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U.S. IT Hiring Increases Despite Outsourcing
surefooted1 writes "A CNN article reports that a new study has shown that U.S. tech hiring has increased, despite oversees outsourcing. It mentions that the job market is higher today than it was at the height of the dot-com boom." From the article: "The study suggests that there are several factors in the continued growth in demand for IT workers here. The report said part of it is due to the use of offshoring by U.S. companies, including start-up firms, to limit their costs and thus grow their businesses. That, in turn, creates more opportunities here even as an increasing amount of work is done overseas. The study also said that companies from a variety of sectors in the economy continue to discover greater efficiency and more competitive operations through investment in IT."
This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.
How addicted? So addicted that we'll hire people skilled in it no matter where they live.
Don't believe me? Learn how to speak English and get an I.T. related degree. Bam! You're employed.
The United States is a developed nation. What do developed nations do? Just sit around on their hands waiting for the other nations to catch up? Not quite. Industrialized is one thing but to have a solid infrastructure and to lead the world in technological advances is the current goal in the game.
Everything is beginning to depend on computational devices. Maybe they aren't used in the end result but they're most certainly used in developing/researching any and all products. Even farming has many uses for computers. It's the new basis for information exchange and delivery. How much more important can an industry get?
Why then, is it news that the United States has a great job market for IT Workers? This shouldn't be surprising at all. These workers are needed everywhere and anyone who can't see that hasn't looked at the stock market recently.
My work here is dung.
The more people on the planet involved in the global economy, the more we will ALL benefit. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.
This doesn't mean you can get complacent and stop learning and innovating. Just that everyone can learn, innovate, create, and all humanity can benefit and get wealthier.
Are we outsourcing oversees? Or overseas?
In other words, outsourcing has actually helped our economy and provided new employment opportunities for the displaced, just like almost every respectable economist has said it would, just like it has always done over the years. Yes, perhaps Paul Krugman disagrees, but I said "respectable" economist, which immediately disqualifies him.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
"Overseas" not oversees
I'll bet its the senior positions like System Administrators, Network Administrators, and so on.
Monster, Dice, and other job sites seem to list mostly those positions. Why? Because the entry level positions are gone.
Wait a couple decades, when all the people qualified for senior positions are retired, and let me know if outsourcing was a good idea.
I don't get it.
is Despite, and why does he oversee outsourcing??
And is this at all related to turn over in the industry? are we seeing more hiring because the people who shouldn't be there in the first place are finally bailing?
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
I am glad to hear there are more jobs... but then, why am I making 25% less than what I was making 5 months ago? Hell, when the dot com bubble burst, and then I got laid off in 2001, was the highest I have been paid in my life. It was not a lot of money, but I wish I could make that much again. There may be more jobs, but I think that there is a flood of people taking them that are not getting paid as much. I have over 10 years experience, and struggle to find any decent employment.
A CNN article reports that a new study has shown that U.S. tech hiring has increased, despite oversees outsourcing....
;)
Looks like writers could be the next to suffer outsourcing
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
It is possible that savings by outsourcing enable companies to employ more people (or pay more money) and put more emphasis for their core business while staill not exceeding their old budget. But I guess, the number of people getting benefitted would be quite less than the people who get unemployed and in the long run, it can be very dangerous.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
...Hiring for janitors in the offices of rich IT executives has skyrocketed in the last several months. Looks like opportunities in the IT world really are coming back.
news at 11.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Wasn't it the same way .. the space program in the 50's?
And the nuclear program?
People should be allowed to pay anyone they choose.
CNN is just re-writing a press release from a pro-guest worker group: The Association of Computer Manufacturers.
Many groups are gearing up to pressure congress to increase the number of H-1B visas. They are spinning a "labor shortage" myth.
There is no such "labor shortage" and no great need to have non-immigrant guest workers.
Perhaps CNN should report on American tech workers trying to get a raise; instead.
Of course outsourcing benefits both countries involved. Same way trading benefits both parties. Can you imagine what kind of dark place we'd live in if we never traded with other countries?
It isn't so much "lower" positions that are lost as they are entry-level positions. This is probably because India and China don't have enough experienced people.
TFA:
expanding opportunities for those trained in fields such as software architecture, product design, project management and IT consulting.
You need to work lower jobs before you get those jobs!
In ten years or so, India will have qualified software architects and DBA's. Young Americans who are having difficulty competing with their peers in India and China will continue to do so as long as they stay in I.T. As the offshore workers will gain experience as fast as them.
Up here in Canada we have seen an increase in the number of available positions over the last six months. From what I have seen, the increase has been broadly based, spread over a number of different sectors and in most region across the country. Employers really need to act fast to get the best talent before it is snapped up by other companies. We have not yet returned to the hysteria of the dot com days, but certainly have experienced an upswing.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
I dont know how truth there is to this but I remember reading a while ago that companies where having problems with outsourcing. Projects where late, missing requirements and so on. Maybe this increase in employment is a reflection on the companies realizing that it is better to have local companies do the work? If you have to outsource part of your project to a company that is say next door or on the same block it is alot easier to keep tabs on what is going on and on making changes.
Here
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/
I doubt you'll change your tune though, it seems you're convinced outsourcing is bad.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I've heard a lot about these new IT jobs.... You can make up to $1200/week, working from home, using a computer to place tiny classified ads on various web sites. It works!! Yes, IT is booming in the states!
The big question is, does a job in IT administration really require all that techincal knowlege, or is it basically equivalent to a "garage job" (knowing what part goes where/ diagnostics) without the heavy lifting?
I hate to tell you this, but the days of high school grads getting a Cisco cert or reading an O'Reilly book and pulling down $80K in an entry level job are gone forever. That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You answered your own question. The DotCom boom created a sudden and unexpected demand for tech workers that artificially inflated the value of those workers. Now that the bubble has burst, the market is correcting for incorrect salaries and paying employees their real market value. It's still possible to get DotCom wages, but you have to be both utterly invaluable to a company and in the right place at the right time. Otherwise your skills will be valued at a rate similar to those of most non-executive business professionals.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Doesn't it make sense, thought, that after a long cycle of firing IT workers that they will need to hire some of that lost staff? Just because hiring is on the rise doesn't mean the IT field is suddenly healthy again. If I start up a company and hire 100 workers over 5 years, then I fire 75 of them, then a year later hire 25 more, I could rightfully claim that my company is growing faster than ever. Doesn't mean it's more healthy than ever. Doesn't mean my company is better off than it was 3 years ago.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Ummmm ok and were are these jobs exactly?????
This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely willing to believe black is white.
"I am glad to hear there are more jobs... but then, why am I making 25% less than what I was making 5 months ago?"
Because that's what someone who does what you do gets paid in the current market.
The question you should be asking is "Why the hell did I ever get paid so much in the past?"
You were overpaid, and the market adjusted. It happens.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I never thought I'd say this, but as a 45 year old U.S. citizen, I pity the young in this country. They will never have the opportunities I had growing up. Time was, if you were admitted to the University of California (I went to Berkeley), there was no tuition, society was making an investment in you. Hewlett-Packard, et. al. picked up young grads and groomed them for success in engineering the coolest devices on the planet; they were making an investment in you. All gone. We no longer invest in the future in this country (the young, NASA, Energy, science), instead we invest in the past (the old, the military, interest on the national debt). Even on the social front, I have to say I pity the young: in the late 70s and early 80s, life was: study hard, party hard, get laid (a lot). I am sounding like a geezer, but I really hope today's 20 year old guys could be time-transported back to enjoy campus life then. Don't worry about condoms, they're all taking the pill ;) Man, I am really rambling, but you get my point. I hope things get better for the current generation, I really do.
Strange ! , we(indians) thought we took all the project. Damn! i am going to fire my marketing team. Anyway , we want total world domination , since our govt uses only paper and pen and no computers ,so there is no chance of getting any projects from them. Secondly , Nobody buys geniune software in india(yes $OS is open source and freeware here) , so we devlop and sell to USA or europe.
We are also very proud of our democracy and our polticians and there goons,they only want to make india a super-power but without providing basic electricity and water to there citizen .
We also have a very good justice system , a innocent model working as bartender to support her family is shot at point blank range , in front of 40 odd crowd by politician son ,when she refused to server him a drink , they all go scot free for lack of evidence. It took seven years for the trial to end ,during which her mother dies of cancer and her father suffers heart attack .
Ofcourse , we also blame USA for all the wrong things happening to our country (earlier we use to blame pakistan , but we have became friends now) and blah blah ....
and dont listen to consuctants about the whole "you have to out-source to be competative" BS. A funny thing happened at all those outsourced countries...the starting salary demands for new hires rose due to demand.....
The IT industry has traditionally made life difficult for entry-level people. Landing that first IT job has always been a big challenge, even with a degree. For many years, employers cheerfully paid a premium for specific experience, while ignoring the entry-level market. Today, the combination of H1B and offshoring is the most effective tool ever devised to limit the supply of US-based entry-level people.
For the projects that are difficult to turn over to the offshore or H1Bs, I am finding a relatively tight market for IT resources. I suspect this is not so much because the IT market is growing, but the labor pool is shrinking faster than the jobs are going away. I know of several people who left the IT field. If the salaries are not going to be all that great, there are easier ways to make a living.
I honestly think we can do a better job of development -- on time and on budget -- using locally available people. At first glance it seems to be expensive, but this is our best chance to get the job done right the first time. Problem: Other managers are starting to think the same way, after we thoroughly discouraged anyone from entering the field. Oops. I guess the market imbalance can be fixed with supply and demand, but it's going to be a rough ride.
First off, it is I.T. it's an acronym not a fucking word.
... [yes, I've said this before...]. Information == content, Technology == subjective. Books are technology. So are cave paintings.
... what the fuck does that mean? In the states? In Canada? globally? What are these new employees doing? Data entry? ...
Second it's a meaningless acronym. Information Technology
So an I.T. specialist could be anything from an archeologist, librarian to a systems admin with 10,000 IBM servers under their thumb.
My larger point here is just the vast sums of meaningless techno babble that swings around in the press. "IT hiring is up"
For the love of god stop over simplifying everything. Yes we use words like "doctor" or "mechanic" but we still acknowledge they have specialties. Why isn't it the same when we're talking about "business". Is it just because it's simpler to hide the truth and sounds more important?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
When I fill out my IRS tax form, I am required to put my occupation and the amount I made. I believe the government keeps track of this sort of thing at the Bureau of Labor. I used their webform to select all computer and mathematical occupation numbers for all industries and generated an Excel spreadsheet. The data is about a year old. Then it was easy to figure the trend using a little arithmetic. According to my calculations the US gains around 50000 new tech jobs every six months. I suppose it's possible that the ACM study might include investigating an outsourcing of illegal tech occupations to other countries, which wouldn't be reported to the IRS, but that's rather farfetched.
It's nice to see people are doing their usual bang up job of actually reading the article before commenting. "The study cites estimates that between two to three percent of IT jobs will be lost annually to lower-wage developing countries through the process known as offshoring. But it said the U.S. IT sector's overall growth should outpace that loss of jobs, expanding opportunities for those trained in fields such as software architecture, product design, project management and IT consulting." ESTIMATE, ESTIMATE losses and SHOULD, SHOULD outpace. That's a big difference between estimating numbers and stating real numbers. THEY ARE GUESSING!! They don't know what will happen. They are speculating it won't be so bad but he have no idea if it will be so. Oh and the increase in wages, 2-5 percent, is simply COST OF LIVING! That's not real growth. Nice job thinking things are improving when they are not. FYI, no RESPECTABLE economist thinks off-shoring is a good idea.
Actually, the job I was doing 5 months ago, got outsourced. What I was making in the dotcom boom, was pretty low. It wasn't even half of the 80k cisco cert someone mentioned. I made a decent wage. Right now, I am a sys admin, taking care of mission critical servers, support the network, do some web design when needed, as well as workstation support, for less than 30k/year. When I was laid off, in 2001, it was because of the general economic down turn. I worked for Albertsons at the time, and they just cut 10% of their workforce at that time. I keep seeing that there are all these great jobs, but I just don't see many of them pop up, day to day.
That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back
Noooooooo!
All my hopes are still pinned on the IT fairy.
#!/usr/bin/english
This entire statement is made up "Depending on what one would call Software Architecture, most of these "expanding" fields are ones that require higher education than those who were displaced. The jobs that have been lost are the ones of entry level programmers, IT support individuals-- in fact, the expanding opportunities are ones that have not been moved, or have been minimally affected. The problem with the statement "everything is going to be ok" is that it's not ok for everyone." None, NONE of the conclusions that you drew here are alluded to in the research. NOWHERE in the paper does it describe exactly what types of jobs are being gained/lost, apart from the very general description you cite. So, please admit you made the rest of that shit up, or give us a link to credible source.
"U.S. tech hiring has increased, despite oversees outsourcing" This should say "because" of not "despite". Outsourcing helps companies to grow. The redundant, commodity-type work gets farmed to the lowest bidder which enables companies to hire US employees for bigger salaries to do inovative and creative work. This strengthens our economy, provides lower prices and improves our standard of living. Outsourcing is not the terror many beleive it to be, it's a benefit. If you lose your job to outsourcing, you are in a job that can be done by anyone, and will be bid out for the lowest possible price. I'd suggest adding to your repetoire of skills if you arein this situation.
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/summary.htm
everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
Get a new job! I wouldn't read a book for under 30k a year! Your degree is worth more than that!
Interesting article, but it ignores the harsh cruel reality of actual US tech employment. As an example, let's take my ex, who used to make $70K in data management and now makes $20K in html coding.
Just because she has a job, doesn't mean she's doing as well as she used to.
Replacing high paying factory jobs with burger flipping at McDonald's doesn't mean things are peachy keen in America, no matter how often the lie gets told that things are swell here in the US.
Good thing I saved and invested a lot of my money while others were living the high life with fancy cars and tech gadget - ok, sure, I've got a few servers I bought on a whim that ran me $20K, but most of my money went into my house, paying off my car, and in retirement.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Globalization has failed to entirely destroy the tech economy, therefore it is good for the tech economy.
Tune in next week, when we'll explain how the Bush tax cuts being followed by four years of recession followed by one year of gradual regrowth in some market areas means the Bush tax cuts saved the economy!
I've spent over a year trying to find employment again in the IT industry after my job was sent to India last January. I ended up being out of work 6 months then going back to a very low-level former employer out of sheer desperation. I make about 50% less income than previously - just about level with the poverty line.
A year! And I still have not found suitable employment. I've had very few prospects and almost no interviews. The recruiters say my resume and skill set is good. The potential employers say it's good. So why am I still looking?
There has admittedly been some small increase in the number of jobs available but, as some here have pointed out, these positions are almost all SENIOR level positions. I have experience, but I cannot say it fits into the senior level category. I'm beyond entry level, so I'm in the middle ground (which has all but disappeared).
I live in the Chicago area - and the job market here is sparse at best. I am trying to relocate to Silicon Valley - but of course, no company is going to pay relocation assistance.
ROCK | ME | HARD PLACE
The IT industry is a dead end in this country, and I want OUT of it. Biggest mistake of my life.
So you would deny developing nations both jobs and trade with the U.S. If all modern nations took that attitude, the developing nations would be doomed to near-eternal poverty. Until their labour laws are up to U.S. standards, they can't do business with the U.S. And until they can do business with the U.S., they can't generate the wealth to improve their labour standards.
That doesn't seem "good" or "right" to me.
my solution to this was to find a small company.. while it isn't as much as i would like it is good and covers the bills and lets me set aside for the later times..
i would never work for a large company again.... you become too esaily expendable
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
IT hiring is up" ... what the fuck does that mean? In the states? In Canada? globally?
Ofcourse he means the US of A. The rest of the world is just target coordinates.
an ill wind that blows no good
return to life as usual, nothing to see here.
That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.
I'd have to disagree. Mostly, because I believe economics and technology is hard to predict. We might see somthing similar in the 2020's if Nanotech took off or neural interfaced VR etc. Heck, we might a second bubble in the 2010's with robotics.
All our current college degrees and current certificates might be worthless when a new technology pardigm comes along and shatters our current economic mode.
The internet boom from 1999 to 2001 was unpredicted and unexpected. It was a shock to the current economic system today and changed all our lives. This is of course the nature of accelerated changes in technology growth.
To sit back and say "This won't ever happen again." is kind of a 'head in the sand' kind of mentality. Personally, I know it may never happen, but I am keenly aware of the fact that if I fail to constantly update my skills and be willing to learn, I might miss out on future oportunities and in worse case scenario also face a pink slip because my skills and degree are no longer valid.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I've seen the effects of outsourcing first hand. I'm fairly senior, and for the last year I've been involved in hiring a team in India to perform entry level tasks. Yes, I went to the dark side, but you've got to feed the bulldog. We're hiring like crazy in the US, because the India teams require a lot more supervision than a US team. So we're hiring manager level technical people. These managers would have been writing code 5 years ago, but there's not much future in writing simple code these days. The jobs are available in design and architecture and going to endless meetings.
I've also seen that we pay quite a bit less for manager level jobs than we did before. I make less today than I used to have to pay a developer five years ago. I know lots of developers that got out of technology because the market was so dismal. Forget being a college kid trying to land an entry level programming job, they just aren't available.
So we're basically eating our children. There's no future in entry level jobs for the US tech worker -- those jobs are gone. By definition, the pool of senior people is getting smaller each day, so those jobs should become higher paying over time. But right now there's a lot of highly experienced people available and even though hiring is up, salaries are not following because the pool of people available is still pretty large.
20 years from now we'll be as dependent upon foreign tech workers as we are today on foreign oil.
Sorry to break it to you slashdot commies but more efficient business creates jobs.
Seems like there will always be demmand to fix broken indian code. Those guys right the most atrocoious cut-and -aste hope-it-compiles with deprecation code, generally explodes when it his production. Anyone who hires sketchy indians to write code is on crack! I've made a number of paychecks fixing this crap, they could have just saved m money by hiring me in the first place. M
So we have a case where paranoid reactionist scare mongering has turned out to not have the results predicted occur, but in fact the opposite?
Must be a corner case.
Why should the gold standard be the point in time for the economy when a lot was smoke and mirrors?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So says the AC who founded a dot-bomb company, appointed himself to the executive board, raped the investors for every dollar they were worth, dumped the company and collected the bankruptcy insurance, and now lives in rural America running a desktop advertising outfit. How about the 401(k) funds that were invested in your web-portal that was little more than a news aggregator with links to online computer retailers? How are those people doing?
Or maybe you were one of the 279 Enron executives who were originally cited in the reports but never actually had to appear in court. Must be nice sitting back on all the cash you fucked everyone else out of.
Easy to preach from the top of the hill, isn't it?
Fucktard. You owe us the money you stole for those eight years.
"FYI, no RESPECTABLE economist thinks off-shoring is a good idea."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33283.html
FYI, you're wrong.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Outsourcing has failed to entirely destroy the economy, therefore outsourcing is good for the economy.
Tune in next week, where we'll learn how the Bush tax cuts were followed by four years of recession followed by one year of partial regrowth in some market areas, therefore the Bush tax cuts saved the economy!
Outsourcing is a good thing (give the work to some other company dedicated to the task) The article is actually refering to Offshoring. taking the work out of the country. If it werent for outsourcing, MANY IT people would be unemployed (think contractors and consultants) Outsourcing is good, it funds new businesses, offshoring is bad
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
do{
programmer = hireprogrammer();
software= programmer.work();
costs+= programmer.pay();
costs+= software.market();
revenue=software.sell();
} while (revenue > costs)
The above function says that if your costs of marketing and paying programmers is less than the
amount of money you make from selling the software than you'll always keep hiring programmers.
Since there are tons and tons of possible profitable applications to make there will almost
always be more work than there are programmers whether they are payed a lot or a little. The
cheaper programmers are more likely to get hired first but, from a business standpoint, after
all the cheap programmers are hired it will still make sense to employ the more expensive ones.
**/
What does it mean for a market to be higher today than a few years ago? I don't understand what you mean by higher. It certainly doesn't mean "better", or "more accessible". The IT companies are simply throwing their dog (the American IT worker) a bone in the form of a few jobs. They are making so much money through outsourcing, a clever word for a cut-throat anti-nationalist business practice, that they can afford to do that. The jobs are part of PR. Any idiot knows that the American economy is in shambles, despite what the likes of major media companies like CNN claim.
Just because it's not a zero sum game doens't mean "ALL benefit".
Some people benefit.
Some people don't.
The one's who benefit : the owner's of large amounts of capital.
The losers: those with commodifiable labour skills but no capital.
So how do we "ALL Benefit" ???
You can't fix a slashdoter's brain, you can only let 'em mod you down.
"Nice job thinking things are improving when they are not. FYI, no RESPECTABLE economist thinks off-shoring is a good idea."
*shrug*
At least it gives the "Get out of my profession, you damn dirty MSCE/IT for dummies wannabees. I deserve that job." a very brief moment of gloating.
I personally could watch that train wreck known as "arrogance meets reality" all day long.
I'm sorry, but if we want to outsource our lowest common denominator positions, go for it.
It's kind of ridiculous.
Dude: Oh no! We've outsourced our cashier positions! Now we're only hiring management, finance, and HR positions for Americans.
Me: But... isn't that a good thing?
Dude: Those positions require more education!
Me: But... isn't that a good thing?
Or.
Dude: I used to get paid $95k as an entry level programmer. Now my friend who just started at the same position is only making $45k...
Me: So you were probably being paid more than market value.
Dude: Yeah, but outsourcing is causing my position to become commoditized!
Me: So you should probably educate yourself more and move up, huh?
Dude: That requires work!
Me: So I guess $45k aint so bad for that mentality eh?
Dude: NO, but I used to make $90k! This isn't fair!
Me: If your company paid everybody double their market value, they'd go under and have to lay you off. That probably isn't fair either.
--
Last time I checked, entry level programming postions aren't something you just walk in off of the street and do. It requires learning too. The IT industry, much with every other revolution, raised the minimum standards of education, training, and expectations. That's the sort of thing that keeps America competitive and able to call itself a developed nation.
H-1B is such a scam on the people. Many H-1B applicants come from wealthy or well-connected families to begin with so they're not really bothered by the lower salaries and they have the safety net to be able to take no extraneous shit on the job. They're the tip of the scheme and provide the success stories which bring in more H-1B applicants who think they're coming here to get a better life. When they arrive they find that they're indentured servants (if they're male) or sexual servants (if they're female) given very little opportunity to actually advance their positions. Then there are those who are hired as stress relievers--just people who are present to take the bullshit from their managers when the manager needs someone to kick every couple of days. "Go left, no, go right, no go left, no go right... damnit! Can't you do anything?!" Those people end up the worst off. At least the others end up with decent, if underpaid, work experience or, possibly, a financially secure spouse. Not only do the stress relievers get fucked over psychologically but often they end up jobless and deported, if they're lucky, or in local jails or on the streets, if they're not.
It's a racket.
He said:
Depending on what one would call Software Architecture, most of these "expanding" fields are ones that require higher education than those who were displaced. The jobs that have been lost are the ones of entry level programmers, IT support individuals-- in fact, the expanding opportunities are ones that have not been moved, or have been minimally affected. The problem with the statement "everything is going to be ok" is that it's not ok for everyone.
You said: NOWHERE in the paper does it describe exactly what types of jobs are being gained/lost, apart from the very general description you cite. So, please admit you made the rest of that shit up, or give us a link to credible source.
In spite of the article not speaking to this, I think he is spot-on. I recently had a discussion with an old buddy of mine who is a professional programmer and taught programming at the local university for a while. I was telling him how I finally finished my B.S. in Computer Science after working on it for some 17 years, and how I'm kind of glad I missed the whole Dot Com bubble (I'm in mechanical engineering), as it seems like nowadays you have to be a guru if you want to make it in the IT industry these days.
He agreed completely. He said he told his students, "Look, guys, if you want to go into Computer Science - great! There are still jobs out there in Computer Science. But there is no room for "C" students anymore."
So TFA or no TFA, we've got three people here who are all getting the same whiff of scent in the air. Mundane IT jobs have been farmed out. If you want to make some money in senior position these days you definitely can't have average skills.
Taking away a job from someone and then saying there's another job available but that it requires more skills is like taking a bone away from a dog and putting it onto of the fridge and saying "if you can get it, it's yours". Yes, the jobs are there, but unless you provide some assistance in training those displaced to fill those jobs then it still doesn't help those whos jobs were outsourced in the first place.
I think this is a great analogy, but I'm not terribly concerned about it, nor do I think "assistance" is required. After all, how did the dog get the bone in the first place? It wasn't handed to him then, either. The goalposts in life are constantly in flux. Very few have the luxury of being able to rest on their laurels securely for very long. The technology field changes so fast that this is even more true for those of us in it.
It is not the responsibility of others to help you get get your bone, no matter where it is.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The title of the top post in to this article (as I write this) is "Told-ya-so". And, for the most part, I agree with what the ideas in that post. There are other posts conveying the same sort of thing. While I agree with them (in general) they're missing one point. That is that a single area may shrink when something new comes along (e.g. offshoring & outsourcing). But that *OVERALL* (key word) the economy is better.
So for example, the overall economy is better because of the invention of the automobile (*). It has opened up new markets and new ways of doing business and increased productivity in our country in countless ways. But it obliterated the businesses of horse-drawn carriages and buggy whip makers. So, while *OVERALL* the economy is better, that doesn't prevent pockets of the economy from massive suffering.
(*) I didn't say anything about the environment being better or worse.. just the economy.
The same is true with offshoring & outsourcing. The IT industry may be hiring more overall, but that doesn't discount the fact that there are pockets in that industry that are suffering massively as a result. My guess is that coders are the most impacted by this.
But don't fret too much. There are other jobs that are becoming available now that coding is getting comoditized. And don't forget that the same facility for easily shipping code half way around the world has also given us free/open source software. So, it's not all bad, and *OVERALL* it's good.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Judging by the Washington Post classifieds, demand for IT workers in this area (DC and suburbs) is a fraction of what it was during the dot-com boom.
"Every day the US is becoming a country where the educational and economical divide grows. The problem is that those on the top are increasing looking down on those below them, and those below them, are becoming increasing bitter of the fact that no-one is watching out for them.
(I'm not advocating that outsourcing be banned, however, I am advocating that something be done to help those who were displaced)"
I vehemently disagree on the educational front, and would suggest you post facts for the "economical" divide you suggest is occurring.
Graduating from high school in the US opens up all the education that one needs. Student loans are available to anyone who needs them, regardless of earnings, credit history, or virtually any other consideration (there are a few qualifiers, but they are easily met). So the argument that students can't afford school is BS.
Which could only leave access, but that's a BS argument too, because many (not sure exactly how many) states require state funded schools to accept Community College/Junior College graduates. Similarly, they require CC/JCs to accept high school graduates. So the access argument is BS too.
Now, kindly explain HOW you came to the conclusion that the education divide is widening when there is an educational opportunity for virtually anyone who can graduate (and in many places, Florida for example, you don't even need to do that, just pass a GED, or General Equivalency Diploma test, which is 10th grade level).
More chicken little BS.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Considering that if you HAVE no work to pay for things, at some point it breaks down and you end up with a depression in the economy.
At some point, it all collapses because there's nobody left in the country that are able to pay for what is being offered, albeit at lower prices (though I don't see housing going down, I see it going up along with the ability to pay for it going down hard...).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
just go look in the classifieds. if you were really around in the dot-com boom, you know the tech job listings today, especially for IT workers, is a tiny fraction of what it was in the late 90's. i travel a couple of times a year, and always check the listings in the local papers. this is some kind of orwellian BS article, written to support the idea of outsourcing...nothing more, nothing less.
That's true until you gain some experience and start looking for your next job.
At that point, you'lf find yourself categorized and pigeonholed based on the tech that you've had formal wexperience with, not the tech you actually know.
It's easier to find work (in some ways) when you're fresh out of school.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I work my butt off in college, i work my butt off at professional levels, they outsource my job and hire me for the position which should involve a raise at LOWER pay just so their execs can suck up more money, but "I" should work harder.
You sound like a supply sider who needs a wakeup call.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
While the ACM or IEEE are theoretically advocates for US IT workers, they both receive a lot of money from the same companies advocating no cap on H1-B visas and so forth. Go to ACM's events and conferences web page and click on SIGCSE 2006. Who is sponsoring this in big letters on the bottom? IBM, Microsoft and Sun, the main drivers behind more H1-B visas.
There are other organizations which are not as in debt to these organizations. I did a web page of my own about this a year or two ago. Any organization like the ACM that takes massive money from these corporations which advocate no H1-B caps can not be trusted to advocate for IT workers. Only an organization that only depends on money from IT workers can be trusted. It's common sense. In fact, these corporate officers usually have more sense about these things, and who is on whose side, than many IT workers.
That was a PR piece for diploma mills, not news. IT jobs are not popping up like spring flowers. That is a lie. The "article" was exactly the kind of nonsense I have come to expect from Certainly Not News, which is really no better than Faux News.
How ya like dat?
I am glad to hear there are more jobs... but then, why am I making 25% less than what I was making 5 months ago?
You got me. I'm making nearly 40% more than I was 5 years ago. My big boost was ditching STE for CM. My total industry experience is nearly 10 years.
Adopt, adapt, and improve... motto of the round table (& the world of technology methinks).
That he is "respectable".
You can change the qualifiers all you like, he won a Nobel Proze in Economics which makes him qualified to comment on economics, far moreso than you or I.
Yet rather than address that, you call the qualification of the "evaluators for that prize" into question, presumably because it's the only way you can discredit him. That's just fucking sad.
What's worse though is this
"A lot of economists have real trouble with economic fallacies such as the simple fact...blah blah spiel"
I would counter with, "A lot of slashdot trolls have a hard time admitting that their closely held biases are wrong, regardless of the evidence presented."
GP said "respectable" and all YOU did was throw a bunch of fallacies around in a weak attempt to hold onto your ridiculous, factually erroneous pet theories.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
First of all, this article neither proves or even really implies anything in either direction about the general notion of "globalization" - which is really just a codeword for Laissez Faire capitalism.
Pretending it does is utterly and prima facie dishonest.
But since you mention it, the free trade premise is complete and utter bullshit.
Free Trade (sometimes also known as Globalization) just means that if you don't like the laws somewhere, you can go somewhere else to avoid them. If you think it would be more economically advantageous to grow cotton with slavery, you can find a nation where it's legal, and these free traders will happily buy it back where it *used to be* illegal. By the way, do you think anyone benefits from a labor "market" that's so "free" it includes competing against slave labor?
Well, I guess the slavemasters benefit, temporarily. But not even them, in the longer term. But I digress. Now, remember, IT outsourcing isn't cotton picking - but it piggybacks on the imbalances (currency etc) created by the same differences in social and legal policy.
"This is not about slavery!" Of course not. But the reason the example is so upsetting is that it's the perfectly logical conclusion of laissez faire ("free trade"). We used to have laws that would compensate for the legal and social differences between trading partners, so that you could actually have effective legal protections for workers, social safety nets, and so forth. Free trade is a conspiracy to delicately and gradually remove these policies by making them economically unviable through trade policy.
As a more practical matter it comes not to explicit American-style slavery but "working conditions." It's quite respectable in some economic circles to have a society where the proletariat is, from the age of 6-8 years old, forced to work 14 hours a day in a factory for subsistence wages, where when unsafe working conditions result in some heinous injury making them unable to work means they're thrown onto the street, and without any form of welfare they beg and die there.
Without meaningful public education, class stratification occurs and you once again get back to where we started, a hundred or two years ago.
The problem is that even beyond all the outrageous dishonesty in the free trade policy and rhetoric, it's also a stupid idea. The first world's economy is powered by consumer spending - by a big old liberal lower and middle class. It feeds off the innovation, curiosity and energy of a large population of educated people with leisure time and disposable income.
We've already come from Laissez Faire, and we ran screaming into the Liberal's arms, where we found the most incredible prosperity in human history.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
As you know from previous slashdot articles, the increase was only in project management and above. The demographics of Silicon Valley have definitely shifted from technical positions to high level marketing and coordinating positions. There are more high level positions than the total positions in 2000, but these positions are much harder to get.
A whiny crybaby who expects businesses to offer hand-outs. It's NOT YOUR JOB. It's THEIR JOB, and they'll offer it to whomever gives them value.
If you don't like how you're treated, START YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.
Instead you complain. What does that say about you?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
The fact that there are more tech jobs today than ever before is simply because information technology as a industry is one of the youngest and fastest growing, despite hiccups that occur as the industry course-corrects itself. It is no 'miracle' that this growth is *despite* outsourcing. Outsourcing is a *response* to the growth in the industry.
The more the industry grows, the more jobs there will be - in the US, in Europe, in Asia, everywhere. In fact the fastest growth markets in IT are no longer in the US - for example, the fastest growth market for PCs is India! The reason many IT companies are going to India and China isn't simply to feed the US demand - it is to feed local demand that is likely for far outstrip demand in the US and Europe over the next 20 years. People in the US will have more jobs because US companies are still at the top of the food chain to provide solutions to the fastest growing Asian economies. Thank your stars for outsourcing contributing to income growth in Asia, since that market will likely ensure your job in the future.
Maybe its no help to you if you lost your job to outsourcing, then ask yourself why you would'nt have lost the job eventually anyway had you not moved with the times. And anyway, in every lost job is a new opportunity - that's what makes free market economies great.
Get a global perspective, and you will find that all is well with the world.
It isn't the number of jobs.
It's the number of jobs at each salary range. Let's make it easy. Here's how it should look.
$20,000 and below | old # | new # | percent increase/decrease
$20,001 - $30,000 | old # | new # | percent increase/decrease
$30,001 - $40,000 | old # | new # | percent increase/decrease
And so on. Then you also need to look at the actual JOBS. Things like "programmer" (entry | mid | senior) and "network engineer" (entry | mid | senior).
Remember, most people do NOT start as the "senior" level. If we don't have the full spectrum from "entry" to "mid" to "senior", then we're going to, eventually, lose the higher end jobs also.
Hey, maybe those tax cuts are finally working
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/latestCOLA.html
So a 2% increase is less than the 4.1% increase in Social Security. So you're "increase" in salary still means you're falling behind.
"So now I work at McDonalds for $6/hr."
I delivered pizza in college, and averaged around $15 an hour.
I'd say your problem is that you make decisions like accepting a job at McD's when then are other options out there. In other words, you don't do a very good job of looking.
And save your retort, there are ALWAYS pizza delivery jobs around college campuses. If you try to claim otherwise, I'd like your approximate location so I can check.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
InconCEIVable!!!
Every time we have an open position, finding someone reasonably competent is like pulling teeth. We routinely have applicants lie about their experience. We had one guy say he's been doing NT support five years longer than NT has existed.
When we hire C programmers, we give a programming test. Most applicants don't realize it's not good to lose a reference to allocated memory, have no problem passing stack variables back to the calling function, and can't spot a variable that's used before initialization.
Whenever I see someone complaining about not having a job, I wonder if it's one of the ones we laughed about at lunch after interviewing all morning.
It's not clear from the article whether or not the wage increases adjust for inflation.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
The pop economics promulgated by the politicians and media is static. But that's not the real economy, which is dynamic. All of the doom and gloom scenarios regarding outsourcing were the result of static thinking. But the real dynamic world is still changing and evolving and growing.
Every action changes the world. This is true whether the actions are done individually by one person, or whether they are the aggregate actions of millions. We could follow the cascade of changes that occurs when outsourcing is done. The domestic layoff increases the domestic supply of skilled technical workers, at the same time it reduces the supply of same overseas. Similar changes occur to the demand. This makes it slightly more attractive to hire domestically and slightly less to hire overseas. But more than that, the net demand for skilled technical workers has risen, and thus their net salaries as well. It doesn't happen instantly (and it doesn't happen in a vacumn), but it does happen. The outsourcing also causes development costs to drop, giving the consumer lower prices (or for the cynical among you, longer intervals between price increases). Companies that are awash in case are very few and very far inbetween. Greater profits means more investment, more research and development, and more hiring.
I could go on, but I hope you get the point by now. The economy isn't a static zero-sum game. Bob may feel intensely depressed that he got laid off, but the overall economy has improved. If Bob is still unemployed, then it's up to Bob to do something about it, because his peers have gone on to re-employ themselves at higher salaries.
p.s. I actually know a farrier. Before you go bitching about the tech sector economy, go talk to him about the farrier economy. The world changes, and you must be prepared to change along with it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.
You are absolutely correct about the confusion of the word "outsourcing". The practice should probably be called "outsourcing through offshoring" or something like that, because it is both.
As for your blanket statement that offshoring is bad, let me rebut that by brining up several areas where offshoring is good.
(1) It provides high-paying technical jobs to countries that don't have a vibrant IT economy. This in turn will help bootstrap their IT economy, perhaps making them viable competitors with the US and Europe. Competition is always good because it drives product quality and quantity up while reducing price. Imagine a world where the Chinese and Indians were just as effective at producing software as the US and Europe. We'll have much better, much more, and cheaper software available for everyone. Sure, we won't have a monopoly on software development, but then again, aren't monopolies universally bad for everyone but the monopoly?
(2) It eliminates low-value, high-wage jobs from the US. If something can be done by a person in India for cheaper, it should be. The money saved can be used to buy resources and hire people to do tasks that can't be done in India, at the same time encouraging Americans to train for those jobs that Indians can't do. Hint: We don't hire Indian firms to innovate. If we were required to hire only Americans for these jobs, it would tie up valuable resources on both ends: the cash of the employer, and the employee's time, that could be spent in more effective, more profitable jobs.
Also, by keeping American's salaries in competition with India's and China's, we are driving the wages of this country down. Is this a bad thing? No. If we can keep salaries low, we can prevent inflation, which harms the economically illiterate the most. It also keeps the price of goods down, and in the long run, may increase the buying power of the average American. I know, as a wage-earner, that the concept that low-salaries are good isn't palatable. But that drives me to be more and more valuable for my company if I want a higher salary.
(3) It bonds the nations together in a brotherly pursuit of wealth through free trade, rather than an antagonistic pursuit of resources through warfare, economic or otherwise. As we convince more and more people that there is more good for them in trading freely with the US than in making threats and taking a militaristic stance against our country, it will reduce the requirement for a massive, global, mobile army. These dollars can be spent elsewhere---perhaps addressing other threats, or perhaps left in the taxpayer's wallets.
I personally see a future of world peace. But how can we have world peace? We can have world peace through world trade. If everyone relied on everyone else for their economic livelihood, what reason would there be to injure or kill one another? There would never be an economic incentive to behave badly in the international community. There would never be an economic incentive to preach hatred and violence. Instead, people, in their pursuit for their own happiness, would seek ways to make the world a better place.
There is a word for the philosophy that free trade with other countries is a bad thing: protectionism. The Republican party, pre-WWII, used to be the populist protectionist party. Today, all protectionist elements are gone from that party, because protectionism doesn't work in the long run. (Listen to Pat Buchanan for a taste of what protectionism turns you into.) The democrats have never been protectionist. If they want to adopt the failing political strategies of a long-dead republican generation, they are more than encouraged to do so. It would spell their ultimate doom.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Huh!?!? ACM == Association for Computing Machinery. It's an organization of computer professionals. I've been a member for over 25 years and trust me ACM does not represent computer manufacturers.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Its members are mostly academics, who make their living not by programming but by encouraging as many people as possible to major in computer science. So naturally it is in their interest to paint a rosey picture of future employment prospects.
A B.S. degree means nothing here. Where the heck are all the tech jobs? Definitely not in Ohio, that's for sure!
This article has been planted by the "trade group" to further their self-serving interests. Their lobbyists can point to it as an example of why the cap on H1-B and L-1 visas should be extended or why all the outsourcing and sweetheart trade deals with foreign gov'ts and companies ain't so bad afterall.
Well, it doesn't jive with the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. According to the BLS, IT lost 17% of it's workforce in the US over the past 5 years, communication equipment lost 43% of it's workforce and semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of it's workforce. The US electronics industry has shriveled. Hundreds of thousands of engineers have been unemployed or underemployed (in menial jobs) as a result. I personally know several dozen. No doubt they bristle with rage as they read these rosy assessments of the job market.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Spearmen could take out a tank though, when it runs out of gas or food or empty lavatory containers. The crew has to come out sometime.
"Nobody's ever going to make any money on the internet"
--VP of the company I worked for, circa 1995
Corporations get hand outs from the public all the time. They get subsidies, bailouts, government provided insurance, protectionist policies. But i guess we're not entitled to the same respect from corporations despite our taxes benefitting them so handsomely. Yep, corporates deserve welfare, but we the workers do not. Sounds logical and just to me.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As everyone knows (or should know), if your compensation increases aren't keeping pace with inflation (historically, 3.5% to 4% per year), you're effectively getting a pay cut, not a pay raise.
I'm not sure whether or not the article is being misleading on purpose, but it serves to make me skeptical of all its content.
Dayton, Ohio IT job market is in the toilet. Could be because of our sucky governor though. ;-)
I read the New York Times report on the ACM study this morning. All I could think of was that old joke about catching your significant other in bed with someone else. "Really", they tell you, "it's not what it looks like. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes".
My resume is published on my web page. So one way I judge hiring is by recruiter calls (obviously this lacks something in the scientific rigor catagory). The other way I judge this issue is by press reports, which I've collected in an annotated bibliography that is at the end of my web page An Economics Question. Many of these press accounts describe the experiences of other engineers in today's job market. There are a few conclusions that I draw from the current engineering employment environment:
There are still interesting jobs that pay decently out there. However, pay and stock options are definitely not what they were, even in 1992, much less 1999.
Job instability is way up. The days when you could get another engineering job relatively easily if you had a good background are over. This greatly increases the risk of working for a start-up, since you could experience many months of unemployment if the start-up fails and you're out of a job. The problem here is that most start-ups do not compensate you for this increased risk. They pretty much give you the same pay and stock options that you got a decade ago. But in this new environment you stand the risk of losing your savings or even your house because of a long period of unemployment.
Job security is also way down. There remains a big pool of engineers looking for work and employers definitely have the attitude that they can always hire another engineer, so you're a disposable, interchangable commodity. With many software development jobs there is always the threat that your project will be "offshored" or that when you complete it, maintenance will be offshored and you'll be out of work.
While hiring is at best tepid in the United States and Europe, hiring is booming in India. Employment demand for Indian engineers who graduate from schools with education comparable to schools in the US or Europe has entirely outstripped demand. The good news is that this is forcing salaries in India up. But my lying eyes tell me that what is fueling the demand in the Indian job market are "first world" jobs that are being outsourced.
With the ACM report working engineers are faced with that question of "who are you going to believe, the ACM or your lying eyes". My lying eyes tell me that the story told by the ACM does not reflect the employment experience of the ACM membership.
So you would deny developing nations both jobs and trade with the U.S. If all modern nations took that attitude, the developing nations would be doomed to near-eternal poverty. Until their labour laws are up to U.S. standards, they can't do business with the U.S. And until they can do business with the U.S., they can't generate the wealth to improve their labour standards.
Sure - we already do it to our own via Walmart and to various parts of the US via New Orleans(or any other undesired region, this includes the Rust Belt too).
I'm sure we can figure out how to get them up to US/EU standards of human rights, even down to allowing unions go unchecked as conventional corporations are today. We have the resources, and we certainly can enforce standards. Maybe not handing a blank check to Asia like we do now is a Nobel-worthy idea after all.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
After the dot-com meltdown and implosion of tech jobs here in the US, many former IT'ers became cabbies, real estate agents, and Home Depot clerks to put food on the table.
Now the job market's saying 'ohhh, don't be that way, here, I have such a nice job for you...', don't fall for it. Or at least play hard to get.
Nothing like taking things to the absurd extreme, eh?
I find it really amusing how many IT types get worked up over the threat that outsourcing presents to their current job, when in fact IT has driven change in other labor markets for the last several decades. How many secretaries have been put out of work due to the advent of word processing and email, and how many switchboard operators have been unemployed due to the rise of automated switches? Now the worm has turned and telecommunications now allows the opportunity to coordinate systems development activity across continents.
What the IT industry has done* to other workers has now come full circle to threaten many IT workers themselves. Boo hoo!
*And what it has done is an incredibly good thing. Productivity is soaring, and that's the key.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I am a bit skeptical of this report considering some of the members on the task force work for companies that outsource to these regions. There are also members for other nations that benefit from US outsourcing. I also wonder how much funding and donations the academic folks on the task force received for their institutions and pet projects.
s .htm
Link to the actual report
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/
Task force members
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/biographie
Yep - IT hiring is increasing and so are salaries. With 20 years of experience in my field, and 8 years with my company, I was making pretty good money when I was laid off in late 2002, and my job was offshored to Poland.
:-/
After spending 2 years unemployed except for short term contracts and whatever money I could scrounge, I finally landed a job at half my 2002 salary last year. That job lasted six months before it was outsourced to Mexico.
Now I make 60% of my 2002 salary - a 20% increase in just one year!
One of the greater threats to IT growth in the United States is the belief by many parents and young people that the field does not have good job prospects, which has resulted in a decline in students choosing to study various IT fields.
This is both a blessing and a cursing. A blessing because those of us already in the field will benefit from having less competition. A curse because it'll make it harder for those of us already in the field to gain more education. I been going to school part-time for the last five years to learn programming and this semester the entire computer department was cancelled out due to low-enrollment. The only classes being taught were the introductory courses required for the general associate degree.
Quote: And anyway, in every lost job is a new opportunity
New opportunity? For what? For not paying my mortgage while I'm out of work? That's the most insane comment I've seen today, and there have been a lot of bad ones. New IT jobs may be happening, but they're not happening in North America. And the "unemployment" numbers are meaningless, of no value for other than making the goverment look good. People out of work long enough for the unemployment to run out are no longer counted. The REAL unemployment numbers are far higher than are quoted, and would probably raise shock to people who think that IT is in any way growing...at least in N.A.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
A simple question which arises here is not if there is an increase in jobs in US even after outsourcing, but if the rate of this increase is comparable to the increase in the field of technology. Anyone can see the field of technology. or "IT", is increasing very fast. So it is bound to create a large number of jobs. The question is how many of these jobs are going to India and how many to USA? If 95% of these jobs are going to India, the remaining 5% will still be an increase in IT hiring, but does not imply anything positive for the US economy.
Volume of delivery does not equal reliability. In fact, your message looks like lots of spam I've received in the past.
I HIGHLIGHT stuff so you THINK I HAVE A POINT!
...there are still quite a few noop (perhaps even multiple noops) and, yes, fully employed engineers. This is a worldwide problem, but is more of an issue in the U.S. due to the inflated salaries of the late 90s/early 2000s.
This will continue to be an issue until employers are forced to acknowledge truly skilled employees' value, regardless of where they are located. Along with this value recognition will come worldwide compensation balance. It won't happen right away, but it will happen...eventually.
Cheers,
- hawkeye
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
someone please tall Lou Dobbs, so he shuts up already.
If she floats, she's a witch.
People would just be fine with an Internet Browser, and a way to organize their photos.
I'm not so sure about this. My previous experiences in retail would seem to say otherwise. I mean, there are still similar devices available; MSN TV still exists. I've even sold one.
One. To an old lady who kept coming back to the store once a month for 6 months to look at it before buying it.
In contrast to hundreds of computers. Even people who only want simple internet access seem to prefer to buy a full fledged (if bottom of the line) computer. It may be a $300-after-mail-in-rebates-celeron machine, but they seem to avoid anything else like it's the plague. Not that I blame them.
That being said, specific purpose machines (e.g. TiVo for digital video recording) do tend to find their niches and can do very well. I just don't know that an internet photo box is ever going to be a viable standalone product.
Especially if there's going to be a $100 laptop.
Yes, obviously there will be bubbles again. Human stupidity and greed are constants. I was responding to the OP's point, not declaring that we've now reached permanent equilibrium.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think the dilbert for today says it all when it comes to the job market right now. People are now looking for qualified engineers and Tech staff because the dot-com boom left us with a bunch of underqualified tech staff members. www.dilbert.com
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
U.S.A. Ireland India : Entry level developers busted.
India Entry level jobs but hundreds of thousands of applicants.
Ireland & USA few entry level jobs.
U.S.A. Ireland : Experienced Developer, ok but salary static and declining if inflation is kept into account. Need to move higher up the value chain to get more pay.
India : Experienced Developer, salary increasing rapidly (there are all those juniors to coach)
U.S.A. Ireland India : Middle management, little role in a static industry with experienced staff.
What role for Ireland, which has few growing local industries except for building a housing bubble based on cheap credit, will India need experienced developers to coach juniors remotely?
Currently Indian wages are 66% of Irish wages for 5 years experience QA software tester.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Article on BLS Data
"IT joblessness is falling at a faster pace than overall unemployment."
"The number of Americans employed in IT approached 3.38 million in the first quarter [2005]. IT employment levels haven't been this high in about three years...That's still about 82,000 fewer jobs than at the end of the second quarter of 2002, when the analysis of bureau data pegged IT employment at nearly 3.46 million. The second quarter of 2002 marked the apogee of IT employment."
"The two IT job categories to see the biggest percentage of year-to-year employment growth are database administrators and network and computer systems administrators, increasing at an annualized rate of 28% and 19%, respectively. The biggest drops came from network-systems and data-communications analysts, down 7%, and computer programmers, off 4% for the year."
"The number of unemployed Americans looking for IT jobs last quarter fell to 131,000 from 149,000 from the previous quarter. That's a marked improvement from the first quarter of 2004, when some 192,000 American IT professionals found themselves unemployed."
the size of the IT employment market in the United States today is higher than it was at the height of the dot.com boom
The study is showing that the size of the IT employment market is higher than in the dot.com boom. It doesnt say that everyone is still making as much money, but people were making a rediculous amount of money at the time. We are finding that most people simply are not worth what they were being payed, thats why the bubble burst. It wasnt because of offshoring.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
you people are just pure sheep - believe what you are told and just want to belive in.
Do you know that for the last two years, the H1B visa numbers were just 65K, compared to the 195K they were the years before that? lus there was an additional 20K visas for the use of hiring people educated here in US, as opposed to the general ones for hiring people directly from say India. So?
So, the outsourcing companies ran out of people for work to be done here. So they ended up falling short, and companies had to hire locally. The shortage was such that even the Indian firms, which traditionally hire ONLY indians from India and bring them here to work, had to look for and hire people here locally (non Indians) to make sure that they could have enouhg people to work on projects already won.
No worries, Bush is being petitioned already for raising the number back to 195K. Bush as always knows all bout this.
Hi Rich! Still with visi I see. :-)
You're absolutely correct. Which is why I feel in the tech field, you ought not allow yourself to get pigeonholed. When the world starts moving a different direction, you need to move with it and keep your skills up to date.
It's difficult, because it takes you out of your comfort zone, but you have to do it. Even though there is still work out there for some old system, eventually that's going to dry up, and you'll be left holding a bag of useless knowledge.
The experience is still useful though, and applicable towards new technologies. The lessons I learned watching system performance on DECstations back in the early 1990s is still applicable today when we're trying to watch performance on Windows servers using SQL Analysis Services 2005 today. The computers are faster, bigger and the technology is vastly improved... but an I/O bottleneck is still a bottleneck and the tell tale signs of what limit your hitting is still very similar.
I think you've brought up a very good point though, something people in the tech world need to be aware of if they want to remain employed.
"1) availablilty: schools are crowded, not all that apply are accepted."
Please re-read my post. You'll notice that I ststed that many states (my state of Florida is one example) that REQUIRE state funded schools to accept students who graduate from a Florida community college. I know there are similar programs in other states.
Now, that's REQUIRE, as in SPACE DOES NOT MATTER.
So, if you're talking Yale, or MIT, I'm with you. If you're talking University of West Florida, your argument is meaningless because the schools are legally required to admit community college graduates.
I agree with your other assertion, but that's really a problem with individuals, not the schools.
"The economic devide does, in fact exist."
Don't get fired up, but I'd like to see some facts, rather than assertions, that support this statement. It seems like another meme that has penetrated our collective mindsets, but I've never seen any facts that make the case.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
... Not necessarily for those of us with 10+ years experience. I see _tons_ of listings and get bugged by recruiters constantly for positions that are for intermediate-level admins (5+ years) but _very little_ for higher levels of XP. Anything for more senior admins I've seen is for consulting, which I'm not interested in. I've spent the past year with a really good bunch of folks doing work I've been doing for years and years, surviving and paying the rent, and trying desperately to not be bored. It's really been pretty terrible in NYC for the whole of this century to date and I'm pretty much resigned to leaving in the next few months for pastures either greener or cheaper.
At this point I'm learning ruby, rails and ajax because I don't see anything particularly interesting in admin anymore (except possibly for the Niagara Sun boxes), and I need something to learn.
All the while I get 3-4 calls a day for midlevel work or 3-12 mo contracts because I've done basically everything there is to do as a unix admin at one point or another. It's really disheartening.
If you understood the mechanics of this board, you'd have replied to the right person, instead of to me.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Labor was overpriced in the dot com boom. It was Dutch Tulip Fever. Companies were hiring people, and not worrying about making a profit, and instead selling worthless stock for insane amounts of money.
You making less money isn't the fault of cheap labor in India... you making less money was the fault of the collective insanity and greed of the stock speculators in the late 90s. The Dot Com Boom was like spending a whole lot of money on your credit cards... it is fun while it lasts, but eventually someone is going to have to pay for all of it.
The Spanish had cavalry and guns, whereas the Incas were living in the Bronze age.
I don't get who "They" are but it sounds like you were outsourced and another company hired you for cheaper. Welcome to the new economy, bub.
If you're a pure code-monkey, then you'd better get some business skills under your belt. People who can code to a spec are being rapidly commoditized. Even if there was no globalization/outsourcing, you'd still see downward pressure on salaries as IT became more lucrative, it's economics.
Get some skills that aren't easily replaceable, like people skills and business analysis, and you can become indispensable.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
However, if you change jobs too often to stay on the latest technology, you're not loyal. And if you stay at a job too long, you're lazy. And they don't tell you how long is too long.
Someone'll always pick something to piss on you with. You can't win.
[T]he market is correcting for incorrect salaries and paying employees their real market value....
No, the market is correcting for incorrect salaries and paying employees less than market value. The market says I'm worth between $15k and $30k more than I earn now, and my situation is certainly not for lack of effort. I'm submitting resumes and interviewing all the time. I get paid the equivalent of an assembly-line auto factory worker when I should be earning what the engineers who designed the cars earn. The IT market is screwed up because companies are still squeamish to invest in IT after the bubble burst. Meanwhile, everyone in entry-level IT is getting treated like the dumbest monkey in the tree with no opportunities to prove themselves otherwise.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
The market says I'm worth between $15k and $30k more than I earn now, and my situation is certainly not for lack of effort.
How can the market say otherwise when you are getting paid what you're getting paid? Your market worth is what the market is willing to pay you. If it's not willing to pay you a higher salary, then you'll have a hard time finding a job that pays you what you think you're worth.
Where are you getting your figures from?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You're also absolutely correct.
Just make sure your pay doesn't increase or you'll price yourself out of the market. Also, make sure you don't get old and slow down in any way or you'll be toast. And, of course, make sure you choose the politically correct technology rather than the best technology for the job or you'll be sidelined also.
People will often do good so they can do harm with impunity - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
He'd be a troll if it wasn't true.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
Then why am I still looking for IT work four years on and counting ...
I recently had an interview with a big name company which a friend helped organize. At the interview they told me they were doing it because they did not want to make their employee unhappy. They also let me know they did not need developers in the US, because their development work was going on in India. BTW this company does most of its business in the good ole USA, which makes almost as much sense as hiring hamas to operate US ports. Obviously, ACM who originated the low impact notion, has forgotten all of us who can no longer afford to pay their dues. Perhaps I should reconcider my original intent to re-instate my ACM membership if I ever find another IT job. Perhaps a great university could award a honorary "Doctor of Useless and Irelevent Information" degree to some of our most wonderful and fearlessly stupid leaders. Perhaps "Bachelor of Stupid" would work just as well.
[Searching memory]
Steve...? Hmmm. :-) It's been a while. Hi! And yes. :-) I really do need to get my own domain, but in the meantime it's nice to have at least *some* level of logical continuity on the net (doubly important for me since I've so badly failed to maintain my geographical continuity!).
You're absolutely correct. Which is why I feel in the tech field, you ought not allow yourself to get pigeonholed. When the world starts moving a different direction, you need to move with it and keep your skills up to date.
Diversification is not always easy to do on company time, though I've managed to do some of that, but it's something to strive for in one's personal time at least.
I thought it was to my advantage to specialize on company time to a certain extent, but due to circumstances beyond my control (9/11) the entire industry I worked in (airlines) started dumping people. My 13 years wasn't enough tenure at the time to save me. Luck of the draw.
It's difficult, because it takes you out of your comfort zone, but you have to do it. Even though there is still work out there for some old system, eventually that's going to dry up, and you'll be left holding a bag of useless knowledge.
That isn't the source of the difficulty I encounter. I *love* learning new systems. However, many of the systems I'm interested in learning about are (a) not available at all at my current workplace, (b) available at work but hard to justify being involved with on the company dime, and/or (c) too expensive or otherwise impractical for home use/exposure.
That limits the options available -- otherwise I'd have been an IBM mainframe "expert" a decade ago. :-) As it is, though, I'm doing software development on two server platforms (one old and not terribly marketable, and one old and still somewhat marketable) with some potentially newer stuff on the horizon.
The experience is still useful though, and applicable towards new technologies.
I believe that to be true. Fortunately, some employers also seem to believe that. Sadly, however, many of them don't seem to, at least in my experience. That attitude hurts everyone.
The lessons I learned watching system performance on DECstations back in the early 1990s is still applicable today when we're trying to watch performance on Windows servers using SQL Analysis Services 2005 today. The computers are faster, bigger and the technology is vastly improved... but an I/O bottleneck is still a bottleneck and the tell tale signs of what limit your hitting is still very similar.
Agreed.
I think you've brought up a very good point though, something people in the tech world need to be aware of if they want to remain employed.
Believe me, it'll become quickly apparent if they ever become unemployed...
It's nice to agree with you on a topic for a change, BTW. ;-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
How can the market say otherwise when you are getting paid what you're getting paid?
Because jobs I'm qualified for, that pay $15k to $30k more than I earn now, are going to over-qualified people.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
That could have been accomplished in under 10...
This article confirms my theory, Lou Dobbs is an idiot.
Then those overqualified people are worth more to the market then you are. Did you consider that they are also taking positions worth less than positions that they are qualified for, but are getting beat out by those who are even more overqualified?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Salary surveys in industry magazines are a good source of salary data. The salary surveys for my field, years of experience, and professional acheivements always indicate a base around $90k with about $20k in error bars. It's a slap in the face when I walk in, spend a day interviewing and giving presentations, come home to wait three or four weeks while they sweat me out, and then receive an offer that's close to half what the salary survey showed.
I've been in three of those jobs. The first one I was fired from because I was sick of it after nine months and started getting "grumpy" with the management (imagine a 22-year getting grumpy with a VP... it's pretty funny looking back on it). The second I left after 3.5 years. The last one I could only put up with for 2 years. It'd be nice to start out a relationship with a company where the first line of the job responsibilities isn't,"We will treat you like a bitch and you will like it." If the company would make half the effort to show some appreciation on the front-end maybe they wouldn't have to worry about me walking out on the back end.
Agreed, it's definately hard to branch out sometimes within a company. I guess it depends on the company and what opportunities are available around you. I think if a company doesn't provide a path for this, it's not a good company to work for.
Even then, sometimes opportunities made available are not good ones and you have to pick and choose. I had an option a while back to work with a particular product, but thinking about it I decided that would stick me into a small niche I'd probably never get back out of and I didn't find it that interesting.
That's a fallacy.
Simply because what you may have become educated in and/or worked hard for isn't rewarded as you believe it should be, does not imply immediately that the economy is failing.
In fact, it may imply that the economy is working as-intended. If you're bad-ass at FORTRAN your skillset is limited, no matter how hard you work there's a high likelihood that you're not going to get paid much as you're niche to a field (scientific applications mainly) that doesn't receive a heckuva lot of funding.
Just because your individual results aren't worthwhile doesn't indicate that the system is broken. Perhaps you're overvaluing yourself.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Aha! You've hit the nail on the head. Qualification inflation.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
Now, looking at the market take a look at what kind of jobs are available. The majority of jobs available in most markets are consulting jobs ranging 3-6 months. Of course they run longer sometimes and often shorter depending on how efficient one is. The reason these jobs are short term are that all too often these jobs are specialized jobs so if you were lucky enough to know obscure technology X you have a consulting gig for 3-6 months. And often the result of this gig is to convert this to something more generic so a cheap outsourced resource can take over where you left off...
/Lindus
But do any these jobs include any benefits? Healthcare, 401(k) and other things one would take for granted as a full time employee is now seldom within reach and if available it will take a serious chunk out of your paycheck.
So, yeah, hiring may be up, companies pay less in salaries for jobs that commanded at least 20%-30% more less than 5 years ago. On top of this as you are now paying for your own healthcare, and other benefits, the net salary has actually decreased with a substantial amount. In the end the ability to live anything remotely like before one was laid off from a full time job, and had to become a consultant, is no longer possible. Unfortunately we have all read about those who have had to cash in their accumulated 401(k), or sell their apts etc, just to get by in hopes the market will do a real upturn and not what we have seen so far.
And in the end we all know what Mark Twain said about statistics...
With hopes they are having a swell time,
Well, I'm losing my job Tuesday because of outsourcing - or offshoring, or whatever you want to call it. I'm a senior UNIX guy, and after a Very Large Consulting Company bought my group from much smaller company (they wanted the contract we had, we couldn't bring in affordable talent to go 24x7 like the customer wanted), we brought a group out of Bangalore into our work.
We suffered through retention problems, scheduling problems, and generally a lack of knowledge - we couldn't even get experienced admins - we got college grads. Turnover rate was 30-40%, and this wasn't for some helpdesk script-reader - this required some knowledge and talent, and even those who have been doing it for a year pale in comparison to the work we did - with just three people we could outperform 15 in Bangalore.
Last year, we got traded internally within our own company - and they relocated our work to Toronto, and basically said bye-bye - thanks for documenting everything.
Fortunately things didn't go so well to start, that we've been kept on until now.
I've been looking STRONGLY for a few months. Recruiters talk up a lot of jobs, but I never seem to see the ones I like - instead its all customer-service-type roles instead of traditional admin roles. So I hit the unemployment line Wednesday unless something radically changes.
So, yeah, there are jobs out there. But some places DON'T WANT senior people. I've seen a number of job postings that actually state they want NO MORE THAN X years of experience, etc.
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
They may be implying that "the change in hiring for IT is up" which means that it went from a decrease of 20% last year to a decrease of only 10% so far this year. But IT hiring is unquestionably down and CNN's reporters, who suffer from innumeracy, have been swayed once again by employers intent on raising H1-B hiring caps.
Asshats who mistake a function's _derivative_ or second derivative for the function itself are called "politicians" and are generally not trusted.
> People out of work long enough for the unemployment to run out
> are no longer counted.
Not to mention people who aren't eligible for unemployment to begin with. In at least three states (I'm assuming many more) the final decision for unemployment compensation is left up to the company. So, unless you're laid off with a group of people who could potentially start a class-action suit against the company (a liability companies want to avoid), you're essentially screwed--even moreso if you left on less than perfect grounds. "We're sorry, sir, the company has denied your request for unemployment. You can resubmit." Resubmit. "We're sorry, sir, the company has denied your request for unemployment. You need to hire an attorney if you want to dispute the claim further."
I've been paying into the system for 18 years and have never gotten a single dime back out of it. What a scam.
So how am I, as a CS graduate with three years' experience in the software industry (I worked in software in college as well) with a 3.5 GPA and some post-graduate work, supposed to convince a potential employer that they should pay me what I'm really worth, all on the good faith that I'll produce software that will save money three years down the road, rather than hiring the guy who will work for half the salary that I'm asking and produce quick-and-dirty software that meets today's need but falls apart tomorrow? The short answer is that I don't.
:)
I'm not sure if you are disagreeing with what I said or not. It sounds to me like if you want to succeed in the US IT market anymore you need to be even better than what you are, which means things are even worse than I claimed. Now just being "good" coming out of college isn't enough.
I guess you have to be Albert Einstein anymore to make good money in CS.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Yes. But as a long time member, I can tell you they do represent CS/CompE academics. And who gets downsized when no one wants to get a degree in CS? You got it - CS/CompE academics. So don't you think they have a bit of a vested interest in making the IT job market look better? You bet.
BTW, this is not a slam on the ACM - I've been a happy member for twenty-odd years and liked a lot of their journals, but as far as being unbiased? Well, let's just say everybody has an agenda. Even me - I've been somewhat peeved at them ever since they dumbed down CACM in the late 70's.
That is all.
Except maybe for a few large country like the U.S., it's impossible for one country to produce all the goods it needs. Is Belgium supposed to produce all of its own steel, integrated circuits, software, microwaves, and wheat? The country is just not big enough to support 100,000 different industries.
Even if a country could produce all of its goods, it would not be able to do it efficiently. To be efficient, you must specialize in what you do well, and so achieve economies of scale. If the U.S. decided to shut its borders and do all of its own manufacturing, the standard of living might halve or worse. Free trade adds hugely to our economic well being.
Countries don't have all the raw materials they need. The U.S. needs Canada for nickel, Canada needs the U.S. for oranges. Japan has very few raw materials.
And then there's freedom. If people in Vancouver and Seattle want to do business together, what moral right do governments have to tell them that they can't?
My province (Ontario) has done away with mandatory retirement at 65. Yes, that's right, now all those aging baby boomers who are blocking anyone from climbing the corporate ladder can sit behind their desks until they die. As someone who is mid-30s I am completely outraged at this move. My generation has been screwed over yet again. I am considering leaving my country and seeking employment where there is actually a chance of moving up.
due to the use of offshoring by U.S. companies, including start-up firms, to limit their costs and thus grow their businesses. That, in turn, creates more opportunities here even as an increasing amount of work is done overseas.
But the increase rarely makes its way back to the group being targeted by globalization. For example, cheaper cars may release more consumer spending money for other do-dads, but only a small percent of that cycles back to auto workers themselves such that the net change is negative for them. I see no reason why IT would be any different.
I do see an increase in "liaison" tech jobs, that is interfacing between tech and customer, but raw tech is still laggard.
Also, tech is so cyclical that it is hard to make generalizations based on only 5 years of (outsource) data.
It's amazing that IT is going up, rapidly like that, even though there is outsourcing. It's almost unbelievable. Too good to be true, like. "despite oversees outsourcing." I believe you mean overseas, though.
I still don't know how I feel about the outsourcing thing, even though I'm in IT and have seen countless companies farm out their highly-paid staff to a third party who may or may not be overseas. Remember that in the not too distant past, it was possible to make quite a good living working in a factory until those jobs disappeared. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the same thing is happening with all the entry-level IT jobs. I see it as a bad thing for these reasons:
1. No one becomes a senior network engineer or software architect without that first string of lousy, low-paid grunt work jobs to get you started. The key here is working your way up from the beginning, working on the help desk, then desk support, then admin work, then design work, etc.
2. The wages for the entry-level jobs that remain here seem to be decreasing over time, meaning that there's less attraction for otherwise qualified people to the field. I don't know if I'd tell a new graduate to pursue an IT career path today.
3. I know every company thinks that everyone wants to be in management and lead. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Trust me, I know what happens when someone who's a great individual contributor is "promoted." It's been said that the new US IT worker is going to just be managing a bunch of developers 11 time zones away. I say that companies are wasting great talent in some cases by promoting their smartest people. A lot of people who just don't have the love of interaction required of good managers are attracted to IT jobs, where they can put their other skills to good use.
OTOH, it's good for these reasons:
1. No one has the lock on smart people. There are plenty of smart folks in other countries, and most have a better work ethic too.
2. The outsourcing thing seems to be finishing what the dotcom bust started...filtering out those who would be better off in other fields and jobs.
" I don't doubt a word you say if we're talking about the *current market*, but I'm not talking about today's standards.
A paradigm shift requires that certain standards change. Jobs and their requirements will adapt to this new market. It's not like there will be zero entry level IT positions left, as mentioned in TFA there will be a face-to-face industry surviving, such as consulting. And lots of people enter that industry and get training on site from their employer."
I challenge that. Show me one job that gives training on site any more.
Experience, experience, experience. That is the issue here. Those with it, will get these jobs. Those without it, will not get hired. It's catch-22.
We are at the point now where a college degree in a related field is not enough to get you any job in IT. At this point you need experience to get hired and without experience you can't even start out.
You cannot do consulting without prior experience.
Whatever shifts are going on in the marketplace are irrelevant at this point to those who are not working in the industry yet. If you aren't working in IT today and if you can't get hired in through the back door, you will not get hired, period.
Now here's the silver lining:
Look for the entire IT industry to start snapping back to America. Why? Because of intellectual property theft going on abroad, and acts of identity theft that the FBI has no hope of prosecuting because it's outside US jurisdiction. As Cisco about Huawei if you don't believe me.
If these jobs do not come back to the US you will see 2-3 generations of programmers abroad, all with every single skill and creativity point we have in America, forming their own startups and competing against American companies with their own cutting edge IP and lower prices. He is a daft fool who says that a nation with millions of IT specialists, working with cutting edge American intellectual property, cannot create their own startups with equally valuable IP at a lower price.
You may respond with "we should learn to give our employers better value than East India/China". But that too is a fool's reasoning: there is absolutely nothing we can do that they cannot learn and do, there is no value added service we can do that they cannot. Except for face to face service, of course. Mind you, when the industry ships out all jobs abroad except face to face service... then millions of people will be applying for that handful of face to face consulting jobs. What happens next is obvious.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I hate to tell you this, but the days of high school grads getting a Cisco cert or reading an O'Reilly book and pulling down $80K in an entry level job are gone forever. That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.
But, as a free market advocate, you'll surely acknowledge that those $80K entry level jobs represented fair market value, at the time, right?
"Despite all the publicity in the United States about jobs being lost to India and China, the size of the IT employment market in the United States today is higher than it was at the height of the dot.com boom," said the report. "Information technology appears as though it will be a growth area at least for the coming decade, and the U.S. government projects that several IT occupations will be among the fastest growing occupations during this time."
In other words, shut up.
Currently hooked on AMP
How can the market say otherwise when you are getting paid what you're getting paid? Your market worth is what the market is willing to pay you.
Hilarious! Why then did you claim that employees during the dotcom bubble were being paid above fair market value? An entry level web designer was surely worth $90K, because that's what the market was willing to pay him, right? You can't have your cake and eat it too. Similarly, the fair market value of Enron shares must have been $90, because that's what people were paying for them. What this should tell you is that fair market value isn't the be-all-and-end-all in evaluating the true value of something.
Of course there's still lots of hiring, they fire all the people who've been in the field for years cause it makes the mid-managers numbers look good, ship jobs over seas cause it makes the numbers even better, then when the job isn't done they hire some fresh college kids that are new to the game and don't realize how great tech jobs used to be.
"This article is evidence in and of itself that a divide in education requirements is occuring."
Then we read a different article. This one wasn't about education at all.
"As for the economical divide, the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is documented quite well."
Show me. STOP CLAIMING IT IS SO, and SHOW ME.
As for the rest of your post, it doesn't IN ANY WAY refute my previous post. None of what you said changes any of what I said.
All you did was give one spurious example, which has nothing to do with my post at all. If you had three kids and a wife, those are choices you made, and you have to deal with them. Education isn't the only thing you CHOSE to give up by doing so, and you can STILL recieve the benefits I mentioned. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU CAN STILL GET THE BENEFITS.
Stop making ridiculous excuses for people and hold them accountable for their actions. No one ever had three kids by accident, so stop acting like that was anything other than a concious choice.
And stop acting like one anecdotal example matters. It doesn't, and it doesn't change anything.
"Your definition of what "access" to education is varies from person to person."
NO IT DOESN'T. The same opportunities are available to everyone, so you're wrong.
Why are you so keen to make excuses for people who made ill-informed choices? More than that, why do you think that matters? Nothing you said changes the facts I posted. Hell you blather about costs, when I clearly covered why that's NOT an argument anyone can make.
If you plan to respond, read the post. You are obviously more interested in trying to be right, but the facts are not on your side.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Where is there any anger? Where is there any "immaturity"? Oh, right I get it now.
You're just trying to avoid posting evidence by shutting down the debate. Nice try.
Post your evidence.
Pretty please with sugar on top.
Then explain why one guy who made some poor choices refutes what I've said (you can't, so I imagine another excuse is coming).
Explain WHY you beleive what you believe?
I'm asking vewy, vewy nicely.
"any credibility on your part gets thrown out the window."
What does MY credibility have to do with anything? You're the one making claims that aren;t supported by facts. If I'm wrong, post the facts.
All in all, your post was the worst attempt I've ever seen at changing the subject after getting called.
Post your facts, or admit you don't have them.
By the way, making claims that are unsupported by evidence is the REAL way to lose all credibility. That's all you've done, so stop being a hypocrite.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
AC when you've made it a point to troll me at every opportunity.
My mother would say you're a pathetic waste of space who's life is so empty that you actually have time to follow someone around on a web board and respond to everything.
She'd be right, and dad, becasue he knows how to get along with mom, would agree.
Then we'd all laugh at you for being so useless and unimportant.
By the way, COWARD, I post with my handle. So how is it that I'M a pussy again, COWARD?
WELL COWARD? Right, just another lame troll by another lame piece of trash.
My mom's been dead for nine years, and she still has more value to the world than you. How does that feel?
I understand now why you post AC. You're too embarrassed about your empty life to post with your handle. If I were you, I would be too.
As for parents, I'm sure yours would be proud of the life you've carved out for yourself, a trolling slashdot Anonymous Coward. At least they can say you've fulfilled your potential.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
This is the IT business sector growth, not necessarily any real tech role job growth. A great deal of the jobs will the kinds of jobs that simply cannot be outsourced because it requires being present right here. Counted in IT sector jobs include sales and marketing people that sell the technology stuff to business managers and executives at (potential) customers. Since most technology buyers at the average business are not really tech savvy, the sales and marketing people have to be more knowledgeable about the interpersonal (e.g. bull****ing and lying) aspects of the work, than about the technology aspects (as long as they memorize a number of buzzwords to toss around). Genuine techies won't fill (or touch) most of these jobs, anyway. And a lot of other jobs that are supposedly tech job roles also end up being semi-sales jobs anyway. They call them consultants. Their real role is to get the client they are placed at to buy even more from the vendor.
Real tech jobs like program development and tech support are going to still be heavily outsourced to the lowest priced outsourcing offer, which usually is offshore these days. Most business executives have little or no respect for true technical skills. In many cases this can be because such job roles do not have specific sales numbers attached to them, so they are not perceived as contributing to the profit levels of the corporation (whereas saving money by outsourcing does such a contribution and is attributed to the executive himself or herself).
Let's see some solid data (not just percentages) on numbers of people hired into each of the various tech role positions, broken down by job class (permanent vs. contract), and by work status (citizen vs. resident vs. non-resident).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Excuse me?! What race is the United States? You can't quite answer that one because the US is made up of descendants from literally all over the world, including China.
Race is different from nationality.
In the Second world War the Royal Navy sent swordfish torpedo bombers - old, slow biplanes nicknamed "stringbags" to attack the great German Battleship Bismarck. The Bismarck was fitted with radar controlled anti-aircraft guns which were designed to shoot down modern aircraft. The system was implemented on the assumption that aircraft always flew faster than 100 Km/Hr (about 63 miles an hour for the Americans). The "stringbags" flew into a howling gale, they travelled too slow for the Bismarck's anti-aircraft guns. Two torpedoes hit the Bismarck. It suffered damage to one rudder and had an oil leak. The jammed rudder affected its speed and ability to steer. The oil leak was so significant that the the Royal Navy was able to track from searching for the leak. Finally the the Royal Navy caught up with the Bismarck and it was destroyed. Don't tell the Bismarck's captain that modern technology always wins... -Nivag
Market value will be a few bowls of rice pretty soon