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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.""
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Hey! Maybe I should start an IT consulting company. I'll call it the "Smart-Ass Group"!
The short future is projects managed in US but implemented abroad - the far future is too scary to think about at all - they're gonna take all our jobs :(.
Pay girls to strip!
"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."
Actually, if this describes you, and you are creative and business savvy to boot, then you are perfectly suited for starting up your own software business.
I wonder which company paid for Gartner's study. The software industry is just waiting to drop wages for programmers, I bet.
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...
But if you want to become a sailor and program from a cubicle hundreds of miles out to sea... your set!
http://www.sandstorming.com
is middle management. Everything else can be outsourced.
Entry level positions aren't necessary. Knowlege of how computer systems behave and are operated isn't necessary. Intelligence isn't necessary.
All you have to know is how to play petty office politics and sell people on useless shit. And run an office (either well or poorly.)
I thought this happened years ago after the
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
What was considered IT back the good old days of the 20th century was information Technology, with the emphasis on Technology. But after attempting to build an economic structure purely on technology we fond out the old rules are still in place and valid, and technology is only one of many tools in the business arsenal. As well the average person is becoming more computer savvy, so jobs like "computer operator" are becoming passé. Now that we have the Technology to enhance information, and it is affordable and easy to use, we now have to Manage our Information Systems to make all this cool stuff actually work right and also fit in the business needs. Sure Video conferencing is cool and all but does it actually help improve profit, No, not really. Or a high end Cisco network for 20 computers, nope that is not profitable either. IT workers are not supposed to be separated from the business that they work for they are part of it and they are being paid to help the company not just worried about tiny technical details. If it takes you twice as long to make a mid size program 50% faster, It would be cheaper to buy a computer that is twice as fast, and run your slower program on that and still have increased speeds. These are the issues business faces. Business don't want people who get loss in the technology they want people who know technology who also know how to use it to improve their business bottom line.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That the remaining jobs are in areas where geeks are typically short in skills.
The good news....
It IS Gartner, meaning there's a damn good chance that analysis is a steaming pile of BS.
If it is anything like my company, the greatly under-staffed product development folks that have survived downsizing.
My team used to be 50 people, now it is only 3 people doing the work of about 15. Very fustrating not only for my team, but also for the business folks that don't understand why it takes so long to get things done anymore.
I wonder how many of those programming jobs 'lost' were actually promotions to managerial positions, and the vacancies left behind were farmed out?
Then again, in what other industry do those struggling to pay for college or to get through unemployment amuse themselves by giving away the very craft that they think they're going to sell if they're ever employed later? Don't blame it all on outsourcing. Some of the lessened market demand can be traced straight back to free software. You can't give away huge quantities of something that has intrinsic value and expect it not to have an effect on market pricing.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
If we all become managers, get MBA's, focus on corporate strategy/direction, and financial analysis. WHO THE HELL IS GOING TO MAKE THE PRODUCTS?? Top-heavy boats tip over.
Manufacturing jobs "lost their luster" a long time ago because a combination of many destructive forces converged on blue collar workers. Corporations with loyalties to no one, not even the stockholders, union bosses who wanted blue collar workers to live middle and upper middle class lifestyles, politicians hell-bent on judging their job performance in volume of regulation and prison/quasi-slave labor in countries like China all conspired to destroy those jobs. Now we are simply progressing toward the inevitable destruction of the white collar job market for anyone who isn't a business major in college.
One thing is certain about the job market. If the starry-eyed socialists would stop regulating our economy into the second world, we'd not be losing jobs the way we are. American workers are very expensive to hire, often too expensive to justify. A decent chunk of it is caused by politically correct bullshit like pushing for diversity over qualification, allowing people to sue merely for being offended rather than telling people to deal with it, the constant threat of corporate-to-corporate lawsuits over nothing and things of that nature.
The bottom line is that if you want to actually have a job and a society that produces wealth rather than living off of the wealth of bygone years, you'll vote for the Libertarian Party. The LP is the only party that actually wants to create a regulatory regime that works for everyone. The coin-operated Democrats and Republicans only care about giving back to those who put them in power and don't care about making the system work for the rest of society.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Some of us really are nerds at heart and strive to learn new "Stuff that matter" ;).
Entry level positions aren't necessary.
So is middle management willing to pay extra tax so that recent graduates who would have otherwise taken entry-level positions can go on welfare instead?
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.
The problem is that IT didn't start as a business facing department. They started as a bunch of people who thought (correctly) that they could improve the business with computers and software. Their budgets increased and they became incredibly large. Eventually, the IT department started determining the direction of the entire company. 5-10 years later the business is finally trying to reclaim control of IT. This is why the most secure jobs are "business-facing."
PS: Anyone who bashes Gartner is just afraid of the truth.
- * - * - * - * - * -
Brought to you in dvorak at 17 WPM and climbing.
We are trying to hire experienced C/C++ developers in the PDX area, and they are really (really) difficult to find. The truth is, that in 95% of the cases, good software engineers already have a job. Outsourcing might have made the lack of jobs for non experienced developers bigger, even if the level of quality you get from outsourcing is even lower than the one you might have got if you'd have given jobs in USA. In a few words, outsourcing stinks, and we better off importing the 1% of good developers they have oversee, and leave the remaining 99% junk in the wild. You get what you pay for dude, and the company I'm currently working with, is crudely facing this reality.
I've been dealing with (mis)management ass-holes who never seem to get a clue that, when you've planned out a project if you cut the staffing and/or the budget for it, you still get what you pay for (meaning the original projections go out the window.)
Its not rocket science but the way these guys manage, it's more like voodoo (and about as effective as 'gris-gris' in warding off AIDS... NOT!)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Our problem is not lack of jobs, it's lack of qualified people. I've been in touch with folks in cleveland, chicago and denver and nobody can hire talented folks fast enough to keep up with growing demand \ businesses. It aint quite the late 90s, but demand is up folks.
What happends if someone is overall a great Door to Doors sales man but have a physical Adnormality that creates unbearable BO? what should he or she do for a living.
What type of mental disability that will prevent office politics. Buisness politics are different from say Education Politcs or Governemtn Politics. And they are all not based on other people tring to fire you. For Most people dealing with office Politics are learned. Concepts like common curticy to other people (If you have torrett sindrome or something like that, people would understand). Think about you job in the business perspective and figure out how your idea is profitable and record it. Quite honestly I have seen the Mentally Disabled people (With full blown Autism) who work at Walmart have more ability to handle office politics then many normal people who just dont want to try and they say they have a mild case of Auditism. Saying that you have a disibility doesn't mean you have an excuse for not trying.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
All businesses, governments, individuals are going to have to face up to this.
The Information Revolution has made sure that digital information of any sort is not a scarce resource. It can trivially be copied and distributed, therefore the inherent economic price (not to say value) is going to tend towards zero. Attempting to try to make digital information of any sort a scarce resource is doomed to failure, the ecomonics guarantee that and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool or a dreamer.
Software development then is a service. And that includes business analysis, software design and coding itself. Some people will do the business analysis and design themselves and ship the spec over to India to have the coding done, some will do the analysis and design and code using rapid application design systems and build it out of off the shelf components, like free software.
Fundamentally, coders are going the way of the blacksmith. They're going to have to become engineers rather than blacksmiths if they want to make a living. Those who don't, won't or can't will have to find other employment.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm not trolling, but I do know it may sounds as if
I am.
Why do we have all this panic about the layoffs? Who remembers all the people flooded the market before 2000?
Many of those people were unskilled. They were in the industry because there was plenty of money to be made. They were not in the industry because they loved programming computers(or whatever your vice of tech is).
That type of person gave the rest of us a bad name. They made it hard for companies to hire the real programmers. The companies learned their lesson. They now have stronger hiring filters. They now must get rid of the bloat they hired on in 2000.
One person in the industry because he or she loves the industry can do the work of 5-10 people in the industry for the money. I say good riddance!
Hmmm.. US has largest growth in Software Patents; US has shrinking software industry.
<sarcasm>No connection, surely?</sarcasm>
I wonder how the employment rate for lawyers employed by US software companies is doing? That would make interesting reading.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
I discussed this in detail in this article. The combination of offshoring, issues with the business cycle and corporate sponsored immigration policy is deadly. Just in case you thought the H-1b issue was over, there are _still_ over 65,000 visas per year being issued(the ones at major universities are exempt from the cap)-about half of which are for IT workers. On top of that there are L-1 visas that are specified in trade agreements like the recent Singapore Chile Free Trade Act that lock the US into substantial numbers of L-1 visas. An industry that is creating no jobs for Americans has no need for these visas.
Don't you guys know by now that the Garter group is full of so much crap??
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Next month I will have been a programmer for 40 years. This is not the first bust I've seen in programming employment, but I'm not sure this is a cyclical change as much as a structural change. The task cannot continue "as is" in the face of advancing technology. Thirty-five years ago there were predictions of software being written by software, and we're on the verge of a BIG explosion of software. (Just look at all the submissions at Freshmeat.)
However, there is a severe shortage of thinkers. Face it, any moron can write code, even good code, if the design is done well enough. But if 9 out of 10 software projects in the US are cancelled before completion (apparently due to cost overruns and design problems), then there is a tremendous pent-up demand for good, creative design implemented in affordable software! The new possibilities that could be addressed by a multitude of programmers freed from writing accounting reports and database forms could change our world in terrific ways!
Unfortunately, the low education level in the US has produced a bunch of code peasants without the vision to use the tools they now have. These are persons whose main interest is getting a paycheck and going home to the bottle or TV.
It took 40 years for the railroad to substantially change our lives. Same thing, 40 years, for electricity, automobiles and aircraft. Don't cry for buggy-whip code jobs. Those are something we had to get through to get to the chance for jetliner opportunities. Larry Ellison said (back in '96) that computing power had increased a millionfold in the last 20 years, and if it continued like that for another 20 years it would produce a future he couldn't even imagine. Back in '79, when Cincom Systems was building one of the best database managers to run on IBM mainframes, they had presentation that included this one fact: Back in 1940 the telephone companies had all the technology necessary to handle all the telephone calls made in 1979, but it would have taken every man, woman and child older than 14 in New York City to handle the calls! (Anyone else remember the days when you picked up the phone and got an operator? Oh, wait...there are places like that in Argentina and India.) Routine jobs will always be downsized, eliminated or automated, and any job becomes routine with progress. Some researchers are predicting huge unemployment in the unskilled labor market in 25 years. Robotic machinery will handle routine skills like cooking fast food, housework, framing homes, etc., but somebody will have to build and design those machines. I say we have a great opportunity to get there before the Chinese! I say , "Bring on the automated programming!" There is no end to the things I could build if didn't have to hire lazy, unreliable and expensive wetware to do the routine tasks.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Isn't there a critical shortage of us?
Aren't we supposed to be driving kids into this stuff, like they are in high school, regardless of the interests of the student.
Isn't this always going to be a great career?
WHile some of it is just off shoring, the other aspect is automation. First realize that the main role of IT is to automate, and that includes programming tasks. While software quality is not where it should be, the tools we have now; in terms of application tools, development tools and OS; are much better than they were 10 years ago. Hence you have greater productivity. Even MS has improved.
The trend is more toward selecting commercial off the shelf products which meet business needs (which require business process modeling and requirments gathering) rather than in-house applications or hiring a vendor to create an application. This is where the 'business facing' aspect comes in.
One good analogy I can come up with is the railroad industry. Up unitl about the late 1940's each railroad often built their own steam engines. Each engine was specialized to a specific task such as narrow gauge, long haul express, high speed passenger, locals etc. To support this you had mechanical shops with hundreds or even thousands of metal workers, boiler makers, welders etc. Then along came diesel electric trains and all those jobs dissappeared to be replaced by a few diesel mechanics and electricians, and some mechinical and electrical engineers to design and refine the engines.
It is heading the same way. You will have people working on the business end defining requirements. Sometimes they will find COTS software and technicians will paste it together with some, but not much cutomization (and then OUTSIDE of the application). In some cases a custom job will be needed and so high end programmers who are good at solving new problems may come in. But the numbers will drop. It is inevitable as the industry matures.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
I have been in IT for almost 15 years and *every* job I have had was a business facing job. Being able to sit down with an accountant, salesman or an AA for that matter and understand their needs and requirements and turn that into code is the basic function of most IT jobs. Most programmers don't work for software firms. Most of us work for companies that have bought a canned package. We spend our time tweaking it and value adding reports and interfaces for the end user. Understanding the business you are supporting is just as valuable as knowing how to code.
Offshoring is a fad, like bellbottom jeans. Even Sony offshored their volunteer customer support reps because paying Indians to do the in-game customer support was more fashionable than free guides (who only got a free subscription and free expansions). There is no rational business reason that actually paying someone wages can be cheaper than a bunch of suckers/slaves who got $13/month for 6+ hours per week of unpaid labor (oh, go ahead and laugh at me for being a guide for 2 years). Yet that is why offshoring is done: it looks good in the press, no matter if it screws the business bottom line and the country's bottom line.
Err from my post... (If you have torrett sindrome or something like that, people would understand)
If you are diagnosed with tourette syndrome, and people in your buisness know about it, they usually learn to live with it and learn to listen between the curses. They probably wont have you in the same meeting with the CEO but as long as you are tring to work for the buisness and go beyond programming you should be OK. Besides most companies are afraid to fire people with disibilites.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No the lesson is you should have your options more open to prevent you from getting to specialized in your field where you can be unemployeed. I rather have a soul-sucking job at 60k then a soul-sucking job at 12k a year, if the job you love is no longer in demmand.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
e.g.
U SD&to=INR&amt=1&t=5y
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=
The dollar has lost around 20% of it's value against the Indian Rupee over the last 5 years. Americans are now 20% cheaper to employ compared to Indians than they were 5 years ago.
That trend's going to continue until it isn't worth offshoring anything anymore. In the meantime the US standard of living hasn't changed much. The Indian standard of living has increased substantially, it'll continue increasing and they'll continue getting more expensive.
China is a problem. The problem with China is that they fix their exchange rate to the dollar.
Compare the Chinese chart with the Indian chart:
U SD&to=CNY&amt=1&t=5y
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=
This is why all the manufacturing has headed to China, guaranteed lower costs, for as long as the exchange rate is fixed.
You say they'll just offshore to the next cheapest country, well it's not that simple, language and education are huge barriers. The Indians have the language thanks to the British Empire and they have the education, it's easy offshoring there. The Chinese have the education but not the language, offshoring service jobs there is far more difficult. Most of the other developing countries have neither.
The key will be to get the Chinese government to allow the Yuan to float on international currency markets. International pressure on China to do this is rising.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Very few competent people have *all* of the qualifications that these jobs typically require. The resumes of these people are tossed out by HR for not having every single qualification and all you get passed on to you are applilcations by poseurs. Your sampling technique is flawed and there is no basis for your characterization of the talent pool.
The US standard of living hasn't changed a lot but it will *sometime soon*, and that's because the US consumer (and government for that matter) has been on a massive credit binge. Credit based on equity in their homes primarily. There's a reason that the congress lately passed a law severely limiting bankruptcy for private individuals, and that's because these credit issuers smell it coming, bigtime. it's just math after all..
A lot of people now are so strapped, but still wanting to maintain an illusion of prosperity, that they have no principal mortgages,and are only paying interest in perpetuity on those notes hoping that sometime they can sell out and still make something, and that is only because of the unrealistic bloated housing bubble.
The old expression "eating the seed corn" when starving people ate the seeds they needed for next years crop in thew winter, is also similar to a blue collar tradesman pawning his tools on friday night. Rich for the weekend, come monday he's hurting, then no way to go from there, no work. We've pawned our tools by offshoring still useful jobs. We (the fatcat bosses "we") are in that "rich for the weekend" phase right now. That's our economy, and they keep destroying or transferring wealth producing jobs in exchange for wealth re-arranging jobs.
It is unsustainable in the medium and long term, and it will cause a severe economic crash, especially once the flight from the petrodollar picks up more speed as masses of foreigners realise that they will get stuck with worthless paper IOUs. But the people (high level business leaders and politicians) doing it could care less, they will have gotten theirs ahead of time and probably look forward to being mega-rich in a US reduced to second world nation status, as they can enjoy the lifestyle they now have to travel overseas for, ie, the ultimate power over other humans lifestyle, with all that that entails.
That's my take on it anyway. It's planned to happen this way on purpose.
Companies need to suck it up. Maybe you would like to have an experienced developer, but the answer to a shortage of talent at that level needn't be whining or outsourcing. The experience threshold seems to be a reaction to the complete hacks hired into IT in the late 90's - by enforcing minimum experience, you reduce your chances of hiring a nitwit. The correction that needs to happen is that companies need to learn to filter and find qualified, inexperienced applicants. Companies aren't willing to invest in entry-level enough to create the mid-level talent that is needed. It's going to get worse before it gets better - I see new grads branching into other careers when they can't find a job, so there's even less new talent coming in.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
Ahh yes, history repeating itself before our very eyes...
This is simply more proof that the U.S. is on it's way down in world status. Don't give me that krap about wage parity either, because the Asians will for the forseeable future, have much more abundant labor force that is better educated than our (ahem...) immigrant labor force.
Forget the fact that more and more R&D will be done in China and India, but ALL the manufacturing will be done there. Americans and our ridiculously non-patriotic and money-grubbing politicians live in a fantasy world of a 'service industry' panacea. We'll live in a country of cooks, cleaners and corporate crooks...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You went to business school. Therefore you are completely unqualified to say anything about IT. B-school prepares you for a life of middle management doublespeak, meaningless and obfuscated bureaucracy, and profiting off of the hard work of others. People who create code (or in B-schoolese, "create synergistic software-based business solutions for new paradigms of information technology") do actual work.
... to get out.
(I've been in IT for over ten years)
Free hint: if your name has "Manager" or "Supervisor" in it, you're not in IT, you're getting in the way of people in IT. Seeing things purely in terms of the bottom line is incompatible with working in IT, and that's what all the b-school drones do. (After all, they can't compete on smarts, so they drag others down to make themselves look better.)
I was even advised by an older timer
He was probably sick of hearing you talking about "thinking outside the box" or "scalable solutions" or "getting to Yes". IT won't miss you; maybe someone with a clue will get your job.
Not posted as an AC because I believe in what I'm saying, and can face the consequences for saying it.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Just curious...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If it was about getting cheaper labor, U.S. companies would have outsourced all the jobs to third world countries 50 years ago when the U.S. was the number one producer of manufactured goods and it's workers were the highest paid in the world.
The reason we are losing jobs in the United States (and it is not just the U.S., the Europe economy is in just as much trouble), is because we have created an enviornment that is hostile to honest buisness and production.
We have a system where is is easier to litigate than it is to innovate - companies that succesfully produce goods and services are taxed, punished, regulated and litigated until they are unprofitable, while other companies thrive by suing for intellectual property, or by having the government give them subsidies and handouts, or lobbying the government to put their competition out of buisness.
We have a system where someone who developes a new product or service for their employer will never be rewarded as highly as the person who sues their employer because a coworker told a dirty joke.
We have created a climate where it just isn't possible to run a buisness in the U.S... Unless your buisness is based on lawsuits, saturation marketing, government subsidies, government enforced monopolies, or local service (like fast food or retail).
I see people are quick to point at the blame-of-the-month, outsourcing, but without really looking at how things got this way.
See, if there were tons of software jobs out there to begin with, outsourcing would be just a drop in the ocean. But the demand for software isn't increasing. Why not?
Well, try the fact that the only software that's profitable to make is already made by one company that dominates the industry, and its only competitors are open-source freeware.
You're shaking your head. "Another Slashdot anti-Microsoft idiot," you say, as you point your mouse towards the -1 moderation dialogue. Well, so what new e-mail program/web browser/media player/operating system/spreadsheet/word processor/other commonly-used application have you written lately that wasn't Microsoft's or free?
And it's not just Microsoft; look at the game industry consolidation, where a handful of companies dominate. Or graphics, where there were once dozens of companies making PC graphics cards there's now only two major ones (and the occasional intel chipset). Throughout the industry, you're either with the Big Company or you're out of luck. There's no competition outside of webspace, and even that is consolidating.
Or you're saying, "But all those new jobs in a competitive market would be outsourced, too!" Well, only if there's enough supply to meet the demand; if not, the cost of outsourcing rises (including the decrease in quality as fourth-rate engineers are pressed into service to meet the demand) and outsourcing is no longer an issue.
No, we need to bust up the monopolies, for real this time. It's bad for you and me because it means fewer jobs for you and me. It's bad for your boss because it means single-source suppliers can throttle your boss for every dime he has.
It's just another cost of sponsoring a monopoly: Your job.
Think about that the next time you want to buy a word processor.
...blue collar guy. In the past couple of decades and change I lost two factory jobs that got shipped overseas. Swell,did the ole "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" thing and went into construction. Had to keep dropping my bids down to about zilch, as I couldn't compete in the area I was in with illegal aliens living a dozen to a single bedroom apartment basically. Moved, it happened again. Finally it was so stupid to do it I just stopped doing it, couldn't even afford to keep my tools and gear in shape.. Swell, went into the tradeshow business doing display set up, watched the labor pool get filled quickly to beyond what was needed as so many blue collar guys who had lost their regular jobs got into it, then the dotcom bubble burst, knocking out a lot of the big booths and shows. Then I got hurt on the job and went broke as I recuperated over 6 months time.
Swell, now I am a farm worker and am watching NAFTA and GATT destroy agriculture, as farmers try to compete with regions that have about zero environmental laws, etc. They don't put up with that "save the flying three eyed newt so screw you mr. farmer, eat it raw" stuff overseas, in those areas like South America, etc where we have to compete internationally. The only thing that is marginally "saving" ag is the cost of oil is making international transpo more expensive, and that's it. A couple more "free trade" globalisation moves and laws, that's it, all she wrote, buh bye US ag. The multinational agcos are screwing everyone, they don't care,they just want you locked into their seed and packing house and distribution channels, and it don't matter to them if you name is Bubba, Jose, Abdul, N'kummah or Apu, they are equal opportunity screwers. It's near impossible to be an independent now. And it's a catch 22, if the dollar drops, stuff costs more but ag stuff can still sell,but people don't have enough of the dollars to make it worth while, if the dollar goes up, more overall jobs are lost, but what is left can be exported, but the people overseas still won't want anything higher priced than what they can do at home. So that point is moot as well. If the dollar drops oil and energy goes up, which means your cost of productyion goes up past what you can charge realistically, ag is severely energy dependent. And foreign nations don't really want our crap anyway, no GM foods, but that's about all the big agcos are pushing.
You tell me what the fix is because I don't know. I'm competing the best I can, but comes a point you just can't compete with people who can live on 50 bucks a month someplace else. You can't do that in the US. I can re-late to the white collars going through the same thing now, just got many years head start on them, same as millions of other blue collars and I can guarantee you that us guys warned you guys starting years ago it was going to come to you big bucks guys sometime, because the boss class is *the same*, no matter what industry you are in. If you in the US making a middle class salary are replaceable overseas for 1/5th the money or less, they will do it, end of story. Those guys are into it for the short term huge money then get out, they *don't care at all* what happens to you. politicians, globalist business bosses, those guys. what they say and what they do are different, pay attention to only what they do and what happens eventually and you can clearly see it.
In the IT world I have no idea other than to go independent and contract and take any job you can get, bank the loot and/or get out of debt totally as quickly as possible.
Me, I own some solar PV but don't own any big home theater system. We have at least two years of simple food on hand, but I don't go out and blow my cash on movies or entertainments anymore. I can see what's coming and decided on some priorities.
When I grew up I talked to a lot of adults who lived through the great depression. It was bad then but tolerable for people as long as they had the necessities of food/water/shelter, etc. City people really got na
Heck the demise of the dot-com boom is enough to explain that, and in just the right time period too.
It remains to be seen if outsourcing means the US is getting out of the programming business, or just that the boring jobs are getting outsourced only to be replaced with more creative ones. And short-term small changes like this can be adequately explained by the business cycle.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
No, we need to bust up the monopolies, for real this time.
In America? You propose Federal Anti-Trust actions, in this day and age? Just when we're getting used to Patriot III or whatever? I think you overestimate our chances.
Just as a thought experiment, let's assume (o noble dreamers) that there exists some possibility, however slim, of breaking up large, vigorous monopolies -- specifically Microsoft.
Under this assumption, I recommend an alternate approach: nationalizing the source code. For the good of the country, you understand. Similar to the manner in which Presidents of past centuries have said Coal is a national priority, this strike is illegal, your union is busted, you men get back to work.
But that's just a thought experiment. I think a better approach is abandoning all hope of doing good deeds at the Federal level
-kgj
-kgj
Talk about soul sucking. I couldn't imagine anything more soul sucking then pre-limiting your options just because you don't want to deal with a difficult job. Ruling out having kids and owning a home just so you can never have to worry about debts? If that isn't soul destroying then I don't know what is.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
"Deep Coding" is just another bullshit propaganda term they've come up with to blame programmers for the loss of their careers. Here's how this fun game works:
Some soulless P.R. flack has to make a case that programming isn't a viable career anymore, so that he can claim that people who still want to program must have something wrong with them. So he needs to find a way to characterize programming in some negative way, to shift the point of view of the reader.
First, he considers the reality: most programmers really love programming, and it's a complex and interesting art best performed by people with education and experience. The real reason the jobs are going overseas is that the suits in charge of companies are vicious skinflints who think they can get something for almost nothing.
That's no good, though, because it's unflattering to the people who are paying for the P.R. flack's work, and it shows the similarity between comp.sci grads and engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc -- which isn't where the P.R. flack wants to go with this. The LAST thing he wants to do is turn the programmer into a sympathetic figure, someone who reminds Joe Sixpack of the scientists who saved the world in old fifties movies. Selling out nice Doctor SaveEverybody might not create the right public image.
So, somewhere, Mr. P.R. flack has heard the term "Deep Geek". He throws the term around a room full of interns, and they come up with the concept of "Deep Coding" -- i.e. programming as an art in itself. "Hey," one of the proto-flacks says, "why didn't these guys study business? It's their own fault. If they wanted to be successful, they should have majored in business like us. All the 'deep coders' are dead meat, and it's their own fault for not being business majors."
The P.R. flack gives the intern a bagel, then reflects on the statement. He can't really put it THAT way, because most people didn't study business, and they aren't going to be sympathetic to that point of view... But what if he turns it around a little, and says that programmers are too specialized! Sure! They focused only on programming, they just want to hide in their cubicles, the bastards, they're no good to a company. That way, he can say it's their fault without complimenting suits directly, and nobody will really notice.
He starts using the term "Deep Coding" when he goes out for his six-martini lunch, he uses it on the golf course around the executives, and before too long, ALL the P.R. flacks are using it. One bounces it off another, who quotes it to another, and pretty soon, everyone is saying that to be a programmer, you can't really be a programmer! No, you have to be a business major who happens to do a little programming on the side.
THAT is how bullshit like this gets created.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Is it I, or did a great number of "questionable" technology professionals enter the programming field between 1998-2000? Is that not when history majors, Taco Bell workers, and bus drivers thought "programming" had luster and these .bomb companies hired them to developer E-commerce applications? .bomb wave and it makes it tough to filter them out until you interview them. They usually pass the "I did everything" on the resume test. I have faith that "good", creative problem solving programmers are and will always be needed.
My question is, didn't that hurt true computer scientists and information technologists? We have recently be interviewing many candidates to fill some technical positions, finding qualified candidates is difficult because we are still getting those folks that tried to ride the
Whenever a career disappears (literally) over the horizon, it seems to get the label "low level", "repetative", etc. This article does it also. This is often used as a justification to let globalization eat away at the variety of careers available.
How is sitting in meetings all day, placating paranoid CEO's, and playing office politics "higher level" than figuring out how to get Oracle to join 5 tables and 2 million records before the nightly batch job deadline is up?
We already traded "boring, low-level" factory jobs for the highly skilled and highly rewarding cashier jobs at Burger King and Walmart. They are just bending language so that they can get away with doing the same thing to tech careers without the guilt.
Table-ized A.I.
I find a lot of Gartner output to be utter tripe, but I'm going to have to come out and defend them on this one.
Most IT people work in an IT department in a large business, or for one of the big consultancy/service companies that pander to big businesses.
In those environments there are no tricky programming problems left. (Ok, that's a grotesque generalisation; I'm talking about 99.5% of the programming that takes place.) People don't get paid to devise new algorithms, to develop new technologies, to find new ways of storing data.
People get paid to hook up an off-the-shelf inventory system with a supply chain, with selling systems (web / retail) and with off-the-shelf fulfilment systems. They use known technologies, they put their data in Oracle or SQL Server, they host on Sun or HP hardware.
In such an environment, someone willing to spend three weeks debugging a complex thread deadlock just isn't needed. People that understand the business, can suggest and rapidly implement solutions that help the business, and that can work with the business are needed.
If you demand a requirements doc and hide in a dark room for two months before delivering your masterpiece, you've failed the business - in the last two months, their objectives have changed, the market has changed, and you've delivered something they don't quite need. If you're continually talking to them throughout that time then you can adapt, and you're more likely to meet their actual needs.
Unfortunately most business people don't understand IT. They have no concept of project delivery, and they don't realise just how much skill goes into making some things we do look easy. To talk to them you have to use their language, express things in terms they understand, and demonstrate that you do understand their needs and aren't actually working to thwart their entire business model.
This takes communication skills. It really needs people that are capable of understanding business concepts. Ideally it needs people that understand the industry itself.
So when the term "Deep Coding" is used, it's describing the programmer of lore, the genius sat at a terminal cranking out code all the time. And that's just not needed by most of the employers out there.
This doesn't mean you need a business major - but you do need to demonstrate you can interact with the business.
Incidentally, don't think I'm downplaying the need for technical skills too - there's a tremendous shortage of people that know how to design complex systems (and make them look simple), that can do proper application architecture, that can think abstractly and hone in on correct solutions. Those people will always find work, and Indian outsourcers are very definitely not filling that gap. And if you get that bit right, the programming is a very simple piece that comes after.
~Cederic
...actually go out of business that way. They start hiring illegals, take them to all their jobs. the guys pay attention and learn the trade. Then they go off and undercut them and take their clients. Sure, that's the "american way", but it's still weird because they do it by skirting laws, violating local housing regs, etc and the government gives them a skate on it. And they do some other sleazy stuff, here's an example. When home depot first opened up, I was one of the first people at their first store, getting there early to get supplies before going to work. After some time I noticed something, the customer service desk started to get a big line in the morning, with illegals returning worn out hardware and demanding replacements. I was flabbergasted, the stuff wasn't new and defective, it was clapped out, but to avoid charges of "racism" Home Depot just sucked it up and gave them new tools! They do this over and over again. Myself, I just would never do anything this skanky. I guess HD just figures it's a cost of business to them, but all the customers pay for it in the long run.
Outsourcing to India is a GREAT idea for the US software industry. While most of the Indian techs seem to do good work, there is usually such a cultural and language barrier, the chance of a project coming off without missing functionality or missed features is nearly 0%. The company I work for learned their lesson with foreign outsourcing. They still hire consultants or contractors, but they are all local folks now.
It's funny because 10 bucks and hour looks sooo damn good on paper, management will usually take the risk of destroying the relationship with a client over the huge margins.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...