Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years

Juzzam writes "The Herald Sun reports that IBM and university officals are worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals and the decreasing supply of computer science students. From the article: 'The slope shows an unbelievable decline in computer science majors,' Astrachan said. 'There are smart people no longer even signing up to take our introductory courses. We need to fix it, or there's not going to be a U.S. work force in computer sciences.'"

Comments

hire the unemployed IT professionals?

[adapt]

There are plenty of talented IT professionals on the market searching for tech jobs.

A couple of weeks ago, I logged in Siemens worldwide jobs site, and, in my field, 321 out of 322 open positions were in China.

Most employers could see the benefits of offering job security and paying decent salaries as an effective means of retaining the talent (and all those hours spent in training...). Instead, they hire temps, pay huge fees to temp agencies and recruiters, they "outsource", etc. Without a knowledge base, there is no future in any company.

It is more a problem of "if I pay you less, I can keep more for myself" than a true lack of qualified professionals on the market. If engineers wanted to flip burgers they would have studied at the burger flipping college! :)

Re:H1B visas are a real option

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

When you can reduce my living costs to those of someone in Bangalore, perhaps then I can consider a more "competitive" salary/compensation package.

Until that time, I've got to pay my bills and feed my family. So I'll stick with my "high" Amercian salary and benefits package, thank you.

Re:IBM and double standards

[Antique Geekmeister]

You worked for IBM Global Services, right? They're real champions at burning out anyone even vaguely competent. I have a friend still recovering from a long stint working for them.

Re:Economics

[SnapShot]

Exactly right. There's a political theory called "cheap labor conservatism" though the cheap labor conservatives, of course, don't call it that.

from the link...

• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like social spending or our "safety net". Why. Because when you're unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like - which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you "over a barrel" and in a position to "work cheap or starve".
  
• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions. Why. These reforms undo all of their efforts to keep you "over a barrel".
  
• Cheap-labor conservatives like "free trade", NAFTA, GATT, etc. Why. Because there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who are "over a barrel", and will work cheap.
  
• Cheap-labor conservatives oppose a woman's right to choose. Why. Unwanted children are an economic burden that put poor women "over a barrel", forcing them to work cheap.
  
• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like unions. Why. Because when labor "sticks together", wages go up. That's why workers unionize. Seems workers don't like being "over a barrel".
  
• Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about "morality", "virtue", "respect for authority", "hard work" and other "values". Why. So they can blame your being "over a barrel" on your own "immorality", lack of "values" and "poor choices".
  
• Cheap-labor conservatives encourage racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry. Why? Bigotry among wage earners distracts them, and keeps them from recognizing their common interests as wage earners.
  

Re:IBM and double standards

[swillden]

the layoffs provide managers with an opportunity to dump their deadwood.

Oh, I should mention that this is a good thing, because IBM is so afraid of ex-employee lawsuits that it's damned near imposible to get fired for cause.

I know two people who got fired.

The first one took a position as CEO of a client, without quitting his job at IBM first. He was drawing both paychecks for about a four-month period, and working within IBM to sabotage our efforts to get the client in question to pay a large outstanding invoice. He was fired, but he was also given a large cash settlement in exchange for a promise never to sue IBM -- which absolutely amazed me given that he was scamming IBM.

The second one was a project manager who wanted to tell a services client that they needed to pay us an extra $200K on a $500K project. The project was over budget due to mismanagement and he wanted to tell the customer "Sorry, we already spent an extra thousand hours, you'll have to pay this bill for those hours. Sorry we didn't tell you about it and let you make the decision as the contract specified. Pay up". This PM was specifically ordered by his boss not to do this very, very stupid thing, and then did it anyway. In addition to that, the guy had a long history of backstabbing co-workers in an effort to build his own little empire. That is normal in some corporate cultures but anathema in IBM's.

He was also fired, although the process took six months, resulted in a board of inquiry that examined his boss and his boss's motivations. Though the firing was fully justified and the boss was exonerated, it was long an painful.

Given how hard it is to fire anyone at IBM, it should be no surprise that IBM managers have a strong preference for trying people out via supplemental and contractor relationships prior to hiring them full-time. It should also be no surprise that there are layoffs after hiring binges, because that's the only way to get rid of the lousy employees who slipped in.