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IT Worker Shortages Everywhere

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the when-i-grow-up-i-wanna-write-programs dept.

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."

17 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. Those of us who supported outsourcing... by geoffrobinson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    or at least the freedom to outsource were confident that, ultimately, outsourcing would be a net benefit for everyone. For India and for America.

    This seems to be confirmation of that.

    --
    Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
    1. Re:Those of us who supported outsourcing... by rovingeyes · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have a friend who works in Google India. And when I asked about this new phenomenon, he said that there is no shortage of applicants, but there is a shortage of "qualified" applicants. For every software engineering position they anounce, thousands of resumes are received, but none of them meet their requirements. So this shortage is not some random IT position but very specific skilled positions that the Indian tech populace is unable to fill.

  2. Hey! by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Most IT workers aren't short all over. They're only short where it counts...

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    This guy's the limit!
  3. Shortfall? by Mydron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lets be clear, no market, including the labour market, suffers a "shortfall". When industry types parade around the notion of a "shortfall" what they really mean is that they anticipate having to pay higher prices (or wages in this case). They do this to drum up support for government policy which will effectively suppress prices/wages.

    I welcome such a shortfall.

    1. Re:Shortfall? by EatHam · · Score: 5, Funny
      How to fix that issue: pass a law

      If by "fix" you mean "create a giant clusterfuck", then yes, that would fix things nicely.
  4. Then why can't I find a friggin job?!!?! by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a BSIT degree with a 3.5 GPA, but without real world experience in an IT department, it's impossible for me to find anything in IT that pays above tech support!

    I'm tired of the chicken-egg thing. If I don't have experience I can't get the job. If I can't get the job, how am I supposed to get experience? /rant off

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  5. Shortage smortage by J.R.+Random · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A "shortgage" of labor simply means that businessmen have to pay people more than they would prefer. There is always a wage at which any "shortage" disappears, but that is not the fix prefered by the business class (importing more cheap labor or outsourcing is). You never hear about a CEO shortage even when they make millions a year.

    1. Re:Shortage smortage by Bryansix · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually there is one field where the is an actual shortage. That is in Nursing. You see when a shortage in any other field occurs two things happen. The first is that people have to be paid more. The second is that because of the first less people are hired. So the company does a little less business because it doesn't have as many people to provide the service or make the product. But in healthcare you don't have the choice of doing less business. Your business is defined by an acute need of the public at large that has nothing to do with your ability to meet the need. In addition healthcare is not elastic. If prices rise, people still need care so you can't just raise prices to drive down demand. So in the field of Nursing there really is a shortage. How does that affect things? Well more and more nurses are prepared on the community college level with an associates degree. Also, nurses get stuck with a higher patient count then they should be. Both of these things lead to shitty care. So the Nursing shortage is real and it affects everyone.

  6. Maybe business might have to pay IT people by Black+Art · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason that IT jobs were exported to India in the first place is that US employers did not want to pay US wages. It is the same reason the want exemptions to import workers. So they can pay them sub-standard wages and deport them if they get uppity.

    Until employers get over the slave owner mentality and start paying people fairly for their work, they are going to have a hard time finding good people.

    --
    "Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
  7. Define qualified by plopez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the US the phrase 'lack of qualified applicants' came to mean 'lack of qualified applicants who were willing to work for what we were willing to pay.'

    Large difference.

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    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    1. Re:Define qualified by heinousjay · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Considering some of the wildly inflated salary demands I've heard from people in relation to their actual deomonstrated ability, I'd say adjustments need to be made on both sides.

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    2. Re:Define qualified by psykocrime · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In the US the phrase 'lack of qualified applicants' came to mean 'lack of qualified applicants who were willing to work for what we were willing to pay.'

      Maybe in some places, but that's not always the case. To illustrate with an example: Last year I was working for a small software company in Cary, NC, specializing in telecom software. We were trying to hire a couple of senior software engineers, so we put out the word to several area recruiting companies and got a deluge of resumes... and the candidates we got were largely downright laughable, at least for a senior level position. And we weren't using some esoteric language, we were a Java shop... and our requirements weren't out in the stratosphere either... we just wanted knowledgeable senior engineers who could handle concurrent programming and network programming (our product was basically a fancy proxy server).

      It took forever to find one guy who was clearly qualified, and he took another position before we even had a chance to make him an offer. So yeah, we definitely experienced the situation where there was a "lack of qualified candidates" despite having plenty of candidates in general. But really sharp people who actually know what they're doing proved to be fairly scarce, at least for us.

      I will say this though: some of the folks that came through were clearly very smart, but just lacked the experience we were looking for. We needed somebody that could step in and contribute right away, and we didn't have any budget for hiring junior level people and grooming them. That would
      have been a good thing to do, if we could have gotten the money approved. But that issue is somewhat orthogonal to the original point anyway...

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      // TODO: Insert Cool Sig
    3. Re:Define qualified by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I will say this though: some of the folks that came through were clearly very smart, but just lacked the experience we were looking for. We needed somebody that could step in and contribute right away, and we didn't have any budget for hiring junior level people and grooming them.

      Yep, this is exactly what every other company wants too: someone who's already an expert in whatever little niche they're working in. Then they wonder why no one's qualified for the job, yet there's plenty of people looking. WAKE UP! If someone is already an expert in whatever you're doing, then they probably already have a job, and aren't looking for a change. If you want someone to come work for you, get over yourself and be prepared to train them. Otherwise, stop complaining so much about a "lack" of qualified candidates.

    4. Re:Define qualified by Mattintosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's an American problem at all levels of society. We're overextended. We're in debt. We can't afford our houses if anything unexpected breaks the budget. We can't afford to do business if an otherwise-qualified job candidate needs training. We need everything handed to us in prepared, processed, usable form, or it's too costly to even bother.

      Now for the tricky question: Why? Because we've quarterly-growthed ourselves into a corner. If we miss profit estimates, making a little less profit than we expected, we lose tons of money because investors are fickle and stupid. That leads to lay-offs. That leads to missed house payments. That leads to homeless people and more companies missing profit estimates. Which starts the next wave of collapse.

      It's a sign of a system that needs to break and cause huge destruction and poverty before it can heal. Brace yourselves. The rabbit hole is deep.

    5. Re:Define qualified by wtansill · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Yep, this is exactly what every other company wants too: someone who's already an expert in whatever little niche they're working in. Then they wonder why no one's qualified for the job, yet there's plenty of people looking. WAKE UP! If someone is already an expert in whatever you're doing, then they probably already have a job, and aren't looking for a change. If you want someone to come work for you, get over yourself and be prepared to train them. Otherwise, stop complaining so much about a "lack" of qualified candidates.
      Absolutly, 100% correct. And where do "experts" come from? From years of moving up from more junior levels. That's one of the arguments I have about doing so much outsourcing. I've heard the argument that "We're only outsourcing the low-skill positions". Yes, but where will the next generation of experts come from if you lay waste to the training grounds that breed them? Farmers have an expression: "Eating your seed corn." The PHB's are only looking to the next quarter though, so it's hard to think a season or two ahead...
      --
      The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
  8. Re: "Qualified" applicants by greyparrot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because employers (not just in India) have no long-term commitment to the employees, and thus the employees have no reason for loyalty, the employer searches for a fully mature and qualified employee, able to perform instantly (in the current quarter) to satisfy the current requirement.

    This used to require a consultant. But no, consultants are too expensive. Besides, with the falling apart of the markets, consultants have gone into other lines of work.

    What's left? Dragging a net through the pool of recent graduates who studied CS, fewer every year as their older siblings tell them it's a lousy market out there.

    My heart cries for you!

  9. Hire and train now or perish later... by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is what happens after a sufficiently long period without sufficient opportunity for entry and mid-level IT workers. People leave the sector to tend bar or build houses or drive trucks because it pays better and drains the soul less than being a helpdesk tech or an asp monkey. Fewer new people stay long enough to develop the skills required to be senior engineers.

    I realize it's hard to make a business case for hiring locally for a job that could be outsourced to China or continuously training your people in new languages and technologies instead of firing one batch of contractors as soon as their project is done and replacing them with new ones, but it has to be done. There's no self-study guide or college degree that can give a newbie the equivalent of real experience, so if the IT industry isn't creating the people it will need 5 or 10 or 20 years down the line right now it isn't going to have those people. Good luck getting upper managers who can't see past the end of next quarter to understand that, though.

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