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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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We have an immidiate requirement for Sr. Software Engineer for our MNC
client from Banglore, INDIA.
Exp: 5 - 8 Years
Qual: B.E/B.Tech OR M.E/M.Tech
The person must have a knowledge of the following key skills.
- C and RISC programming
- Software Arch. and Design Experience
- Chip Debugging
- VxWorks
- pSoS
-Device Drivers
-ATM
-DSL
-System Debugging
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Thanks
Uday.
uday@eexcelsolutions.com
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Unfortunately Gartner has beat you to the punch!
Anything with the name "Gartner" in it automatically has a taint(not the area between a man's genitals and his anus, though that may be an accurate description of Gartner). It's just hard to swallow their credibility. They seem to keep on coming up with research that says, "Offshore everything! oh and by the way, we just happen to have a large offshore consulting division, what a coincidence". If they are a research firm then they should stick to just research, anything else tarnishes their credibility....
Monstar L
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.
"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'm a programmer, like many of you. I develop my own Open Source systems and have done so for the past five years. After being shut down by employer after employer for stupid reasons, I finally got smart about it.
My last experience was the clincher. This company will remain anonymous because they are dirty enough to go after me and tie me up in court if they ever found out I was talking about them negatively. They hired me as a full time contract employee to develop a project management system for them and some other projects like an online mapping system. They started me at contracting wages which are a bit higher than full-time-contract wages -- for the reason that I would be paid more frequently and would not have to wait so long between paycheques if I took full-time-contract instead of contract. Like many other fools out there, I took a pay cut and they paid me more frequently -- for a while. I traded my value for job security. DUMB MOVE!!!
They laid me off when I finished my project and their cheques continued to bounce until I finally managed to certify the last one a full two months after I was laid off. My employer knew all along that I would be sacked on completion of my project, so it was intentional.
So how do these companies expect us to handle this? We are going to get smart and we are going to get powerful until we can do as we please. Vocation == Vacation.
So I guess you can say I was left with a bit of an edge after that experience.
We all need job security and that sort of thing for our families, but we also need to create that security ourselves -- nobody is going to do it for us.
My Ace of Spades is to have a project going that is mine alone and fund it through my own employment and extra-curricular activities.
I've switched to full-on entrepreneurial activity with a NEW company.
I am being paid right now to provide solutions to the company I work for and yet the company has signed off that they will not own the solutions but that they will be able to use them in their current state -- FOREVER.
They are okay with this because they can get me a lot cheaper than if they were to actually OWN the systems I build. Exclusivity is expensive and I have told them that if they want to exclusively own my project they will have to come to the table with a very big offer. Huge offer, I said.
What they really wanted was to have solutions to problems and with my troubleshooting experience (10 years), I am able to help them and they are able to help me. Symbiosis!
Are you unemployed or just ready to do something special with your talent? I want to talk to you.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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.
Some of the lessened market demand can be traced straight back to free software.
Really? Where do you get that from? Empirical evidences shows that one can get very good jobs from large companies if one of those companies sees the quality in your work. How many times have we heard "X lead programmer for large Free Software project was hired by Y large enterprise"? You have nothing to back up your statement except, what you believe to be, a logical argument. There are many factors which can effect the decrease of programmer jobs in America, why pick a reason which has evidence that contradicts your conclusion?
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!"
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?