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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."

11 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

  3. 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."
  4. 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.

    --
    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.

      --
      Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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
  5. 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!

  6. 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.

    --
    0 1 - just my two bits