER SCIENTIST.
The overall number of people employed in computer-related occupations in the U.S. dropped by about 9,000 people from the first to second quarter. The 2.96 million computer-related jobs in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2004 compared to an average of 2.98 million during 2003.
So even though they say later on:
-- The number of employed software engineers in the U.S. dropped from 856,000 in the first quarter of 2004 to 725,000 in the second quarter. Yet, the unemployment rate among software engineers dropped from 3.3 percent to 2.9 percent between the two quarters. In 2003, an average of 758,000 software engineers were employed in the U.S.
Smells like a category shift to me. Overall employment doesn't change.
I've decided to just run a cash register and be poor. It was good enough for my grandfather.
Nothing wrong with the rest of the people, I'm just not very good at being whatever-it-you-call it. Successful. Evil. Whatever. I'm over 30 now and through with programming as a profession or even giving a shit what happens in the industry.
I'm content to be a hobbyist dinking with Linux at night from now on and being a total Rodney Dangerfield. I'd rather just be poor.
By now you've all been told how MicroSoft makes all of it's profits on Windows and things like the X-Box are just money losers running as place-holders at the company's expense.
Well oil is to the world economy what Windows is to MicroSoft. Oil is turned into fertilizer so all high-carbohydrate crops and the livestock that feed on them are just an "X-Box" from an economic viewpoint.
All transportation, manufacturing, etc. are also 100% dependent on enegy from fossile fuels. All plastics, nylon, etc are made directly from oil.
When oil prices go up it's like Windows ceasing to be the "money printing press" for MicroSoft. The net effect is that the whole world is made poorer.
- unknown
So that would make goatsx guy the deficit?
s/that does allow/that does not allow/
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm a former Northwest Airlines applications programmer/analyst with a BSCS and 15 years of pretty solid experience who has been looking for a new permanent place to work for over 2.5 years now, and my local area (the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro) has had a number of large companies lay off a large number of people over the past few years including my former employer (NWA), Unisys (which has a heavy airline/mainframe presence in the Twin Cities), Lawson, IBM, Qwest, Verizon, and a number of others.
:-)
In the case of NWA, many IT people were laid off based on the organization or project they were affiliated with, and whole trees of people were lopped off from the manager on down. I know several folks who I considered top-quality techie types who were let go in October 2001 because they had moved to a project that was more technically interesting or high-profile a few years ago, but which was considered a non-critical project by management in the post-9/11 airline environment).
In other cases (such as in my case), cuts were made based purely on seniority, and my 13 years put me on the bottom of the ladder compared to the remaining folks I was working with in Flight Operations (I survived the major IT cuts in late 2001 only to find myself nickel-and-dimed out a few months later when we all thought it was over).
Given the experience level of my peers I was a logical choice, at least by that measure, but I'll frankly put my general level of technical acumen against anyone here. Or there, for that matter.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the measurement used. Ability rarely factors into such choices, as two layoffs in the past 15 years have taught me, particularly when the layoff parameters are being determined mainly by bean counters rather than technical management.
With such a glut in unemployed techie folks in the local area, many of them quite senior, it's hard for someone with only 10-15 years of experience to get any sort of contract work because there are a fair number of 20-30 year people also laid off who are now competing for a much smaller number of positions. And contract work is almost all there is. A few firms seem to be hiring real permanent employees, but competition is so fierce that one has to be an almost perfect tech-skill+line-of-business match in order to get a first-level interview.
I know several folks who have roughly my experience level who are still out of work after more than a year, and it sure isn't due to a lack of technical ability or a lack of effort. From what I can tell, it's mainly due to a large number of people seeking a small number of positions, and to an increasing tendency for companies to require more and more specialized business and technical skillsets even for general IT positions.
The folks who have "left IT" according to common statistical measures are a mix of all types.
Some fit the stereotype of being "less skilled" or interested only in the financial aspects of an IT career, and I'm in agreement with those who say "good riddance" to such folks, but there are probably at least as many others who are hard-core bit twiddlers or talented designers or whatnot who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who are finding it difficult to obtain employment in IT at a time when companies are hiring specialized short-term contractors in lieu of more generalized long-term employees.
When an IT position isn't available, and when the six months or so of unemployment runs out, a former IT person has to do *something* in order to make ends meet. In my case, it will probably end up driving a truck or doing some sort of generic office work so I can continue to pay the bills.
That doesn't make me any less interested in IT, and I'll still be looking when I'm not working at a lesser position, but for statistical purposes I'll have dropped off the radar and will no longer count as an unemployed IT position. It's a very misleading statistic...
If this comes across as a bi
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Ok, yeah I'm not calling myself an IT Profesional anymore.
My business card now says, "Burger Orientation Specialist".
You want fries with that?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Face it, Your Boss is a Rat
Who REALLY moved your cheese and why!
By: John Shepler
If you think something smells rotten in corporate America, you're right. It's a foul aroma wafting in from the executive suites, where the rats are jumping for joy at the success of their latest manifesto, "Who Moved My Cheese?", subtitled...get this, "An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and In Your Life."
"We moved it," they squeal with delight, "and when we want to, we'll move it again." Why? Very simple. Management has discovered that moving or removing YOUR cheese can be quite advantageous to them. But they've known that for a more than a decade. What they've just begun to realize is that it's possible to sell employees on the idea that this is perfectly OK. I'll elaborate, but first let me tell you how it all began.
It Takes Only a Minute
Management has a Holy Grail and it is known as "the silver bullet," also called the quick fix. It's epitomized in a small, thin book called "The One Minute Manager" by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. (piled higher and deeper) and Spencer Johnson, M.D. (mostly deeper.) The theme of "The One Minute Manager" is that business people, especially managers, spend way too much time mulling over problems, internalizing them, and debating on what to do next. Much better, proposed Blanchard and Johnson, to jump in, collect all the facts that are at your fingertips or can be coaxed out of your subordinates, and make a snap decision in one minute or less. Actually, the primary decision is which employees can best be made to take ownership of the problem, strategically moving the burning acid of responsibility from your stomach to theirs. If things improve, you allocate no more than one more minute to tell them how great they are doing. If the situation deteriorates, you allocate that same minute to making darn sure that they feel terrible about it and will work even harder to keep the problem from returning to you.
A Revolution in Business Thinking
Think this is funny? It's revolutionary. The enabling power of one minute management has caused the entire Fortune 500 to refocus from the concept of stewardship, with a responsibility to the community that spans generations, to a slavish devotion to the needs of the institutional investor, primarily an increased stream of earnings every fiscal quarter. White-collar layoffs, almost unheard of prior to the 1980s, are now a standard tool of expense management. With only a minute needed for problem solving, the span of control for managers has increased as much as ten fold and the number of people assigned to non-producing supervisory functions proportionally reduced. Productivity, as measured by corporate earnings, soared to create the raging bull market of the 1990s. Johnson and Blanchard are lauded in corporate circles. But the emphasis on rapid decision making has led to shortened attention spans. It's already time for something new...
The Big Cheese
The toll of one minute everything is burning out once naive and eager employees, anxious for their leg up the corporate ladder. The abuses of ever increasing demands have created calluses of cynicism that are best portrayed in the characters of Scott Adams' Dilbert. Now everyone sees themselves as an oppressed Dilbert or Wally and adopts a passive/aggressive approach to corporate survival.
Re-enter Johnson, sans Blanchard, with a new silver bullet, this one cleverly disguised as an irresistible morsel of cheese. And who can resist the power of cheese? It's a story that is designed once again to get the onus of action into the mind of the common employee. Without giving too much away, here's how it goes.
It seems that there are two mice and two small people living in a maze. They dine on a seemingly endless supply of cheese provided by an unseen benevolent caretaker. All are complacent and happy with this scenario, until one day the cheese is gone. The mice shrug and take off down the corridors of the maze to find more
However there are too many people who won't think that its a joke
"The economy is doing wonderfully since the big tax cut. All those wealthy people who recieved thousands or even millions of dollars from the government went out and created jobs with that money, right?"
Actually, one uncle, my brother-in-law, and 2 of my cousins benefitted immensely from the tax cuts. See, they qualify as wealthy by some people's standards. Yet what in fact they are is small businessmen. They gross between 250-1M a year with differing nets depending on which industry they work in. (the cousins own an industrial roof ing business, the uncle is a home builder, the brother in law as renovator).
The one common thing, the economy has picked up for them. The lower tax load has expanded all 3 businesses. Still the tax burden on these small businessmen will choke you if you saw what they put up with. Just adding another employee is a royal pain in the ass, let alone certain breakpoints (25, 50, 100 employees).
If anything we should ditch the whole scheme of taxes and replace it with a national sales tax akin to fairtax.org
---- now back on topic.
The article is bunk because it doesn't go into enough detail about what IT is. I know web designers that are IT and mainframers who scoff at the notion a web designer is IT.
Oh, if your unemployed more than 6 months you have a problem. I know of NO ONE who remained unemployed that long except by inaction or personal choice. You need to reexamine what your asking for. If its not available where your at then move or change. Do not fall into the trap of blaming others for your misfortune. Fortune favors those who take the initiative.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As technology improves to reduce support needs, support people loose their jobs. If you didnt see it coming you are an idiot.
Just wait another 5 years when 90% of IT support people are looking for work in other industries.. ( that have all been outsourced to mexico and other places )
Bitter? Ya.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I used to do the IT thing until I got laid off twice in one year from two different IT jobs. Now I am doing customer support (email with some live chat) and I am thinking about going back to school to learn to do something more hands on (like welding or being a machinist (sp?)). Why? Because, I have no desire to go back into IT (don't have an MCSE? Sorry, we don't want you!) Where I live, the employers who are looking for that want only Winblows experience and nothing else. It is not worth it for me.
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
Its more than job loss. My brother, who was a programmer and project manager, is finishing his MBA in (gasp) marketing. Many in his classes are former IT professionals who have left IT.
Although I've stayed in IT, I've seen quite a few friends and associates over the past couple of years leave IT for small business (real estate, insurance, home construction, landscaping) or MBAs in non-technical fields.
Why the change? In almost every case, their disgust and reason for a career change was predicated not on the disappointment with IT, but rather the realization that the cost center they worked for was decimated by the absolute posers and morons in alleged profit centers marketing, management, sales, etc. My own 2001 downsizing came despite our IT shop nailing project after project well under budget in a constant death march project. The company couldn't afford the damage from the marketing/sales/corporate spending on extravagant headquarters (complete with a parking garage filled with leased Ferraris and Mercedes), incredible perks for corporate employees, and a general knack for hiring complete clueless idiots (complete with their own staff of at least three or four executive assistants - god forbid a marketing assistant not have someone to get their coffee and bagals).
No, what has inspired so many IT people I know to go into the soft fields is that they're driven to make sure the next company they work for isn't rotten to the core in these areas. Armed with the knowledge that these areas are totally soft and seriouosly lacking competence and drive, they're eager to get going.
Watch for the next career segment upheaval in Dilberts favorite targets: marketing and HR.
I think we indians took away a lot of IT jobs maybe thats why a lot of americans are not in IT anymore.Ok that was a JOKE. :-)
But i did expect a lot of people to point out to outsourcing for the drop in IT employment.
Lord of the Binges.
Many industries have to face this day by day. Companies over the last 3-4 years have laid off IT and software staff and have learned to make do without them.
So when you ask the boss to hire more people to do the work he says "But we haven't had any problems over the last 3 years" not realizing it's been a patch job since then.
When your company only generates so much money, upper management would rather invest it into marketing and sales, rather than investing into something where there is no perceived problem....
just my two cents worth....
Veni Vidi Vici
disclaimer: If you live in india; Don't take it personally, i make fun of everyone for all the wrong reasons.
Slashindia.org headlines:
The number of people calling themselves IT-professionals have increased by 1175% and those calling themselves programmers 2500%.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
There has also been a decrease in qualified Slurpie machine techs as they move into outsourced American tech jobs. I think maybe all those years of being made fun of in the movies and in real life was only a ruse in order to lull us into our eventual destruction. Damn, you Indians are craftier than the Japs.
From the article:
this jives with what I've seen--a rise in software engineer jobs. My guess is that many of the less-skilled IT positions are being simply eliminated or outsourced.yes, this use to be a great field to work in. the jobs were relatively interesting and they paid well. now the jobs are harder to find the pay is not what it use to be. and also, i feel because i dont have the choices available managment can basically do anything they want to me with little complaint.
Is there demand for a masters/phd?
Welcome to America. You must be new here.
I think it's great that all these wannabe programmers are out of jobs. Time for getting a diploma in nanotech guys... that's the next field you can be incompetent and still have a good job.
Considering the number of racist comments made by American programmers towards Indians (and not just on Slashdot), I can't have much sympathy. American companies have regularly outsourced to many countries such as Canada and Ireland, yet Americans only complain about Indians. And of course, many companies in other countries outsource to Americans. There is potential for a balanced exchange of services here, yet Americans want to have it one-way only.
The bottom line is, Americans don't want to play nice with anybody, and so they screw themselves.
The term for this is the "lump of labor fallacy".
Here is some explanation/commentary on it:
http://www.pkarchive.org/column/100703.html
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
I was at the SoHo Apple store Saturday, they were lined up and waiting for hours with busted iPods. Yes, there is a future in it!
The operative phrase here is "people calling themselves IT Professionals...". During the bubble, when it was fashionable to be in the biz, the quantity of these folks increased dramaticlaly and the average quality of the whole industry suffered horribly. It's taken longer than I ever imagined to weed them out. Goodbye! Good riddance! Good luck in food service (where you belong).
To suggest that this is the result of either offshoring or opensourcing is chicken***t. Going offshore only works, and is only economical, if you need an army of programmers. And what worthwhile software was ever produced by an army? There are more then enough good jobs for good programmers in the U.S.A. If your job has been offshored, improve your skills.
And as for opensource, has anybody noticed how many sysadmins it takes to run a data center built on opensource components. Far more "IT Professional" jobs are on the user side than in ISVs. The number of people employed keeping Apache software alone up and runnning is staggering. FWIW, ~mark
One could also point out the correlation between America's major wars in the last century and Democratic administrations -- WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam. Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy/LBJ. So does that mean the Dems should get the 'credit' for wars that cost the lives of over 600,000 Americans? Or is it possible all these correlations don't actually mean much?
Before GW Bush's term, tHe last year that the GOP controlled all three branches of American govt was...1929....
So, it is more than just the presidency that is important.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I hold a degree in Software Engineering and started programming at the age of 14.
When I started working I was horrified to find people all over the world doing IT stuff they were not qualified for!!!! Argh!!! Like people with 12-week course in Visual Basic or similar! Or Management guys as Aplication Architects! These are the main Microsoft technology backers! I hate these guys!!!
I am very glad to see these people kicked out of our Industry!!!
I believe most Linux folks are not in this category of people.
What ur saying is bullshit Its all Bush's fault!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Nonetheless, things like 64bit computing with faster processors and obscene quantities of RAM will open up real-time desktop video editing to the masses - that might see a whole wave of upgrades."
What do you mean "open up"? I've been able to do this for several years. The primary difference is that it's dedicated hardware, much as DVD playing use to be dedicated hardware instead of mostly software. For those who need such a capability they've already made the investment, and much like everyone else the question of upgrading for the sake of upgrading holds true as it does for everyone else.
slashindia comment:
Meanwhile in USA... (Score:5, Funny)
by Eudial (590661) on Sun August 08, 04:12 PM (#9913135)
disclaimer: If you live in USA; Don't take it personally, i make fun of everyone for all the wrong reasons.
SlashUSA.org headlines:
The number of people calling themselves IT-professionals have decreased by 1175% and those calling themselves programmers 2500%.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
is that I have more time to help out the clueless from outsourcing companies when they ask for help in some of the more technical newgroups. There's one ongoing right now with somebody who works for Wipro. Ironic.
sure shows the appropriateness of a recent political cartoon from Ben Sargent.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
"Am I unreasonable to see a lot of this as an overdue correction in the IT labour market? For a while here in Australia at least it seemed that someone with a 6 week vocational computing course could earn $50K+ doing front-line support. That wasn't a realistic or sustainable situation, and is certainly not reflected in any other industry I"
You may not be unreasonable so much as unrealistic. As one of the posters pointed out above. 2000 and the bubble is long gone. Just how long do you think we can use that as an excuse for what's wrong with the market? Yeah! It's all the ITT/DeVry/whatevers fault. Now what are you all going to do when you no longer have that to fall back on and the market still hasn't performed up to your expectations? How about blaming the Indians/Chinese/Phillipians/Flavour of the week? I know lets blame the leadership/Corporations. That's the funny thing about blame, you can always find someone/something to foist upon. And history has given us plenty of examples of where that eventually leads "Oh some black/polish/latino/jews are taking our jobs. Attack!"
I just get so very tired of people whining about how unfair life is
Two small kids each get an ice cream. One kid starts crying, "It's not fair! Why isn't my ice cream the same size as his?".
His Mum looks at his ice cream and replies, "What do you mean? Your ice cream is *bigger* than his!"
Kid replies, "Well, yeah. That's what I meant when I said it wasn't fair."
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
No, the bright kid will not get into IT because he doesn't want to work 80h a week, get treated like shit, stressed, with absolutely no job security, compensated with peanuts, and without a career path to pursue.
He will get into another field, and nourish his brain doing OSS software in his free time.
The marketplace for these types of jobs has certainly changed. IMHO we are experiencing a few things - outsourcing of jobs is becoming a normal option for cutting costs, the higher education institutions have flooded the market with "IT pros" who have questionable grasp on the material going into the workplace. Combine this with other nations starting to pick up the tech gauntlet and compete - your going to get cyclic response by the job market. To another end, take a look at every IT house or office you know of, doesnt it seem that at least 15% of them dont belong in IT anyhow? Just my opinion.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has fallen 15% since the first six months of 2004.
Probably because every hack who ever put into his webpage was checking off the "Dynamic Content Web Programmer" box, and a lot of people that read the latest issue of "Just Enough IT To Get A Job!" didn't get one, and now work somewhere else where their skills are better used.
I'll repost two,Links that most didn't see. The second is relevent to the above post, as well as the story about Microsoft it's embedded in.
I've been to the BLS site. I hope this crowd realizes you can load the data into Gnumeric or OpenOffice Calc and investigate the numbers more carefully (Go to the "more formatting options" page).
Too any job number comparisons are made to the last peak of 3-4 years ago. But that was the height of the dot.com bubble. That was the point where the industry was too crazy to sustain itself. Outrageous money was spent irresponsibly, qualified engineers were hard to find, classic measures of business sanity went out the window. We don't want to go there again. So if things don't look quite so rosy compared to those days, it's because we're not yet at the point of another dot-kablooie. So it's not like "the good old days"? Good.
To blame Open Source for the problem shows you don't understand the problem;
.net, ASP/ASPX.
In fact, the costs of IT have ballooned, directly because of ignorant people, like yourself making IT decisions, or managing IT people.
The problem: Reinvention of the wheel at every business, and over-charging for obvious IT solutions.
Evidence of this:
Most BUSINESS related software is made using MS-related technologies, like VB,
Most OPEN SOURCE software is based on C, perl, php, Java. This means, businesses are paying more for obvious solutions, instead of using open-source software. Why? IT Staff and "consultants", who know only the microsoft way of doing things are lying to non-technical managers and business owners, everytime they tell them, that MSSQL/ASP/VB is the most viable solution.
How many inventory/CRM/ERP software solutions are way too expensive? Most of them.
Example:
ofbiz.org offers a full business solution for free, yet, I find "consultants" charging each company $1,000 per year for something as simple as a "work-flow" manager. This is module #6 in ofbiz. This particular consultant took MS Project, exported the results, made some designer-level changes, along with a customizable syntax by industry, and charges $1,000 a year as an "affordable" solution.
Businesses are over-charged by consultants.
Not only is the wheel reinvented every time a consultant builds a "cusom-solution", but the "custom-solution" has to be reinvented, if another business wants a similar feature. Imagine if Operating Systems were handled like this; Home users would pay for every driver they need by 3rd-party hacks. Lastly, if Linux didn't exist, MS prices for the home version would probably be closer to $1,000
The IT Business Sector is full of people who don't really know what they are talking about, and are costing american businesses alot of money.
I personally know tech-support managers, who don't know why we would want a centralized resolution-database for the techs! Everybody was writing-down their own resolutions, instead of sharing; The irony; The managers stayed, and the IT staff was cut by 30% in the middle of a code-change nightmare, where customers' average hold-time on the phone was an hour. You gotta wonder, how these people are even employable.
Companies pay several thousand dollars to run MS SQL? Why would companies with 1 server and less than 50 people do such a thing, when mysql/postgresql and others exist? Why? Because either an incompetent IT person doesn't really know how to migrate data, the company software isn't "supported" on that db engine (read: so what; most companies don't support the sql-side of things anyway!!!), or a dishonest consultant is ready to make a buck off of this company's ignorance.
American business can embrace outsourcing or open source. Outsourcing only lowers the labor costs for the company who is over-charging for their software; Thus, the rest of the industry still pays the same price, regardless of where it's made. Open-Source software not only lowers the cost of OBVIOUS solutions to zero, it will also get rid of so-called "consultants", who depend on customer ignorance to over-charge.
Remember "Value Added" Solutions?
Basically, this means, add-ons to an existing solution. American business will NEVER see the benefits of "value-added" software without open-source. There is no incentive to share code and solutions without open-source software (free to share/use/change). The alternative is the present-day situation, and man, somebody is ripping someone off big time!
In many states, if you want to do someone's nails, be a plumber, or even sell insurance, you are required to get a professional license. We IT-professionals need the same!
...I'm one of the few who finally felt comfortable calling myself an IT professional during the past year.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
I had the distinct "pleasure" of working with a lot of people who should not have been let anywhere near a computer, let alone pretend to do anything useful with them. I am not the least surprised there's less people in the industry now.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
So....Who's ready to program for minimum wage? Me being unemployed and all...it wouldn't be so bad, would it?
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I pretty much agree. I wanted into IT. Couldn't (for various reasons). Bottoms fallen out so it doesn't seem wise to do so (for "love" or otherwise). At least with cheap hardware and FOSS, I can party like it's 1994 without kissing boss *ss or incurring anyone's wrath ("Oh you Devry/ITT grad you, taking "my" MY! job). Yes actually living with minimumn needs is good. Little stress and a LOT of problems (government and otherwise) disappear.
You might want to read Karl Marx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx). He foretold a lot of what's going on now, from the "race to the bottom", to "corporate globalization".
How amazingly childish. Seriously, grow up, names like "dumbocrats" are not likely to win anyone to your side. I enjoy engaging in political debates, but not with people who have the emotional level of a 7 year old. Grow up. You just repeated a bunch of rhetoric without offering anything new or insightful. You say that democrats aren't even human, hardy har har.
When you are a big boy come back and maybe we can talk.
I just had a thought. Since employment in the IT industry has dropped since the bubble burst, is it at pre 1994 levels? It seems to be my observation that the World Wide Web was a significant factor in causing the tech boom of the 90s. Could it be that the industry is simply returning to its prior self after the World Wide Web has matured. Will this boom occur again with another equally important innovation hits the industry?
I am wondering what anyone else thinks about this idea.
There is a neo-con strategy called "Starve the Beast," whose goal is nothing less than to push the government to near bankruptcy so that it is incapable of governing. The rationale is that this will force the government into laissez-faire policies. Bush's slash and spend policies are in line with this policy, rather than the traditional policies of conservatives, which is to match tax cuts with spending cuts.
But even the traditional policy can lead to disaster. Infrastructure requires constant maintenance. Think of a loose shingle on your roof. Replacing it will cost 50 dollars. If you leave it, the others around will will also come loose. Now you have to spend 500 dollars to fix it. Let this go, and you suffer water damage. $5000 to replace that section of the roof. Ignore this, and the water may get into the house, into the wiring, and cause a fire. Then you lose the whole house. Costs delayed are costs increased. Ignore the state of your highways, power grid, environment, etc, and the costs that you incur when you can no longer ignore it will be crippling.
The danger of 'Starve the Beast' should be obvious. The economy runs on the rails of infrastructure provided by the government; highways, police, courts, regulations which protect business as well as prevent unfair practices, etc. Without the ability to do this, capitalism itself will collapse. Corporations are, first and foremost, legal entities sanctioned by government authority. Their very existence is made possibly by the efficacy of government. And we haven't even touched on the military yet. A bankrupt federal government will mark the end of America as a Superpower. All of this is why large numbers of old school conservatives are furious with Bush.
I still haven't touched on the liberal arguments against what Bush is doing. Those who have little money left over after necessities pay a much larger proportion of their income in taxes, through sales tax. There is no tax on securities and stocks, and the financial slight of hand that uses tax shelters is available only to those with a large surplus of capital. When Henry Ford paid his workers an unheard of amount of money for common labourers, he created a large working middle class, with disposable income which allowed them to buy the products of their own labour. This rendered obsolete what was probably the only legitimate claim of Karl Marx: that when workers could no longer buy the products of their own labour, the markets would collapse. The result of Ford's policy eventually spread to most of the American working class, creating the most powerful economic dynamo the world has ever seen. The decline of the middle and working classes make the pie smaller for everyone. The rich may get richer for while, but they will be fewer in number. It is only a matter of time before they feel the pinch. The wolf that grows fat on the poor will soon go after bigger prey.
Both the long term and the short term consequences of Bush's policies are disastrous. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. It may be disastrous for the Democrats if they win, because they will inherit such a mess that it will be hard to wow the crowd. America cannot afford four more years of Bush. And even the conservatives are beginning to realize this.
Instead of childish name calling, how about you actually come up with some facts and an argument against the Democrats?
How trite...
Think this has anything to do with all the jobs being exported to India?
Future of IT Jobs in America
This article strikes of FUD. How is it that supposedly hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing, yet, at the exact same time, we are in such a need of more corporate software engineers that there's a university trying to pump them out at the rate of 1500 per year? I can understand fluctuations in employment, but these numbers seem way off, especially now. I mean, it's not 2001 anymore.
to countries that do not reciprocate in free trade.
Do India and China really open their markets to our products ?
I feel Kerry will address this problem.
Here in New York, employment is booming. The job posting lists I monitor are buzzing comared to where they were a year ago. I've started getting cold calls from recruiters again. And the last tech conference I went to was much fuller than last year's. I don't know anyone who would say the job market for programmers isn't dramatically better in 2004.
Did Microsoft releasing Internet Explorer for free (to Windows & Mac users) cause Netscape to tank?
[Yes, it did.]
Actually, it seems quite possible that open source might help the job market. Back during "The Bubble," it was amazing how much money companies were willing to spend for marginal results. Now budgets are lower and expectations are higher. Open source can help programmers do more with less, which they may need to do to survive.
The report went on to say that tech positions would command 7 of the top 10 most in-demand positions. (The other 3 positions were in the medical field.) The demand created by the Boomers rolling off at the top end combined with a decreased enrollment of students in related fields at the bottom end will create (they claim) a demand for talent which will make the late 90's look like a walk in the park in comparison.
I'm looking forward to the results, if true.
The postman hits! The postman hits! You have mail.
It's all we have left!!!
I was there, dude! You couldn't walk 2 blocks down a street in any large metro area without seeing a Help Wanted sign in a window of a business. I live in houston, and I can tell you that I cannot remember the last time I saw a Help Wanted sign in a window. I am not saying small retail shops are not hiring, but the supply of workers is greater than the demand.
You and most other Americans need to understand something: as an American worker, you should WANT the demand for labor to outpace the supply. THat is a good thing for YOU as worker. It is not so good for the business owners and investors, but who cares, they are by definition a small minority of the population.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I feel Kerry will address this problem.
Hah. I doubt it. Even if he tries, I don't think he will be very successful. India and China will laugh, and even if the governments there make it look like their markets are open, their people won't buy American products, even if they had the money to, which they don't. What Kerry will do is roll over for US labor unions, making America even less competitive and increase taxes on the 'rich' -- no, that isn't the really rich, that is anyone who makes more than poverty level. And while he will talk a nice Robin Hood story about going after the really rich, nothing will change there either. They will just hide their money and send more of it offshore.
To be fair, I don't think Bush will be much better, but I'm going to have to hold my nose and vote against Kerry this year.
We saw this with railroads in the 1800s, Radio and Automibiles in the 1920's and now computers at the end of the 20th century.
We are also hit with this outsourcing phenomina at the same time. It sucks and there is nothing we can do about it.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
When you have a progressive tax system, you maintain a check on the power of the rich. For example, if you have a real progressive tax system, like we used to have 30 years ago, the rich get taxed at rates like 60% or so, and the lower income earners get taxed at 0-5%. But since Reagan taxes have gone up on the lower income earners (via the payroll tax and user taxes and fees), and taxes have gone down on the rich--they now pay 35% on earned income, and 15% on unearned income such as stocks, etc.
So now the rich have more money to do other things, such as manipulate and lobby the government, create think tanks and foundations that flood the media with propaganda, etc. Also, they are now better able to use all that extra money to send jobs overseas.
I say move the tax rates on the rich back up to 60% and eliminate the payroll tax for the working poor. Uncap the payroll tax from its current cap of 87K, so that the upper income earners pay payroll tax on all earned income.
That way we keep the rich under control, and we can use the increased revenue to pay for universal healthcare.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
You are right--Americans used to think more highly of each other. But the rich and the corporations, in order to keep from paying for a stronger welfare state, formed think tanks and foundations to propagate "news stories" that portrayed poor people as worthless and shiftless.
It worked. The propagands destroyed our social capital.
If you want to learn more about this, see my sig link....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It's funny reading Roberts' latest columns. He sounds like a liberal now.
In truth, regardless of the field the percentage of people who are really competent is less then we would like to think. Remember that the next time you see a doctor.
I write for a living, anyway. I aint a software engineer.....
I guess if someone cannot attack an argument, he usually attacks the person making the argument, huh?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
And at this point the capital problem is showing little signs of going away. There is a ton of capital available but those who hold its keys want a "sure" thing, as if such ever existed.
One of my concerns with the Open source concept was always the way it mislead CEO's bottom line thinking into devaluing the productivity enhancements unquestionably emanating from their information systems staff. The idea that such of equal quality could be had for nothing was not just an unrealistic distraction it represented a true deterrent to cooperate progress. Factor in the shortsighted Y2K bug cost run-up and there you have today's capital crunch.
Instead of protecting our job base, neoliberals simply say, "work harder." Why would it matter if the harder work involves working for someone else, or working for yourself?
As the neoliberal policies continue to decimate the job base and increase the unemployed, the unemployed are exhorted to work ever harder. Of course all this ever-harder work is simply turtles all the way down logic.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It is relevant because ever increasing competition must of course reach a limit, mathematically speaking. And of course neoliberal exhortations that "you must compete harder in this Grand New Global Economy" are simply turtles-all-the-way-down logical fallacies.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
(Score:-1, Flamebait)
They usually work about the same number of hours. And they are treated much better. The poor schlub making 10 an hour gets treated like crap.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Most small business owners are into exploiting the desperate working poor as much as possible. THat is just what my experience tells me.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Someone who makes 300K can pay 50% in taxes and have 250K left over. Whereas if someone who makes 25K pays 10%, he has only 22.5K left over. And of course the payroll tax is where they really stick it to the little guy.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Even though that 250K was probably a typo, its probably how it works out. Especially what with lax enforcement, massive supplies of loopholes for the rich, the ability to toss huge amounts into tax free savings and still have enough to live on, etc.
If the number of IT titles/jobs/workers went down, what went up? What kind of titles are in now? Anyone knows?
Simpy
Once manufacturing and engineering are in a low-cost country, the need for high-cost management starts to disappear. US-sized CEO salaries become a drag on competitiveness. Local management has an advantage.
A nice example of this is the $29 DVD player available at Best Buy. Made by CIS Technology, Inc in Taiwan.
There are further steps. One is when the low-cost countries develop their own intellectual property. In the VCR era, Japanese companies developed the technology and owned the basic patents. In the DVD era, Chinese companies are now doing that. When a replacement for the current DVD standard comes, it will probably be from China.
I think that the reason America was a better place for working people 30 years ago was in large part because of higher taxes on the rich. The top tax rate for the super rich used to be over 70%. But through a decades-long media propaganda campaign using well-endowed think tanks and foundations, the wealthy have been able to move the top tax rate down to 35% on earned income and 15% on unearned income. Now that they have more money to spare, they are more powerful. THey can now buy more congressmen, etc. THat means they (the rich and the corporations) are better able to crush the little guy, to control the little guy, better able to ship jobs overseas.
This is really the way animal societies work--the golden rule prevails: he who has the gold makes the rules; except in animal societies, it is he who has the most muscle and size gets to kill or eat or run off the competition. For example, if there are three baby birds in a nest, and one of them starts getting more food, then it will get bigger, and may push the smaller chicks out of the nest.
That is why we need to raise the top tax rate back to 55-60% or so, just like they have in Europe, Canada, etc. THat way we can afford universal healthcare and longterm unemployment, just like most of the European countries, Canada, and Australia.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I know I'm coming late to the party but I'd really like an answer:
"The biggest IT job category--computer software engineers--grew to 816,000, up from 757,000 in 2000, a nearly 8% increase"
"The bulk of the IT workforce loss occurred among computer scientists-systems analysts, programmers, and support specialists"
Ok. What's the difference, technically, between "computer software engineer" and "programmer"? I use "software engineer" when I'm feeling pretentious, "programmer" when I'm not. I think both titles involve design and implementation.
Any guesses?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Haven't you ever heard of comparative advantage? If someone is willing to do these little utilities for free, then people who want to get paid should do something else to make money. A friend of mine graduated with a CS degree and started a tshirt site, getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of web design for free (by doing it himself).
Anyway, that 1-3 person shareware shop wasn't really the main source of employment in the IT field, it was corps that had lots of data-processing needs. Now those jobs are being outsourced. Along with a shrinking economy (only 32k new jobs this month. Bush claimed we'd be getting 300k on average until the election, but I guess those got lost along with the WMD) are causing this bout of lowered employment.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
let's get right down to the source. It is neoliberalism we are talking about. Neoconservatives are supposedly the rightwing, more warlike neoliberals. Both the Dems and GOP are neoliberal, the GOP more so. For background, neoliberalism is associated with trickledown, supply side economics. neoliberalism == The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Neoliberalism has dominated America since 1980.
Keynesianism used to be the prevailing economic philosophy here and in Europe. But when oil jumped up in the 70s, the Big Money used that as an excuse to jettison keynesianism for neoliberalism.
Europe, Canada and Australia is much less neoliberal, and still keynesian. THat is why they have a higher standard of living, and do not have to scramble for their future like we Americans have to. THey have strong, fully funded social safety nets.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
You and most other Americans need to understand something: as an American worker, you should WANT the demand for labor to outpace the supply.
What about as an American purchaser?
It is not so good for the business owners and investors, but who cares, they are by definition a small minority of the population.
Over half of Americans own stock, which is why the left's class warfare is becoming less and less effective.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
As a couple of people have already stated in previous posts, they've left IT anyway; albeit some have conveyed a certain sense of loss or depression about it. I say we tell the Industry good riddance.
I'm a poor, but happy performing singer / songwriter now and stay as far away from IT as possible. I'm keeping a couple small sysadmin contracts to keep a few bucks flowing in until I get a job waiting tables, or tending bar.
Tried the consulting thing, but what ends up happening with those 3 - 6 month $50/hr contracts for fortune-500 biotechs is they inject tons of project creep and then blame you for gauging for change-orders. You end up making adjustments to your rate to appease them and they're never pleased in the end. This didn't used to happen when I consulted for IBM because IBM had big balls too and told them they could fuck the rate adjustments if they weren't willing to pay for the additional features they asked for.
Really, who cares folks? The rate for a consultant ends up being about $25/hour after all is said and done, and you can make that slinging drinks for people if you aren't an asshole. None of us are going to be millionaires anyway unless we weasle our way into management and continue the trend once there of sending skilled American jobs to places besides America. And software design isn't about innovation or revolutionary algorithms; it's about service pack 4000 for Windows; still the only game in town.
So fly; be free little birds. Let those irritating stressful bullshit jobs go wherever they want. I don't feel like doing that shit for anyone else anyway. I'll just keep my website updated with my latest song.
I already know how to administer Lunix and Apache / PHP / MySQL so like I give a rats-ass about finding a good programmer to maintain it and keep it running. I've already got one and don't make him work any harder than he wants to.
Good riddance to an industry that won't compensate you for a difficult job, anyway. Best of luck dudes and dudettes!
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
They don't stop counting your when your unemployment benefits run out, they stop counting you when you stop looking for a job. Of course what I find funny is that employment has been going up for almost a year now. Certainly this month wasn't great, but OTOH it's all at least been positive. (Of course the payroll survey of established companies, which gives us the most cited jobs figures, is different from the household unemployment survery, which is what calculated the umemployment level. Hence you can have the umemployment rate seem to change opposite of the payroll figures. Payroll seems to be more reliable and less volatile, OTOH it tends to undercount jobs. The household survey often has more wild seasonal fluctuations, may overstate employment somewhat, but it does give us the imformation about discouraged workers and labor force participation. What George Box said about models applies to these surveys too, "All models are wrong, some models are useful".
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I love how a link to some random website proves how 'wrong' the common historical understanding. While FDR's programs may not have lifted americans out of the depression, what they did do was allow americans to like, not starve to death.
I don't see how you can view the repulican party as good for "individual freedom" in any sense of the word. They want to shove religiosity down our throats in order to apease their base. How does the embryonic stem cell restrictions support individual liberty? how does the war on drugs support invididual liberty? and so on.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The globalists whine again : "racism".
Sorry, protecting the US is good policy. Period.
Have you considered teaching?
If so, I think We are looking for pt computer science instructors. It beats driving a truck.
ctown at inverhills dot edu
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
an American.
I believe Fred Gallagher still has a "day job" but it would not surprise me if someday MagaToyko pays his bills (e.g. books (of MegaToyko strips), conventions (e.g. Dallas, June 2004)).
Does UF take care of Illiad? (I hope so. How many video cards is YOUR kingdom worth?)
I think the future in a lot of "IT employment" will come from the knowledge/creativity of individuals and will use IT as a tool. If you live in a small city (say 500,000) and you would like to be an "artist", your opportunities would have been very limited ten years ago but are much better now; MegaToyko and UserFriendly are two examples of opportunities (i.e. content/entertainment offered without a middleman) which were not available 10-20 years ago .
I think the "future" (a future) lies in content rather than delivery. So you are a great "flash programmer"; who cares? Do you have something worth seeing or reading? Do you have specialized knowledge? Are you a leet mathematician or chemist with something interesting to say? (Mandatory link.) (If you want to hear my talk at ANU later, there is no charge.)
Anyway, I think outsourcing is bad (e.g. call a credit card company or airline and try to get good service) but it is reality. I think content (mostly from people in the US/Canada or Europe, although there are extremely smart people everywhere) is the real opportunity. Copy Illiad or create your own path. Your content might be humor or entertainment. It might be your specialized knowledge of the XYZ industry. "We" are all over-weight; who is using the Internet and making money by poking fun at us and offering us free "health advice" (and selling books with the "health strips" strips ala UF)?
PS If I had any really good ideas, I would be working on them rather than posting here. You "guys" are the smart ones; find a niche market so you can get rich and afford a "Doom 3 computer".
Fair point. However, you say that those not willing to take a risk always 'LOSE'.
If you take the position that the guy with the most stuff 'WINS' and everyone else loses, then that is correct. However, almost everyone ultimately loses by that token (unless you are Bill Gates).
Let's consider this more in depth. It would be fair to assume that, in return for the unpredictability of risk, the average return on your risky action (sum of (probability * return) on all win/lose situations) should be slightly higher than the (for the sake of argument) uniform return on the non-risk position (otherwise- on average- why take the risk?). Actually, the flaw in this assumption is that (e.g.) $5000 might not be enough to let you survive, and $9000 would, so better to have 50% chance of winning $9000 or nothing, than $5000, even though the average return is less. But I digress (and waffle...)
Even if the risk-taker's average return is higher, it doesn't take into account the 'exponential' value of money; that is, the $100,000 that takes you from nothing to $100,000 will be worth more than the next $100,000 (taking you to $200,000). After all, if $100,000 was enough to survive, would you risk it on a 51% chance to go to $200,000 (or 49% chance of losing it all, and *everything* you have)? Probably not.
So, if we consider money in terms of its value to a person ('person-value') as opposed to its literal value, we can see that $200k is *not* twice $100k in person-value. Thus, if we average out the 'person-value' in the "non-risk" scenario and the "risk" scenarios, you might find that, although the risk taker, on average gets slightly more money, the average 'person-value' of their return is lower, because the added value of the "winning result money" on top of the average doesn't compensate for the horrible prospect of losing *everything* on the "losing result money".
This is why insurance works. Big insurance company averages out its risk over millions of customers. Single customer might save money on average by not taking out insurance; but the prospect of losing everything outweighs the "win" result of not having an accident (or whatever).
Damn; at least I remembered *one* thing from that AI course.
It all comes down to what you, as a person, consider acceptable risk. This (IIRC) is one of the significant things that defines us as people.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I say the "Parasoft" board should outsource the entire company including the CEO position. See how chipper Adam Kowala is about fighting terrorism by not employing Americans when he's drawing unemployment.
People like him who think corporate profits are more important than his countrymen are traitors. And no, I'm not flamebaiting.
Myself and my hard core old school group of friends call these .
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ppl suits, because they are typically "dressing for success"
and their technical expertise is at best a joke
We have 20+ yrs hands on experience with computers, and remember
mag tape and punch cards . These ppl think there has always been a mouse
When you have someone making decisions about technical material
and they themselves only have a shallow surface level understanding
of it , you are going to get a giant mess
Technical ppl are usually not allowed into management because they
"talk over the heads" of the suits . Ego in check, and fear of
being made to look like idiots , the techie types are kept out
of the boardroom for their tendency to be blunt and call it like
they see it
Techies make this fear real by being blunt, and calling dumb
ideas dumb with no sugar coating, and no window dressing
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, we call it a duck
The boardroom wants slick willys that can sweet talk take sweet
deals, and and resell the same subroutines in different forms
and different apps as separate packages
They want plastic personalities and want a professional image
not some bulky linux admin pagan that dresses like he got
his clothes from goodwill
Even though more often than not that is the person at the "soul"
of the operations, keeping the blood of bits pumping
Yet the garbage man of the company gets paid like a garbage man,
because it is a thankless job at "most" companies
If it is a Engineer owned or built company it is usually better,
but even companies like Cisco grow to a point where they
lose their tech management soul, and become victims to the
marketing mantra of maniacs
The sales rep, marketing rep, management type goes out and sells
that image and a bag full of promises they "forgot" to mention
to the technical ppl til a week before deadline
The suits are not about good engineering, they are about lubing up
the customer for a first rate reaming
It comes down to the usual common denominator, "money", period
They want to make the customer think they are getting a great deal,
and then find the best way to get as much money as they can,
and lock themselves into that company so getting rid of their
solution is as painful as possible without making it obvious
The marketing types and management types in alot of places are
about image, and giving the feel good, and ego massaging, and
orchestrating a grand play to make things look like they
should to the other suits in the other companies . Think of it like poker
The company that can balance this, have good engineering, and
good slick willy management wins
I hate it, and I decided to work for myself, and be a oncall
technician that does onsite and drop off
Corporate drones, watch Office Space, it makes TOO much sense.
Tech corporate insanity can suck the life out a person
May your god whomever he be, save you from this fate
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Sounds like you might want to drop out too. Welcome to the club. There are more of us appearing every day.
I think your comments are completely erroneous. They and much of the subsequent discussion miss a number of larger trends.
OSS remains a very small part of total software sales and costs. Even if what you say was true, it couldn't possibly explain the larger trend since no more than a few percent of IT professionals are focused on OSS.
Rather, I suggest that there are several larger trends that are causing the loss of IT jobs.
1) the overall economy remains mired in mediocrity and the "IT/dot.com crash" is still not completely over. Companies, investors, and consumers, are all still trying to understand and reassess the "value" of software. In the meantime much of those reinvested income tax savings have left for foreign markets, where there is a now better possibility of return on investment.
2) General IT education in the US is declining rather than rising. This is due in part to a recognition that there are fewer jobs available and a decreased emphasis on the critical need technical education by the current US administration (reduction of scholarships/reduction of governmnet PR/shifting resources to emphasize testing, faith-based approaches, etc). It has decided to allocate the bulk of funding into debt-servicing, military and security-oriented employment, and faith-based small business rather than technologies that require many programmers.
Yes, there are more folks using technology, but most of this is little more than a few clever programmers making it "idiot simple" to do what were, at one time, difficult tasks. Consequently, there is no longer the need for increasing numbers of developers to support an ever increasing number of unsophisticated users.
3) M$ largely has legalized and institutionalized its monopoly by securring the acquiessence of the US government. This has reduced the need for multiple developers to develop similar functionality in a variety of competing environments. Oh yes, they exist in pockets here and there, like small island populations, but otherwise extinct on the mainland. But, don't get me wrong, I believe the 'penguins' are like the birds and mammals of the Jurrasic, waiting for a chance for a cosmic event to alter the technical landscape and make the dinosaurs extinct. Its just at this moment, we are still in the technological equivallent of the Jurrasic. The dinosaurs are still basking in the sun and still almost completely dominating the waterholes.
The current governmental philosophy also reflects the trend in the corporate world to concentrate wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands so that it can be managed more "wisely, efficiently and securely". Like the influence of this philosophy in other areas of the economy, a few contractors are doing very, very well. Its just that these efforts are not coordinated into any kind of plan to improve the overall technology economy and their number and effect is too small to translate into noticeable trend in the larger population.
4) What software development is occurring is more and more moving offshore (outside of US). Technical education in most countries now greatly exceeds that in the US (which has moved from 25 toward 30 in the overall standings for math and science education over the past few years). More importantly the cost of taking advantage of this better-educated, non-US talent has greatly increased because networks are better and the differential between wages in the US and other countries make it more cost effective to hire 5-10 southasian programmers for the cost of one US one. Admittedly, it is easy to overlook the fact that about 60% of all advanced degrees in technological fields awarded in the US over the past 10 years have gone to foreigners. While many have stayed in the US, eventually much of this expertise finds its way home.
5) I looked into the methodology of the survey and like most of these kinds of surveys, it is abysmal. Very small samples, biased sampling techniques, no effort to account for spatial autocorrelation, a
Good links.
,stocks get a good push up .
Economics is NOT a science !
The president can sway the public mood into buying and investing. He can influence consumer confidence which is one of the big indicators WallSTreet looks for. If the CC indicator is really good
Alot economists were amazed at low inflation numbers of his high growth economy. There were many WRONG ivy leagued professor with mud on their faces. The Rush limbaugh crowd was humbled. The mantra of low taxes equals growth was proven incorrect.
Clinton put people to work with jobs programs and that created a climate of confidence which created more buying which created more jobs. It's a cycle that reinforced itself.
It all comes down to what you, as a person, consider acceptable risk.
More importantly, it depends on how you define success. Money is but one tool to measure success. Happiness is just as important. I have always found that if you are good at what you do, and you love what you do, the likelyhood that you will find a way to make good money doing it is greater than if you hate it.
I am willing to take less risk for a venture if the only reward is money (ie: I can make a wad, but its not fun). Success is subjective and progressive, not universal and static.
Unlike life insurance companies that can average the age of death of an entire population, you can't write a table of risk for a business venture. For that, you have to rely on common sense, experience and yes, a little luck.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Fucking GNAA troll!
Hey Pharmboy! Where were you when this was being bantered about?
These social safety nets are causing a very lazy society. I'm one of a dwindling part of the population that is actually productive. But I'm ready to give up, and not bother anymore. I'm tired of being taxed-to-death (I keep 20% net of what my company has to pay; this means I have to fight very hard - 5 times as hard, to be exact - to earn my keep in a globally competitive environment), hindered by social parasites (who cut off roads, lower speed limits so I need 20 minutes more per day to get to/from work, and lavishly spend tax money on projects I don't care about and will never profit from because I simply don't have the time) and yet still feeling insecure because, since I'm not trained as a social parasite, I will be disadvantaged and will have hard time learning to become one when hard times hit.
Higher standard of living ? Are you kidding ? Have you seen the petite houses and cars most Europeans are paying off ?
Socialism isn't the solution. Watch Europe crash and burn soon in the US's wake, for the same reasons but despite different politics.
That said, I agree with you that both political sides are equally bad in the US. But that applies to the parties here in Europe as well. They just care about their own political power.
Anyway, I'm hoping that the Americans will pretty soon get a better prez and administration than the one they have now.
I am willing to take less risk for a venture if the only reward is money (ie: I can make a wad, but its not fun)
:-)
So, if someone offered you a 30% chance of getting $5,000,000 for cleaning school toilets (and 70% chance of getting nothing), you wouldn't take it? Or perhaps *lots* of money overcomes risk *and* boredom?
Yeah, it's a stupid hypothetical question. I'm just nitpicking now, sorry.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I recently graduated from the University of South Carolina with an ME in Compuyer Engineering. My studies were funded with competitive academic fellowships, and my GPA was a 3.95. Previous to the ME program, I worked in IT for 4 years, in tech. support and programming.
....
Now I am looking for jobs, and I have been flatly told by recruiters that my degree *does NOT matter*. My grades, my theoretical and coding experience in school, my side projects on the web (I focus on web and db programming), and in particular the long and detailed record of the fact that I am intelligent and adaptable do NOT matter.
All any employer here wants is for me to fill out a checklist of skills. How many years of (on the job only) experience I have, etc. I feel that I have no choice but to lie, in order to get on the job, where I am sure I will be fine.
I have some hope of companies like Brainbench levelling the field, so that those of us with skills can prove it, whether we have the many years of work experience they require or not. On the other hand, one company down here required several Brainbench tests just to get to the interview stage. The scores I was told to get for two of them would have been the number one score in the state. This is just about as ridiculous as the people asking for 5+ years of J2EE experience.
Grr.
On the other hand, a company that actually pays its employees decently and treats them like real people has a chance to snap up real talent in this market. If only I could *find* that mythical company
Correct me if I am in error, but it is my understanding that neo-conservatives and neo-liberals are not ideologically related (geography being another matter, entirely.)
Neo-liberalism is an economic movement based around the work of Friedman of the Chicago School which abandoned Keynes. Neo-conservatism is a foreign policy movement, which I don't think has much to offer on domestic policy aside from some old ideas rehashed by Leo Strauss that are more appropriate for totalitarian states; hence their connection with the Trotskyites (though from what I read he seems every bit as much the ideological heir to Goebbels as to Trotsky.)
The distinction between the two is that neo-liberalism leads to class division while neo-conservatism leads to empire building and totalitarianism. Hence it isn't surprising that with both combined we are heading straight towards a becoming a bankrupt facist empire.
That both movements should stem from the University of Chicago comes as no surprise considering the university was founded by John D. Rockefeller.
This is good news, but the industry is still full of IT admins that suck ass that think they know what they're doing.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Surely you are not suggesting that supply-side economics is part of the Democratic platform. Nay, neo-liberals and neo-conservatives are both part of the Republican mainstream. Neither ideology has much support in the Democratic Party. While I know it is hard for many Greens/Independents to believe, there are major differences between the parties' ideologies. The reason we don't see it much in there actions is due to the excessive influence of lobbyist. Greens/Independents ought to recognize that their own candidates are just as likely to be swayed by lobbyist as are the Republican and Democratic candidates. Hence I believe that a three or four party system will not operate substantially differently from today's two party mess.
Your wonderful reference was so perfectly on target it simply requires absolutely no elaboration whatsoever - assuming one is dealing with people capable of moderately-to-intelligent thought processes - but there are simply too many people around who are oblivious to the obvious!
I've been telling people this for at least the last 3 years or so! The I.T. industry is basically "melting down" into a skillset employers just expect you to have, coupled with another skillset they claim to be hiring you for.
I watched it happen at a previous job, where the engineering staff were told to start picking up books on Visual Basic and Java programming, and actually started spending half of each week working along-side our software development team. Those who didn't show interest in "playing along" ended up looking elsewhere for work.
Not long afterwards, the "I.T. support" staff was cut - with much of the rationale being, "We've got things to the point now where most users just have thin clients on their desks, and all the control is done at the server side anyway. The engineering staff is the one group of real computer "power users" left who need support on their workstations, and they're learning to do it for themselves now."
To be honest, this trend disturbs me, because I've always considered myself a "hard core I.T./computer" guy. I really don't like math, nor do I really have any desire to try to get into another field at this point in time (in my 30's already). If I was talking to someone just going through college, I'd probably advise them to only get into computers secondarily, with a different primary career choice. But for folks like me, I don't see a real bright future.... No matter, I'm pretty stubborn, and if I become like one of those old TV repairmen still looking for old sets with tubes that need swapping out - so be it. That'll be me.
How often would I have a 30% chance? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? I could go for the first two: Once a year would be a bit harder, and any more than that, forget it.
I found this on the net. It may explain why the IT industry was as well as others gutted. " The Federal Reserve subscribes to the Phillips Curve theory, which equates high employment rates with inflation. This correlation causes the Fed to believe that if too many people find jobs that the economy will "overheat" and cause inflation to shoot through the roof...." "The Phillips Curve was a relationship between unemployment and inflation discovered by Professor A.W. Phillips. The relationship was based on observations he made of unemployment and changes in wage levels from 1861 to 1957. He found that there was a trade-off between unemployment and inflation, so that any attempt by governments to reduce unemployment was likely to lead to increased inflation. This relationship was seen by Keynesians as a justification of their policies. The curve sloped down from left to right and seemed to offer policymakers a simple choice - you have to accept inflation or unemployment. You can't lower both.... " --- So it looks like a permanet level of unemployment is already calculated into our economy no matter who is in office. And I guess they flip a coin to pick which industry(people) would be targeted. Human capital! Your life measured in dollars!
The symbol on slashdot for IT is a stapler.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I read a number of rants. A number of "gloom and doom postings." I am also aware that the next place for computer programmers to be outsourced to will be where programmers, help desks and so on are cheaper than they are in India. That would be China, folks.
At first NAFTA was a rip-snorting success for Mexico. Problem is, the owners of these new plants didn't see the future coming, they just wanted to cash in on the now. So, while a number of rich plant owners in Mexico got richer (at least momentarily) American companies receiving a tax and labor cost benefit from moving to Mexico were learning that they could move out of the US without significantly harming their business and promptly moved to where wages are even lower than they are in Mexico.
After all, NAFTA rules say that workers have rights to organize, even in Mexico. Why not move somewhere where workers have no rights whatsoever.
In the United States, shortly after the Civil War, prisoners in penitentiaries were traded back and forth between companies doing business in the Deep South more or less as slave labor chain gangs. You can see exactly the same treatment -- and worse -- today in China. I will not knowingly purchase goods marked "Made in China" because I find the practice of near slavery and outright slavery repugnant.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
What makes you think the less capable individuals are the ones now unemployed? If anything, the opposite is true... ass-kissing, low-profile, mediocre engineers get to keep their jobs, and the people who spur innovation are out on their butts.
The current economic orthodoxy says that if you lose your job, after a short period of time and maybe some retraining you will get a new job at the same wage you were receiving before. You really have to search to find economists who disagree, and they are all really out of the mainstream. IMHO, the unorthodox economists are right on this, and the mainstream economists at the big colleges, think tanks and on Wall Street are all affected by herd mentality. I feel it's a case of the economists who have discovered the correct models being voices crying in the wilderness.
"The above is not "informative". It is the old blame the victim and assume we the employed are so much better than that. It assumes that having a job is some kind of statement of moral worth or software savvy."
This topic's winding down, but I think this lady deserves a hug. I've been rallying against this attitude for months, using straightforward commentary to biting humour, and yet it still exists. I'm afraid this beast will only be slayed when we all are at the bottom looking up. It's kind of hard to look down on others from a shoulder to shoulder position.
I was invested in that same political philosophy and worldview for years. But for some reason, I was able to re-evaluate my worldview of political economy. For the time being, they either cannot see the evidence in front of their eyes, or they are able to fool themselves. And fooling ourselves is something we humans are quite good at doing.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
But even assuming the poster meant to say "during" the first six months of 2004, there's nothing in the Information Week article to support this.
That is the most generous posting I have ever seen anywhere. Although, I bet you will get many people responding to your post. If I thought I would like teaching I would do it myself.
Most every American is both a purchaser and worker, are they not?
And the vast majority of those Americans are small time stock owners. We all know that most stocks are held by other corporations, and the 1-3% of the richest people in the country, everyone else is a bit player, allowed to exist to make the whole system appear legit.
As long as the middle class continues to shrink and the country's wealth continues to be concentrated in a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole population, which has been happening (.pdf) continuously since the early 70's, the class warfare will never end. The right has simply been very good at diverting attention from this so far, usually by playing up the religious and racial differences, to keep all those people from realizing they're all in the same boat.
Exactly - OSS destroys jobs and allows IP to be easily copied. No other industry that gives away the fruits of its labor for free has ever survived. Once the US loses control of the software industry it is unlikely that other (eastern) countries will be so obliging. Of course, so the argument goes this is irrelevant - just look at Linux created in Finland. The overlooked point though is that without Unix and Bell labs there would be no Linux (or other Unix look alike). Dennis Ritchie and the others that developed Unix and C did not work for free and the company that funded their research did not give its product away for free. The absurd crusade to give away software is the dumbest business model there has ever been. If you are unemployed there is no doubt that OSS is part of your problem. Microsoft was and is right. You gotta make money to survive. But this is now all academic. By 2012 the US software industry - except for defence contractors - will have completely moved off shore. All the stupid argument will be over and there will be (alas) a glut of burger flippers. At least MacDonalds and Burger King will have benefited from OSS.
You guys sure are spinning this as hard as possible. Do you think most of you are invested emotionally in free market/free trade ideas, or is it your financial interests that you are concerned about?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Hah. Recognizing that you're being attacked doesn't equal returning fire. I wish "the left" would practice class warfare in return, really.
This is more like "Class Self-Defense". Are you quite well-to-do, or do you not see that regular folks are taking it in the ass from the Corporate Elite, daily?
Kerry supports both leoliberalism and neoconservatism. Look at the votes. I don't care what he says, I care how he votes. NAFTA, the recent wars? Yes, look at the votes.
Greens are for campaign finance reform. They self-impose campaign finance limits upon themselves. Thus lobbyists have no sway against them.
Greens don't accept legalized bribery. Your party does, so sit down, shut up, and learn how the Greens are revolutionizing the political process based on principles, not power brokering.
Per annum.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Like in the Pacifici in WWII, the Japanese would go blindly charge at a few marines, but the highly specialised and mobile marines would wipe them all out with a few casualties.
;>
I would like to point out a flaw in your analogy. Remember Tarawa.
That is, before the marines became highly specialised and mobile, thay went through such places as Guadau Canal (fierce month long fighting between equal forces of japanese troops and US marines), Tarawa (tiny island that was bombarded for six days, yet when the atack started by the elite 2nd marine division, which had new amphibious craft, first used during the war there, lost 90 out of 125 of them and the 5000 defending japaneese killed and wounded 3000 marines, with an unusually high percentage of deaths) and more. Oh, btw (this is an obligatory obvious trolly-question here), when the landing in Normandy occured, the coast was guarded by two divisions (300something and 700something)... Guess where the rest of 300th and 700th divisions were?
He lied to you.
He used intelligence for his political (and perhaps economical) gain.
He has awarded juicy contracts to companies (without looking for the best deal) of his chums and associates (that latter on overcharge your goverment).
He has done precious little against the medieval country from which financiers and ground soldiers of the 9-11 attack came (US-Saudi relations are in reasonbaly good health).
He has done nothing to cut your addiction from foreign oil).
He put a chum of Unocal, yet another US company, as president of AFghanistan (surprise: Unocal wins contracts for gas pipeline trhough AFghanistan).
And still you consider him a credible alternative?
What does this individual need to do for you to finally see the light? Appear in a party picture with Osama bin Laden?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Despite all the handwringing, wages are up, way up for us, from 1999 to 2003:
programmers: $55K to $65K;
software engineers (what's the diff?): $66K to $76K;
researchers (ah!): $67K to $85K
And since if you didn't do this, you'd have to do something else, consider these other occupations:
Employment at the post office -- down, slowly but steadily over 10 years.
Employment at your friendly local government? up, up and up, with never a moment's hestitation over the last 10 years. (I didn't happen to find Federal employment.)
What about the dot/com boom? The "Internet publishing and broadcasting" category peaked at 51,000 jobs in 2000, and is now down to 33,000. Compare that to "Computer systems design and related services" which peaked at 1.3 million, but is now down to 1.1 million.
This stuff comes from the month National Employment, Hours and Earnings report and the annual Occupational Employment Statistics survey.
It never stop to amaze me how so many geeks feel exploited but at the same time seem unable to utter that dreaded word: NO!
Do you need to lern Smalltalk for work? What is stopping you to do it during business hours? The workload? Well, gee, then are you suppossed to hold the world in your shoulders if your manager can't allocate resources?
I have never worked more than 40 hours a week, and now I work 35. 09:00 to 17:00 (one hour lunch) and I leave. Need to study? I do, during business hours.
All this mindless self inmmolation so the corrupt CEOs can make obscene gains even if they screw up things is the most self defeating attittude of US workers.
Work ethic has its place, but more often than not I just perceive unending masochism.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Slaves did not have any rights nor did have any saying on their conditions.
All the people you are mentioning are no slave labour, not by any meaningful descriptiong or any meaningful context,
You could say cheap labour and you may have a point, but that would be like saying the sky looks blue or air is transparent, I mean it is self evident that companies want the cheapest labour they can get, it is just you silly USians that seem unable to understand this in spite of you being home of the more savage capitalist system in the world.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am dissapointed, Very much.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Nobody mentioned the outsourcing of IT jobs to places like India. Their yearly salaries are about what we make in a month, and they are happy to get that. The down side is that I can't understand what the hell they are saying half the time. I think we should outsource the Dunkin Donuts jobs to the Indians, but leave the IT stuff right here. Bottom line- do I have to paint a dot on my forehead to get my next IT job?
you cant win an arguement with a diehard republican or democrat.
because by definition, they are already braindead.
NAFTA is globalism. Kerry's vote on the recent war had much more to do with trusting the President and the intelligence community; an honest mistake made by 98 other senators. Back in reality, we will not have a Green senator if they maintain their self-imposed campaign finance limits. And if they drop their limits then they will again be under the influence. Hence my original assertion stands. Piece of advice my friend - get your head out of the sand.
An e-mail is on its way... I'd not considered teaching (I like mentoring, but the idea of being in front of an expectant classroom makes me a bit nervous), but it's certainly worth considering...
Thanks!
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.