Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I am a student in college majoring in the IT field but I am seriously considering changing my major due to the outsourcing and job instability that plagues the IT industry as a whole. So I guess you can count me as another statistic.
This trend is not exclusive for America. I remember reading about something very similar for Denmark three months ago. It is possible that people are scared off these educations because of out-sourcing. I remember reading about more and more IT work being outsourced to India several times here on Slashdot. So what are you to believe?
...why computer science and computer engineering is the most impacted major at the University I attend. Seems to me there's an over abundance of them, especially with the decreasing starting pay I've heard about from some friends (although I suppose that could be more regional than anything else).
Translation: We need an excuse to ship the remaining IT and R&D jobs overseas and bring in some more H1 Visas.
>decreasing supply of computer science students
What does that mean? The real worry is not the lack of IT professionals, but rather the lack of keen, young, fresh and still clueless recently graduated computer science graduates to hire for peanuts and milk for all they're worth.
Nobody wants someone with 10 years of experience and a family to support, those people expect benefits and regular working hours! The nerve!
---- Take the Space Quiz!
It makes one ponder just what the full scale adoption of interpretive languages has done. Yeah yeah Java compiles sure sure... its just like XML, its about as extensible or cross platform as Eddie Murphy is to an albino.
Looking at post-secondary curriculum I see nothing but Java being taught, and I think this is a pretty big mistake. Who cares if its easy, if you don't undersstand the fundamentals of how computer hardware and operating systems interact, you don't stand a chance at either staying interested or actually writing anything not crappy.
The biggest problem is that the IT industry was flooded with fucking asshats interested in it only for the money. I recall quite clearly a former friend who was a landscaper. I didn't see him for a couple of years and then ran into him downtown where he told me he was learning C++ and Java, at which point I suddenly felt the urge to vommit.
How on earth I can reference anything insightful when slashdot signatures are limited to 120 characters?!
Its not that simple. The IT business has not shown itself to be very stable over the last few years. Not exactly encouraging as career choice and source of stable income if you have ambitions to get married, buy a house in the burbs etc. I think outsourcing is a factor currently as well. Even most non techies are aware of what has and more importantly what could happen to them should they enter IT. The prospect of suddenly being replaced by an alternative you cannot compete with economically does not engender confidence. If I was leaving school now I have to say I would probably be looking at alternative diciplines as a career choice myself. I doubt the thought of a few quick bucks in an unstable rapidly fluctuating IT market would change that.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Every industry will be critically short of workers in 5-10 years. My company has estimated we may lose as much as 30% of our staff due to babyboomers retiring.
If IBM were so concerned about the number of IT workers, maybe it should become a better employer first.
You see, IBM for the past several years has been on a hiring binge, but with very rare exception, every new hire is brought in as a "supplemental". A supplemental, by IBM's definition, is a temporary position that CAN NOT continue past 18 months. Once your supplemental service is over, you are blacklisted by IBM for another 6 months - no rehire possible.
When I left IBM (near the end of my supplemental "tour of duty"), IBM was in a hiring freeze, there was no way to become a full-time employee, regardless of demand. Oh, and as a supplemental for IBM, the ONLY benefit you are eligible for is the employee stock purchase plan. That's right, no insurance, no 401k or pension, no education assistance, nothing else!
If IBM needs more employees, then they need to stop chewing through their existing stock (and spitting them out) so rapidly.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
ciao
Yesterday (still on the bottom of the front page) :
:
Technology Paradise Lost
[...] many believe that the sector will regain its past glory and blistering growth rates. [...] it's not going to happen. [...]
Today
Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years
[...] worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals [...]
If there's no sector growth, is there really increasing IT workers demand ?
Aren't these mutually exclusive points of view ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Thus making it even less likely that anyone will take up IT courses in the US.
Americans should realize that they need to compete in this new world economy by either working for fewer wages and benefits, or by offering much higher skills and capabilities.
What you mean is poor Americans must do this, the rich Americans that own the companies will not be affected and can get on with their graft and tax-dodging and buying politicians as usual.
Why exactly does the whole of the American governmental system have to be geared to supporting the tiny aristocracy at the top?
TWW
It's all a scam.
Big computer, defense, and, to a lesser extent, manufacturing companies pay shills in academia and "think tanks" to gin up these kinds of studies every couple of years so Congress has some political cover when they increase the H1-B cap. It's not true, and it never has been. The only shortage that ever materialized in those two decades happened during the boom, and that was caused by a huge spike in demand.
The goal here is to make sure there's plenty of hungry technical people around so they don't have to pay them too much.
The fears you highlight are not uncommon, but they are unfounded. Companies from India are not developing very good software. There is a reason outsourcing has not taken over as predicted. And the cultural and distance barriers are make it very unlikely management's 'vision' for a project are translated correctly.
The market is very ripe in my opinion for US developers. The only thing the offshoring option has done is hold wages down a bit for the last three years, but prices in India are going up too.
Americans should realize that they need to compete in this new world economy by either working for fewer wages and benefits, or by offering much higher skills and capabilities. Or both. Congress realizes this, and should take action to support American business, the economy, and people.
Which is very nearly a fine definition of the word "extortion".
Saying that we need to cut our own throats to statisfy THEIR needs -- or they'll simply be "forced" to turn to third-world dirt-hut coders -- amounts to the same thing. And before anyone gives me a lecture on "global economies" and other politically correct bullshit, I'll remind you that I'm only responding to their supposed concern about a lack of US talent.
If they're so fucking worried about losing in-country talent, then they'd better simply buckle down and pay what it costs to get it. That position is NO DIFFERENT than the position they take when they claim we're too expensive. I counter-claim THEY are too cheap. I further counter-claim that any hand-wringing a US company does about losing US talent is simply a campaign to improve their image, and to suck up to Congress before joining the corporate outcry to allow more H1Bs and to avoid offshoring penalties.
So ["Insert Corporation Entity Here"] needs to shave a few million to keep stockholders happy? I'd say CEO salaries are a fine place to start, rather than whacking hard-working, often highly skilled people with house and car payments and a family to feed.
Yeah, same old story.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Basically, if you look at the way they're running things, and the way they're headed, all the grunt work will be done offshore, including programming, but the IP will be owned here in the US.
That's why they're pushing so hard for these laws, it's the very basis of the new economy.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
There are two things that many /.ers here are missing when they knee-jerk "blablabla India blablabla $5 bux an hour bla no benefits."
Pretty soon companies that are flocking to the third world will run out of qualified IT workers there too. Then the salaries will start rising. How long before they reach equilibrium? I'll bet not very long.
Too, I haven't read TFA yet (running out the door to my non-outsourced IT job) but I will bet that it didn't make mention of the huge proportion of workers (and not just IT workers) that are getting close to retirement age. We could see a spike in demand the likes of which nobody has seen, and one that even a third-world supply of workers won't be able to fill; all to replace current positions, to say nothing of economic expansion. (Business 2.0 had a recent article about it called "The Coming Job Boom.")
I'm 45 and I work in IT. I'm not worried. In a few years it'll be raining soup. Grab a bucket.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Who cares about MSCEs? Stop getting certificates and start earning computer science graduate degrees at accredited universities. You'll be okay.
... but in Spain, being an IT is the worst thing you can be. Here the money is in everything related to economics and commercial issues. You deal with money, you get money. You deal with computers, you eat shit. Although IT is usually what boost companies, they treat IT staff like dogs. No doubt people is starting to get sick and saying... "You want IT, do it yourself, moron... I want my bucks" Thank God the new generations are not so naïve as mine was.
Now, for a dose of reality, check out this opinion piece over at Ars Technica. It points to a study by a UC Davis professor (who wrote this op-ed piece over at News.com) found out that there was, in fact, no studies showing a shortage of IT workers. Why would both academics and indistry go off on such a chicken-little hissy fit? Money, of course.
What IBM and other tech companies really want is dirt cheap labor, not just sufficient labor. Hence their push to get H1B visas while there is still a fairly high unemployment rate among computer professionals (personally, I know of a *lot* of former colleagues who have left the industry because they couldn't find work). H1B workers have their hands tied, since the second they are no longer employed in the US, they get kicked out. That is a huge stick for a company to be able to use against an employee.
And how does academia benefit from the doom and gloom? Easy. More research grants. More money pumped into computer science departments to "attract new stidents." More territory for people who are more bureacratic empire builders than they are actual educators.
As an Indian grad student here in the US, I have found many of my US classmates to be way ahead of majority of my peers back in India when it comes to algorithmic ability.
Perhaps its got to do with the current job situation where only the people who are truly interested in Computer Science, major in it. So you have students of much higher quality.
Judging from the total disregard for the job market shown by some of my US friends shows that the US still has a very bright future in Computer Science as long as these "anomalies" are around.
These companies have vested interest in outsourcing cheap labour. Don't believe what they say. They just wanna keep salaries low and their bottomlines high. The anomalies are more common than they would have you believe!
What do you wanna bet that the ITAA or some similar coalition of IT industry companies bought this little bit of propaganda, simply to help manufacture consent for raising the cap on h1b visas and retaining L1 visas?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Paul Graham has a different idea. He thinks that some kids should consider the educational advantage you'd get from starting a business instead of going to college. Especially kids with interest in technology. It sounds like Paul was making a suggestion, but I wonder if he's actually describing something that's already happening.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Yeah, no joke. No one wants to drop $30,000 on an education only to have their job outsourced to some guy who won't see $30,000 in his lifetime.
~Will
sig?
Yeah, or how the structure of many organizations leaves you in a Dilbert like position, wondering where the hell you're going to be in 20 years, other than stuck under the same a**hole boss whose salary is probably 4-5 times yours.
- Sighuh?
The out sourcing trend has several root causes. Every body talks about most of them but I rarely hear one thing that I think is a major reason. Management really does not understand the development process.
I have worked on a number of projects that management dictated large numbers of people. A couple turned out to be super stars, a few were very good, some were capable to do grunt work and 40% drained a lot of time from the other 60%. This has caused many projects I have worked on to be over budget and long delayed. Often missing marketing windows. Yes even as an engineer I think this is important.
Where I work now they are constantly trying to hire only "principle level engineers" for the good of the company. This is crap. Every project needs varying levels of experience for a cost / performance trade off of the engineering and busy work that needs to be done. They also cause projects to be over budget and often late because none of the experienced engineers want to do the crap work.
Now add this to out sourcing. I do believe in the time it takes to write a design document that very carefully outlines every little detail that needs to go into project it could have been coded here anyway. My experience with out sourcing, and this includes India, China and Russia is that every detail is required. That is also my experience with outsourcing in the US. These companies make money by doing the least amount of work for the defined contact. You can not leave even one detail up to a good engineers imagination in these contracts.
Out sourceing has its place but cannot be the answer for everything. Much of it is the mananement solution "du jour". Much of managment is patting itself on the back at the moment but I still think this will change at some point in time.
One thing I hate is the business people in america who state catagorically that outsourcing manufacturing is good for america. As I implied above engineering takes ability and interest. The 40% I mentioned above lacked one or both of the two. Just because engineering was paying well did not mean they could perform. Not all members of our society are capable of high tech and require jobs in manufacturing to provide for their families.
Without projects based in the US there will be no way to screen new graduates for moving up the chain. Trying to entice students in comp sci should be targeted at convincing them there is a future and screening out this who have a chance of creating value for a company.
I think it's kind of surprising how many fewer CS students there are, though. I just got my BCS last year, and there were over 120 CS students who started at the same time as me (not sure how many graduated). Do you know how many students applied to CS at my school this year? 12.
Huh. That's going to cut down on their course options.
reference a recent post of mine about north american executive salaries.
Also in europe, note that most employees can get 6 weeks of vacation and a lot of other benefits. It's a tangent, I know, but I'm on a project right now in England, and I'm amazed at the work/life balance here.
I believe it's directly due to the lack of corruption at the top rungs of the companies. And yes, I consider the multi-million dollar salaries of NA. execs corrupt. The payoff to Carly was a fine example of this. Legal? yes. Ethical? no.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
"In the scheme of industries which have suffered, you folks in IT have little to complain about. Ask an engineer from the 1970's what life was like after the Apollo missions ceased."
I met a guy in the mid 90s who was once an engineer in the Apollo program. What was he doing? He was a cemetary plot dealer, I was buying one for a family member. Kind of poetic, from the theme of this article.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
I have experinced the same thing as a programmer. I was laid-off during the burst and could not get a job because I was overqualified. People would not hire me for 35% less because they figured I would just leave when someone came up to what I am worth.
My solutions was simple, I started my own business until I was able to get a new job. I refuse to accept a full time position that will require me to give up that business and now I have a high paying full time job and a thriving programming business on the side. I suggest for any programmer that they do not sign any IP agreements and tie themselves into one company. Do not put all your eggs in one basket....
I am no longer afraid of the outsourcing issue becasue I have found that many of the major companies are oursourcing but many of the small businesses in your area do not know anyone in India and do not want to deal with someone they cannot see and talk too. There is a very fertile field of work that makes me plenty of money.
My formula does not work for everyone but it is what i have experienced.
The safety net was set up as a vote buying scheme. The government knows that the majority of people are lazy and want other people to pay for them to live. The government wants you to be dependent on them for everything because that gives them more power. If the government has more power therefore you have less and you will be less likely to kick them out of their plush government job.
The divide in the US is not between rich and poor, it is between achievers and non-achievers. There is now a majority of non-achievers in the US so it is popular to punish those who are successful and give it to the "less fortunate". Everyone has the opportunity to be successful in the US, but most people are not willing to put in the effort to succeed in life. I will leave you with the exercise of which group you fall in.
You know what the middle path is? It's communism. Real communism. When we stop figuring out what costs and finally make connecting need with supply a priority.
When we stop making everything a number, those in control of the numbers can stop playing games with them. Who needs wages if you get food, housing, education, and your kids have a safe place to play?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Every three or four years, somebody else tries to get us all to panic because there are not enough CS majors enrolled at college.
The dirty little secret is: You don't need a degree in CS or anything like it to be able to do 99% of the jobs in the IT industry, and most large companies are brimming over with techies who hold degrees in completely different fields.
My degree is in Music Education. Sure, I have a certification in C and C++, but zero college credits in the computer sciences, other than a single FORTRAN class I took as an incoming freshman.
I work as a support programmer alongside somebody who sweated through the CS degree while I was having fun at college.
It's not like this stuff is brain surgery. There's a perception that computer science is hard to learn because so few people are interested in learning it, but the truth is that most IT jobs are so pathetically simple that even a humanities graduate like me can learn them.
One could argue that "Business Administration degree + computer skills" often results in a much brighter future in the corporate IT world than "Computer Science degree + business sense."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Tassach is absolutely right about the lack of jobs for current grads. When I worked for a Fortune 50 company and the job market got tight in the late 90's, we were hiring anybody with any degree that looked even close. Some were less suitable than others.
Now that same Fortune 50 company is getting good Comp Sci majors through temp agencies, and they're getting lower wages, less (or no) benefits, and no job security.
I know that one of these underemployed programmers is trying to enlist in the Air Force. To me, that's a shock. It used to be taken for granted that if you were a decent programmer with a degree, you had some good job and life choices.
I, for one, am far more cynical about my relationship with my employer after the recent developments in the workplace (offshoring, outsourcing, lack of job security).
Best regards.
The shortage is of people worth interviewing. My boss gave me a stack of resumes the other day. Of 20, 2 gave an indication they had programed and were honest. (HTML is not programing. VB is, but there is enough bad VB in the world that it is only worth something if you can program something else) Most were IT people, but we are not large enough to need a full time firewall admin.
My peers that are good programmers are all working. At least the ones I can find anyway. There are a large number of programmers that I wouldn't hire who are not working.
Funny how HR always has an inflated view of what benefits are worth. Working in CADD in switchgear plant, HR said their benefits were worth 24% of salary for people in my range. I actually made them itemize the benefits and we found that benefits came to 14% of my at the time $56K salary. Now I'm working at place where there is just vacation and they contribute $100 a month to health care - less thann 5% of salary benefits!
Whenever I hear about future US dominance, I remember the kid of a friend of mine from India. She came over to the US for a year with him, and he went to the local public school. When she returned to India, she had a horrible time getting him back into an Indian school, since they regarded the time spent in an American school as more or less wasted.
You speak the truth. I went back to school to re-train becasuse I hated my previous career. Obviously, I was much older than most of my classmates (this happens when you trade in a 10 year career for something new!). The thing that shocked me the most was watching the skill sets of the foreign students just out of High School, vs the local kids. Same number of years of study, same ages, similar education systems.
The math skills of the foreign students were WAY better than even the best of the local kids. No comparison. Remember, we were all taking CS, so one would assume that the program already attracted people who had an interest in math and science (not debating if math skills are required or not).
In fact the foreign students were shocked at how bad our skills were. Almost every week, they would contest something that the professor would say. The profs would take the usual approach of "I know all, and you are wrong", followed by the shame approach "Would you like to come up here and show the whole class what you mean". These kids would stand up, and show the profs exactly what they meant, provide the full proof, arrive at the correct answer in half the steps, and sit down. I learned more from watching these guys humiliate the profs, than I did from the profs.
Oh, and I am not in the US, but another similar country that regularily scores higher than the US in educational rankings. They made us look stupid by comparison, I can't imagine how they make US students look.
So, am I a "cheap-labor conservative"?
I don't like a lot of the social spending, but not because I want people to work cheap - because I want people to earn waht they get (I have to, why shouldn't you?)
I don't like minimum wage hikes because typical minimum wage jobs are not intended for wage earners but for high-school kids earning spending money. I could get unskilled labor jobs earning $10+ per hour, and I live in Maine - where good paying jobs are "scarce".
I don't like NAFTA etc, so I don't fit your profile there.
I oppose a woman's right to choose because I feel that a child's right to live supercedes that. Besides, the unwanted children can go to good families if we cut all the beurocracy dealing with adoption. If we're opposing abortion as a supposed way to save money, that's just plain stupid. That would just be more mouths to feed on the welfare roles.
I don't like (some) unions because they have a tendancy to be overzealous and corrupt. They have a purpose, but they over-step their bounds.
I think morality, virtue, hard work, etc are important. If you don't work hard, why do you think you deserve compensation?
I don't support racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, and with the unfortunate exception of homophobia neither do the other conservatives that I know. Your argument about this distracting the wage earners is downright rediculous though.
Addlepated - punk & metal
Unemployment only measures people who are looking for jobs, many people have given up. It also does not measure the kinds of jobs, many people have settled for lower paying jobs.
Valiant effort to try and defend the Bush economic farce though. I'd take the clinton years back in a heartbeat and I bet so would most Americans. I'd rather have a president got blown in the white house but kept the country at peace and prosperity then to fall asleep at the wheel and let the terrorists kill 3000 people.
evil is as evil does
They are interviewing with you, and claiming expert status because, as a rule, no company will hire any developer that does not claim expert status. They generally don't really care if you are an expert or not, but you will not get the interview if you don't claim it.
You say that your clients know what they want, and are willing to pay for it.... Maybe your clients THINK they know what they want, and are willing to pay for it.
Perhaps what they really want is two guys that are not as good for $50k. Or maybe one guy that is pretty good, but not an expert for $70k, and someone who isn't very good at all for $30k.
For the last 5 years I have been working for a client that has figured this out. I am part of a two person development team. I am very good at coding, and the woman that I work with is not (and never will be). Our team is fantastic.
I work on the difficult stuff, and build the framework of our applications, and she handles the grunt work. I am three times more productive because I don't have to worry about getting in and making changes to button labels and display views. She will also take in the bug reports, and more often than not will track down exactly where the error occurse. She might not know how to fix it, but by presenting me with exactly where the error occurse, I can fix it quickly.
The net result is that the client gets the equivelent of my skill at the price of hers, since someone has to do the work she is doing, and if the client insisted on "experts", they would need someone that makes 3 times as much to do her job with no increase in productivity.
For the past few weeks I've "picked up some books" and am teaching myself Windows MFC, just because I'm curious about this older technology. I've never done Windows programming professionally, but I'm heartened at how my background (general computer science) helps me understand it. I get the sense that most employers don't see the value of a generalists' background. They'd rather get the person with the certification and be done with it. It makes me frustrated and nervous!
rickumali@gmail
The fears you highlight are not uncommon, but they are unfounded. Companies from Japan are not making very good cars.
So who's going to be the new W.E. Deming who goes over to India and teaches them how to kick our asses?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Sounds like a Dilbert cartoon where the PHB's make a resoundingly successful suggestion to the effect of:
"Let's save money by firing all of our internal staff and replacing them with contractors, then, we'll replace our contractors with outsourced staff, then, we'll save even more money by hiring employees!"
Seriously, the reason why people are avoiding CS like the plague is because of outsourcing, horror stories of the dot-com bust, stories from people in the field who complain about constant stress and long work hours, pager duty, etc.
CS -> IT is a career move with uncertainties. There are people graduating now who are wondering where the heck they are going to get a job. The market is cluttered with people who had been laid off and can't find work. Companies are being extry picky about who they want to hire(multiple degrees AND years of work experience... but not the people who got laid off recently, because they are burned out...)
Is it any wonder that people are avoiding the computer science fields?
Before, people swarmed into CS because it was a career choice with possibilities and options. Now, it is viewed as a path to despair and a limited future.
Winged Power Photography
By the same argument, employers and headhunters should be honest, and admit they're not willing to even discuss paying for the expertise they demand on their job postings. Or, admit they are posting hard-to-satisfy offers to justify what they *really* want, in some cases: to justify an H1B or outsourcing after "no one qualified applied for our offer".
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
Long story, but involves midnight raids to the fiber closet, insurgent email servers, and black-ops internet access drops. Once you have achieved a level of service that exceeds the incumbant infrastructure, the hearts and minds of the people will...
Man, earlier today I spouted out an economic argument that communism was the superior model for the future. Now I'm sounding like the Che Guevara of Network Engineering. I think I've had too much coffee.
In any case, there is a bit of crossover between programming and networking that can be exploited in the right environment. Look for a position that requires both. It requires a little reading between the lines of job descriptions.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
But then again, I don't know what kind of questions are being asked. I used to follow the ANSI C++ committee, read "C++ Report", read books from people like Scott Meyes, Stan Lipman, etc. Let's just say I know C++ much better than pretty much everyone around me. I was never arrogant about it nor used interviewing as a soapbox to gloat.
During the interview process I would ask people to rate themselves and would qualify the upper tiers of the scale (1-10). Per my "scale" which was very arbitrary mind you (as all are) I would say "If you rate yourself an 8 you should be able to tell me off the top of your head why you would want to write a copy constructor." I would then qualify 9 and 10.
Either people weren't listening (likely) or they severely overestimated their C++ coding abilities (just as likely, probably more so). I would hear "8" an awful lot. Guess what the first question was? Few people got this question right.
Mediocrity ruled my C++ interviews. I met maybe 5 people who truly knew C++ well. The scary part is I spent 2-1/2 years in Microsoft and twice I had people on a team I was on want to rewrite code I had written since they did not understand contemporary C++. That was 1997. I pretty much gave up on C++ and software development. I have not done any C++ software development since then nor am I inclined to change that fact.
Mediocrity truly rules software development... unless you're talking about people who code out from a point of passion, in particular, open source projects (it sure ain't the money).
But then some of this is necessary. You see, if everyone had stellar C++ class design skills (as a function of their knowledge of the C++ language) no one would want to do the grunt work. However, this type of person is very common and thus you wind up with lots of difficult to maintain code.
In closing, YES I can believe they have a hard time finding good C++ people.
-M
PS: Trying hard to make money in other ways nowadays.
One thing that is really needed is management who have both some technical ability and good management skills. In my experience the management in major US high-tech firms do not allow analysis and design to take place. We end up with ALL the people in the department being techs. Given this dumbing down of computer science in US firms, there is no need for a formal education. Most of what I learned for my CS degree I have been expressly banned from practicing.
"Lying on a resume? You expect me to trust someone who makes his first impression by lying to me?"
Really? Like the companies that say "If you meet our qualifications we will get back to you". Yeah, right.... There is a simple reason why so many people lie on resumes. It works. Sure, you may flame out in the interview, but there is no way of getting a job without one. Resumes will become honest documents when job postings become the same.
And remember it is only lying if your intent is to deceive. They may be operating under a different definition of an "expert". The term "expert" has become the equivalent of "knowledgable about"-in other words, it is greatly overused by job seekers and job posters. Precious few employers want, require, and/or are truly willing to pay for an expert when they include that statement.
I troll with a different account. :)
I've done kernel code, driver development, network stacks, and database backend work in a pure assembly language environment, producing code with an expected lifetime of decades and maintaining code written in the 60s. Trust me, you haven't see bad code until you've seen code that was written before most good coding practices were invented and was trying very hard to cram a bunch of functionality into 2K of memory. Hmm, we're past the first 80 bytes of code, lets use that area as an i/o buffer now; wait, now we need to branch back to where that code was, let's just set a flag in a register and re-load the program!
I've also done C++ code in a large modern shop with modern techniques (though sadly not free of decade-old legacy C code), for a widely-known IT application that I won't name while I keep this job. Understanding the underpinnings of an OS and a compiler are wonderfully useful for troubleshooting, and for understanding the performance, security, and reliability implicaiton of your code. You don't have to learn this stuff in college, but it's probably less painful that way.
Have you ever fixed a bug on a production machine by directly editing the program in memory to avoid the cost of restarting the system, while your VP watched nervously over your shoulder and made "helpful" suggestions? It's not a sport for the faint-hearted! (You get no credit, of course, if you look up op-codes in a reference manual - the VP will imagine anyone could have done it - but if you copy them from surrounding code that you understand, the gray-haired veterans observing you will grin knowingly and comment on the difficulty of the task for the VP's benefit.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.