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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.
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
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.