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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.
Yes, like other posters I do not believe my career is in jeopardy, having long since moved past programming into software engineering. Still, I've recently found myself drawn to hobbies that when I look at them could potentially replace SE as a profession should I ever choose to do so. Feel free to add to this list with replies:
E lectronics (ok, this isn't too far from software, and about the same endangered status).
:-)
Automotive mechanics
Carpentry (soon to branch out and study architecture and general contracting)
Farming/survival/self-sufficiency
Anyone have others? What hobbies to computer professionals enjoy that might branch out into alternate careers? I discarded Lego building immediately
Nerd Rock In Progress
There's a futures market that examines some of these issues: ITJOBS
In 10 years, India will be full of very experienced managers, architects, and analysts. In the US though, most of those jobs will be gone much like the junior positions are leaving now.
Parent is very insightful, but the senior positions won't move, unless entire projects are moved overseas. At that point why not just license someone else's code? They will just have a lot of trouble trying to fill them with people who have a resume that meets the requirement that they are looking for. Eccccccenomikz says that at that point, either HR will have to lower expectations (less bang for the buck from their point of view) or Pay more to get the top talent (Scarcity of resource drives price up). Either way it's a long term negative for businuess in the USA, because of their short sighted goals. Which is really rather typical of the American businuess perspective.
(Eventually, Japan might just buy the entire world, because they have long term goals and are patient about achieving them.)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I agree with you... Although this is even more shameful
They actually cited a dumb slashdot joke as the source
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
In the real word of hardware/software integration, it usually takes a bit of time between the people that write the drivers for hardware and the hardware designers to get things right. Usually with both H/W and S/W sitting in a room together with some kind of test equiptment to make sure that the hardware is doing the right thing and to find which side of the fence the bugs lie. That's hard to do with a 12-hour phase shift.
It doesn't solve the H1B visa issue, but there are many senior people who make 10x what people in India make for a reason. They are worth their weight in gold because of the time that is saved by others. An excellent debugging person can save boatloads of other people's time that a crappy debugging person would waste. That's what makes the more expensive person cheaper.
I think all this doom and gloom stuff is left over from the heady days of the boom times and the subsequent crash. There may be certain types of jobs that go overseas, but there are many that will stay right here for the forseeable future.
10 years ago people though I was nuts for doing this Unix thing when all the jobs would be in Windows. Yet, I still get calls for more work than I can do from people that need a unix programmer. So the pundants are worth exactly what you pay them for their opinions: nothing
Some software companies or IT shops might have a highly compartmentalized (stratified?) software development process with senior people doing mainly design work and junior people writing the actual code and doing little else, but that really hasn't been the case in most the places I've worked during my career.
The beginning programming jobs I've been exposed to over the years have *not* been just "coding" positions -- writing code is only one of the tasks involved in the job. The person also has to do a number of other things, often including the initial requirements gathering and various follow-up tasks with the end users or customers, creating the interface/program/database design, doing the actual coding itself, writing or updating any technical documentation which might exist, doing formal unit testing before acceptance testing, doing regression testing if required, and finally providing the actual support to the customer after the code is loaded into production.
That was the case for me when I first came out of school (I was effectively put in charge of a particular set of programs and had to do it all), and it's still the case in my current place of employment.
Maybe some companies can actually afford to have dedicated design people who don't actually write the code themselves, but I guess the places I worked didn't have the resources required to have that type of functional separation. The one or two experts in each area had to do it all, since there wasn't anyone else who know each area well enough to produce an effective design.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
But there's a difference between programming and software engineering...
Very true. Programming is just one part of the software development process. Programming focuses on product, software engineering focuses on process. Programming is the "what", software engineering is the "how". This leaves out one part of the equation, one part I will probably be flamed for bringing up: computer science.
I consider myself a computer scientist as opposed to a programmer or software engineer. I have a solid CS background and am working on buttressing that with mathematics education. I like CS theory, statistics, discrete mathematics, etc. I do not like being a code monkey, nor do I like being a software engineer, although I do value both and do take on both those roles at my job. I much prefer being a computer scientist. How does this fit into the scenario presented by the article?
While I think most theory and math discoveries are already made, I still think progress is possible. I want to do research, but it looks like the shrinking computer fields might have repercussions even in academia. I may have to emmigrate to the next computer nexus to keep on the bleeding edge. I hate to bring politics into this, but I think that for all the educational focus our national leadership has, I think they all need to realize that bright, intelligent workers mean nothing if India can still do the work cheaper. Then we have a shrinking working class paying taxes to support new, bright workers who spend years being educated only to collect unemployment benefits. How about a "No Worker Left Behind" law?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
That's not a slam against Indians (or other off-shoring cultures), but more a fact of life. They are disconnected from the project to such a degree that they have no real grasp of it other than to produce *exactly* what the specs document says. This is the same type of problem you see in using consulting firms like Anderson, nay, Accenture in developing your software.
Agreed! Personally, I'm not planning on getting out of the industry, but I do plan to work only on projects using agile methods like Extreme Programming. Why? Because methods like XP tightly integrate the businesspeople and the techies in a way that is impossible if you're working in different time zones.
Not only is this more efficient than a document-driven process, but it's so much more flexible that you can keep ahead of your competitors using traditional processes. For projects that need speed and flexibility, outsourcers can't compete, whether they're in an Accenture office or in Bangalore.
No doubt the industry is changing but I do not think it is valid to lump every different kind of programmer or job into one category and say that it is being outsourced.
The most obvious outsourcing occurs in companies that have IT departments but are not in themselves a software development company. For instance, a bank and it's IT department. These IT departments are a commodity for the non-tech company and they are looking to satisfy that commodity at the cheapest possible price. And the types of jobs being exported are very basic types of programming that could be compared to the simple manufacturing jobs that are also exported.
This is a very different situation from a software company where the programmers are not considered a commodity. This might not be true for the very large software companies but that is also an indication of their dysfunction.
The jobs are flowing to India purely because of the low cost. As India develops a large middleclass due to this influx of money, wages will rise and the value proposition will worsen for India. That's when the jobs will start flowing to China. India is not necessarily in the best position, long term.
SYS 49152
Programmers are typically well educated and mobile - they will go where the work is.
Hundreds of contract programmers are said to have left the UK to work abroad becuase of recent tax changes targeted at them. Right now in the UK I know of a number of _US_ programmers who have come here to work on major projects where apparently they can't find enough UK contractors. Probably (given it is a large multinational/US company) some of the work is also being outsourced from the UK back _in_ to the US.
I work on projects that require US citizenship, top secret clearance, polygraphs. There's no way my job or our work will ever be outsourced.
BTW, we're hiring in the Ft Meade, MD area...cleared or uncleared. Unfortunately, business is booming and we're behind the hiring curve for the year.
You forgot to mention the medical profession. I was just in the hospital visiting a sick aunt. It was about 10pm and they were taking a chest X-ray. Then they told me that they needed to fax the X-ray out so that it could be analyzed and they would know what to do next when the analysis came back. Given the late hour (10pm Pacific coast time), I asked if the X-ray was being faxed to Bangalore. The nurse smiled, commented it was a cogent question, and suggested I take it up with the hospital administration because she was not allowed to discuss it.
I have been wondering, though - before I got fired, after, and even now - what if I hadn't been able to find a job? The truth is, there were several possibilities (heh, had one come in from guru.com this morning that looked like it would be a cool deal as a smalltime temp contract) - but it seems like those possibilities are dwindling. Maybe it is the economy - but then again, maybe programming is going away?
I am 31, I only have a "technical associates degree" from a small school, hardly any college experience (a couple of community college classes), no real degree. I also have a mortgage, bills and a family (well, my wife and a dog - no kids yet) to take care of. My main domain of knowledge is computing, in all of its forms - and programming specifically. This is what I love, this is what I do best. Given a job having to do with computers, an employer can expect me to work very hard to make them do what they want them to do. I know there are others that feel this way to.
I can't afford to go back to school - I don't have the time, I certainly don't have the money. I am living my life now, just wanting enough to be comfortable, and have a little fun now and then. So - serious question - what happens to a person like me if all the programming/computer jobs go away?
The outcome of such a situation doesn't seem rosy. I likely would end up in a job I would hate, doing something just to keep the roof over my head. That isn't the kind of life I am willing to lead - working at a job I hate for less money than I feel I am worth. I can't think of any job I would really like, that I have the knowledge or ability to do, that doesn't involve computers. There are jobs that I wouldn't mind doing - but I don't know if they exist, nor do I have the required experience for them even if they did?
One thing my wife and I discussed when this occurred was basically "chucking it all": Liquidating *all* of our assets, except for bare basics, buying a cheap RV, sticking the rest of the money in an account somewhere (and maybe some in an IRA) - and then becoming road hippies and travelling the continent. That would be a better life than a dead end unforgiving hateful job.
But seriously - are there other options for people in mine or similar situations? People who have little money to spend to educate themselves on the "next thing" (what is that, anyhow?) - I can't even think of a career path that won't suffer the same or similar fate as programming, etc. Becoming a lawyer, or a doctor, or a "healthcare professional", or a biotechnologist (yeah, I have the time and money for any of those - right)? About the only job I might have a shot at, that can't be off-shored, and people would need - would be either an air-conditioning repairman or auto-mechanic (and I still don't have the money to pay for such education). Plus, I don't relish the thought at doing either of those jobs (harsh and hazardous working conditions - though either one sounds somewhat interesting to do).
Ideas, comments, suggestions? All I can do right now is work as hard as I can doing what I know for what it is worth while I can still get a job (and, as I stated before, I did find work) - and save my money, get rid of all of my debt - and hope there is a way out...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon