Computer Science as a Major and as a Career

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running an interesting Q&A with Director of IBM's Academic Initiative, Gina Poole. In the article she talks specifically about taking computer science as a major and ultimately as a career. From the article: 'There are a couple of reasons [for the decline in science and engineering degrees]: one is a myth, believed by parents, students, and high school guidance counselors, that computer science and engineering jobs are all being outsourced to China and India. This is not true. The percentage of the total number of jobs in this space is quite small -- less than 5%. According to a government study, the voluntary attrition in the U.S. has outpaced the number of outsourced jobs to emerging nations. Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S.'"

Comments

I guess good CS doesn't mean good math

[yagu]

I get uncomfortable when I hear people trying to rationalize outsourcing, painting it as less insidious than it is. I'm especially confused when, from the slashdot article quotes like:

Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S.

propose the ludicrous!

If there are nine U.S. jobs created for every outsourced job, I would infer a couple of things:

• someone should do the math, and calculate how many jobs we need to create in the U.S. to achieve 100% employment and outsource enough jobs to create those jobs. For example, if 8 million Americans are out of work, we should outsource 1 million American jobs (9 million jobs -- 1 million to fill the "outsourced", and the remaining jobless 8 million now have jobs).
• someone should be firing management! If every outsourced job creates 9 new ones, management fails in its cost savings argument. (That is unless of course, the nine new jobs combined actually pay less than the outsourced job -- which may actually be a possibility.)

Also, from the Article (emphasis mine):

The percentage of the total number of jobs in this space is quite small -- less than 5%. According to a government study, the voluntary attrition in the U.S. has outpaced the number of outsourced jobs to emerging nations. Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S.

and then this from the article (emphasis mine):

There's even a view that outsourcing actually will help grow jobs.

which seems to be less certain of a statement about the "created jobs". Either there's a view new jobs get created from outsourcing, or there's a reality that can be measured empirically. Which is it? And if it's the latter, where are the numbers?

That said, I guess it's nice to hear the CS career path and job market is healthy and alive.

Re:I guess good CS doesn't mean good math

[Why is My Ass Bleedi]

On the interval [t1, t2] the number of jobs exported is K and the number of jobs created domestically is N. They look at the numbers for this interval see N:K is 9:1. Then they tell you, "for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S." They aren't implying this because it doesn't support their thesis, but the rate of change for K and N is not constant, so the ratio of new jobs to exported jobs isn't constant. It also says nothing about the nature of the created or exported jobs in question.

Re:I guess good CS doesn't mean good math

[Jerf]

Your arguments are more obviously ludicrous than the ones in the article. Yours are absurd on their face, whereas the ones in the article can be true, but I would want to have more substantiation than just this one person's word.

For example, if 8 million Americans are out of work, we should outsource 1 million American jobs.

You are assuming linearity where there is not even a faint trace of it. If I have the capability to produce 1000 cars, and I sell 900 of them, that does not mean that if I double my capacity, I will sell 1800 of them. That is to say, the fact that I today have a 90% sale rate means nothing, in terms of trying to predict what would happen if I change my sale rate. Similarly, the claim that 8 jobs are created for every outsourced job only holds true under current conditions (if any). If you force the outsourcing of jobs, odds are that since almost by definition that will be less economically efficient, that ration will drop. It's not written in stone.

You are also assuming that you can artificially just jack up the supply of jobs with no consequences, also patently false. Jobs are an economy, and there is demand (work to be done and the money to pay for it) and supply (workers willing to do the work). Neither side of that equation can be magically changed without affecting the other.

someone should be firing management! If every outsourced job creates 9 new ones, management fails in its cost savings argument. (That is unless of course, the nine new jobs combined actually pay less than the outsourced job -- which may actually be a possibility.)

This is a continuation of failing to view the job market as a market. Jobs are not cost centers alone, as you seem to imply, because if they were, the ideal number of jobs would be "zero". The correct criteria is to compare the in-sourced job's generated value, accounting for the cost of paying the worker, and the outsourced job + the other created job's values, accounting for the cost of paying them. While the pay in the second scenario will almost certainly be higher, the value may be much greater too.

Now note I'm not saying these numbers are correct, I'm just saying you are quite wrong.

By using the same sort of understanding that you are lacking, we can actually show a much greater case that there is something fishy about these numbers. Often in this sort of situation, there is what we call "low-hanging fruit", initial actions you can take which will have great results, and then you eventually get into "diminishing returns". If outsourcing a single job is capable of creating enough value to support the pay of nine new workers, than that strikes me as still being well into the "low-hanging fruit" stage, and people ought to still be aggressively outsourcing as the gains are so obvious and big. However, it is also obvious that outsourcing has either slowed or is starting to slow, and the backlash is well into the "development" stage... and note that's not a legal backlash I'm referring to, but people pointing out it doesn't seem to actually save much money. That's also a stage these sorts of things go through, and that occurs when the low-hanging fruit is basically gone and the new-comers are noticing they aren't getting the promised results.

Thus, I would expect the correct statistic is that you can expect a 1.3x-1.8x improvement for an outsourced job, which is the range where you start questioning the whole thing, although with large variation. ("Large variation" also implies that there will be many people who lose, which would also start to contribute to the backlash.)

Now that's a criticism of the numbers.

Re:I guess good CS doesn't mean good math

[stevejobsjr]

Where does it say outsourcing a job CAUSES 9 jobs to be created?

It just happens to be than there is a ratio of 1 outsourced job to 9 new American jobs.

I guess posting on Slashdot doesn't mean good understanding of cause and effect.

Re:I guess good CS doesn't mean good math

[Jerf]

(Note this is a reply to someone that is probably below the reader's threshhold.)

If I tell you that for every canybar sold I earn $0.25 and you go and fill a bag with 10 candybars and I charge you $50 you're going to ask me what's going on. Well of course my rates change.

Your argument is incoherent. If you assume that from a claimed profit margin of $.25, that I can derive anything on the final cost, that's your error, not mine. In fact, due to the wonders of advertising the cost to me may be lower than your profit.

(For reference, I recall seeing that the average profit margin in the Fortune 500 is on the order of something like 5%, and if I'm screwing up either way, that's probably high. For a $.25 profit, that's a cost to the consumer of $5. So ironically, all else being equal and assuming you were a reasonably efficient company in a competitive market, your "surprising" price is close to the correct guess!)

I actually thought I understood what you were getting at, but the more I read your post the less I understood. I think the statistics may be wrong, but I think what you think is "misleading" is actually your own fuzzy thinking on the topic.

From the article

[Wellington Grey]

Why do women shy away from this field? Reason number one is the view that it is for loners and geeks.

That's because, mostly, it is. Trying to pretend that it's not isn't going to help things. Some kinds of jobs attract some kinds of people and we just have to accept that.

-Grey

Re:From the article

[Hollinger]

That's because, mostly, it is. Trying to pretend that it's not isn't going to help things. Some kinds of jobs attract some kinds of people and we just have to accept that.

That's not true.

Everything I do in at work is a team effort. In fact, working as a loner is a very quick way to annoy many people crucial to your success, and kill your career. On top of that, I'd say that it's becoming increasingly hard to do anything significant as a loner, because new systems and applications are too massive to be developed by a single person.

I see a sort of natural selection at work, where those that have the "soft" skills and people skills tend to be more successful, and those that don't get stuck on a more "standard" career path. Maybe where you work it's that way, but at IBM (at least in Austin), things are different.

~ Mike

The real title should be:

[Wellington Grey]

The real title of the article should be: Power Architecture directions: Two-year-old Academic Initiative enhances computer science curricula, seeks to reverse student decline and sell as much IBM stuff in the proccess. See the following questions from the article:

1) How is the curriculum linked to teaching or use of IBM technology?

2) How can IBM Business Partners participate in the Academic Initiative?

3) Do participating schools gain an incentive, financial or otherwise, to acquire IBM equipment, software, or other technology?

-Grey

That's Not Why

[MBCook]

I'm a CIS major. I enjoy it. If you do to, go for it.

But that's not why enrollment is down.

I started college in 2000/2001. The end of the boom. It was VERY obvious that a large portion of the students didn't care about the subject. They weren't too interested in the material. They often didn't know much about how to even use computers above very basic things.

It's clear why there were there. They were in it for the money. At that time all you heard about was the exploding tech sector and 19 year old multi-millionares and getting $90k salaries right out of college. They saw gold and they ran for it. Many of them were very nice people, and some of them tried VERY hard and had a great commitment to the subject that they weren't personally that interested in (I wouldn't be able to do it), but many of them were just trying to slide by to get the money, or had no idea what they wanted to do so they went with the one that had the $$$ behind it.

Now that the bubble has burst (combined with the threat of outsourcing and such, real or imagined) it's not seen as an ultra-lucrative career so people aren't going into it like they used to.

Where ARE they going? From what little I've seen, the new hot things are degrees that get you to accounting (returning favorite), lawyering (classic money maker), or the new hot stuff: biotech. Those are where the gold-rushers are going.

So CS is back to people who want to do CS instead of those people along with gold-rushers, certification mill graduates, and other such people. Big loss.

It will be CS again one day. Google is starting to turn that tide with all the headway it's making.

But the reason CS enrollment is down is the bubble burst and the gold-rushers are gone.

That's not the worst of the article, either.

[khasim]

Gina: Absolutely. To say, "20% of IT jobs are being outsourced" is alarming, but there are whole new fields opening up, new disciplines that will be in huge demand. Some of the more traditional IT positions -- application maintenance, transcription services, base application development -- may be outsourced for a number of reasons, principally cost and availability of workers.

I can understand "cost", but "availablity of workers"?

Or is that another way of saying "cost"? If there are more people in India willing to do it, they'll do it for less money.

But if you think of the exciting jobs marrying technology and business and really making an impact -- data mining, business intelligence, network architecture, Internet and Web architecture, Web services -- these will be the hot jobs as technology becomes more pervasive, less costly, and as more uses are found for it. There's even a view that outsourcing actually will help grow jobs.

Yes, and there's a view that space aliens are abducting our citizens and probing them in scientific experiments.

"Web services"? Why wouldn't those also be off-shored?

"Internet and Web architecture"? Why wouldn't those also be off-shored?

"network architecture"? This is one "of the exciting jobs marrying technology and business and really making an impact"? I've been doing this for the past 16 years. The only reason that this won't be off-shored is because I have to physically move the devices.

"business intelligence"? That has NOTHING to do with a CS degree.

"data mining"? Great. the 1990's are back again. That's a buzz-word from the 20th century. We're in the 21st now. And there is no reason that that could not also be off-shored.

That article is nothing more than a bunch of claims without support and meaningless recycled buzz-words thrown together.

the bottom line

[Anonymous Coward]

To do well in University, take something you're interested in. Just going after the money will lead to worse results and possibly even burnout/dropout.

A job when you graduate isn't unimportant, but life isn't just about going after the most cash.

Report from the trenches

[mrsam]

I graduated with a Bachelor's in a double-major of Comp Sci, and Applied Math, 16 years ago, and have been working ever since.

The barrier to entry, today, is unquestionably higher than it was years ago. If you're coming out of college today, expect to rough it out for 5-7 years. Then it gets easier. Much, much easier. If you know what you're doing, and you're good at it, outsourcing is not going to bother you.

The key to success, in this racket, is to love programming. You should've known that this is what you want to do with your life -- computer programming -- even before you've gotten your high school diploma.

If you're looking at a career in IT as a means of earning a living -- forget it. It's not going to work for you. You need to be naturally drawn to programming. If you're naturally driven to this (I sat down in front of an Apple II at age 12, and that's all she wrote), then it's only a matter of time before you claw your way to the top of the heap, and from that point on, it's easy going. Do not be concerned even if things look very bleak, the first 5-6 years out of college. Learn as much as you can, when you go home, spend all your free time "scratching an itch", and a few years down the road you will have the experience and knowledge to run rings around everyone else.

I hear all the woes that people are saying, and just quietly smile, internally. I work in what's considered to be the toughest IT environments in the world: Wall Street. People get eaten alive, around here.

Yet, I moved into my first house at age 21, paid off its 30-year mortgage eight years later, sold it, bought a second house two years ago, and I expect to pay off THAT mortgage next year. I get into the office around 9, and leave around 5. I'm not a wage slave, I don't work myself to death. I work as an independent consultant programmer, so if the company wants me to work 12 hours a day, they will have to pay for it. It's funny how the expectations of IT people to work 12 hours a day disappears, when the company has to pay for it (I'm under strict orders not to work more than 40 hours a week, anything more requires advance authorization).

I remember hearing the headhunters' sob stories, as long as ten years ago, about all these Indian outsourcers taking a dozen H-1Bs, throwing them together into one, tingy, dingy house somewhere on Long Island, paying them $30/hr, and billing each one out for $40/hr; and undercutting everyone else.

Strangely enough, I've somehow managed to avoid getting undercut all this time. Yes, I see a lot of Indians around here. But, they're all low-level admins, who really don't do anything that requires any kind of sophistication. If you enter the market today, you WILL have a lot of competition to deal with, at first, for entry-level/low level spots. Once you get past that, though, the landscape changes dramatically.

I'm currently involved -- amongst other things -- with the management's hiring push. We're trying to hire as many high-level, experienced, developers as we can find. Wall Street has done very well in the last year, everyone is reporting record profits, everyone has hundred dollar bills coming out of their assholes, more cash than they know what to do with, so everyone's trying to hire as many good people as they can.

Based on interviewing a whole bunch of people over the course of the last 3 month, I can say: if you have your shit together, and you know what you're doing, you won't have any problems.

Re:Report from the trenches

[mrsam]

I've had gigs that involved report generation, and I've had gigs that involved developing user interfaces; on one occasion I developed a web-based interface with Perl/CGI, on another occasion I've used a Java applet.

The more financial knowledge you have, the better. That goes without saying. Everything helps. As I said, the first 5-7 years are going to be rough going, while you learn the ropes. Financial knowledge will accrue naturally, as you gain experience.

While you are getting yourself through the first 5-7 years, save as much dough as you can. Do not make the common mistakes many others make: do not splurge and buy a new car, on credit, or crash in a sprawling flat that forces you to pay sky-high rent. Live frugally. Make it your goal to save enough cash that you can live off for at least 2-3 YEARS without a job. Yes, _YEARS_, not months.

Savings tip #1: live with your parents for 2-3 years, after graduating from college. This does wonders for your bank account. You can move out and get a pad of your own later, after you've saved up an rainy day fund that'll get you through the low times.

After graduating from college, try to stick 2-3 years in your first job, then change jobs and try to find one that's in a completely different financial area, so you get well-rounded financial knowledge. You may not end up being an expert in any particular area of financial knowledge, but you'll have a generally broad base of financial knowledge.

After being a wage slave for 5-6 years, incorporate and become an independent consultant. If you've got a good head on your shoulders, you don't need an accountant, just Turbotax. You can do all the tax paperwork yourself. Now that you're a consultant, kiss the 60 hour week goodbye. Now that the company has to pay you for every hour, suddenly you don't need to work 60 hours a week, any more.

Many headhunters will still try to screw you with gigs that don't pay overtime, they'll throw buzzwords like "professional day" at you. Tell them to fsck off, you get paid $X/hr, and not $X*8 for a ten hour day, or not $X/hr for the first 8 hrs, then $Y/hr after that, where Y<X. Stick to your guns. Every time, in the last eight years, I was looking for a gig, I always stumble upon some headhunter twit who will swear up-and-down, cross-his-heart, that nobody uses consultants any more, or that nobody on Wall Street pays consultants for overtime any more, or that nobody pays the kind of money that I want.

Every time I'm in between gigs, I always end up talking to one such clown.

Just last week some lady called me. She talked to me about seven months ago, her agency recruits for salaried spots only, and she was disappointed that I have no interested in a salaried position, only consulting. So, this sweetheart calls me last week, wondering if I changed my mind. No, honey, and I've been busy for the last 6 months, making twice as much money as you were offering me. She tells me to call her if I ever change my mind. In my Jerry Lewis voice I tell her: laaaaaady, I've been a consultant for over a decade now, and that ain't gonna happen. And a couple of dudes that I'm working with right now, are consultants who are pushing into their retirement years. Ain't gonna happen.

You will end up doing gigs that will run anywhere between 6 months, and >5 years, with intervals of 6-9 months in between, while you're looking for your next gig (did I mention that you need to have enough cash to live off, for at least 2-3 years?)

You will find that your job search will go much better when you are not desperate for any grub a headhunter would want to throw your way. I enjoy pissing off all the headhunters, who think that I'm desperate to latch onto anything they give me. Yes, I'm really serious -- this is how much money I want, and no, your "exciting opportunity" isn't really that exciting to me.

I really had the following happen more than once: it's early spring, and I'm on the prowl. Just finished a gig somewhere

Computer Science as a Major: NOT !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Young folk !!
Do not believe those business types !!!
They LIE LIE LIE !!

I'm NOT amused by those leeches ( business types)
who claim that more CS grads are needed. I keep
that in mind when I interview, but I won't say anything...
neither will anyone I know.

The IBM person didn't mention that the industry is
a double whammy for no jobs: outsourcing as well
as IMMIGRATION !!

And 3rdly, lets not forget age discrimination.
There's a lot of those looking for work, but industry
has it's sites set for certain "Classes" of people.
More could be said, but 2/3 of the readers are looking
to reinforce the shortage notion, so I won't.

so, industry has no sympathy from me, and to protect my job,
I often and loudly tell anyone who will listen that the
Computer Industry is NOT A WAY to earn a living.

signed,
Anonymous, since Big Brother is reading my email,
and companies use detectives to track down personal info.

They're lobbying for more H1b's

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the endless 'no problem here' stories and IBM staff with their talking points ready.

There's currently a lobbying effort to get the cap taken off the H1Bs to try and drive down the IT market cost in the USA even further.

And we believe an article from IBM?

[br00tus]

It doesn't even require a moment of thinking to realize an article on IBM.com about this sort of thing is propaganda. What is the article trying to do? Get us to spend tens of thousands of dollars, at our own expense, to pay for skill training so we can then go see if a corporation like IBM wants to employ as as a wage earner on an "at-will" basis. It tells us not to worry about the jobs being out-sourced.

Then it tells us how many new jobs are being created in this field. This is an old trick. I have a cartoon that is a century old of Mr. Block (a recurring character who is basically a rube) travels out west because of newspaper ads about how many jobs are out there and how good they are - he travels thousands of miles and finds out that there are only a few jobs and hundreds of people like him lured in by the ads. Beyond this the job is not as good as promised by the ad - once the bosses have all these suckers competing for a few jobs, they can pay less, increase the hours and have better working conditions. So this sort of nonsense has been going on for a long time.

As other people pointed out, this article does not talk about H1-Bs. IBM is part of the ITAA which is trying to push the H1-B cap up. They spend tons of money in Washington DC and what tchnical professional organizations are spreading money around counetring that? The IEEE? The IEEE gets a great deal of its money from the same corporations funding this, menaing the IEEE is not a real professional organization like the AMA, ABA and so forth. You can read more about how the IEEE is controlled by these companies here.

Does any of this set off bullshit detectors? "Also, a lot of students don't understand the flexibility they can have. You can travel the globe; you have flexibility whether working from an office, from home, full-time, part-time." I am a UNIX sysadmin. I can work from home, part-time? Give me a break, I can do neither. I would love to have a "part-time" UNIX sysadmin job in the sense of only working 40 hours a week. And I can do this for 20 hours a week supposedly? And what's this nonsense about working from home? If I never had to go into the office, I never would. This is a lot of BS, I don't even know why this was posted. Of course, a few of these jobs exist, and we can get away with working from home once in a while, but 99% of jobs be it sysadmins, programmers, DBAs or network admins are at the office and full time, meaning over 40 hours a week.

Another thing is the article does mention "voluntary" attrition being a reason for the lack of people. But of course it never says why people are leaving. They are leaving because they are not getting paid enough to work the hours they do, and having to put up with the BS they have to.

As far as saying there are X many jobs out there, it is really meaningless. Let me create 10 million new jobs right here - I have 10 million openings for C/C++/Java gods, DBAs and sysadmins. The pay is a dollar a week and you have to do a lot of shit. There, I just created 10 million new jobs. If you believe in capitalism and neoclassical economics, and obviously these people do, then supply should always equal demand, if you have X many new jobs that are so great in terms of pay etc., then the market will automatically meet them. This is what is believed from Keynes to Milton Friedman, if you don't believe this you are probably carrying a copy of Marx's Das Kapital. So the idea that there can be a job shortfall is either 1) coming from someone who believes Marx is right and Keynes and Milton Friedman are wrong or 2) someone who is talking out of their ass and just wants people to pay tens of thousands out of their own pocket for an education, so that there will be one more person competing for an IT job, so that the company can then make people work more hours while paying them less money.

Re:Computer Science... isn't

[MrDomino]

As said by Edsger Dijkstra:

We now know that electronic technology has no more to contribute to computing than the physical equipment. We now know that a programmable computer is no more and no less than an extremely handy device for realizing any conceivable mechanism without chaning a single wire, and that the core challenge for computing science is a conceptual one, viz. what (abstract) mechanisms we can conceive without getting lost in the complexities of our own making. But in the mean time, the harm was done: the topic became know as "computer science" - which, actually, is like referring to surgery as "knife science" - and it was firmly implanted in people's minds that computing science is about machines and their equipment. Quod non. (These days I cannot enter a doctor's, dentist's, or lawyer's office without being asked my advice about their office computer. When I then tell them that I am totally uninformed as to what hard- and software products the market currently offers, their faces invariably get very puzzled.)

CS Remains a Poor Career Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart students are avoiding CS for good reasons. Here is the situation facing potential CS students:

• Whilst salaries in CS were once good (and briefly excellent) they have declined below those of other, more-easily-acquired skills.
  
• Most employers will not compensate you for overtime.
  
• There is a "glass ceiling" effect resulting from the fall from grace of the dotcom bust. There is now less chance of career advancement beyond senior technical.
  
• Many other fields compensate better, especially given the education, and cannot be outsourced. A good example is healthcare, where a 2-year degree as a nurse or an EMS paramedic can give you $40K/year starting with guaranteed overtime and rise fairly quickly to $80K/year.
  
• There is little prospect of change. If anything, the rate of outsourcing is increasing as India's infrastructure becomes better established.
  
• The IT industry has begun a new campaign to increase H1-B limits once again. This will further eliminate jobs and reduce wages for U.S. CS grads.
  
• Should you go into CS, your CS career will be (relatively) short: plan to re-educate yourself and move to a new field by the time you are 40 and you may escape this situation. Do otherwise and you're whistling in the dark.
  
• The above effects are accentuated by the recent corporate emphasis on dumping older employees who have higher benefits, pension and insurance.
  

Re:Dilbert realities of the corporate coder.

[cerberusss]

Why the flying fuck did you allow the Man to kill your working pleasure?

Let me describe my work:

• Fun projects, combining software and hardware which get sent off on a balloon 40km into the atmosphere
• Intelligent colleagues, telling how they built a 50 watt long-wave radio transmitter
• A Linux workstation with friendly sysops
• A nice manager with which I talk about his sailing ship

You've become a mindless work drone. And the most stupid thing is, YOU DID IT TO YOURSELF.

Re:Dilbert realities of the corporate coder.

[iamwoodyjones]

> Tons of off hours solo work, and continual outsourcing.
> I could go on, but hey it is a beautiful sunny Saturday and I have to go into work.

Sigh, please don't scare people into thinking that you're being *forced* to do extra work, you don't want to do extra work, and you don't truely love going into work on a Saturday. Because if you didn't want to do it, you would't be doing it.

You know what I'm doing right now on my sunny Saturday afternoon? I'm writing code, BECAUSE I LOVE IT! Today I'm writing my free software project that I LOVE! Some weekends I write software for my company because I LOVE IT! When our company hires we ask, "Do you truely love writing software? So much, that you invest your personal time into reading about it, writing it, and writing about it?" If not, please don't work for us because you'll whine and bitch all day about how you have to write software at a software company. Latter your skills will go to shit because you won't be reading about it in your spare time.

And I know *YOU* love writing software because you're doing it right now aren't cha'. Yea, you are! You're a GEEK admit it! That's what GEEKS do and that's why geeks are paid a buttload more than anyone else. Because there's not a lot of us autistic people who are crazy enough to do it!

> Crushing deathmarch deadlines. Tons of off hours solo work, and continual outsourcing.

I for one, *welcome* the deadlines, off hours solo work and outsourcing. Sound F'ed up? It's not. When a manager comes to my door he says, "Man, we've got this high priority task that *has* to be done in 3 days and the only reason I'm comming to you is because you've done it before and I have confidence you're one of the few people that can get this done." After reviewing if it's possible, I say, "I'll have to crank it out day and night, and talk to my wife but I think I can do this." and I grin because I love to prove myself to the company and it feels *DAMN F'ing GOOD to prove my worth!*. Go ahead and outsource jobs, it won't be me getting fired I'm too busy writing code for the company day and night and I'm LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!!

> So much process overhead that it will suck any of the joy out of design/coding that ever existed

Why do you think most of us write free software on the weekends and at night?

> Your interactions will consist mainly of mind dulling staff meetings, early morning, barely intelligible conference calls to far off lands attempting to keep outsource staff up to speed (good luck with that) while the real work will be long solo hours staring at a machine (evenings and weekends if need be).

YEA BABY!!!!! Let me have it! I can handle it and I get paid to handle it. I pride myself on handling specifically THIS and I make it known to the whole company, *PUT ME ON THE SHIT JOBS AND WATCH ME GET IT DONE!* Bad employees, asshole bosses, give 'em to me and watch me work w/ their fucking asses and get shit DONE! Once you do that a few times you'll get tons of recognition and tons of rewards. Everyone will say, "Wow! He's done a great job working with those assholes over there. He's a nice guy. He worked day and night and got that project done. Let's give him another" I don't mind another either, because I'd rather be working the hours and making things happen then sitting in my office picking my ass waiting for a golden plate of requirements to enter and instead be surprised by a pink slip

But I don't do it all the time. As a matter of fact if I don't want to you know what I say to my manager. "NO!" Wow, try it sometime. Just say, "NO!" I don't bullshit and I don't worry about getting fired. I put a big wad of about a grand in my pocket in 100's. Not shitting here. When I get pissed enough I pull that wad out and sniff it. Mmmmmm smells delicious. It's my "Fuck you" money. When I've had enough I can get up and walk out and say to everyone in the whole room, "Fuck you! I'm outta this shit

Misleading statements about myths

[Skapare]

There are a couple of reasons: one is a myth, believed by parents, students, and high school guidance counselors, that computer science and engineering jobs are all being outsourced to China and India. This is not true. The percentage of the total number of jobs in this space is quite small -- less than 5%.

Notice how the wording of this is meant to distort and twist perceptions. Hardly anyone thinks that all science and engineering jobs are being outsourced to China and India. By saying it that way, however, they are hoping to recruit people to argue with those who do believe (and rightly so) that many jobs are being outsourced there.

Also notice how they leave out "insourcing" of workers on H-1B non-resident visas. The latter is actually more of an issue for a few reasons. Among them is that many jobs simply cannot be moved to a remote location. Another reason is that this makes for an effective slave labor force right here because such a worker cannot easily move to a new job, and if they complain about the working conditions and hours, and get fired, they can't just go get another job, they usually have to return to their home country.

All of this, including the industry push to flood the market with even more CS, engineering, and science graduates, is all part of the scheme to drive pay levels down, cut benefits, and limit career paths to just 10 or so years. If you think business has any other motive besides the acquisition of profits, then you absolutely do not understand how business functions.

And I'm not so sure about this 5% figure. I've heard a number of figures from a number of sources, ranging from 3% to 25%. I'm more inclined to believe it is somewhere around 8% to 10% based on empirical observations of numbers of people out of work. More likely they conveniently include lots of lesser-tech jobs when they work up those figures, while sending the higher-tech jobs overseas.

According to a government study, the voluntary attrition in the U.S. has outpaced the number of outsourced jobs to emerging nations. Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S.

The government studies lots of things and tends to get things wrong a lot. The only voluntary attrition that exists here is due to declining working conditions, such as bad working environments, fewer benefits, and lower pay. And of course, PHBs.

For every high-tech job outsourced, some number of low-tech jobs probably are created. I doubt it is nine; probably closer to three. These would be low-tech jobs like sales, marketing, and secretarial. If any of those jobs created in US really are high-tech, they will be trying to hire H-1B's in them.

The government also has incomplete figures on people out of work. When someone who had a high-tech job loses it, and applies for unemployment benefits, then they get counted. But when the benefits run out, they aren't counted anymore. And if they had a substantial savings, they might not apply for unemployment benefits, or might not even qualify in some cases ... and won't be counted. Those that do find work doing something else like delivering pizza will then no longer be counted as unemployed (the government has no classification of underemployed).

While it is true that there are untapped resources of smart people who can do high-tech work all over the world, and it is a good thing to get them working for you, it is clear that US businesses are using this combined with other practices more for driving down pay and benefits while still having a base of smart people.

All that said, I do need to point out that US business, as well as European businesses and probably even Japanese businesses, are at a competitive disadvantage in the emerging world market due to the higher living costs at home. Costs have to be cut to survive. And even if we stopped all foreign companies from selling in

Yeah but the salaries aren't the same

[baggins2002]

Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S.
Yeah, but those jobs are being created at WalMart and Burger King

Re:Go for it!

[badmammajamma]

I make 6 figures and I don't even have an associates degree in comp sci. Experience > piece of paper. I have worked with many people with advanced degrees and from what I can tell, it really has no impact on their salaries. They may make a few grand more coming straight out of school but the guy who went into the real world after 4 years will make up for it by having built up experience.

I'm not saying people should not get advanced degrees, I'm merely stating that they shouldn't do it for the money because it just doesn't pay. It's misleading to hang a 100k carrot in front of students like that.

CS As a a Standalone Skill

[Atmchicago]

The key these days is that there are plenty of people who can do computer science, but far fewer who can do computer science and something else. This means that computer science is extremely comptetitive, but if you also are good at biology, or chemistry, or economics, etc., that you can use your computer science skills and apply them to your other field. There are far fewer biologists who can code, so if you can do both then you can get the best of both worlds.

Computers are tools, and a tool needs an application. If you can apply it directly yourself, then you can do just fine. If you only know how to code, then you will find yourself with lots of other people in your shoes, and that's where it gets tough to get a job

Why not consider real world data?

[walterbyrd]

As far as I can tell, the reason behind all these bullsh!t articles is to make sure there will never again be a shortage of IT slave labor.

Forget the article, look at the real world.

A BSCS is as difficult to get as an engineering degree, but as useless as Liberal Arts degree. Look at the job boards, degrees are rarely listed as requirements for software development jobs, and when they are they say "BSCS or equivelent."

If I have a degree in Chemical Engineering, I am *way* ahead of any non-degreed person who wants to work as a Chemical Engineer. The same can not be said for a degree in Comp Sci.

The newspapers and job boards are filled with ads for nurses. The ads often offer $15K sign on bonuses. All they ask is that you be an licensed nurse. How many honest ads are there, offering $15K sign on bonuses for software developers - right out of collede? The real evidence of supply v demand is staring you in the face. Most developer jobs require five years experience in a long list of technologies - and ever job has a different technologies list.

Please don't mis-understand. I am not suggesting that nurses are not worth it, nor am I suggesting that you become a nurse. My point is that real world data should out-weight these bogus self-serving articles.

Same old story

[ClosedSource]

So a corporation that depends on computer science graduates for its business wants to keep their labor costs down in the future by suckering young people into a career that will probably be over by the time they are 50.

The shortage of technical talent in the US has been proclaimed by industry continuously since the 1950's but it has never been true.

Given the absurd compensation given CEOs in the US, perhaps IBM should encourage more business school graduates to try to flood the market with cheap management labor.

Re:Same old story

[ClosedSource]

I'd have to know the specifics to determine if your CEO friend really has a legitimate problem, doesn't know what he's doing, or is just part of the disinformation campaign.

One quick way to increase the pool of qualified applicants is to eliminate the top of the experience range you advertise. For example, instead of asking for sw engineers with 3-5 years experience just state that the job requires a minimum of 3 years experience. Probably 60-70% of sw engineers have more than 5 years experience so you'll see a big increase in applications.

Of course, if the real issue is not a lack of qualified applicants but a lack of cheap, qualified applicants then this approach won't help.

Re:Go for it!

[Courageous]

In fact, if they asked others to refer to them as "doctor", they would be looked upon as pretentious snobs.

If they asked others to refer to them as "doctor," they'd be pretentious and narcissistic snobs. Sometime a while back, I had someone ask me to refer to him as doctor. I asked him why he wasn't referring to me as "mister"? Respect is reciprocal, was the point of the day.

C//

Two different things

[Foerstner]

Being a "loner" does not necessarily mean that you can't work effectively as part of a team. It merely means that you are inwardly focused.

For that matter, there are a lot of outgoing, sociable people who can be disruptive in a team environment.

Re:Go for it!

[dougmc]

You can't just say "I learn languages quickly!" The attitude you get in response from the jaded cynical HR people is "stop giving us b.s., anyone can say that and nearly everyone does." Fair enough. I haven't been able to figure any way to convincingly show that so they wouldn't have to take me at my word.

Easy ... learn some languages. Do so quickly. Once you know them, put them on your resume. C, C++, perl, python, and java are probably good places to start. Once you know all of those, you probably know the languages that 90% of your potential employers would want you to know anyways, so it doesn't matter so much if you can learn new languages quickly or not.

I know that comes across as a smart-alec answer, but it's true. If you're so good at learning new languages quickly, do so, then it won't be an issue anymore. (And HR is right -- everybody does claim that.) And if you're REALLY fast at learning new languages, just put the popular ones on your resume and when you have an interview in two days, well, find out what languages they care about, and you've got two days to learn it. It's risky, but I've seen people pull it off. (And I've seen people crash and burn.)

(Actually, on second thought, that list is pretty *nix biased. For Windows, they may want VB and is C# very popular? And you'll also want to learn things like SQL, know your way around XML and HTML (they're not really languages though), javascript is useful to know as well for web stuff. In any event, once you know a few computer languages well, learning more is generally easy. But the first one is usually the hardest, and the second one is easier, but still not as easy as the later ones become.)

Another way to get past HR is to have some experience in what a company does beyond programming. Ok, so you want to get a job writing financial software in java. You know java, that's fine, but what will really wow them is having experience in finances. Very few jobs just involve `programming for the sake of programming' -- instead, you're programming to make the computer do something useful, and knowing something about what the program is supposed to actually do is what will set you apart from all the other CS grads.

Also, you can often bypass HR completely. If you know people in the department doing the hiring, give them a call -- often you can get an interview without ever talking to HR. Networking works.

The Grapes of Wrath

[Foerstner]

I know literary allusions aren't the stock and trade of CS people. Perhaps they should be.

PEA PICKERS WANTED IN CALIFORNIA. GOOD WAGES ALL SEASON. 800 PICKERS WANTED.

  Summary here.

Broaden your horizons. Read things beyond the ACM journals and Slashdot. You'll learn something.

Self Inflicted Wound

[ZoOnI]

Ironically the companies that are complaining about this are in the best position to make a change. Why is it that most reputable CS schools do not offer a CS degree online. These same schools offer online degrees in many disiplines but not CS.

If any degree field should make use of this infastructure, it should be the field that evoloves it. How many smart people in dead end jobs with financial overhead would love to spend a few hours a night pegging away at a CS degree and what percentage of the population is under 23 and living in a University town.

Re:Go for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I make quite a decent living (not quite millionaire), and I've never went to university. If you know your stuff, can interview well and show what you're worth, you quickly get a good job. Add some decent opportunities, hard work and gained experience, and you can make a lot of money pretty quickly.

Then I compare with my bro & sis who went to university for like 8 years each (sis's hubby is STILL in school and they got 3 kids!), and all they've really managed to do is get VERY MUCH in debt over student loans. Jobs were pretty much non-existant after school (perhaps they studied the wrong things - geography/music. While they were getting in debt 10k per year (and only have the bare essentials), I was making 60k+, and no loans to pay back later.

Can't say I really miss going to university. Most schools nowadays suck so badly (I truly hated it - no challenge whatsoever). And you're getting in debt instead of making a decent living. Knowledge and experience is every bit as good as an expensive diploma. I don't feel inferior in any way to those who studied all these years. It's not like you won't be learning stuff otherwise, or if you'll stop learning new stuff once you're done studying.

Re:Go for it!

[BVis]

It's probably worth mentioning at that point that (at least in the USA) malpractice insurance premiums can easily reach six figures annually. So that $200k ends up being more like $100k after you pay the insurance cartel. Still not anything to sneeze at, but hardly huge money (especially if your house cost $750k, which would be considered a bargian in most large cities.)

(Something you may not know: The discipline with the highest malpractice premiums on average is not neurosurgery, cardiology, or another big name.. it's OB/GYN. Mostly because the first thing people do when they learn their baby has cerebral palsy is sue the OB.)

Re:Go for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

it's good that you earn that salary without a degree. for every one of you, there's probably 50 people who "know how to code" but don't have a degree and don't earn anything because of it.

not obtaining a degree will create two big hurdles for most people: 1) many companies (including the few that i've worked for) won't even interview you, 2) you'll hit a ceiling where you can't be director/executive/vp because you don't have a degree.

Come on get real!

[Anonymous Coward]

"People equate Computer Science with Programming. CS is more than just programming. If all you're doing is programming, then it's easy to see that you can be outsourced. If on the other hand, you show what else Computer Scientists are involved in - robotics, algorithms for movie special effects, improving the quality of life for people with missing limbs and for people with speech impediments - interest might pick up again."

Come on, get real. I've been working professionally now for almost 15 years. Worked with both large and small companies. I have a BSCS from a top notch university. All the jobs that I've had to this point have been programming/architecture related. I would estimate that there's VERY FEW "computer science" jobs even available. By "computer science", I mean jobs where you spend all/most of your time in front of a whiteboard instead of a keyboard. Those jobs just don't exist (except a few exceptions) in the real world. My sense is that it breaks down like this:

2% "computer science" (mostly academic positions, high end R&D corps.)
8% "architects" (this is the prime "computer science" position at Joe Company)
90% "developers" (with varying levels of experience from entry-->senior)

Now keep in mind, my numbers are reflecting the whole computing space, including every small 2 man operation out there.

In larger corporations, there's usually one architect that drives the "vision" for the project, along with a bunch of varying levels of developers. In smaller companies, the architect can also be the developer. But I'm not including these guys in that 8% number. I'm talking about pure architects there (people that don't type code for a living).

Most companies want you to get busy cranking out code that they can put into production quickly. That lends itself to "assembly line" thinking, therefore the temptation to use offshore outsourcing is greatly increased.

So, take a look at those numbers above. Let's assume that people in the 1st two groups can't be outsourced. That leaves (potentially) 90% of an entire industry workforce that could potentially be outsourced. 90%!. Ok, maybe not today or tommorrow, but in 5-10 years, India/China/[insert low cost country] will perfect their software "manufacturing" processes to the point where this will become possible. Even if only HALF of those positions are eventually replaced, it still paints a very GRIM picture.

Re:I'm a employer for a small software company

[Skapare]

Let me ask you this, since you posted a specific tool you use. Are you willing to hire someone who does NOT yet know that tool, but is willing and eager to learn it, AND has a track record of learning other things to show that they can?

If you are NOT interested in hiring such a person, then you are an example of part of the problem. Here's how the logic works:

These various technologies never last long enough for someone to practice that technology for their entire expected career (42 years typical, from graduation at 23 to retirement at 65). Do you expect to be using J2EE only for the next 42 years? I highly doubt it. Something new (and supposedly better) will come along in a few years.

The problem is, everyone who learned J2EE or any other current modern technology will then be SOL. Why? Because you and other employers will switch to the new technology a couple years or so after it has emerged, and you won't be interested in hiring anyone who would be learning it for the very first time.

The problem is, there's no long term career opportunity in any field which is changing in a way that employers won't LET people keep up with by hiring-to-learn. College (and pre-college) kids are learning that getting a degree in CS and/or learning some current modern technology such as Java and J2EE means a career of perhaps at most 10 years, and in many cases even less. As technology changes, employers are just disposing of employees who could learn new stuff in a couple months, and instead trying to hire new people who already know what's new (either college grads who just learned it in a class, or someone lucky enough to fall into that technology just as it emerged). The kids see this practice and instead look to other careers fields which pay well and will last well into retirement, such as being a lawyer or doctor.

If all employers were to make at least 25% of their hires from experienced and/or educated people who don't really match some, most, or even all of the technology in use, but can learn it, then maybe this "problem" of kids not pursuing the path will go away. Think about it. Put yourself in the place of one of these kids seeing that both new college grads that just happened to pick the wrong technology to learn, as well as decades experienced people that want to move on to new things, just aren't getting jobs (they aren't because employers like you won't hire them).

True smart hiring should be based on hiring people that are smart, regardless of the specific technology they happen to know or be experienced with. If they are smart people, they can make it happen with any technology. Hiring programmers shouldn't be about what language you know or what toolkit you've used. It should be about understanding the development process, and even about improving on it. Past programming experience always helps, but even in other languages, it's still mostly what you need.

1991 Jobs in Texas

[Skapare]

I just checked computerjobs.com and found there are currently 1991 jobs in Texas. I remember when that number was as high as 23,000 before the economy nose dived. Whether it is, or is not, back in other areas, it most definitely is nowhere near back in IT hiring.