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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)."
- 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 ?
The number of jobs in any market is not finite. There is one "one pie" that once job is taken, is empty. People create their own jobs. People start new businesses and create new jobs all the time. You statement reflects "zero sum" economics, and sorry, but it doesn't fly in a capitalistic economy.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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.
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.
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.
What reason do thy have to upgrade? What new features are on offer?
;)
Some of the new viruses require at least a 1.5ghz processor
But yea, my mom doesn't need anything faster for email and web surfing. She has a 2.0 Celeron box from Dell that I bought her (live 1300 miles away, wanted the support for her) so she is not likely to need anything faster until it dies. The only reason "regular" people upgrade is for games. Hell, I went and upgraded my video card yesterday just to play Doom3.
The problem with computers isn't speed, its software. I setup a webserver to talk to my X10 modules here at the house, so I can turn lights on and off from anywhere in the world. I had to patch together all kinds of software to make this happen, as I haven't seen any packages that could do everything my kludge of packages can do. Home automation doesn't need powerful computers, it needs software. We are underutilizing the hardware we already have.
Part of this problem, of course, is the fact that manufacturers will not agree on standards for appliances to talk to each other. Each demanding a proprietary system, thinking it will protect them, when it only makes the irrelevent. This is one of the reasons I am pro-OSS, as open standards are what will bring us the really cool software that we could have run on P3/500s had it existed at the time.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Yes, FOSS has been around for years, but suddenly it is the cause of job losses - not institutional corruption that has gone unchecked, manipulation of energy market prices which can easily cause the economy to tank (1972 US, or more recently the California economy trashed so that Enron could make some fast money), not downsizing and outsourcing in the financial section after 9/11 and the sector wide corruption at the top of those businesses from the S&L "crisis" to the only partially told truth about illegal trading now.
Was there a big loss in jobs when Sun came into existence and decided to make cheap (compared to the rest of the players in that market at the time) workstations and small servers with off the shelf parts instead of proprietary, custom stuff?
Did the release of perl 5 cause the numbers of programmers to drop signficantly?
New versions of BLAST cause a sudden drop in programmers doing genetic work?
LLNL releasing some mathematics libraries tank the engineering software market?
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they hide is vital."
- unknown
I'll admit he got very lucky. The tech jobs graph looks like it was rigged for Clinton and against Bush. But the thing is
1. Even ignoring tech jobs, the job sitation was pretty good under Clinton, and still not break even under Bush
2. Eventually you have to come to the conclusion that either Democrats are all very lucky, or that they're doing something better.
As for the Internet, this seems to indicate that the bidding for the ARPANET contract started in 1968, under the LBJ adminstration.
Here
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.)
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.
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.
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
I know this will be marked as reduntdant, but this is seriously the most insightful thing I have ever read on /.
Unfettered free trade is not helping this country, mainly because it isn't free trade. China wants to send stuff to the US, but has no interest in buying US products. Besides the obvious under-valued currency, there are also a lot of other barriers to US goods in the Chinese market. There are huge tariffs and quotas on everything imported into China from the US. If the US tried to impose these quotas on China, China would scream bloody murder at the WTO. In order to even sell stuff in the Chinese market, you have to make a large percent of it in China, and transfer a lot of technology to the Chinese government.
Why is the US standing idly by you ask? Because our leaders don't give a shit about you and I. The huge tax cust is funded China is buying a large amount of the US deficit. We are esentially borrowing from China to buy Chinese goods and making a lot of influential people in Washington very rich.
This is a country who's top general said as recently as 1996 that war with the US was inevitable.
The US is losing the war on communism with Wal-Mart leading the charge!
So we should all just give up, and not try then? Should we all worship the quitter, the one that was too afraid to take risks?
No thanks, I would rather fail while trying, than cry and die because I may fail. Guess what: life is full of risks, I would rather decide my own risks, rather than be a drone in a company where the risks are there but hidden from my eyes.
Yes, most start up businesses fail in the first few years. What you didn't mention was that most businesses fail from mismanagement, not circumstances. So the answer is that no one should start a business? No one should take risks? We should all abandon all hope and just go "get a job"?
No thanks. I choose to not live with such a doom and gloom outlook on life, making myself a "victim". Life has thrown me many curve balls (which I won't cover, because they are irrelevent, we all have challenges and mine are no more important than yours), but I have come out swinging and done fine. I am not better, smarter, better educated or luckier than anyone else. I just refuse to roll over and die, and willing to make the sacrifices for something that is important to me. Its more about attitude than anything else. I choose to not give up.
History is full of people who faced more adversity than you or I know, and the ones that gave up, we don't know about as they are forgettable and forgotten. The ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and succeeded in spite of the odds, should provide enough inspiration for the rest of us.
Abe Lincoln is the best example. Go read about all his failures, lost elections, failing law practice, limited education, for decades before becoming president. Just about everything he tried before becoming President was filled with failure, yet it was his unwillingness to quit that best defined him, and presented him with the opportunity to become argueably our most important President ever.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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.
I find it interesting that you would quote exactly what he wrote, and then baldly mischaracterize his statement in the rest of your comment. He most pointedly did not say "just 'work my ass off.'" He said, "taking risks and working your ass off."
In other words, he's not claiming that you and the 131K should all merely compete against each other for the same corporate jobs by working hard. He's saying you have the ability to take a risk and start up your own business. And that if you are successful, you will not only employ yourself but in all likelihood several of the 131K unemployed tech workers. Jobs don't just exist in the ether. Someone had to create them. And the next someone could be you. And if it's not you, some of your fellow unemployed group will have an entrepreneurial drive and will create jobs. It'sl likely that when all is said and done, more jobs will be created than were outsourced or destroyed. That is how the economy grows. How do you think all those computer jobs came about in the first place?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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.