Believe the Occupational Outlook Handbook?

concerned00 writes "In their latest Occupational Outlook Handbook, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics says that employment of software engineers and system analysts is expected to increase 'much faster than the average' through 2014 (here, and here). In contrast, employment of programmers is expected to increase 'more slowly than the average,' with outsourcing given as one of the major reasons why (here). However, from the stories I read from American programmers on the Net, the profession is lost. Is the government wrong, or lying, then, when it implies that software engineers and system analysts can expect to have a good future? As an American, am I a fool if I decide to undertake this for a living?" Read more for details of concerned00's analysis.
The difference between a "software engineer" and a "programmer" seems somewhat dubious to me, although from the Web pages in question apparently the software engineer is involved in requirements gathering, analysis, and design, whereas the programmer usually is not. According to the Web page for programmers, "[t]he consolidation and centralization of systems and applications, developments in packaged software, advances in programming languages and tools, and the growing ability of users to design, write, and implement more of their own programs mean that more of the programming functions can be transferred from programmers to other types of information workers, such as computer software engineers." (?)

The page for software engineers says: "Computer software engineers are projected to be one of the fastest-growing occupations from 2004 to 2014." Reasons given: the increasing complexity of computer systems, the need to "adopt and integrate new technologies," "the expanding integration of Internet technologies and the explosive growth in electronic commerce," the increasing reliance on "hand-held computers and wireless networks," and concerns about security. Yet: "As with other information technology jobs, employment growth of computer software engineers may be tempered somewhat as more software development is contracted out abroad. Firms may look to cut costs by shifting operations to lower wage foreign countries with highly educated workers who have strong technical skills. At the same time, jobs in software engineering are less prone to being sent abroad compared with jobs in other computer specialties, because the occupation requires innovation and intense research and development." (?)

On the other hand, to hear the personal anecdotes of many (American) programmers on the Internet, the profession is lost and anyone in college majoring in computer science or software engineering must be either naive or insane. According to them, you have to be a genius programmer if you expect to compete successfully for the slim pickings that are left, there is no job security at all, and the best most can realistically hope for these days is a job at Home Depot. Furthermore, even if you could get work, you wouldn't want it: the deadlines are impossible, the bosses are naive, petty-minded, and perversely self-serving, and the technology changes so fast that if you allow yourself to slip behind you might as well kiss your career good-bye.

Comments

You can't get there from here.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I believe it, but you can't get there from here.

Software engineers and software analysts are *highly skilled* positions that require experience in addition to at least a Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering or Software Project Management.

Programming, on the other hand, can be done by anybody with a Computer Science or related mathematical degree, usually a two year Associate's degree. India is graduating 50,000 people with this training EVERY YEAR.

You need to know some demographics to understand why, in the 2008-2014 era, the first will be in demand- it's because the first generation of Software Engineers and Analysts and Project Managers are all Baby Boomers. They're all in their late 50s and early 60s now- getting ready to retire. We're going to need to replace them with people who have similar skill levels.

Which leads to my question to prompt discussion: just how the hell do you become a software engineer without being a programmer first, unless you're independently wealthy enough to work in Open Source for 5-10 years?

One potential answer is government instead of private industry- I'm a software engineer with 10 years of experience and that's where I ended up after the last recession because I simply didn't have enough experience in enough languages to get a private industry job.

But beyond that- I just don't see any way for a young person graduating from high school to become a software engineer anymore. Sure, you can probably get the 4 years of schooling. But you'll be competing with people who earn $2.50/hr halfway around the world when it comes to getting experience. And that's not a winning bet when it comes to paying back your $40,000 of student loans it will take to get that Bachelor's degree.

Re:You can't get there from here.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yes, but the difference is this- it was rare for a manufacturing assembly line worker to become a manufacturing engineer. It's NECESSARY to be a computer programmer for a while on a variety of projects before you can become a good software engineer.

Re:You can't get there from here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming, on the other hand, can be done by anybody with a Computer Science or related mathematical degree, usually a two year Associate's degree. India is graduating 50,000 people with this training EVERY YEAR.

As a manager at a software development firm, I laugh at what you're saying. We've interviewed several of these people, unfortunately. They're essentially useless, even as programmers.

Some of these dipshits, err, "expert C# developers" couldn't even explain the basic concepts behind a linked list implemented in C#. One notable Indian-trained fellow we interviewed told us all about arrays when asked to describe a linked list. When we asked him to elaborate on where the linking comes into play, he told us that "the addresses of the memory cells were linked by virtual memory".

The developer I was interviewing this fellow with was also of Indian descent, but trained in France. He told the candidate flat out, "Sandeep, you are a disgrace to the people of India!"

The few times we've actually given such people a chance, there has been nothing but trouble. Some of them run into major problems just getting simple code to compile. In the end, they waste the time of our better developers with stupid, near-pointless questions. So I think it's almost always a mistake to hire the people you describe.

Re:You can't get there from here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a warning: the following is going to be offensive to anyone who's not putting it into the context of cultural differences.

"Programming, on the other hand, can be done by anybody with a Computer Science or related mathematical degree, usually a two year Associate's degree. India is graduating 50,000 people with this training EVERY YEAR."

As someone who's working heavily on an Indian offshoring project right this moment, and has had the opportunity to talk to many others in the same situation, I'm going to have to disagree with this entire line of thought.

If you think those two years of Indian schooling produce anything resembling the equivalent that two years of an American school will produce - even a low-end community college - you're fooling yourself. The Indian education system is fundamentally broken in terms of teaching initiative and critical thinking, in the sense that they don't. They produce robots, for the most part.

If they don't understand what you're saying, you know what they say? "Yes, I understand." Because they're too damn scared to say no, because their teachers and parents yell at them when they said "no, I don't understand" in school.

The project's running late? Don't expect any notice from your Indian team until it's too damn late to save it. Ambiguity in the specs? Same thing. They can code pretty well given an extremely exacting spec. They fail miserably when they're expected to make good design decisions on the fly. Their culture is big on shame and saving face, and it bites you in the ass every time.

High productivity? You wish. That's not the way their culture works, for good or for bad. They're not lazy, per se, but office socialization will take up huge amounts of time, meaning that the time you do get isn't going to be quite as good (think late at night work binges).

Performance reviews? These guys are high management. If you give them anything less than perfect, they'll bawl in tears in your office. Why? Well, mommy and daddy expect nothing less than perfect, so that's what they've gotten used to. In the real world, though, no one's perfect, and they never seem to figure this out.

Is any of this fixable? Yes, given time. I'm quite pleased with the progress a couple of our guys have made after a few months, even if they're nowhere near American standards yet. But you'll often spend quite a lot of time trying to just work with their constraints, and worse yet, dedicate significant resources to trying to just get them into gear.

The culture differences here are huge, and they have a huge impact on the effectiveness of offshoring. If you gave me the choice between 10 newly-graduated Indians and 2 newly-graduated Americans, and I got to do the interviews, I would take the 2 new Americans EVERY TIME on a programming project. In a call center environment, where those cultural differences work to my advantage? Definitely the Indians. Sometimes, bodies count. Other times, they don't.

Job Growth Doesn't Answer This

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fool to choose a career that doesn't interest you. Pick something you love, and you'll be happy. And as far as money is concerned, if you actually enjoy it, it will show in your work and you will be sought after.

Right conclusions, incoherent reasons

[autophile]

The Handbook's conclusion is probably correct, but the reasons they give are pretty much incoherent. My theory goes like this.

There's a food chain in project development. At the top is the customer, and at the bottom are the implementers. The closer you are to the top, the more important it is to the customer to be in the same country as the customer. The closer you are to the bottom, the more likely your job can be done in any country.

I don't like it, either, but there you go.

--Rob

The profession's fine, if you're good.

[cduffy]

If you're good, there's plenty of work.

If you aren't good, then:

1. You won't enjoy it
2. People who are good won't enjoy working with you
3. You'll have cause to seriously worry about outsourcing as competition for your job

People who say the profession is dead mean that the profession is no longer supporting as many gross incompetents as it did back during the boom. That's thankfully quite true.

The point: Don't go into software development as a profession if you're in it for the money. You won't want the profession, and the profession doesn't want you. If you're in it for something other than the money -- come on in, the water's fine.

Re:The profession's fine, if you're good.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's more than that- to get good, you need experience. To prove to HR that you're good, you need experience that you can put on a resume (no, writing a virus to control a 50,000 node botnet isn't experience). And getting that experience is exactly what is being outsourced. It's not just the incompetent that have lost their jobs- it's also the ignorant young guys who might have become good programmers if given half a chance.

Re:The profession's fine, if you're good.

[rossifer]

It's more than that- to get good, you need experience.

There's different kinds of good.

I've worked with kids fresh out of school who can understand good design and have the enthusiasm to get into the system and the domain really quickly. Tell them something once, and later you see other people going to them for help for that exact same topic.

Then I've also had the misfortune to work with people with "15 years of experience" who have clearly been making the same mistakes each year for 15 years.

When you're looking at fresh-out-of-school-hires, there's only one real way to know if someone is one of those sharp kids that you really want on your team: someone told you about him/her.

My advice to the poster: learn how to network. Work on class projects with different people and keep working with the smart people. Get into a co-op or intern at interesting companies (ask other people who have already interned and don't stop asking until you find someone who's (1) sharp and (2) gung-ho about their job). Go to the local language user group meetings and see if those people are any good. Ask to help out on other people's senior projects that seem interesting to you.

The more people who know that you're a badass problem solver, the more likely you are to find work you enjoy.

Regards,
Ross

Science vs. "The internet"

[Hacksaw]

I won't speak to the accuracy of the studies that you might be citing, I haven't read them. But remember that anecdotes collected on the internet, or anywhere else, are almost useless since they are self-selecting participants in an ill designed casual survey. You don't have a real survey, you have the rantings of perhaps ill treated people.

True, but is it the right question?

[Loopy]

While it is true that "software engineer" spots are going overseas at high rates, two things should be taken into account:

1) "Software engineer" isn't the shiny, highly-technical bastion of the well-edumacated like it used to be. As computers have become more standardized these jobs, like many other "old high-tech" jobs, have become more or less commodity positions. Look at clerical (read: typing/wordprocessor, etc.) work, for example. Everyone and their dog thinks that if they can use Windows, they're automagically a PC expert.

2) The "jobs are going overseas" mechanic implies a zero-sum game, when there isn't one. There is a growing need for generic PC software weenies in all sorts of QA and other fields at companies that didn't need them a few years back. This is A Good Thing(tm).

So, basically, having been in the industry pre and post-dot-com-boom, I'm more or less of the "Nothing to see here, move along," mindset. /shrug

Jobs Exist

[kmsigel]

I have been a software engineer (working as an independent consultant) for 15+ years. I see plenty of jobs. At least once a year someone asks me if I'm available (I'm not) or whether I know of someone good looking for work (I don't). As with almost any profession, if you are very good at what you do then you won't have any problem finding work. If you are merely "good" (or worse) then you'll have trouble if the field isn't "hot" at the time.

So, you have to ask yourself, "Am I merely good, or am I very good (or even better)?" I think that a lot of what determines that is enjoyment of the field. If you really enjoy programming, are really bothered when something doesn't work, are really driven to find an explanation for the "strange" behavior you are seeing, then you probably have what it takes. If software engineering is just some major that you're ok at that you think will pay well then it probably won't in fact pay well for you and probably isn't the right thing for you.

Good luck.

Yes, you are a fool

[mi]

And a waste of material to boot, if you pick a profession based on its earning potential. And I really have no patience for lectures on how arrogant my saying this is.

Do, what you love to do — and get to be really good at it, and you'll earn a lot.

The problem with Programming today is that much more programming suddenly became required over the last decade or two, than there were naturally born and/or nurtured programmers. You had people becoming "programmers" after a 2-6 months courses... Asking these people, what bit is, results in stares and head-scratching. Many of the better ones got promoted too high as well (a problem in many other professions in America due to its low unemployment today, BTW).

That much of the work of these programmer wanna-bees is outsourced is a good thing — maybe, the quality of burgers will improve, and/or hiring a (legal) baby-sitter will become possible again. The real professionals — and those, who really want to become professionals — don't have much to fear...

Yes, you would be a fool

[tftp]

And here is why. First of all, if you read the replies above you will see that a software analyst is not something you can claim on your resume when the ink on your diploma is still wet. And you won't get the chance to grow into the position because the entry level positions are either not common enough or just a dead end.

A more generic outlook is this. Software can be produced in any country, anywhere at all, and the only thing it requires is the competent personnel to execute the project. India and China produce more software developers in total, and proportionally more *excellent* developers. Now imagine that someone in the world (a transnational corporation, for example, which does not care where the job is done) needs to develop and write a complex software system to, say, operate a 23-legged underwater spider that is being built to fix underwater fiber cables. The company will build the hardware, and now it needs to find a software developer (a company, of course) that can provide at least 100 developers full time, at least 25 senior developers, and a proportional number of managers and other necessary overhead.

Given these example conditions, let's see which company will win the bid. A US company will be burdened with high salaries, and at the same time will not be able to provide so many competent developers (warm bodies do not count.) Ability to work *seriously* overtime is probably not there; willingness to travel and participate in testing in Philippines is probably not there either. Compare to an Indian company which can give you as many workers as you need, at fraction of the cost, and they are all best of the best. A US company would need to have some very tangible advantages to win the bid, but I can't imagine how they can win on costs. Practically the only usable story here is previous experience and the ownership of relevant intellectual property, and good luck if they have it. But a US newcomer has no chance to win the bid; and even older companies, with experience of underwater and robotic works, will face fierce competition from far more populous countries.

In other words, a US worker is overpriced on the global market, and exceptions are rare. The USA does export technology, but it is in markets that have extreme barrier of entry (airplanes, nuclear reactors, Windows OS, drugs, CPU and IC designs) or when the products are weapons. Those are the major sectors of US export (not counting food products, since they are not relevant to this discussion.) More and more of US technological output is in knowledge only, and software developers are not high enough to qualify as such.

Why all this is happening is simple. Humans and societies develop more and more knowledge and skills, and then they get to a plateau - no more intellectual growth. That's what Europe and the USA reached decades ago. During that time Chinese cast iron at home and shot intellectuals, and in India Hindus and Moslems tried to determine whose god is mightier. Physics of semiconductors and quantum effects in P-N barriers were not on the horizon there. But now the developing nations advanced, as they should, and they are quickly approaching the same knowledge plateau that US and Europe encountered earlier. That's why they are becoming competitive - their PhDs are just as smart now as any european or american PhD, and there are far more of them, and they charge far less, and the process is only unwinding out of control.

Name game.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... employment of software engineers and system analysts is expected to increase 'much faster than the average' through 2014 (here, and here). In contrast, employment of programmers is expected to increase 'more slowly than the average,' ...

Well golly gosh whillikers.

In my 30 years in software (before I went over to the hard side of the force) I've called myself a programmer, a system analyst, a software engineer, a system architect, and a number of other buzzwords.

Guess what: There is not a standard definition for ANY of those terms. The only distinction between them is the expectations of the employers about the strengths of various parts of your skill set.

So you call yourself the one that your prospective employer hangs on the highest-in-the-design-tree position that you can convince him you're qualified to fill, based on your own skills and your resume.

They're hiring system analysts and SW engineers locally and going abroad for programmers? That just means you have to change the top line on your resume from "programmer" to "software engineer" or "system analyst".

Don't have enough experience to qualify for whatever position they're hiring for when you're just out of school? That's the same old "break-in problem". The "can't get a job because you don't have experience and can't get experience because you don't have a job" vicious circle. It's been around as long as I've been in this industry, and I cut my teeth on computers that had vacuum tubes for the DIODES in the logic.

You get your skills through:
  3) classes,
  2) ripping apart and studying others' code,
  1) playing with the computer to make it do something fun for you,
in that reverse order. (I know because that's how I did it, and I had some big names for teachers back in the day. The lessons were valuable. But self-directed code reading and bug fixing / feature enhancement was more so and self-directed problem solving was the top skill builder.)

You don't get your job through resumes, degrees, and certifications. You get your foot in the door through contacts with people who have seen your previous work or play. THEN you and your contact use your (tuned to the job) resume, credentials, and references from other contacts to convince the middle-manager in the suit that he's lucked into a paragon who's perfect for the job.

How do you get contacts? Initially you do as much unassigned for-fun stuff as you can when you can and let others see what you did and that you enjoy doing it and are good at it. Some of these people will remember you when somebody they know is looking for somebody like you for a job of the sort you want.

Later you'll make more contacts at work: Co-workers, managers, etc. Your network of contacts will grow to get you into more doors. Your resume's experience section will grow to calm the suits (while your other contacts serve as references ditto). And your skills will grow to let you actually perform in new positions.

Your actual skills are important: to keep impressing people so you can hold your jobs, build your resume with successful project results, and grow your contact network. But it's your contacts - as you/job matchers and references - that are what get you into the jobs.