Slashdot Mirror
IT Worker Shortages Everywhere
Vicissidude writes with news from the IT front in India: "The software industry body Nasscom has warned that India faces a shortfall of half a million skilled workers by 2010. The country will need 350,000 engineers a year, but no more than 150,000 of the most highly skilled engineers will be available each year." This shortfall is fueling a new development, the exporting of Indian tech jobs to the US. But will there be workers in the US to do those jobs? Reader Jadeite2 writes with a word from Bill Gates, speaking to a business forum in Moscow, who said: "There is a shortage of IT skills on a worldwide basis. Anybody who can get those skills here now will have a lot of opportunity."
The only reason there is a shortage of IT professionals is there is a PAY shortage! Fix that and you will have more IT workers.
There may be a shortage of "qualified people who can do the work at the wage we want to pay", but there is no such thing as a shortage of qualified people.
If you can't find enough qualified applicants, simply raise your offered compensation until you do. That's how markets work.
Exactly. Anyone can sit down at a keyboard and write code, thats a skill that can be quickly learned and makes you just a programmer. To be a real software engineer you need to understand theory and problem solving, not just how to do what you're told. College doesn't teach you skills as much as it teaches you how to think and solve problems, and this lets you acquire new skills faster and easier than someone who doesn't know anything beyond what they can put on their resume. Skills are just the application of one's real abilities.
I got hired just before graduating undergrad at an excellent salary with no job experience whatsoever.