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U.S. Programmers An Endangered Species?
CommanderData writes "USA Today reports that US Programmers are an 'Endangered Species' and expects them to be 'extinct' within the next few years, replaced by offshoring and H-1B visa holders. They suggest people will manage overseas projects, become self-employed, or switch to other fields. What do my fellow code-dinosaurs plan to do before the asteroid hits?" A report on Newsforge (which is part of OSTG along with Slashdot) shows the flip side of the coin.
Certain areas of programming lend it self away from offshoring and H-1B visa holders. Here in the defense industry we have the confidence that our programing requires US citizens holding security clearances. This, however, does cement our job secturity. While we do not have to worry about offshoring, the vacillating DOD defense fund and nearing presidant election leave us a bit chary.
That's a good idea -- if you can get a clearance. Getting a security clearance can be difficult for various reasons. For one thing, you have to find a company that will sponsor you (either that, or go to work for the government). For another, you have to meet the requirements for a clearance, and they've tightened those up since 9/11 (I should know -- when I applied for a clearance, the government told me they'd have to investigate me for well over a year, just because I had changed my name). I even know of one guy who's been cleared for a while but is now in jeopardy of losing his clearance because his wife is French.
But yes -- if you can get the clearance, that's definitely an excellent way to give yourself a good dose of career security.
The death of the American Programmer has been heralded many times before. Back before spreading terror about the eminent collapse of our non-Y2K compliant world, Ed Yourdon wrote a little book of doom called The Rise and Fall of the American Programer, in which a dim future was projected for our overpaid and underworked behinds.
He wrote this is 1993.
Some of you will remember that the booming economy of the mid to late 90s in which being able to say "internet" landed you a tech job.
It will take more years to evaluate the real impact of offshoring on the American Programmer. If programming is what you enjoy doing, you will always have work (although you will have to be flexible in what you program).
As always, don't panic.
True, but the fact that in a general question about outsourcing, he simply assumed that it mostly applied to dead-end low skill jobs.
The mere fact that a decent number of high-tech high-skill jobs are going overseas was completely glossed over. What saddend me was that Kerry didn't say anything about it either.
I think that $52k vs. $60k is the difference when both programmers are located in the United States, and the 40% pay cut is when the coder is located in India.
H-1B in the U.S. make largely what U.S. citizens make.
The jobs overseas are a whole different ballgame.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Offshoring is actually a bad move for clients who need software development, since it puts so much distance between the software engineer and the customer (plus a possible language barrier). If the engineer and customer can't communicate efficiently and effectively, then the product will suffer in both quality and release date. Most likely, software companies which offshore development tasks will suffer in the not-so-long term, while others, who hire developers close to home, will release better products faster. However, other tasks like nighttime telephone tech support are easily offshored with no consequences.
I just left a company where I had to tell my engineers their jobs are going to India. I agree that the coders in India are not going to be able to do the same level of work and will likely fail on major projects. The main reason for this failure is communication. If the client is 11 timezones away, how can their be any collaboration.
I had a great team that worked close with the business and developed a lot of new extreme programming practices. In the end the execs decide with their checkbooks. India resources are very cheap. Unfortunatly the execs had not realized the hidden cost of the main customer service website not working properly or not even running. The other item the business folks want it the latest products, pricing and promotions on the web in a very timely fashion. They don't get any of that now but they are stuck with the resources the IT department decides to use.
As for me, I've seen the writing on the wall. Consulting rates have been pushed down and other then boutique consulting, hard to command a decent rate for the effort required. I've had enough and to quote the "City Slickers" movie, my life is a do-over.
Washingtonpost has an article on the Industry vs. American workers squaring off on this issue. and an article on outsourcing.
BTW, Harriss Miller and the ITAA are the ENEMY on this issue and the IEEE is the good guy. Check out IEEE Legislative action center to help us take action on these issues.
My wife has a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics, and has been unemployed for 3 years. The job market has been so bad that she has pretty much given up even looking.
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When I suggested a couple of years ago that she could go back to school she just glared at me and said "27 years of school was enough". I can't believe Bush thinks "get a job" is an economic policy, which is why my wife and I are voting for Kerry this year.
Check this out -- funny! http://www.theonion.com/election2004/news_4013.ph
Debating (healthily) is okay, but spreading FUD is not.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I'm a Republican too, but I despise Bush. He claims to be conservative but is wholesaling America to the highest bidder.
I really wish I could take back my vote in 2000 and give it to Gore.
Bush is great if you're rich, own a major oil or logging company, like to breathe CO2, or look forward to the 23 rise on sea level.
If you're the average Joe in the U.S. that doesn't buy into the whole Saddam = Terrorism garbage, then Bush eats it. I'm sick to death of his cheesy grin and empty rhetoric.
Anyone But Bush
John Kerry is a Douche Bag But I'm Voting For Him Anyway
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Bush is a big proponent of H-1B visas. With the huge number of un- or under- employeed American computer workers the H-1B visa program for computer workers should be drastically reduced.
mbbac
Come to Greenville SC. BMW just opened a plant here about 5 years ago. Its called in-sourcing.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Jesus, only a grade schooler would make such an argument.
1999 Numbers :
2000 Numbers :
2001 Numbers :
2002 Numbers :
2003 Numbers :
Difference, 1999-2003
Considering the tech burst, the generally faltering economy, outsourcing, the MPAA, and 9/11, it's pretty good. Especially if you aren't a programmer (incidentally, they average around 8-10k less a year than the software engineers, IIRC).
I'm not a wonk, I'm a geek, so please forgive if I have my numbers or sources wrong somehow.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Would you stop it about the H1Bs? They are *NOT* "stealing" your jobs! For an H1B to be hired, the company has to *prove* that the foreign worker is better qualified than local available workforce for the position they are being hired. And the salary level *must* be approved by the local dept. of labor. In fact, many companies avoid H1Bs like a plague because it takes too much effort to do the paperwork, and they have to wait 4-5 months before getting an approval.
No US company would hire an H1B if they could have an American doing that job. Especially considering that H1Bs are limited to 6 years.
I'm an H1B and I've been one for the past 6 years. I'm leaving to go to Canada in the spring because I'm coming up on my limit and can't continue working at my current job past July. I'm good at what I do, I have excellent English skills (and Russian, and now French), and I have good references. I have paid all my taxes (including Social Security, which I won't ever see back, since I don't qualify for it), and nearly everything I earned in the past 6 years went back into your economy.
Feel free to bitch about offshoring your jobs, since the money actually leaves your economy forever, but don't blame H1Bs if you lose your job. That's not how it works.
</rant>If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Programmers do not mate.
We interface.
I still can't get my wife to say "Enq" and waiting for me to say "Ack" before she asks a question.
No, YOU go watch it again.
A note about the Pell Grants he talks about: they are automatic, not something that is "expanded" deliberately by a president. You become eligible for Pell Grants once your income falls below a certain level. The fact that more people are getting Pell Grants than before is not something for him to be bragging about- it's a direct consequence of increased poverty during his administration. It takes a lot of gall for him to actually brag about Pell Grants expanding.
I don't know about where you live, but getting an apprenticeship is nearly impossible around here... The skilled trade of being an electrician is wanted by many around here, and the demand is far too low to find a job for the amount of people interested in it. I'd have better luck finding a programming job here than an electrician apprenticeship.
So someone who's working on an H1B isn't necessarily foreign-EDUCATED, only foreign. Plenty of H1B workers are US educated.
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
Speaking as someone seeing first hand the quality of today's college students, I'm not sure I can agree with you that the claim of lackluster US education is a fallacy. Being an older student (due to transferring schools and taking time off), I have the unique perspective of having seen two generations of college students while working towards my degree.
In that time, I have seen the the basic skills of the students decline dramatically. Most of the papers I've read by my classmates read like papers written by non-native speakers of English... and these are the born-and-raised American students! Simple problem-solving skills seem to be non-existent in the current generation of college students. Worst of all, academic dishonesty is rampant--when I started my college career, no one even considered cheating, but now many of the students in my classes cheat without even realizing they're cheating! Even worse, there seems to be an attitude among today's students that they are entitled to pass a class, regardless of their performance.
The only real light of hope I can see in this situation is the fact that the foriegn students, at least the ones from non-Western countries (at my school, I haven't really run into any non-Americans from Europe (perhaps because European schools are good enough that no one wants to come here instead?)), are often worse than the Americans. But I can excuse some of them--they are often not only dealing with difficult topics, but trying to learn them in a language that is not their native tongue.
So, is the US education system better than those in many other countries? I'd have to say yes. From what I can see, however, that's not really saying much. US education definitely needs improvement, because we're no longer substantially better than everyone else. And if we're going to compete, we absolutely must have the best product available, because there's no way we can compete on price.
I have alot of work done in India, quoting me 10 dollars an hour and taking 4x as long to complete it. Gee that is 40 dollars an hour
Here are a few tidbits I know about outsourcing to India:
1. India (I believe TATA) is home to one of the first two SEI Level 5 software organizations - the other was the NASA shuttle group.
2. Programmers in India are more like $35 per hour rather than $5.
3. The time difference can actually be a benefit as customers can test during the day things that were coded durning the night before.
4. Anyone who has changes to go to code going to production in 30 minutes with a million lines should really review their processes and standards. That sounds like an invitation to failure.
5. Programmers got spoiled just like stock market bubble surfers during the 90's. It makes completely no sense to pay a VB or HTMl guy $80 per hour. I saw even higer rates than that.
To summarize: the Indians are getting the business because they are good programmers who have a good process and charge what the work is worth. The Indian rates have been rising steadily over the past few years and will equalize soon. So I don't really believe the Ameircan programmer is going the way of the Dodo bird.
Poor people spend, they don't save. That creates new demand, which creates new business opportunities, which creates new jobs.
Yeah, saving is bad, everybody max out your credit cards right now! Come on. When you save, you make money available for investing in new businesses and expanding existing ones.
I was fairly miffed that Kerry did so little to explain how increasing the minimum wage spurs the economy.
Because it doesn't. Otherwise we could increase the minimum wage to $50/hour and all be rich.
We hear the supply-side view about the minimum wage killing jobs all the time, even though the same sorts of dire predicitions have been made for 70 years now without coming to pass.
European economies are much more Keynesian than the US, and have much higher unemployment.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
That's what I did. Yes, I went to community college, and then on to a one year tech school. I lost my job to outsourcing/.dotbomb at the end of 2000. However know I am doing quite well now.
Silicon Valley is dying because of imported labor.
1998 == No imported workers
Badly off, and racist to boot. TiE (tiesv.org) was founded in the Valley in 1992. Non-tech Indians (physicians, for example) were here earlier.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton