Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.