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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.
>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!
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
"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.
As I once said to a friend (also CS), "Students treat you like nerds throughout elementary and high school and like free tech. support through college, professors try their hardest to kill you off, and when you graduate in spite of all this, you get to work as a 'code monkey' with little job security or respect while you watch your tech-ignorant bosses, who probably make many times your salary, screw up management decisions because they couldn't be bothered to learn the stuff". As the field is now, only the most dedicated students would enter it because we are basically treated like [insert vulgarity here] from the beginning of education to retirement. I think that we will eventually start to see more respect from society... when all the jobs are gone and the full impact of a dwindling supply of tech. workers can be seen.
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.
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.
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.