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.

Comments

Re:Well, according to the last debate...

[operagost]

How many programmers don't have four-year degrees? Obviously he was talking about people stuck in dead-end low skill jobs. Pick something else to troll about.

Re:Well, according to the last debate...

[lpangelrob2]

Didn't Bush tell us to go to a community college and educate ourselves so we can get higher paying jobs?

The funny thing is, I thought the community college you were referring to was Harvard. :-)

Re:Learn More Stuff

[demachina]

" I'm working on getting my teaching certification in mathematics. Like any industry, it's good to have a backup plan"

Hmmm, teaching, now there is a high paying profession. Good backup plan. Is that one or two rungs above pizza delivery.

Maybe outsourcing programming will fizzle when managers realize how hard it is, but I doubt it. Most dumb managers think budget first, and quality and success second and the budget advantage is very compelling. Hopefully smart managers don't think that way but if they see tasks they can spin off to Timbuktu and save a bunch of money they will. The less managers spend on their staff the more there is for their options and bonuses. Gotta pay those country club dues.

My solution is self employment as long you have the skill and contacts to get work. Also move out of overpriced U.S. cities and eventually out of the U.S. all together so you can live cheap, underbid your U.S. counterparts and be on the winning end of outsourcing. An added fringe benefit of moving out of the U.S. is you get further away from the rising American police state(though probably not far enough), the moral majority and the nut cases running the Republican party lately.

Re:He's right.

[sunwukong]

the entire US signs up to take correspondence courses in taxidermy that are shown on TV.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is a fine specimen of the once prolific, American Cube Dwelling Programmer, posed as his career died, browsing Slashdot ...

Re:Worked for me...

[kin_korn_karn]

Blaming a President for your lack of job is about as brite as claiming one got you a job.

Spelling BRIGHT wrong while flaming people for not being BRIGHT is fucking stupid.

Rising cost of reproduction leads to extinction

[Baldrson]

In the Wired storyThe Geek Syndrome Bryna Siegel has hypothesized the explosion in autism rates is due to:

One provocative hypothesis that might account for the rise of spectrum disorders in technically adept communities like Silicon Valley, some geneticists speculate, is an increase in assortative mating. Superficially, assortative mating is the blond gentleman who prefers blondes; the hyperverbal intellectual who meets her soul mate in the therapist's waiting room. There are additional pressures and incentives for autistic people to find companionship - if they wish to do so - with someone who is also on the spectrum. Grandin writes, "Marriages work out best when two people with autism marry or when a person marries a handicapped or eccentric spouse.... They are attracted because their intellects work on a similar wavelength."

That's not to say that geeks, even autistic ones, are attracted only to other geeks. Compensatory unions of opposites also thrive along the continuum, and in the last 10 years, geekitude has become sexy and associated with financial success. The lone-wolf programmer may be the research director of a major company, managing the back end of an IT empire at a comfortable remove from the actual clients. Says Bryna Siegel, author of The World of the Autistic Child and director of the PDD clinic at UCSF, "In another historical time, these men would have become monks, developing new ink for early printing presses. Suddenly they're making $150,000 a year with stock options. They're reproducing at a much higher rate."

Now, whether you accept this hypothesis for the eitology of autism or not, the subtext is that it is acceptable to hypothesize that certain genetic factors contribute to software engineering skills.

So, let's go with that in the context of "the extinction of the American programmer" and ask ourselves what the real cost of reproduction is for American programmers vs programmers from societies where programmers have marriages arranged with women of comparable educational and socioeconomic background with extended family support (frequently with someone in the extended family providing food direct from the clan's farm) for children.

Societies like India.

You can rest assured that the more an American excells at programming the lower his odds of reproducing are for the simple reason that no matter where he works he is in a male saturated environment with a high cost of living. A very very few make it really really rich and have a couple of kids, yes. Maybe there are a few Orthodox Jews, Mormons or traditionalist Catholics and have some cultural protections of their fertility.

But on the whole, the last cohort of engineers to have any sort of reproductive success were those that were born before 1950 and were therefore in a position to enjoy affordable real estate in combination with being in a position to ride the shockwave of the baby boom which came just after they were positioned to avail themselves of all that cheap labor (and nice nubile female fertility).

If you go to a typical office on Wall Street or Madison Avenue or some law firm in Washington D.C. you will find professional men who are just as dedicated as the most dedicated programmer -- with a huge difference: They are surrounded by young fertile women. New York City has one of the highest female to male ratios in the world.

There's a eugenics program going on in the US alright -- or should I say pogrom.