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."

Comments

It's Obvious

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:It's Obvious

[PFI_Optix]

It's important to note that we are nowhere near approaching market saturation as computers are concerned.

There are still millions of homes that do not have computers at all; that number is shrinking every day. And more and more households are building home networks, some even going so far as to add servers. Home automation is becoming practical and affordable, meaning even more IT-related equipment is going into the home.

Schools are still trying to catch up to the digital revolution as well. The local district has a 4:1 student to PC ratio, and their target is 1:1. They'll be buying PCs as quickly as budget allows. The more they buy, the more they'll spend on IT--and most of that will necessarily be in the immediate area.

And of course businesses are investing more and more into IT as they stop seeing it as a money sink and start viewing it as a way to increase efficiency or even as an investment.

The outsourcing we're seeing is simply the offloading of what jobs can be done without being on site. There is a lot more IT work that requires proximity than work that can be sent overseas.

Re:It's Obvious

[Jim_Maryland]

unable to get a Software Developer job for 4 years now

The jobs aren't going to be searching for you so I have to question what are you doing to find the jobs? I realize you are upset at not having found anything, but my experience is that the jobs are available. Personally, I've recently had calls/emails from former co-workers all trying to cash in on hiring referrals (both new and experienced hires). The IT job market seems pretty strong to me.

So the questions for you are:

• Given you have 4 years out of school, are you doing anything to keep your skills somewhat fresh?
• Are you looking in job markets outside where you currently live? I used to live in Altoona PA and finding a tech job there was damm near impossible so I moved to Maryland.
• Are you looking at entry level jobs or are you thinking they are beneath you? From your comment about 1 million lines of code, I gather that you feel you should walk right into a high paying job. That won't always be the case. You may have to work at a company where you get some experience and then look around after a year or two if they don't promote you (assuming that you deserve it from your work).
• Are you networking with family, friends, alumni, etc...? I am registered with PSU for their alumni career link service and I've had plenty of family and friends ask me for pointers.

Re:It's Obvious

[Ucklak]

There are still millions of homes that do not have computers at all;

I don't even think that computers are important in the traditional sense.
They are too complicated for the average consumer.
Devices that eliminate the horrible computing UI that just perform simple tasks are what the masses need.

Look at how DVD has replaced VCR's in the media player sense.
People get the -buy an electronic device, -buy content for that device, -hit play.
A good bit of the VCR's sold were just that, players even they had the record feature.
A lot of people that did record on VCR's recorded at the time they were watching becuase that's the concept they know, get it as it's happening.

Remember those Internet appliances at Y2K? They required a monthly subscription and still too complicated for the end user and not really a reason for the common person to use it.

People get iPod. The extra step required to get their music on it is a self-educational step they're willing to take.
Really a computer isn't needed for that. A network appliance with an Internet connection and iTunes interface is all that's required.

Take digital photography today, that's the barrier that will bring or self-educate the end user to the electronig age. The ability to instantly share photos and experiences.
Kodak and Flickr and other photo outfits have the right idea about setting up a shared space for users to share photos (although I disagree with the requirement for a viewer to have to sign up). People who didn't know how to program their VCR do understand how to use Kodak's interface and share photos.

I believe that Microsoft and Apple are the reason that computing or computing devices aren't really in more homes. The term 'computer' sounds like you have to be smart to know how to use it.
The same people that bought NES and Playstations with their Disney VHS tapes don't buy computers because there are too many choices.
For MS and Apple to keep the computing angle going (their livelihood), they've abandoned the appliance market.

People would just be fine with an Internet Browser, and a way to organize their photos. Pre Y2K when digital photography didn't have the market it has now, we all knew that those expensive appliances would fail.
If there is going to be a $100 laptop, why not a $100 screen with basic OS and can handle simple networking and external storage?

Replacing workers

[a_nonamiss]

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.

what the hell is it?

[tomstdenis]

First off, it is I.T. it's an acronym not a fucking word.

Second it's a meaningless acronym. Information Technology ... [yes, I've said this before...]. Information == content, Technology == subjective. Books are technology. So are cave paintings.

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" ... what the fuck does that mean? In the states? In Canada? globally? What are these new employees doing? Data entry? ...

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

It's High Level Jobs at Lower Pay

[GoCanes]

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.

Filled entry level is a good thing

[moochfish]

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.

Re:So outsourcing hasn't killed the economy?

[mjh]

There's nothing to say the tech industry wouldn't be even more vibrant without the outsourcing.

I beg to differ. The theory of comparative advantage says that the tech industry wouldn't be more vibrant without outsourcing.

This is an ACM study, but who funds the ACM?

[br00tus]

As the article says, the ACM s behind this study.

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.