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Tracking the IT Job Market with a Bot
atlantageek writes "Is the
IT job market improving? Is the growth in Unix or Windows? Should I
study Data Warehousing or E-Commerce? Identify the recent trends with
CJ Miner, a small tool I've written that has been monitoring the Computer Jobs website for the
last year."
"track how the computerjobs.com website has been doing"?
;-)
That was also my interpretation of this project. I'm afraid that computerjobs.com wouldn't necessarily represent the entire IT market, but rather a very small percentage of it. The software would be limited to indicating various demographics at computerjobs.com, perhaps arguably and tentatively serving to indicate the "competency level" of their members. Without data from many sources, however, you couldn't hope to provide an accurate impression of the overall market.
Maybe the programmer should sell the collected data back to them.
Do you like German cars?
A bot taking another IT related job! Where will it end?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
You know if you want to check out how tech jobs are doing why not go here?
Philosophy.
I'm sorry sir, but the bot seems to be able to do your job better and faster than you can. No job for you!
Boxing Equipment Reviews
However, whenever a shortage of labor occurs in the IT market, the government consistently intervenes by importing H-1B workers to fix this shortage. As a result, the growth in wages is damaged. Working conditions (like working 60+ hours per week) do not improve.
Any perceived shortage in the market for IT labor is illusory. If this shortage were real, it would be short-lived, due to government intervention.
By the way, we see the same phenomenon in the market for unskilled labor: e.g. picking vegetables and fruits. The government fixes this shortage by allowing illegal aliens to flood this market for unskilled labor. As a result, wages (hovering around $5.00 per hour for fruit-picking in Southern California) never rise. Working conditions (like standing for more than 9 hours per day in the strawberry fields) never improve.
The rub is that politicians do not care about Washington's gross tampering in and bludgeoning of a (relatively) free market like the USA. Washington is eager to fix shortages of labor. However, Washington rarely fixes shortages of jobs by, for example, creating more government jobs. The interests of Washington are not aligned with the hopes and aspirations of middle America.
We should close the American market to (relatively) non-free markets like India, China, and Mexico. Further, the American market should be flung wide open to (relatively) free markets like Eastern/Western Europe, Canada, and Japan. Free trade is good -- only when we are trading with other societies that maintain (relatively) free markets.