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Programming Jobs Losing Luster in U.S.
alphapartic1e writes "Yahoo! News writes "The U.S. software industry lost 16 percent of its jobs from March 2001 to March 2004, the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute found. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology industries laid off more than 7,000 American workers in the first quarter of 2005. Gartner researchers say most people affiliated with corporate information technology departments will assume "business-facing" roles, focused not so much on gadgets and algorithms but corporate strategy, personnel and financial analysis. "If you're only interested in deep coding and you want to remain in your cubicle all day, there are a shrinking number of jobs for you," said Diane Morello, Gartner vice president of research.""
I would change that to the "immediate future"
The Indian firms want to climb the "food chain" and go after the higher margin business. That includes PM, design, and even outsourcing everything. Eventually, as wages come into parity with the US (theirs goes up, ours go down), they will have to outsource the coding to China or any number of developing countries that are trying to get onto the off-shoring bandwagon.
While I was in B-School, we had a lot of folks from developing countries. Just about everyone of them said that their Government has some sort of program that trains and subsidizes IT with the hope of having work from the developed world sent to their country.
Yes folks, you were right! It's a race to the bottom!
Just because the largest software company in the world makes consumer software does not mean most software made in the world is for consumers. Most software is made for a handful of customers, and not for general use. Free software does not compete with this specialized software most of the time, but consumer software. If might affect you if you work on consumer software, but most programmers don't work on consumer software.
I know that there are some good firms overseas that probably can provide a legitimate savings without some of these headaches, but businesses expecting a panacaea may come out the worse for outsourcing. Caveat emptor, YMMV, etc.
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There are people as good as or better than you who'll do your job for less.
This is largely a myth. Take India, for example. They're scrambling to meet the demand for software developers. As a result, universities are graduating woefully bad software developers. Indian consulting firms are grossly exaggerating the qualifications of their employees. It's like the 1990s were in the U.S., except much, much worse.
Companies who buy into the offshoring hype deserve what they get, which is, more often than not, terrible results.
Speaking as a hiring manager, and one who has friends in the recruiting profession, the market for tech skills is actually not that bad. It feels like a roughly balanced market--with any edge probably on the side of employers, albeit a slight one.
I say this because I've hired several positions in the last 2 years, and there just aren't that many qualified candidates out there. As the AC said, the good ones are employed, and that is the sign of a healthy, balanced market.
I've personally written the job descriptions to hire my employees in the last 5 years, and I typically separate the years of experience from the skills--seasoning is different from the toolset. And, like most skill lists, the skills are just "desirable qualities," not at all a comprehensive list of mandatory skills. Yet I find few good candidates (on average).
You're right, an HR department can be terrible at throwing away the wheat and giving you the chaff, but I disagree there as well. Since I have friends in the recruiting biz, they have helped me considerably with hiring over the last few years--and they *do* hand over just the bits of wheat they are able to find.
I've even seen very good candidates decline reasonable offers, because they had good offers elsewhere. Again, that's a sign of a healthy (or healthier, at least) job market, and certainly supports the ACs comment that good people are fully employed. They are not only fully employed, but they have options when they switch.
Finally, the recruiters that I know have told me that the last few months have been crazy busy, contrary to typical trends for this time of year. Plus, when year over year comparisons are made, about the last 15-18 months have been far better for them than the prior 15-18 months. And economic recovery does typically hit recruiters early in the game, as they are direct recipients of the benefits of companies feeling flush enough to not only hire but pay a premium for it.
"the area between [the] genitals and [the] anus"
perineum
Wow. Right on. I've been ranting about how this housing bubble is going to burst any day now, but I never made the connnection with offshoring. Makes sense.
I live in the South Bay area, which is the poster child of the housing craze right now. The median home price is now somewhere around $700K. And note that that's not new homes, just homes in general. Every month or so I see a new giant subdivision of townhomes being built with two bedroom, two bath, attached, cookie-cutter homes starting at $650K. And I've actually gone to talk to the people in the sales offices in these places, purely out of curiousity... I just ask the obvious question: "How are people affording these $4000 to $5000 per month mortgage payments?" I mean, I make a fairly good salary out here, and I couldn't even come close to that. Even if I were married and my wife was also making $100K, it would still be a stretch to make house payments like that.
So their reply is that people are taking "interest only" loans. Interest only loans on $700K houses!! Are these people out of their minds? Basically, they're gambling. They're risking every cent they have in the hopes that their houses will appreciate over the next few years, and then they can sell it. And what if it doesn't appreciate? Guess what! The bank is still going to want that money that they loaned you. Yeah, remember? You were only paying the interest on the loan, so you still owe them 100% of the principle, which is the better part of a million dollars. What's that you say? You can't afford to make the payments, and your house is now worth less than the amount of the loan? That sucks.
You need residency in India to buy property. You do not need citizenship. However, you cannot buy property in India if you are a citizen of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Nepal or Bhutan.
There are no restrictions to foreigners buying property in Japan. It is difficult, perhaps practically impossible, to get a home loan if you are not a long-term resident (not necessarily citizen); of course, that is also true in the US, since credit-bureau information is often not shared internationally. But if you have the cash, you can get property.
I'm thinking you're not an economics major. I dream of a day when "Uncle Sam" only takes 30%. The state of California takes 9%, and federal income tax on a 100K salary is about 30% by itself, then tack on FICA and the dozen other nickel-and-dime B.S. taxes, and Uncle Sam ends up taking very close to half of your check, if not more. Not to mention 8.25% sales tax any time you actually want to spend what you have left. It's great how they get you coming and going like that. Property tax is 1.25% out here, which is nothing to sneeze at on a $5K house payment.
The bottom line is that, yes, if my wife did make 100K (I'm not married, and even if I were, two 100K incomes in a household is pretty extraordinary), then we might be able to barely afford a $700K house. But we'd have very, very little left to put into savings or anything else, really. But I refuse to gamble on a variable-rate, interest-only loan like so many people out here are doing. I'll just wait for the housing bust, and hope that it doesn't crush the economy so much that my job is affected.