Techie Pay Approaches All-time High

Stony Stevenson sent in this ITNews story which opens, "Techies were paid nearly record-high hourly wages in the third quarter, according to a new report released Thursday by staffing firm Yoh. Based on data compiled from 75 Yoh field offices and 5,000 technology professionals contracted in short and long-term projects, pay increased an average of more than 5.5 percent for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to the same period last year."

Comments

Well duh

[Reason58]

McDonald's workers were also paid more than any other time in history. If you are going to a study like this without adjusting for ever-present inflation, then of course you will constantly see new records.

Re:Well duh

[smclean]

Has the dollar inflated 5.5% in the last year? Sounds unlikely to me, but IANAEconomist.. or even informed..

Re:Well duh

[Opportunist]

Compared to what? Internationally or nationally? I don't know about the national inflation of the US, but when you compare the USD to other currencies from large markets, I'd say no, it didn't lose 5.5 percent of its value. It lost much more.

Re:Well duh

[Fallen Kell]

Has the dollar inflated 5.5% in the last year? Sounds unlikely to me, but IANAEconomist.. or even informed..

No just 9.4% against the British Pound
13.2% against the Canadian Dollar
11.1% against the Euro

Need I go on? A 5.5% raise is still a 4-7% DECREASE in buying power verses the world economy.

Re:Well duh

[JonathanR]

Has the dollar inflated 5.5% in the last year? Yes, and probably more. Have a look for the M3 or MZM money supply figures.

According to this graph the annualised rate of increase is hovering around 10%

Re:Well duh

[timeOday]

As much as the dollar has fallen, it's odd that inflation in the US isn't higher (except for gas, where we are feeling the weak dollar).

Re:Well duh

[fishbowl]

>As much as the dollar has fallen, it's odd that inflation in the US isn't higher (except for gas, where we are feeling the weak dollar).

I believe you could rephrase that in order to claim the dollar has not fallen as much as is sometimes claimed.

For inflation, I like to use reference points other than the price of fuel. I get a big kick out of stuff like local grocery store ads that show the price of, say, milk, and seeing that I can come very close to those prices, or even beat them, today.

Re:Well duh

[Z34107]

Need I go on? A 5.5% raise is still a 4-7% DECREASE in buying power verses the world economy.

No it doesn't.

A 5.5% raise means you have 5.5% more money.

An 11.1% fall against the Euro means you have 11.1% less purchasing power when buying goods imported from Europe. You're not any "poorer" than they are.

It also means our goods are 11.1% less expensive for Europeans, which means more exports and lessened trade deficit.

Just because our currency lost value against another country's doesn't mean we're now "poorer" than they are.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a big kick out of stuff like local grocery store ads that show the price of, say, milk, and seeing that I can come very close to those prices, or even beat them, today.

I also laugh at the price of commodities like milk which are set by the US government regulations, and not by the free market.

Wait... you are aware that milk prices are set by the government, and are completely unaffected by real inflation, right?

Re:Well duh

[some damn guy]

Speaking of McDonalds, remember when tech workers actually got SALARIES, you know, or benefits ?

Or when they worked for companies who wanted them to stay on a semi-permanent basis, as opposed to move along every 6-12 months.

Of course I'm still young and relatively cheap, so I still get to work for a company instead of a staffing agency. Hey, I mean, everyone loves a junior guy on salary, after all they're "better" programmers since they have no families, less cynicism, and in the end get paid less per hour than anyone.

Of course programmers really do get better with experience, that's why they have no job security. Good companies do understand, too bad there aren't that many any more.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the only thing that has gone up in price lately is energy.

Wait... maybe it's energy and health care.

Actually... energy, health care, and housing.

Hmm... energy, health care, housing, and education.

Maybe... energy, health care, housing, education, and stock prices.

No, that's not right either... energy, health care, housing, education, stock prices, and non-asian imports.

Yep, nothing is more expensive at all, except for a few minor things that none of us ever buy.

Re:Well duh

[ArcherB]

Thank you for saying that. Seeing people who don't understand the difference between a falling dollar in relation to foreign currencies and inflation really bugs me.

Also, may I add that a falling dollar makes outsourcing of labor less attractive as well. All of a sudden, those Indian tech support centers are not such a good deal for Dell that they once were. This may have something to do with American techies getting paid more. (although I have no idea what the exchange rate is between the dollar and whatever Indians spend)

Or, maybe it's just a coincidence.

Re:Well duh

[timeOday]

Actually prices of milk and grain are soaring lately: Skyrocketing milk prices hit families just in time for school.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

As your currency goes down, you are in fact more poor: Wealth, income and purchasing power are all lower on a globally defined basis. Your domestically defined purchasing power is indeed higher compared to other countries domestically defined purchasing power, but given the rather grotesque trade deficit you're carrying, net-net it means you're gonna pay more for stuff overall.

Granted, it also means that your assets (including labor) are cheaper on a global basis, and other countries will buy more of them when the bloodletting starts to end. But, you can't have it both ways. They will buy more of you and your stuff because, indeed, you are poorer.

Re:Well duh

[xenocide2]

Oil, gold and just about every commodity has seen large jumps in price over the past year. Core inflation is basically up 2.8 percent over the measurement last year, which discards food and oil prices. Food is up 4.8 percent and oil 5.3.

More importantly:

Consumer prices increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 1.0 percent in the third quarter of 2007, following increases in the first and second quarters at annual rates of 4.7 and 5.2 percent, Wages are sticky -- they take time to adjust to market forces, for a large number of reasons, including "IANAEconomist". This suggests to me that wages were partly up 5.5 percent because of inflation, and if the credit crunch hadn't had a large effect on the market, wages could have been down or stable compared to inflation. In other words, this report not news at all. If you're celebrating an increased wage of 5.5 percent, stop.

Re:Well duh

[Lord Ender]

Yes, and 29% vs gold and 46% vs moon rock.

It was pretty absurd that americans could stay at a top hotel in europe for the price of a Motel 6 back home. The dollar adjustment seems like a long overdue correction.

Re:Well duh

[angus_rg]

It does means those dumb enough to vacation in a country where the dollar is down are poorer.

Re:Well duh

[Opportunist]

The point is that in a global market, there is no such thing as "imported from XX". If it's imported, it suffers from your inflation. When there is a strong buying market area (and the EU is) that has a lower inflation than your market, it will swallow up resources, because they become "cheap" for them. The market will react and prices will rise to match the increased demand, resulting in higher importing costs. Whether you import from Europe or China doesn't matter in this scenario.

And yes, your exports would become cheaper, if they didn't depends entirely on your imports. There is hardly any kind of product that is 100% "Made in the USA", which would actually benefit from a weak USD. But since almost all US products are either manufactured abroad or depend on imported semifinished products, the benefit is almost zero.

Re:Well duh

[mrlibertarian]

An 11.1% fall against the Euro means you have 11.1% less purchasing power when buying goods imported from Europe.

Huh? Doesn't it mean dollar holders lose, in general, 11.1% of their purchasing power for any good that could be sold on the global market?

For example, imagine a world in which you could buy one gold ounce for 1000 dollars, or one gold ounce for 1000 euros. In that case, the exchange rate would probably be 1:1. If the exchange rate were to ever go to 2:1, everyone would instantly have an arbitrage opportunity: Sell 1 gold ounce for 1000 euros, exchange those euros for 2000 dollars, and buy 2 gold ounces, for a profit of 1 gold ounce. But market action like that would quickly drive the exchange ratio back to 1:1.

So, if the exchange ratio were to ever go to 2:1, we could reason that either 1) the new exchange ratio will be short lived or 2) we will see a general price increase of 100%, in terms of dollars, on goods that could be (but will not necessarily be) exchanged on the global market. You seem to be treating the exchange rate as though it is unrelated to domestic prices, but perhaps I don't understand your position.

Re:Well duh

[tyrione]

We have nearly a $1 Trillion trade deficit. We import more than we export. So yes, either our domestic goods aren't selling at advantageous prices/value or we indeed are seeing a Drop in Buying Power. The fact is, the cost of Goods and Services in the US for US only services exceeds the cost of living adjustment. With our trade deficit we aren't seeing inflation because most of the offset in corporations comes from the investments abroad these corporations have heavily invested within the past decade. Take a look at the 10-K of most Global Corporations that originate in the U.S. They've heavily invested OUTSIDE THE US.

Please Read: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/OurBiggestExportInflation.aspx

Article Excerpt:

A pain in the wallet

That's how a falling currency is supposed to work. A cheaper dollar encourages exports and discourages imports, leading to a gradual climb in the value of the dollar. Ultimately, a high U.S. trade deficit hits you and me right in the wallet. Here's how:

• When the U.S. is running a big trade deficit, our trading partners wind up holding a larger number of U.S. dollars every month. A trade deficit means we're importing more goods and services than we export, and we wind up exporting dollars in order to pay for the excess goods.
• As those dollars build up overseas, governments, companies and individuals recycle them by buying U.S. bonds and stocks and other assets.
• This increases the exposure of these overseas owners of dollars to the risks of the U.S. currency and U.S. asset markets. If the value of the dollar declines, their dollar-denominated investments will lose value as well.
• At some point, these overseas owners of U.S. dollars start to demand higher returns -- higher interest rates on Treasury bonds, for example -- to offset that currency risk.
• Some may sell off a portion of their dollars, producing exactly the kind of fall in the currency that they had worried about in the first place, which leads again to a demand for higher returns.
• The higher interest rates demanded by overseas dollar holders finally start to slow economic growth in the U.S. That slowdown, plus the higher prices consumers have to pay for imported goods because of the weak dollar, takes a painful bite out of family incomes. (Or it halves or eliminates the family income, if one or both family breadwinners get laid off because of the slowdown.)

Re:Well duh

[CodeBuster]

At least part of the reason that we are not feeling it is because many of those dollars are not circulating within the borders of the United States. If you want to purchase oil on the international market, a commodity which is increasingly in demand worldwide, then you need US dollars to purchase it since OPEC nations (and many other producers as well) take payment for their oil only in US dollars. The petro-dollars and the status of the US dollar as a worldwide reserve currency insulate Americans from some of the ill effects of our poor national spending habits, but only up to a point and only for so long. There are other factors as well, currency manipulation on the part of the Chinese and others to prop up their export markets comes to mind, but the petro-dollars play a big part in buffering the inflation that might otherwise be felt here in America if all of those overseas dollars started washing up on our shores again.

Re:Well duh

[PhxBlue]

Just because our currency lost value against another country's doesn't mean we're now "poorer" than they are.

Doesn't it, though? Whence do oil companies purchase light, sweet crude for our gasoline? How many of the goods in our stores are made in China?

Re:Well duh

[mindslut]

A drop in the trade deficit is good, but doesn't make one feel better off, whereas having to stay in a cheaper hotel in London than German vacationers will make one feel less well off.

Back at home one tends to buy imports from where the dollar goes furthest - like China - and we feel like we are getting alot for our money; but one is generally buying a different product in terms of quality, safety, service, externalities, or conditions of production. Most of that stuff is invisible and ignored, and the price difference in goods is therefore very highly valued.

Did anyone mention, as a factor in feeling less well off, what they are getting for their buck in that chunk of the paycheck one does not get to take home (taxes)?

Lots of unfelt or unseen factors in what we get or don't get for our money. But at least we're getting a smidgen more of it. Just a smidgen!

Re:Well duh

[letxa2000]

Actually... energy, health care, and housing.

Housing? Ok, I know you're an AC, but housing? Come on!

Re:Well duh

[timmarhy]

the canadian dollar is worth more then the US.

CASE CLOSED.

Re:Well duh

[ScrappyLaptop]

Wait a minute here...you mean we jack up the price of milk to subsidize the farmers and then hand out WIC to subsidize families that can't afford milk for their kids? Is it just me or does that seem a bit, well, screwy?

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Or when they worked for companies who wanted them to stay on a semi-permanent basis, as opposed to move along every 6-12 months.

Funny, so many people want to be self-employed. I quit my full-time job in 1999 and went full-time consulting at $50/hr. I'm now at $125/hr. And I don't have to work 40/hours a week, let alone 60/hours a week with no overtime pay. And when a project is done, I get a brand new interesting challenge.

Dedicate my life to a company that isn't going to care about you when push comes to shove? No thanks. I'll just keep on billing $125/hour and working less than 40 hours a week on average, pay for my own health care, write a check each quarter for taxes to the government... but most importantly, own my own life. Thank you very much.

** Posted as A.C. because I don't want to publicize my consulting rate in a forum such as this where it will inevitably be mocked for being too low (there's always someone that earns more) or flamed as bragging (there's always someone that earns less).

Re:Well duh

[Ash Vince]

It says techie pay has increased by 5.5% in one quarter, not over the whole year. There is a huge difference. This equates to 22% over the whole year. these is no way inflation is running at 20% in the states or anywhere else in the developed world.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Real estate is down slightly over the last few months, but that's mostly hypothetical--they went so high that our return to sane lending standards has all but eliminated buyers from the market. It'll be some time before sellers resign themselves to accepting prices working class buyers can actually afford. Meanwhile, ARM payments are skyrocketing as the poorly-comprehended rate bumps kick in, and rents are up because so few can buy while foreclosures are turning "owners" back into renters.

Many people are paying more per month and/or settling for less housing, while few are paying less than they were recently.

Re:Well duh

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes including the goods that we now compete with them to purchase.

Like oil
Like food
Like beachfront property
Like disney vacations
Like front row seats at the $300+ concerts
Like the best shows and rooms in vegas

We are becoming second class citizens in our own countries.

Re:Well duh

[larytet]

Just because our currency lost value against another country's doesn't mean we're now "poorer" than they are.

US actually imports vast majority of goods. Not only from Europe, of course. Mainly China. Latin America, Canada and Europe. Check also prices of gas - such things tend to make you poorer

Re:Well duh

[Alioth]

Incidentally, Ireland - only fifteen years ago, the poor man of western Europe - has overtaken the United States. Ireland's GDP per capita is now about $3000 higher than the US GDP per capita.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

He obviously hasn't seen the commercial for Wendy's latest $.99 sandwich either!

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it mean dollar holders lose, in general, 11.1% of their purchasing power for any good that could be sold on the global market?

Depends what you mean by "good that can be sold on the global market."
You refer to arbitrage, a term that is strictly only applied where the transaction is free of risk, requiring simultaneity, and without transport cost.
Your example indeed makes these assumptions; however, comparatively few real-world markets are so nice. Simultaneity requires electronic trading, and zero transport cost requires the goods traded to be virtual. Stocks, for example, count. Gold doesn't, because it costs something to move gold from, say, Europe to the US. That cost means gold could be, say, 1001 Euros, or 1000 dollars, with an exchange rate of 1:1. No arbitrage would take place, if it costs a Euro to move the gold. Gold is pretty close, being a nice, compact (if heavy), non-perishable good, so I'm not complaining about your choice of example.
But other assets that cost more to ship, such as cattle, can have large sustained differences in price (after prices are normalized through exchange rates to one currency) without arbitrage driving the prices back level.
Also, never underestimate the market-thrashing capabilities of an entity which maintains a monopoly on the use of force. Yep, governments meddle with such stuff: fixing exchange rates vs. letting them float, imposing tariffs, and such actions all de-simplify things. And complications tend to permit/encourage non-linear market dynamics.

Re:Well duh

[dekemoose]

While this is one of the few true and accurate statements to be found on Slashdot, I don't see its relevance to this thread.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes my dollar is worth the same as it was 7 yrs ago when gold was at $250 an ounce and gas was at $1.25.

Re:Well duh

[Doc Lazarus]

This is probably the new way that work is going to defined in the United States. One of the main complaints in IT that I've found is the excess of hours for minimal pay that one gets. Eventually, nearly anything is going to be outsourced simply due to the lack of pay that one gets if one sticks wtih a company for any extended period of time. While it'll definitely affect the economy if all of us go into a self-employment situation--basically guaranteeing that we'll have a government-run health care system of some sort--it'll probably be better in the long run for the workers who get more control over their destiny as opposed to companies who'll have to end up paying a fair wage, unless they really want someone getting paid a tiny amount doing crappy work for a company they have no real vested interest in.

Re:Well duh

[stewbacca]

means you're gonna pay more for stuff overall.

Uh, you mean pay more than we used to pay in dollars? Because if you mean pay more than the Brits/Germans/French/Italians pay, you are sadly mistaken. It doesn't matter how strong the pound is to the dollar. There is simply no excuse to ever pay more than $30,000 for a three cylinder economy microsized car. These types of cars would sell for about $12,000 USD. It doesn't matter how many high paying jobs or what the pound/euro rate is, this is simply a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the European economies.

Since everyone hates car analogies, how about this one. Little Timmy discovers he likes the sound of the trumpet. Little Timmy's parents live in Anytown, USA and go to the local music store to buy him an entry level trumpet. They walk out with a new trumpet and case for $500. Little Gerhard lives in some town in Germany. Little Gerhard also loves the trumpet, but Little Gerhard's parents have to fork out $2000 USD equivalent and another 20% ad velorum tax. Little Gerhard develops a sudden interest in "hanging out with friends". (Feel free to substitute the entire German part with any British name and musical instrument).

Re:Well duh

[BobSutan]

If you're in the military and living overseas it most definitely means you're poorer. Ditto if you're traveling abroad.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

They will buy more of you and your stuff because, indeed, you are poorer
You are not poorer as you have their money. Which just happens to be worth more...

You are also missing elasticity of demand.

Country X makes widget1.
Country Y makes widget2.

widget1 and widget2 are similar items. Country X's dollar fell against Country Y. Does that mean Country Y has more 'money' suddenly? Relitive to widget1's yes. But relitive to widget2's no. Local goods become cheaper to buy as the dollar falls in the country. And people WILL buy the cheaper similar goods. They will even say that one is better which may or may not be true based on price and what they FEEL.

Take a look at japan vs the us dollar. Nearly 100 to 1 does that mean the yen is 100 times more powerful? No it means at this moment you can get about 100 yen for 1 dollar.

As an American a weaker dollar is good for the local economy as it creates jobs as local goods are now more in demand as they are 'cheaper' vs 'forign' goods. The ONLY people who seem to be pissed off are other countries who have been enjoying the 'strong' dollar ride. Because it levels the playing field a bit. It has been tipped the other way since about 1973ish. Short term it sucks. But long term it means when it comes to get another job so I can keep making money I will have a better chance at it.

Why do you think MOST of the items in walmart are made in other countries? It is not because they hate the US. It is because they buy the cheap stuff that their customers want.

China has been riding the US coattails by 'pinning' their dollar to a fixed rate. But now are 'moving away from it' as the dollar falls. Funny huh?

Re:Well duh

[cHiphead]

Republican fiscal incompetence (as in so-incompetent-they-should-be-fucking-jailed) combined with Democrat social spending always makes for a fantastic increase in national debt (as in fake-debt-owed-to-yourself-and-you-only-get-away-with-it-because-you-print-the-fucking-money-otherwise-you'd-be-shot-in-the-face) that will totally imbalance economic equalizers and cause a recession.

Cheers.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Poorer, but the US is still winning. As an American living in France, I find myself doing the following mental exercise on a near-daily basis:

Ask yourself how much (in USD in the US) it would cost to buy any of the following:

Video Games
Computer parts
Food
Clothing
Books
Furniture ... and so on

Now do the same thing with Euros in Europe.

Now do the currency conversion and compare. Also adjust for median income if you feel like it (you don't have to). The purchasing power of an individual living in the US is vastly greater than one living in Europe. That means greater quality of life as well as a larger business presence and a stronger economy. Now *capital* may be flowing out to foreign markets, but that's just until a new balance is struck wrt currency. A balance which, ftr, still favors the US.

So things are not really bad at all. The people who should really complain are the Brits, who theoretically have a phenomenally strong currency, but can't seem to buy anything without getting completely screwed.

Re:Well duh

[boris111]

This thread is making me depressed. This is why I only took the one required Business class in my Engineering curriculum.

Re:Well duh

[Myopic]

Nationally. International standards are important, but not for inflation.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

In what country is this global market you're talking about?

Re:Well duh

[letxa2000]

... Real estate is down slightly over the last few months...

+5, Understatement of the year

Re:Well duh

[Andrewkov]

No, we were talking about food here.

Re:Well duh

[Opportunist]

Actually, exchange rates are a good indicator for the "real" inflation. Or rather, they should be taken into consideration, because they usually preceed inflation.

My country has experienced hyperinflation. With bills printed worth a trillion. Or rather, worth less than the paper it was printed on. People were paid in pounds of bills, because the bills themselves were worthless. When you go back, you could easily see that before it, the international exchange rate for the currency plummeted a few month before that.

Now, the US has hardly an inflation that requires you to adjust your prices twice a day. But still, you can tell from exchange rates where the inflation is going to go. If your currency is stable or even gaining against other currencies, your inflation will stay low, it can even deflate due to exports becoming harder (and thus having a surplus of supply internally). Which can be even more devastating to a country's economy than having a hyperinflation (we're "fortunate" to know both pretty well, following the hyperinflation and a currency change, our national bank was so terrified that they pressed for a "strong" currency so we couldn't compete on the international market, actually facing a quite crippling deflation of our currency).

International exchange rates are pretty useful for predicting inflation rates. They preceed the inflation, depending on circumstances by days, weeks or months, but it will reflect in the inflation sooner or later. With goods becoming more and more expensive due to more and more expensive imports, an economy highly dependent on imports (as the US economy is) will have to reflect it in its own inflation rate.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Doesn't it mean dollar holders lose, in general, 11.1% of their purchasing power for any good that could be sold on the global market?

iow, you just explained why gas is over $3.00/gallon in the states. it would be about $2.70 if bush hadn't gone zodiac (serial murderer in the states, movie is currently out) on the dollar.

Re:Well duh

[letxa2000]

... that our return to sane lending standards has all but eliminated buyers from the market.

In other words, we were insane to try to make homeowners out of people that honestly couldn't afford it. I actually agree. If you can't afford the payment of a 30-year fixed loan, you have no business buying a house. Likewise, if you can't put together the 20% traditional down payment for the home, it seems unlikely you'll be able to deal with the expenses that come with home ownership.

Meanwhile, ARM payments are skyrocketing as the poorly-comprehended rate bumps kick in...

Poorly comprehended? If you're buying a house and the payment is $1500/month and someone offers to loan you the money for the same house and only wants to charge you $900/month, you're an idiot if you think there isn't a catch. People that got themselves in ARMs have no-one to blame but themselves.

... and rents are up because so few can buy while foreclosures are turning "owners" back into renters.

Indeed. It's a good time to be able to rent property. On the other hand, there are many opportunities in buying foreclosed properties. I know someone who bought a $300k property for $120k in the last month. Opportunities abound.

At the end of the day, the problem is we have too many houses available because we built lots of houses for people that couldn't really afford them. Now that the reality that they can't afford them has hit us, we have an oversupply of houses which is driving prices down. And probably will for quite some time. But the prices of housing isn't going up, it's going down. That's exactly why so many people with ARMs are scewed: They put no money down and their property is now worth less than their loan amount, so they can't refinance.

Many people are paying more per month and/or settling for less housing, while few are paying less than they were recently.

I have no sympathy for people with ARMs. They got a great rate for a couple years and are now paying the price. Meanwhile, I was paying a higher interest rate--but at least I knew it wouldn't change. Today's market turmoil has zero effect on my payments because I had the foresight to get a fixed-rate loan.

Whether or not people are actually paying less for housing today, they will in the future. The market is driving prices down and that will drive prices down. Of course, that doesn't mean **I** will pay less since I have a fixed rate and don't plan on buying a different home. But, market-wide, lower housing prices will of course drive down the cost of housing.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Need I go on? A 5.5% raise is still a 4-7% DECREASE in buying power verses the world economy.

No it doesn't.
A 5.5% raise means you have 5.5% more money.

Perhaps but that money will buy 5.5% less soap. Consequently, if the value of money can change (a given for a fiat currency) more money != more buying power.

An 11.1% fall against the Euro means you have 11.1% less purchasing power when buying goods imported from Europe.

It also means our goods are 11.1% less expensive for Europeans, which means more exports and lessened trade deficit.

The corrolary is that it also means 11.1% less purchasing power when buying goods exported TO Europe. It doesn't matter whether you are buying a bottle of scotch, a gallon of gas, a banana or a Harley. If there is more money to be made selling the product in Tuscany than Delaware, relative supply will be adjusted until their isn't.

Now you are probably asking, if this is the case, why does so much of the media tout a devalued currency as being a good thing (the argument you quoted above)?
The answer is simple. A devalued currency implies a lower cost of labor over the short term. More bluntly devalued currencies are attractive to business because, in a global context, businesses don't have to pay their employees as much. (and by "employees" I mean you and me).

Re:Well duh

[dgatwood]

The problem with that logic is that the dollar would have to plummet in value before it would make sense to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. in most sectors, by which time everybody would be thoroughly in pain over paying a hundred bucks for a pack of four AA batteries.

The theory about making local goods more appealing only works if the locally-made products actually exist, which in the case of the U.S., generally is not the case. Outside of some textiles and foods, I can't think of any product I've bought in the last ten years that was made entirely---or even primarily---in the U.S. Even the pencils sitting in the can beside my TV were made in China and have been since at least the 80s. My laptop, made by an American company, was manufactured in China from parts that were mostly sourced from manufacturers in various parts of Asia.

If we tried to switch to local parts so that we could manufacture products in the U.S., we'd run into a similar snag: there aren't any. Manufacturing capacity would have to be built up from scratch, having long been bulldozed for lack of use. I can probably count the number of U.S. manufacturers of components like capacitors and resistors on one hand, and those don't have the capacity to cover demand for even a single laptop manufacturer, much less all the other stuff we buy and use on a daily basis. AFAIK, there are no manufacturers of LCD panels inside the U.S. at all.... The list goes on almost without end.

The fact is that the U.S. is postindustrial. It would take a massive crash to bring us back into an industrial age, and such a crash would be devastating for the individual worker in the short to medium term because almost everything they buy would still be imported for decades while manufacturing capacity was brought up. Thus, in practice, the value of the dollar against foreign currency (and thus the purchasing power of the dollar) must be taken into account when considering how much people are earning. Pretending that the trade deficit on manufactured goods is somehow going to magically go away simply because the dollar falls is every bit as silly as trickle-down economics or outsourcing technical support to a country of non-native English speakers. It just doesn't make sense in the real world. If it were a very slow decline of a half a percent a year over 200 years, it might, but any drops of several percent in a single year have an immediate effect on buying power and a very slow, heavily delayed effect on production, and thus must be considered as having a direct effect on buying power.

Re:Well duh

[cayenne8]

"While it'll definitely affect the economy if all of us go into a self-employment situation--basically guaranteeing that we'll have a government-run health care system of some sort--"

Not sure why you're saying that???

When you are self employed in IT, billing $50-$125/hr...paying for health insurance as it currently is, is a cakewalk.

The only problem comes if you as your own 'company' cannot qualify for group insurance through your incorporated entity (varies by state). If you try to get private individual insurance...the companies really cherry pick you...and it can be tough if not impossible to get insurance at all...at any price. That is the problem to be addressed.

Paying for health insurance isn't that bad, if you can get it. I'd rather see them open up large contributions to private HSA's....to sock away more money pre-tax...and only have to have catastrophic high deductible insurance. I think if more people went to this, and took control of their health care dollars...health costs would actually go down and wouldn't be dictated by the HMO's, insurance industry and other for profit entity leeches on the current health system in the US.

But, definitely NO need for Fed. universal health care...PLEASE NO!

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

In what country is this global market you're talking about?

From my experience, any SE asian country. It obviously doesn't apply to a country (like the US) where you are not even allowed to own gold.

Re:Well duh

[some damn guy]

The point was it's nice to have choices, what's best for people varies. I can quit tomorrow and work someplace else if I wanted. In fact, it's even easier than many contracting gigs because there's no contract to break. So 'owning your own' life is a bogus argument, it really is.

If you have some great skills that are in demand, sure you can do really well that way. If you're just doing it because you have to it can be very stressful and also bad deal financially- especially with more frequent periods of unemployment. 50 an hour sounds like nice pay, but when you really add up all the benefits you get, including paid vacation, sick time, 401k matching- it's a pay cut for most people. If you're young and healthy (or making $125/hr), it might sound good- but if you have a family or god forbid a chronic medical condition it gets a lot more complicated.

It's not about turning your soul over to a company, it's about being able to stick with something that works for you, being able to work with people you know and like, and being able to have a more stable financial situation.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in Canada and here is what I know.

Our dollar last year was at 85cents American. That means you could come to Canada for vacation, and save a bundle. While our dollar was at 85 cents, today it is 1.03 American. But our dollar did not change significantly against the Euro.

What it means is that the US dollar has devalued to where other countries do not want to hold it. And that means a tremendous risk for a potential recession.

Why the drop in US$$. Ask president Bush. When money is spent internally, or wasted internally, it amounts to circulation, where each time it changes hands, a little goes back to the Government. But when it is outside the USA it is compared to managed economies and it is compared to the Euro. But when the money is going towards war, a war to avenge the father, then it costs in US standard of living.

By the way, I am not saying, flee from Iraq to stop the bleeding, but, change the Iraqian policy. The oil belongs to them. And recognize that soldiers in Iraq must learn their culture and their family values. Do not go there with cell phones, iphones, walkmans, showing off wealth, but with aid, meetings and money for hospitals, foodbanks, schools.

You can only defeat terrorism if you can show the emums of the mosques that you can also respect their religion and contribute to the wellbeing of their citizens.

OK, once you do the latter stuff, the heavy military losses will diminish, and some of the bleeding will disappear.

I have acquaintances in the arab countries, and the american is considered a stupid arrogant individual, as the american education system, and their news outlets feed to dummies. (All those books, Politics for Dummies, Slash.dot for Dummies, is proof)

I got carried away, sadly the actual buying power of the American worker has dropped significantly, due to too much American paper in circulation outside the USA.

By the way, you Americans are not stupid, but your CNN, Fox News, ABC news treat you like idiots, and do not give you a worldly view of the news and what is going on out there. Who cares about Brittany Spears, what about people who do great things in the world? What positive impact did Spears make in Africa, Darfour, the Sudan, or anywhere else? What good is American democracy when there is so much lobbying for favors against the good of the individual citizen, and so much under the table money to make favorable decisions to large conglomerates?

A disappointed neighbor.

Re:Well duh

[gr8scot]

One staffing company's report on their own clients' pay doesn't mean anything about the general market for tech workers.

In other news...

[Tackhead]

From TFA:
> Compared to the same months in 2006, hourly wages for techies in 2007 rose 6 percent in July, 4.64 percent in August, and 5.79 percent in September.

Compared to the value of the US dollar against every major currency in 2006, hourly wages for US-based techies are still down 5-10% year over year.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you are spending all of your US dollars on merchandise/services produced outside of the U.S.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Only if you are spending all of your US dollars on merchandise/services produced outside of the U.S.

Or at least most. If you're not spending more than 75% of your income on imports, then you either must live in one of the few places in the United States where Agriculture and manufacturing hasn't been utterly destroyed by imports, or you actually believe "Made in America" means something more than parts created in Mexico & China and shipped here for assembly.

I dare you to find a 100% made in America computer or car.

Or anything else requiring magnets, capacitors, and resistors (none of which are made in America anymore).

Heck- for that matter- I challenge you to find a US Soldier who isn't dependent upon part of his gear made someplace else than America.

For that reason, yes, the falling US dollar is about to make a 2008 $75,000/year paycheck feel like a 1995 $26,000/year paycheck. Good luck continuing to afford your education, for which you need to keep your techie job more than a couple of generations of languages and operating systems, on THAT.

Re:In other news...

[Seumas]

It seems that at best raises average out over time to keep you on par with the cost of living and little more. Great -- you got a 4% raise this year! Oh, guess what? Your rent is 5% more.

Not to mention... what percentage of techies make an "hourly wage" anyway?

Re:In other news...

[Opportunist]

Oh, affording that education should be possible. After all, the winner of an inflation is the one in debt.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right.. it all sounds good until you actually check your facts. If only those silly laws of economics didn't get in the way. Before making silly remarks to further your idiotic ideology check here (1995 & 2007) http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/ Also, you should take an intro to macroeconomics class too.. Broaden your horizons beyond sound bites.

Re:In other news...

[mi]

If you're not spending more than 75% of your income on imports, then you either must live in one of the few places in the United States where Agriculture and manufacturing hasn't been utterly destroyed by imports, or you actually believe "Made in America" means something more than parts created in Mexico & China and shipped here for assembly.

Your single biggest expense, most likely, is housing, which is still priced in dollars.

Next after that are various services — the labour of fellow Americans, mostly, as well as immigrants (legal and otherwise), which are all priced in dollars too. This labor is the biggest part of the price of those "Made in America" items, which you dismiss as merely assembled here. It is also a big part of the retail price of just about anything you buy (wherever it is made)...

Manufacturing? China's currency is pegged to the dollar at the moment, and will be for a while. China-made stuff is thus not getting more expensive, whatever dollar/euro ratio is — that covers nearly all manufactured items sold in US — for better or worse.

What did I miss? Oh, yeah, imported wines and cheeses...

Amazing. A few months ago we were lamenting, how the techies are underpaid, and how all tech jobs are outsourced to India (as if Indians are any less deserving). Now comes the news of tech-salaries growing rather quickly, but the lamentations don't cease!

The H-1 visas are all "sold-out" within hours every year — hundreds of thousands of people dream of coming here to work (white-collar work) for the salary you seem to dismiss as insufficient... Maybe, you ought to pack up and leave to make room for fresh immigrants — evidently, your family has used up its time in this country, if the latest generation (you) is so unappreciative.

Re:In other news...

[Bill Dog]

For that reason, yes, the falling US dollar is about to make a 2008 $75,000/year paycheck feel like a 1995 $26,000/year paycheck.

I made $28,000/year in 1995, and remember what it was like, and can assure you that unless your tastes and/or family has dramatically expanded with your salary, $75K currently affords a large amount of disposable income, and is nothing like the former circumstances.

Re:In other news...

[sholden]

So you compare it with inflation.

Remember that the CPI calculation got changed so not include the very things that people spend their money on and go up in price - which makes sense since there are a bunch of things indexed to the CPI numbers so it's in the interests of those who calculate them to keep them low.

http://www.shadowstats.com/ or for the even more pessimistic formula: http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-cpi.gif

Re:In other news...

[Kingrames]

If all of the parts were built using the global free market that America helped create, then it's American, dammit.

Stop acting like our border is an economic Berlin Wall.

"Made in America" is a term used to describe products that are built here, whether their parts come from elsewhere or not.

Is a man less of an American if his parents were German?
No.
So don't act like it's not 100% made in America. if it were, we wouldn't be living in a free country.

Re:In other news...

[ucblockhead]

The single biggest cost for most people is housing. Housing cannot be offshored, and the housing market is actually depressed compared to last year.

Re:In other news...

[ucblockhead]

I dare you to find a foreign house on US soil!

Housing is the biggest cost for most people, and it is not offshored.

Re:In other news...

[eggnoglatte]

Well, you DO import construction materials (most notably lumber) from Canada; probably other places.

Also, heating (and/or air conditioning, depending on where you live) is a fairly big part of the housing cost. Transportation costs (i.e gas) are a fair part of construction costs. For now, most energy is traded in US dollars, so you don't see a decline in purchasing power in that area, yet. That will change if the dollar continues to be weak for a few years, in which case energy trade will shift from the US$ to other currencies such as the Euro. If you haven't noticed yet: it is a seller's market for energy out there, and that will only get worse.

Re:In other news...

[0xC2]

A weak dollar means more foreigners buying up land and housing. That could drive up home prices.

Re:In other news...

[Inthewire]

Heating, air conditioning, water, and waste disposal (sewer and garbage pickup) combined run between 4.5 to 9 percent of my monthly housing bill. I doubt the lumber used to construct my house was imported from Canada, but the brick came from a demolished hotel.

Re:In other news...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Funny you should mention cars - the most american car at the moment is a toyota, subaru builds the Legacy in indiana, while ford builds in mexico.

Re:In other news...

[Kiashien]

75k, if I made it right this second, would finally allow me to have a disposable income of _any_ level. I don't know about you, but I owe craptons of money for school, and loan payments are insane. I need 65k at least to _meet bills_. So no. It does not offer disposible income.

Re:In other news...

[jotok]

Er, not so much.

I live on a foreign economy and my 120k USD is not so great in Europe. Back home it was fine. I think salaries calculated in the US, on the US economy, take imports into consideration.

With all the layers of abstraction, I don't think you can really say you're interacting with foreign economies just because your iPod was build in China. Now, if you BUY it in China, that's different.

Re:In other news...

[pla]

The single biggest cost for most people is housing. Housing cannot be offshored, and the housing market is actually depressed compared to last year.

Which only affects you if you want to buy or sell a house now - Not actually a large percentage of the population at any given time. For renting, only what the landlords believe the worth of their properties matters.

The house sales market has plummetted, mostly because people would rather stay in what they have now than sell below cost, even if it would save them money in the long-term. On the flip side of that, although what sell does so way below asking, the (initial) asking prices remain high. As a result, rental prices have basically remained at their bubble-peak level, and will simply stay flat until the housing market catches up.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you are spending all of your US dollars on merchandise/services produced outside of the U.S.

Or if your cheap-dollar goods are being bought up by people outside the US that can afford more of them than you.

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

or you actually believe "Made in America" means something more than parts created in Mexico & China and shipped here for assembly.

Yeah, it usually means "shoddy workmanship" or "overpaid union worker -- reliability suspect".

Re:In other news...

[everphilski]

75k, if I made it right this second, would finally allow me to have a disposable income of _any_ level. I don't know about you, but I owe craptons of money for school, and loan payments are insane. I need 65k at least to _meet bills_. So no. It does not offer disposible income. I make just under 65k (2 years out of school) ... I have a mortgage, 2 kids, two sets of student loans (mine and my wife, both of us have masters, she is a stay at home mom so we are paying both off of my income) ... we pay our debts off faster than our debtors require, put a good percentage (double digits) of my income towards our 401k and have investments outside of work (Roth IRA, overinvesting in my VUL insurance policy, educational accounts for our children, etc.) ... might want to take a good hard look at what you consider necessities...

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

I can second the otherwise anecdotal evidence that $75,000 today is NOTHING like $26,000 a year back in 1995. Coincidentally, these are roughly the salaries I am/was making for these given times. With $75,000-ish a year, I am able to afford my $230,000 house with a mortgage payment of roughly $2,000 a month. In 1995 I bought my first house. It was $60k and the mortage is (still have it) $450. I also have two more children then I had back then, yet I'm able to comfortably pay my new mortgage. I remember barely making it month-to-month on my first mortgage.

Seems to me that disposable income grows exponentially, after you get over the living mont-to-month hump and after you've paid off all the necessities. I often ask my wife how much more stuff we actually need, when we lived just fine in 1995 with less.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Not if you're already in debt up to your credit limit on just trying to provide your family with food, clothing, and shelter.

One recent calculation of a LIVING wage is now $80,000 for a family of four with two adult earners. Education is a luxury on top of that.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Why would I believe the biased and incorrect data of paid shills for the investor class, over real data like the fact that THIS YEAR farmers are suffering a shortage of pesticides and herbicides, which will result in a doubling of food prices next year? Note also that I said 1995 & 2008, not 2007.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Your single biggest expense, most likely, is housing, which is still priced in dollars.

And which has seen a 300% increase since 1995, if the history of tax assessments on my house are to be believed (1995 tax assessment, $75,000. 2007 tax assessment, which I just received, $262,000)

Next after that are various services -- the labour of fellow Americans, mostly, as well as immigrants (legal and otherwise), which are all priced in dollars too. This labor is the biggest part of the price of those "Made in America" items, which you dismiss as merely assembled here. It is also a big part of the retail price of just about anything you buy (wherever it is made)...

Assembly is largely done by robots, not by human beings.

Manufacturing? China's currency is pegged to the dollar at the moment, and will be for a while. China-made stuff is thus not getting more expensive, whatever dollar/euro ratio is -- that covers nearly all manufactured items sold in US -- for better or worse.

You must have missed the news last week-China has begun dumping the dollar. A situation that will only increase in the next year.

What did I miss? Oh, yeah, imported wines and cheeses...

And blueberries, beef, wheat, soy, corn, strawberries, milk, peanuts, etc. Ask any farmer- they've all had to compete with cheaper imports from Asia, South America, and Europe. MOST of what you eat is imported these days. Like those tomatos in December? That's globalization.

Amazing. A few months ago we were lamenting, how the techies are underpaid, and how all tech jobs are outsourced to India (as if Indians are any less deserving). Now comes the news of tech-salaries growing rather quickly, but the lamentations don't cease!

That's because it is once again fake numbers, paid for by the upper class. You can't trust the ITAA to put out anything real.

The H-1 visas are all "sold-out" within hours every year -- hundreds of thousands of people dream of coming here to work (white-collar work) for the salary you seem to dismiss as insufficient... Maybe, you ought to pack up and leave to make room for fresh immigrants -- evidently, your family has used up its time in this country, if the latest generation (you) is so unappreciative.

The victims of a con job should not be blamed for being cheated out of a dream. On either side. They'd be better off staying where they are- the United States is the land of slavery, not freedom.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Currently, yes. Next year? It's beginning to look like not, as we see the return of triple digit inflation in food and fuel prices. Not to mention China finally figuring they've got a large enough middle class to turn towards domestic production instead of export production, and dumping the dollar in favor of tangible ownership in the United States.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

If all of the parts were built using the global free market that America helped create, then it's American, dammit.

Only if you believe a bunch of tax evaders should still retain their citizenship. I don't. I consider such people to be traitors, worthy only of execution. If it doesn't create middle class jobs RIGHT HERE IN OUR OWN CITY, I refuse to invest in it either as a stockholder or a consumer. What Japan learned after WWII is that economics is a form of warfare.

So don't act like it's not 100% made in America. if it were, we wouldn't be living in a free country.

As long as we don't have the right to be protectionist, we're not living in a free country. We're living in a slave society to international interests.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Housing is the biggest cost for most people, and it is not offshored.

Yeah, right. Once again, this is the difference between manufacturing and assembly. Canadian Lumber, Mexican pre-formed concrete block, chinese nails and tools. At best, you can say that American houses were disassembled for shipping...

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

But all out of parts from China. Do you American manufacturer of alternators? Of course not, because alternators require magnets, and China currently has a world monopoly as the sole supplier of magnets.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I live on a foreign economy and my 120k USD is not so great in Europe. Back home it was fine. I think salaries calculated in the US, on the US economy, take imports into consideration.

But do they take the cost of food into consideration? We're looking at potential triple digit inflation in food and fuel here in the next few years. do you really think we'll be getting triple digit raises to keep up?

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Funny, I actually find union made parts to be of superior quality- due to the fact that they weren't created by people who were starving.

Re:In other news...

[jotok]

Probably not, but I wouldn't worry so much. It'll increase demand for homegrown goods eventually.

Most of us techs could stand to lose a little secretary butt :)

Re:In other news...

[letxa2000]

One recent calculation of a LIVING wage is now $80,000 for a family of four with two adult earners.

You lost me there. Are you saying that a living wage is now $80,000 if both wage earners earn $80k? Are you saying that a family of four needs $160k to "live?" If so, my gosh, what kind of over-the-top materialistic "keep up with the Joneses" lifestyle is being considered "livable" these days? Or are you living in some extremely expensive place like San Francisco or NYC?

And if a family of four needs $80k to be livable, well, that still sounds extreme--but in that case your statement of "with two adult earners" is unnecessary since all you need to specify is how much a family of four needs to "live." Whether one or two adult earners is necessary to earn that much money is a question of their individual earning capacities.

Anyway, don't worry. The Democrats want to make sure everyone has a "livable" wage. So if we now need $160k to live, I guess the Democrats will just make minimum wage $80/hour. Problem solved!

Re:In other news...

[spike hay]

Compared to the value of the US dollar against every major currency in 2006, hourly wages for US-based techies are still down 5-10% year over year.

The CPI is a much better measure of the increase in the cost of living. Your idea is only true if you only buy imports. The weakening dollar is actually probably a very good thing for techies, because it will make it more expensive to outsource, and make it cheaper for foreign companies to use US labor.

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

Funny that American cars, all of which are made by union employees, are considered the some of the least reliable cars on the road. I guess all those "starving" Japanese guys are doing something right?

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Amazing the number of people that missed the fact that I'm not talking about today, but a prediction a year from now when China is dumping the dollar wholesale and food prices have doubled or tripled. And of course, education costs have gone up to cover THOSE costs.

Re:In other news...

[ucblockhead]

Housing prices are mostly unrelated to construction costs since most home sales are preexisting.

Most places, heating costs are NOT a "fairly big" part of the housing cost. Most places, just the mortgage or rent eats 20-30% of income.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

MH42 I enjoy your posts, but I think you've been predicting gloom "next year" for many years. How about getting more specific with your predictions?

I'm talking about stating some things you can be measured on: For example why can't you make a statement like: "90% of people will be homeless and on the streets by 2070 if free trade is not ended and immigration halted."

"Life expectancy will drop by 10 points in 5 years if socialized healthcare with X, Y, and Z features isn't introduced"

Can't you make statements like that and post them up somewhere? Seriously.

Basically, all you've been predicting is doom and gloom .. and I would like to see if your predictions are true.

Yet in this time, people have been making more money. Buying iPhones, iPods etc. Crime rate has been low, unemployment is at 5%. Cancer death rate has been dropping. Life expectancy is on the incease. Home ownership RATE is high as ever. I understand your vision for america is for people to leave their service jobs and work for minimum wage in a factory --havcing not run any numbers, you're sure there's enough people to produce, market, and sell goods and entertainment products while also innovating.

More people than ever before own cars, large screen tvs, cell phones, etc. -- all those will become unaffordable if people had to go back to manufacturing jobs. Tell me, according to your prophecy, when we will start to see a decline in car and cell phone ownership (not sales, ownership .. sales may fluctuate).

Re:In other news...

[Bill Dog]

Should I worry about all that, or corporations or terrorism or illegal immigrants or President Hillary or offshoring or Global Warming or...

I'm just not going to live my life believing in worst-case scenarios just around the corner. I've lived in tension and fear for several days the early part of this week, and I didn't like the feeling. So, while it's worth being cognizant of potentially threatening issues, I'm not going to assume cataclysmic changes (such as an economic change of the magnitude you're talking about) are imminent and near. I'd be a nervous wreck.

Re:In other news...

[default luser]

http://www.shadowstats.com/ or for the even more pessimistic formula: http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-cpi.gif

Sure, that's all well and good, except for the fact that none of these shadowy saviors who cry foul about the government's numbers ever provide their own formulas / proof. All they do is slather their websites with their life story and their own mysterious numbers on graphs, and expect you'll buy it.

And when I say buy it, I mean it literally. If you want more than a few meaningless graphs, you need to pony-up the 89.00 for the 6-month subscription. And I seriously doubt even the newsletter you get contains any of the actual formulas or raw source data references, because then what would he sell to all the fools out there?

Re:In other news...

[Kingrames]

slave society to international interests?
Since when is the small minority a "slave" to the whims of the people they've been exploiting for decades?
Was Ramses a "slave" to the Jews' interests when he sent his army after them into the red sea?

The only thing this society is a SLAVE to is the reality of how economics works. You HAVE to play fair with the community of the world to get a fair trade. If you exploit them, you will get inferior goods out of your deals.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And if a family of four needs $80k to be livable, well, that still sounds extreme--but in that case your statement of "with two adult earners" is unnecessary since all you need to specify is how much a family of four needs to "live." Whether one or two adult earners is necessary to earn that much money is a question of their individual earning capacities.

For the grand majority of salaried and hourly workers out there, they will never come close to $80k/year. Only executives make that kind of green. But yes, I'm talking about combined family income- and yes, I do think that is pretty extreme. It's a sign of a first world country sinking to third world status, with all of the inflation that would require.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Perception and reality are often quite different things. I've driven Fords, VWs, and Datsuns in my life- and it was the Datsuns that would always fall apart. So no, I don't hold with your racist implications that the Japanese are good at engineering.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

When oil runs out :-)

But seriously, I think you've missed the entire point of gloom and doom predicting. NOBODY makes such predictions lightly or to be correct- rather such predictions are made to give negative cases to avoid in our engineering, that is, specifically to be proved wrong, and in so doing, encourage others to do the right thing by proving us wrong.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's all linked. One basic problem: the failure to manage chaos in the economic sector. Global warming? No problem if you've got a command economy, just pay some people to do everything possible to remediate it, and move your farmlands north. Terrorism and illegal immigrants? Invade Mexico and start offering countries with failed economies statehood to join our economy, booming with jobs in changing the world over to ambient energy sources. President Hillary might just be the solution- considering that the problem is business as usual, and President Hillary would certainly be the end of business as usual.

I'm just not going to live my life believing in worst-case scenarios just around the corner. I've lived in tension and fear for several days the early part of this week, and I didn't like the feeling. So, while it's worth being cognizant of potentially threatening issues, I'm not going to assume cataclysmic changes (such as an economic change of the magnitude you're talking about) are imminent and near. I'd be a nervous wreck.

Not enough people are nervous wrecks today. Thus we continue to ignore the problems instead of actively fixing them.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

slave society to international interests?

Yep, that's what I'd call it when Americans have to take out home loans to buy foreign food, fuel, and consumer goods. Especially when those home loans are coming from the same countries that the goods are coming from. Sell the entire country into debt slavery.

Since when is the small minority a "slave" to the whims of the people they've been exploiting for decades?

When they become so dependent upon that exploitation that they cannot survive without the exploitation.

Was Ramses a "slave" to the Jews' interests when he sent his army after them into the red sea?

Ramses sent his army after them into the Red Sea *because* he was a slave to the interests of the Hebrews- he couldn't make his economy work without the slavery. We have the same problem today with trade with China- if it went away tomorrow, the United States no longer has the manufacturing capacity left to survive.

The only thing this society is a SLAVE to is the reality of how economics works. You HAVE to play fair with the community of the world to get a fair trade. If you exploit them, you will get inferior goods out of your deals.

Partially right- but it's worse than that. You also lose the ability to create goods yourself, thus giving the countries you were exploiting an absolute advantage over your own citizens.

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

Nothing racist about 20 years of statistics contradicting your claims. I, for the record, own two Fords (Contour SVT, Ranger). That hardly makes me a racist, but I do accept the fact that my cars will have no resale value and after 5 years will have many more mechanical problems than a Honda Accord and Toyota Tacoma. I've already found out that Fords have more short term problems as well.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

None of my Escorts, Anglias, or F150s have shown any such problems. Some are more than 30 years old. You can't go on "resale value" in a situation where base anti-American racism has affected the statistics; of course those who like cheap labor will ignore the problems that cheap labor produces in favor of getting more cheap labor. Sometimes efficiency just isn't worth it.

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but Japanese cars (in general) have higher resale value because they are better engineered and better manufactured vehicles, a LOT of them being manufactured in the US. The reason US cars suck in general is due to poor engineering and bad business models that stress "value" over performance. In otherwords, my crappy Ford interiors fall apart faster than a Honda, not because Joe assembled them in Deerborn Michigan, but because Ford uses .19 cent parts engineered by an MIT dropout. There is nothing racist about the reality of the vehicle quality, especially when the global economy has blurred the line of what is foreign and what is domestic anyway.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My experience has been that ford interiors last for 20-30 years; but that Japanese cars use inferior plastics that crack under UV light sources, like the sun.

In other words, the racism of the industry is not held up by my experience- so why should I believe YOU or the industry over my own eyes?

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

You don't have to believe me. There is plenty of data out there supporting my own anecdotal evidence that American cars cut corners at every possible chance, ESPECIALLY in interior design components, long term reliability, and initial quality reports. Consumer Reports would be a good place to start. I live in Austin, TX. Before that, San Antonio, and before that San Angelo, TX (high desert). I don't need a lecture on UV light to show you my curled up dash board, my broken light switch, my thrice cracked/replaced overhead lamp, my fogged over lens covers, my faded paint on the quarter panel to know that my Ford Contour SVT has a pretty lame quality history over it's 8 years. The saving grace being zero mechanical issues and I'm up to 100,000 miles. It still has the original front brake pads too! If this car (and my newer Ford Ranger) weren't rattling buckets of plastic crap, I'd say they were some of the best manufactured cars on the road, in absence of mechanical problems. Unfortunately, I don't think the standard Contours got the same levels of attention mechanically as the SVTs did, so the Contour's below average to poor quality rating is valid, since they only sold about 3000 SVTs a year for about 7 years.

Re:In other news...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

What I'm saying is that I strongly doubt the data- especially when used to malign unions and American workmanship. I've got my doubts as to the veracity even of consumer reports- for that reason I always buy as locally as possible. And always will- I simply don't trust what I don't see with my own eyes anymore when it comes to attacks on America's middle class. the world has lied about free trade once too often for me to believe that crap any longer.

Re:In other news...

[stewbacca]

Well my friend, I admire your convictions, but I believe in this case they've made you near-sighted. The data are what they are....data. Consumer reports doesn't do anything to interpret the data, they simply report it. They don't take advertising money or kickbacks either, so there is hardly a more unbiased publication out there. If they are to be faulted, it is because they don't measure anything subjectively, and the biggest part of owning a car (for me at least) are based on the subjective qualities of the car. I have no stake in the success/failure of American/Japanese/German/Whatever cars whatsoever, and I'm hardly attacking the US middle class (for fear of attacking myself and my entire family, I suppose) nor am I or Consumer Reports "racist". What I do notice, though, is that you get a lot better car for the same amount of money if you avoid Detroit. To look at it another way, you get a whole lot of car, but not the quality, if you buy American. What's more important to the consumer? Well, that's up to each individual consumer. You can defend the Unions all you want, but they are part of the problem.

I'm not exactly saying that US manufacturing is to blame, because many fine Hondas and Toyotas are manufactured in America. If I am "racist" about anything, it is the dispicable way that US corporations undercut everything in the name of "value". There's a reason BMWs and Mercedes Benzes cost more than Fords and Cadillacs, and it ain't just because of the respective emblems on the hoods. I WISH I could buy an American car that was 75% of the BMW 3 series. That whole line of entry level luxury sedans is dominated by Germany and Japan with no US entries. Instead, we get the usual Detroit line about, "Buy a Ford 500! It's every bit as good as a Bimmer but for $20k less!" Then you look into it and see uou get half the car for a 5% discount.

Obviously I don't shun the US Automakers entirely given my purchase history (from current to oldest: 2002 Ford Ranger, 1999 Ford Contour SVT, 1997 Ford Escort, 1996 Chevy Cavalier (worst care ever), 1995 Ford Escort, 1995 Dodge Caravan, 1993 Ford Probe GT, 1990 Honda Civic, 1988 VW GT, 1984 Honda Civic S, 1980 VW Pickup, 1978 VW Scirocco). It is in SPITE of the poor-quality that I've bought a few of my US cars (the SVT, the Caravan and the Probe GT, in particular). I wish any one of these American cars could say they had half the build quality as the 1990 Honda Civic, but sadly, I can't say that.

the exchange rate

[User 956]

pay increased an average of more than 5.5 percent for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to the same period last year.

Yeah, but it's in American Dollars, so the amount actually decreased.

Re:the exchange rate

[kryten250]

Unless they are telecommuting from europe then I think it's fine as long as they still buy food and pay rent in american dollars.

Re:the exchange rate

[mi]

Yeah, but it's in American Dollars, so the amount actually decreased.

Amount of what? Of computers? Of TVs? Of cars? Of T-shirts?

The inflation is related to the value of currency against others, but that's not the whole of it... The stuff made in the US — and in dollar-pegged countries such as China — is not getting more expensive automatically, when the dollar falls against euro.

Re:the exchange rate

[Opportunist]

Indirectly, they do. Because resources become more expensive.

The USD is a global currency. Thus, you don't feel it as directly as another country when it goes down in inflation. But when some large market isn't affected by the same inflation, like China or even more so the EU, since their market is not as tightly tied to the US market as China's, you notice it with prices for resources going up, since they will more easily be able to afford those resources, and, well, supply and demand, their demand increases due to subjectively sinking prices. The price "increases" (for the EU it remains mostly stable, though, since the EUR gets stronger compared to the USD) to match this increased demand, which in turn means that resources become more expensive for the US.

So yes, in a very indirect way, the amount decreases. The amoung of everything. As it was mentioned already, the US production is highly dependent on imports. Imports of resources but also import of goods, both of which become more expensive due to a softer USD.

Re:the exchange rate

[Courageous]

This will be directly reflected in the actual inflation numbers. There is no need to attempt to discern inflation through currency imbalance, and can be quite misleading, given the fluidity of exports (or indeed selecting not to import) extant in the markets today.

C//

Re:the exchange rate

[Opportunist]

It's different for the US. If this was any country, I'd agree with you, but the US is in the unique position of brushing off its inflation to the rest of the globe, at least to some degree. Because the USD reserves in all countries become less valuable, thus fending off any inflation the US generates.

This has worked wonders in past years. It doesn't anymore. Until a few years ago, the USD was the only viable currency for international trade, and as long as this was the case, the US could easily ignore any inflation. Their inflation would simultanously affect the global market and pretty much the whole reserves any country had for international trade. This is changing. Countries are starting to see the Euro as a viable alternative to sell their resources, mostly oil, especially countries that don't really enjoy the idea of dealing in the currency of a country they don't agree with, and the US certainly don't like that idea. Whether or not it's actually true or just spin is debatable, but it would explain why the US invaded a country that was stable. Ruled by a dictator, but at least one that wasn't too keen on some sort of religious war.

But I ramble.

The point is that the US are in the fortunate position that their inflation hits everyone equally. If the US were some "small" country that doesn't have global economy in a stranglehold, they'd be facing hyperinflation. We have here a country that relies to an unhealthy degree on imports, whose primary and secondary sector have been neglected for a long time and partially destroyed by cheap imports, and that relies heavily on services, information, patents and other "virtual" goods as exports.

Re:the exchange rate

[Courageous]

While I follow your presentation perfectly, I don't see how you are coupling the exchange rate internationally to inflation domestically. If you are arguing that ought to be and indeed will end up linked, that's fine, but one need not speculate, one need only look to the domestic inflation figures. Speculation and even seemingly valid logic can be confounded by many factors in a complex system. Best to look to the actual results.

I'm reminded of a long, long argument I once had about condo appreciation. This fellow presented this very long logical argument why condos really couldn't appreciate, and I asked him for data, any data, from any source, that showed that they didn't. Couldn't do it.

There is some inflation here. But it's hardly crazy.

Look here http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p01w.html and then browse around at nearby things. Latest data on inflation-adjusted individual income here.

BTW, the petrodollar welfare article is interesting, but note that the Euro can't really *yet* be the reserve currency, as fairly well binding legislation at the EU is keeping the number of euros available for that sort of thing scarce. Perhaps if demand for euros rise, they EU will change things.

C//

Re:the exchange rate

[Opportunist]

The EU will change that. It will have to. With the USD getting softer and softer (during the last few weeks we had .5 cents a week average, hardly hyperinflation but it would mean 25 cents per year and dollar, and 25% inflation doesn't sound too comforting), countries will sooner or later start to worry and try to shift their foreign reserves. This will put more stress on the Euro (and the Dollar), it would even increase the Dollar inflation if the EU does not react, and that is not really beneficial for the EU economy.

Yes, the EU currently has it in its hand to bleed the US economy dry if they want to, but the price would be that their exports grind to a halt. So they'll sooner or later relent and open the faucet a bit more to relax the situation. Every country in the EU is sitting on a sizable amount of USDs, too, I doubt they'd want them to go to waste.

The question is only what they're going to deem to be the right moment and the right amount, but they will have to react. The Dollar is currently at 1.43 to the Euro. At 1.5 it starts to become a problem. At 1.7 we'll see the economy go berserk.

Re:the exchange rate

[Attila Dimedici]

This assumes that the dollar will continue to fall for long enough that people will adjust long term policies. This is not the first time in my lifetime that the US dollar fell like this. The last time it happened people were saying that the Japanese Yen was going to become the new currency of choice. That really worked out.

Re:the exchange rate

[Courageous]

Here's CPI data, to ground you a little. I, for one, am one of those who believes that CPI overstates inflation. How do you fall?


Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual HALF1 HALF2
1997 159.1 159.6 160.0 160.2 160.1 160.3 160.5 160.8 161.2 161.6 161.5 161.3 160.5 159.9 161.2
1998 161.6 161.9 162.2 162.5 162.8 163.0 163.2 163.4 163.6 164.0 164.0 163.9 163.0 162.3 163.7
1999 164.3 164.5 165.0 166.2 166.2 166.2 166.7 167.1 167.9 168.2 168.3 168.3 166.6 165.4 167.8
2000 168.8 169.8 171.2 171.3 171.5 172.4 172.8 172.8 173.7 174.0 174.1 174.0 172.2 170.8 173.6
2001 175.1 175.8 176.2 176.9 177.7 178.0 177.5 177.5 178.3 177.7 177.4 176.7 177.1 176.6 177.5
2002 177.1 177.8 178.8 179.8 179.8 179.9 180.1 180.7 181.0 181.3 181.3 180.9 179.9 178.9 180.9
2003 181.7 183.1 184.2 183.8 183.5 183.7 183.9 184.6 185.2 185.0 184.5 184.3 184.0 183.3 184.6
2004 185.2 186.2 187.4 188.0 189.1 189.7 189.4 189.5 189.9 190.9 191.0 190.3 188.9 187.6 190.2
2005 190.7 191.8 193.3 194.6 194.4 194.5 195.4 196.4 198.8 199.2 197.6 196.8 195.3 193.2 197.4
2006 198.3 198.7 199.8 201.5 202.5 202.9 203.5 203.9 202.9 201.8 201.5 201.8 201.6 200.6 202.6
2007 202.416 203.499 205.352 206.686 207.949 208.352 208.299 207.917 208.490 205.709

Unfortunately for American workers

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Oil and most other necessities are also at record highs.

Re:ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bogart that bandwidth, my friend...

Record Highs?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's my raise?!?!?

d'oh

[User 956]

In other news... by Tackhead (54550) Friend of a FriendFoe of a Friend on Thursday October 25, @08:27PM (#21122141)

/me shakes fist at Tackhead

I'm in the wrong business...

[corychristison]

...translated to an average hourly tech worker wage of US$31.80.
Among the hottest skills being demanded right now by Yoh clients are Java and .Net developers, database administrators, SAP functional and technical consultants, and project managers, said Jim Lanzalotto, Yoh's VP of strategy and marketing. Last quarter, SAP consultants on average earned US$88.07 per hour, while Java developers earned US$50.89, per hour, according to Yoh's research.

read the subject

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[camperdave]

It kind of raises the question of who's the real sap programmer, doesn't it?

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Surt]

Garbagemen make a lot too. You have to pay people to get them to do painful tasks.

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Plutonite]

You have to pay people to get them to do painful tasks. No wonder I was offered 90K for a MS job as a fresh grad :)

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[LithiumX]

I have seen job postings for SAP over and over, and barely know what it is beyond what I can read online.

Just how hard is it to get into SAP in the first place, especially if you're already a multi-platform multi-language programmer (including .Net, w/ certs) with experience administrating a few thousand servers?

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Mean Variance]

I've always wondered if that is an urban legend. Of course it depends on what "a lot" means. Granted, in many areas it is "a lot" less strenuous having gone from back breaking to using a joystick. Though my former apartment in Menlo Park, CA had those cans that are below ground.

But I digress ...

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Sanitation_Worker/Hourly_Rate

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[dae_42]

While you do need to pay someone to do painful/disgusting/dangerous tasks, it's probably less than you think.

I'm a garbage man: if you wanna hire me away, you gotta beat $15.94 per hour. The private haulers (Waste Management and Rabanco) pay less than that, supposedly.

I guess $32K/year might be a decent enough wage for a no-brainer job, but think about how many medical wastes, rancid foodstuffs, and asbestos (and everything else) you gotta handle for that money. I'd rather work where the most dangerous thing there is the coffee I'm drinking...

The "Garbage" episode of "This American Life" is kinda interesting: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=249

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Anonymous Coward]

The garbageman in Dilbert cartoon is a lot smarter than any of the engineers. He would probably jump portals and travel backwards in time just to spend his increase in wages when it worthed more too.

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I too am a multi-platform multi-language programmer, and I was once sent to an SAP programming class by an employer (though I left that job shortly after and never really had to put the knowledge to use). It's a huge proprietary world of its own, and its all in German. (At least at the time I was learning it if you called up the documentation for a particular API or object, you had about a 40 percent chance of it being available in English).

I think the only realistic way to get into it would be to either a) work for SAP or b) work as some other type of programmer for a company that happens to decide it needs SAP programmers and wants to train from within.

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Surt]

It's not that I thought sanitation workers were being paid million dollar salaries. Just that if you paid the same as barista, I think most people would choose barista. So sanitation worker makes more than barista. SAP 'developer' makes more than java developer for the same reason.

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[Surt]

So something like triple the minimum wage, for what I assume is an essentially unskilled job requiring no special education. Note that I could be wrong about that. Frankly, I just hope we pay those people enough, I really want someone to do that job, and for it not to be me.

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[swillden]

I've always wondered if that is an urban legend. Of course it depends on what "a lot" means.

Yes, it does. Garbagemen get paid a lot if you're looking at it from the perspective of an unskilled laborer. If you're comparing it to what a college graduate would expect to make, garbagemen don't make a lot. My brother-in-law threw garbage for 15 years, and including lots of overtime pay made around $35K annually toward the end. The company basically forced him out because they were paying him too much because of his seniority. He took another basically-unskilled job at Thiokol building rocket motors (including shuttle boosters) and now makes more money without working overtime.

Garbagemen are towards the top end of the unskilled labor spectrum, but they're not at the top of that, and that whole spectrum tops out near the low end of what the educated workforce expects to make.

Re:I'm in the wrong business...

[cthulhu11]

I submit that the hourly rates of consultants don't compare 1:1 with the hourly rates paid to full-time employees. You have to factor in vacation/sick time, medical insurance, etc.

Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering most Americans buy, sell and trade in US currency, it makes little difference what the exchange rate is.

Inflation is what counts, and its under control.

Re:Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation is what counts, and its under control.

Sure, after you quit publishing M3, start dumping gold reserves, and remove everything that keeps getting more expensive from the "basket" like gas and food.

Who didn't see that coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yoh stating that the hourly wage is at an all time high is like McDonald's saying that it costs more to make hamburgers now than it used to.

Doing a study like this seems 'self-serving' in some ways. Bill rates go up because wages increase

The new tech economy

[i_ate_god]

The first IT bubble taught us one thing: what's a good idea and what's a bad idea. Now that we figured that out, a second wave of technology money is washing over the world, only this time it's slower, more calculated, and less dumb. With articles all over the place saying that kids aren't getting into IT anymore, salaries will keep going up for skilled tech-savvy individuals who can get the job done.

The experimentation is over folks, it's time to get some real work done, and get paid handsomely for it since we are NOT a dime a dozen.

Re:The new tech economy

[19thNervousBreakdown]

I dunno, I've thought about it a million times, and when it comes down to it our only real skills are memorization, problem domain reduction, patience, discipline, and critical thought ... which boils fairly well down to critical thought. Once I come to that conclusion, I can't help but wonder if I even want to be so rare.

Re:The new tech economy

[esecasco]

you echo the sadness I feel for the world at present.

Re:The new tech economy

[1lus10n]

What you want is irrelevant. People are usually lazy or thick and to be rather blunt they are fucking happy about it. Ignorance is bliss is no longer just a statement, its the new american dream.

Re:The new tech economy

[pla]

our only real skills are memorization, problem domain reduction, patience, discipline, and critical thought

I would agree with that completely. Anyone who focuses on specific skills such as language-X or web-platform-Y just doesn't "get" it.

However, at least two of those "skills", critical thought and problem domain reduction (I like that term - Your own phrasing, or the newest buzzword for the same ol' idea?), not everyone has the capacity to learn.

Not a matter of dedication or intelligence, I've known plenty of dedicated, intelligent people who simply can't grasp the idea that my job consists of nothing more than reducing big, seemingly-intractable problems down to a set of small, easily-solved ones (much less do the same). No amount of education (or at least, no amount of time in our current education system) can remedy that.



Once I come to that conclusion, I can't help but wonder if I even want to be so rare.

Agreed completely... It often disturbs me how little critical thought most people put into everyday tasks. Even the absolutely basic "does this make sense in its own context" slips past unasked.

People fight over politics, without noticing that the elephants and asses do the same exact things. People fight over imaginary lines on a map. People fight over which fictional group of "warriors" will win at the stadium this week, as though it matters in some way. People beg the government to save them from a 0.001% chance of death at the hand of flashy "bad people", while daily facing almost the exact same risk of death or serious injury merely getting in their car and driving to work.

We, as a species, have problems.

Re:The new tech economy

[stewbacca]

Anyone who focuses on specific skills such as language-X or web-platform-Y just doesn't "get" it.

That's what is so damned frustrating about the IT industry. Seems like every program manager I've ever known has this short sighted "vision".

Thankfully, I got in with a company that understands that my content knowledge in our industry is far more important than my Flash development skills. Although I'll spend 90% of my time designing training with Flash, my understanding of how the industry works (and my 12 years of experience in the industry) is far more important (and valuable) than my ability to buy a book and go through it to makes some Flash presentations. Not to dismiss Flash skills or the art of Instructional Design (since that is what I do), but in the hierarchy of things, how to program a rollover button is far less critical than designing sound Instructional Design from the start. Instructional Design is no good unless you understand the target, which requires a solid understanding of the industry. This, in a nutshell, is why project managers make more than the Instructional Designers, who make more than the developers.

Re:The new tech economy

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Not a matter of dedication or intelligence, I've known plenty of dedicated, intelligent people who simply can't grasp the idea that my job consists of nothing more than reducing big, seemingly-intractable problems down to a set of small, easily-solved ones (much less do the same). No amount of education (or at least, no amount of time in our current education system) can remedy that.

Although I'd like to avoid sounding elitist, I have to agree ... and I just don't understand it. One of these days I'd like to see a brain map that, instead of lighting up for God, or love, or fear, lights up when people are practicing reduction, and shows that in a lot of people it only lights up when they're dealing with situations they're familiar with. At least that way I wouldn't feel like I'm some kind of crazy asshole that just looks down on everyone for no reason.

Tangential thought #1: You know creationists speaking of "irreducible complexity"? I wonder if there's ever been a good programmer/computer engineer who's said that. I welcome anecdotes or thoughts, but in the interest of not getting into a religious flamewar I won't be replying to anything on that topic.

Tangential thought #2: I wonder if it's at all related to introspection. I've noticed that many people are just incapable of introspection, and I don't know why, but for some reason I think there's a correlation.

Tangential thought #3: Isn't it weird to think of people not performing those thought processes? Imagine yourself not having those paths open, or not even wanting them. Man. Freaks me right out.

Re:The new tech economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who focuses on specific skills such as language-X or web-platform-Y just doesn't "get" it.

That's what is so damned frustrating about the IT industry. Seems like every program manager I've ever known has this short sighted "vision". That's also the problem with the universities. Too many resumes we get say "I took a course in this language, and that" but don't indicate teaching any analytical skills. When we get the applicants in for interviews, they don't show any familiarity with underlying principles.

Part of the reason we rarely hire new graduates is that they need a few years of experience to figure out the principles they weren't taught in school.

Re:The new tech economy

[visualight]

The problem is education. Back in the 70's school districts started cutting budgets, and then in the 80's people got on this Reading,wRiting, and aRithmetic. Art, sports, shop, band, etc. were all cut and we raised a generation of people who know how to read basic instructions and make change. It seems we forgot that being creative is problem solving.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if it wasn't on purpose.

Where?

[damn_registrars]

This is a link to a news source in Australia. They then link to informationweek.com, who is in the US. But I've never heard of the company who runs the survey they are talking about, so I have no way to know who was surveyed about their wages.

Re:Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

All I got was a big full screen flash ad. Is that the techie pay?

Re:Where?

[skoaldipper]

Yes. And in the very near future financial revolution, instead of swiping your debit card, you will wiggle your ear as your forehead nanotubule LCD flashes a series of 30 second infomercials at the cashier. Then, you may safely depart through the two magnetic pillars.

Re:Where?

[flyingfsck]

Evidently they interviewed a large group of IT professionals working at McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell.

Ya want friez wiz dat?

Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[Newer Guy]

Pay there is DROPPING about 5% a year-both in actual pay and in the amount of responsibility for the same pay. As (clueless) broadcasting groups buy more stations, they expect the existing tech. staff to assume the burden of the extra work-with no more pay or assistance. The pay used to work out to about $15K per station. Then it dropped to 12K. Now it's at about $9K, which means that the average radio broadcast engineer makes about $60K for servicing 7 stations. This many stations means that all he's doing is running around putting out fires all the time.

Re:Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[camperdave]

Well, judging from the technical quality of my cable feeds, they should get less pay. I'm frequently seeing commercials cut in over other commercials, loss of signal, and severe weather and missing child alerts for foreign countries. Sheesh! Can't they separate a syndication feed from a broadcast feed?

Re:Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[xSauronx]

Reminds me of a wISP in Kansas i worked for. They have a great admin who (im told by a few sources) makes about 20 bucks an hour. No benefits (the assholes with their own offices, who get very, very little done, ooooooh full benefits, with a phone and gas allowance). He came in when they had about 400 customers in 3 service areas. Now they have (last I heard) more like 1500 in a dozen areas, and hes the *only* admin. In addition to having more, crappy work to deal with because the service areas the company acquired were garbage, hes required to work more and more hours (without overtime pay) to help resolve service issues. Hes getting pissed. I really hope he saves some cash and moves away to get paid what hes worth, because a number of people agree hes easily worth twice what hes getting.

Re:Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[billcopc]

He probably is worth double that, and if he is, then he should have no difficulty finding a better job elsewhere.

The only reason we techies get stuck in hell jobs is because we allow it to happen. We complain that outsourcing and ass-kissing immigrant workers are destroying our wages, well if you're in a ridiculous scenario, get out of it! Let the poorly managed company deal with sub-par staff, they will learn their lesson (or not), but the important thing is that you don't sell out to a faceless corporation. They don't give a rat's ass about anyone, why should you care about them ?

Re:Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[Nephilium]

Actually... I would say there's three things at play here...

1) We're techies... we like problem solving... especially interesting ones. Keep us fed with interesting problems, and we'll stay for a long time.
2) IT people (as a group), are generally bad at negotiating.
3) A standard fear of change... everyone has it. Especially when it comes to jobs and paychecks (unless they're going up).

And I worked for many years at small companies... working the 60+ hours. About two years ago, I was without a job, and got one at a faceless corporation. It's amazing, my stress level is lower, my pay is higher (by a significant amount), and my hours are generally less. The other IT people who I work with who started by interning for this company don't seem to understand how bad it can be... which amuses me...

Nephilium

Re:Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[billcopc]

Yep, the 60 hour weeks are common. I actually find I don't mind it so much where I am now, because I typically enjoy what I do (in general, not in particular :P). My previous job was moderate, predictable, comfortable but boring to insanity (same pay too). You could say that I took a pay cut by switching jobs because I now have occasional overtime, and I'm certainly exerting my brain much much more, but I'm definitely happier.

Happy enough that even though I could do a quarter of the work for the 1.5 times the pay in a government position, right now I'd rather stick with the small shop where I'm not bound by the inevitable hypocrisy of bureaucracy. It works because my coworkers (and boss) are like-minded individuals; if they were a bunch of assholes (like those you find in most larger companies), I'd burn the building down and take my red stapler elsewhere!

There's a lot more to a career than money.

Re:Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[Nephilium]

Heh...

Actually I found the flaming assholes at the smaller companies... I lost one of my jobs because I wouldn't help the owner cheat on a certification exam...

When I started at my current position, the bureaucracy was minimal and it was of the CYA style ("No, I can't give you access to that unless your boss asks me to give it to you."). The larger bureaucracy is starting to creep in now... so it may be time to start looking for a different job... but right now I'm working with a good team, all of whom are willing to bust their asses and work longer hours when necessary.

Nephilium

I don't think they said USA wages

[walterbyrd]

They may mean USA, or maybe they mean wages in India?

The hottest skills sound about right. But, if you don't have 5 years recent experience already, you can forget about those area: SAP, Project Management, database administrators.

-shameless plug-
Please feel free to view my research on IT wages, collected in the Denver area, go here:

http://it-careers.pbwiki.com/

And click on "IT Salary Survey"

Re:I don't think they said USA wages

[tompaulco]

But, if you don't have 5 years recent experience already, you can forget about those area: SAP, Project Management, database administrators.
You're spang-on there. I used to be a hotshot datawarehouse architect billing $100/hour. Then 9/11 hit and I had to take $anyoldjob which did not even involve databases. Now, my database skills are 6 years old, and I haven't a prayer of getting hired for a datawarehouse position. Now, mind you, I had a natural aptitude for relation databases, and went from 0 to eclipsing my peers in less than a year, so obviously, I could learn it again in a matter of months, but that is not what employers want to hear.
So I am still doing $anyoldjob, which is a serious waste of my talent, and doesn't pay much to boot.

Re:I don't think they said USA wages

[JanneM]

Well, in how many fields could you expect to be paid high wages as an entry-level beginner, with little experience and no specialty?

Re:I don't think they said USA wages

[Buelldozer]

Thanks for the salary review on your website. I'll be sure to forward that to my boss.

I live in Casper and I'm now officially depressed.

I'm rich! Bitch!

[poormanjoe]

#whoami Dave Chappell

Hard to compare

[timeOday]

It's hard to know what conclusions to draw from this sort of thing unless they have a very well thought out metric and collect it consistently from year to year. For instance, the US has been gradually moving away from long-term employment with a regular paycheck and benefits (such as a pension and paid vacation) and towards contracting with fewer benefits and stability. I would certainly expect these contractors to receive more cash per hour, but that isn't the whole picture.

Contractor versus Full-Time

[Gybrwe666]

The other problem with this comparison is that this is only looking at contractor pay, not full-time employee salaries. As full disclosure, I work for a firm that provides IT Staffing as one of its services. Yes, certain in-demand skill sets are getting big bucks. Where I work locally, there have been so many positions posted for various C programmers that we simply can't find anymore, and the ones who will move for a short term or mid-term project are asking and, by and large, getting ridiculous salaries.

But when we do full-time placements, I'm not seeing a big increase. Not only that, but the majority of positions we filled this year were full-time placements.

So I think saying they are at an all-time high needs to be qualified: for certain contractors, which are the jobs where companies like Yoh are most likely to be placing candidates.

Bill

Re:Contractor versus Full-Time

[plasmacutter]

If this is true, I'm graduating in a month and have been put through 3 years at approx 25-35 hours per week on c projects, hire me? : )

Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expiring

[Anonymous Coward]

People forget that each H1-B visa lasts for basically 7 years. And that the limits were wildly expanded during the dot-com boom. Starting in 2000, they went from 65,000 to 130,000. And this continued well after the dot-com bust had happened. It was only in 2004 that the limits went back down to 65,000.

Since this limit wasn't expanded this year (yet), that means lots of H1-Bs are starting to go home. This is why all of the visas that were issued in April were gobbled up in a single day. And none of this is something that you'll see in the mainstream press.

So a lot of H1-B's are going home this year. The local labor market WILL get tighter, and wages WILL rise.

If the limits aren't expanded this year, it's unlikely they'll be expanded next year either, as that's a major election year.

If Hillary Clinton is elected though (which seems likely), you can expect them to again be doubled, as she's been aggressively promoting their expansion, even on her current website.

So, expect wages to go up, while the H1-B's go home. And enjoy it while it lasts, as it won't last forever.

It's just more proof that H1-B's are all about cheap labor and not about a lack of talent.

Not adjusted for real estate and security.

[Baldrson]

If you look at "techie wages" adjusted for the increased price of real estate in places like Silicon Valley, and the lessening of the security of those wages, especially approaching middle age, then you see the real reason why mere propaganda isn't going to draw young people into tech fields ever again.

Re:Not adjusted for real estate and security.

[Tablizer]

If you look at "techie wages" adjusted for the increased price of real estate in places like Silicon Valley, and the lessening of the security of those wages, especially approaching middle age, then you see the real reason why mere propaganda isn't going to draw young people into tech fields ever again.

Amen! IT is a churn-and-burn career that is always changing, cyclical, and is not very secure for older workers who do not enter management. Investments that are risky usually pay more, and IT should be the same.

It would be like choosing junk bonds over regular bonds because junk bonds have a higher average pay-out. This is true, but they are also highly volatile, so their demand is limited. If you look at only average return or early returns, you are doing the reality math wrong.

Re:Not adjusted for real estate and security.

[stewbacca]

Excellent point. My (way under $100k) salary in Austin TX would have to be about $200k in San Jose California for me to live the same quality of life. Substitute "Austin" with "San Antonio", "Boise", "Portland", "Atlanta", "Colorado Springs" or about 25 other cities I'd rather live in than ANY city in California ever again.

I got a huge raise with my current job

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously so as not to upset my coworkers...

The position I was hired for had been unstaffed for over six months before I was hired. I was offered a huge raise with the position, no doubt that there would be no chance I'd turn it down. It's the highest salary I've ever had.

over 10 years, wage is lower now

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in tech for over 10 years now... my salary is lower now than in the late 90's.

I wonder if part of it

[zullnero]

Could be a result of less entry level salaries among the workforce. I know when I broke into the industry, I made probably 1/3rd of what I make today.

Techie Wages

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm..depends, some of those wages look too high..I mean 50.00/hr for a java programmer? All you are getting really is a glorified typist.

Way too over-valued.

I'd pay that to a good, and I mean good IT person, but not to a simple java programmer.

Re:Techie Wages

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even know what he can do or how he can do it but you are ready to dismiss the wage as too high?

Do you hear that? It's the sound of talent passing you by.

Developers can be a lucrative source of revenue. Remember, we develop products. If you tell us to write something worthwhile you will make a fortune and we will have all the cool stuff we want. A good developer can pay that salary off 2 times over wihout breaking a sweat.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[tompaulco]

So a lot of H1-B's are going home this year. The local labor market WILL get tighter, and wages WILL rise.
But, but, but that's IMPOSSIBLE. Because H1-Bs are paid PREVAILAING WAGES and are only necessary because there is INSUFFICIENT LOCAL TALENT!

Maybe I should check back and see if I can get that contracting job back that I lost to the H1-B.

CAD?

[loconet]

That translated to an average hourly tech worker wage of US$31.80

What is that in CAD? a loonie or so an hour?

Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[voisine]

Too bad inflation is at 18%, as measured by the increase in the money supply. 10-15% measured by price increases, if you include the stuff the FED likes to leave out, you know, like housing, fuel, college education, health care, unimportant stuff like that which the average techie doesn't spend much of his income on.

Re:Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation IS the increase in the money supply.

Re:Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad inflation is at 18%, as measured by the increase in the money supply. 10-15% measured by price increases, if you include the stuff the FED likes to leave out, you know, like housing, fuel, college education, health care, unimportant stuff like that which the average techie doesn't spend much of his income on.

Pity party!

Oh, wait... my student loans are locked at 3 and 1/8%, my home mortgage is locked at 6 1/8%, and I don't have any credit card debt. *CHING* Health care is a job benefit, and fuel is about as expensive as it was in the early 80s. *Meh* Imported electronics that, let's face it now, are luxury items cost nominally more because of the currency shift, but not proportionately because, let's fact it again, who else are the electronics companies going to get to buy their product in the same volume for more. *boo*

About the only thing I can complain about it that my investments are probably losing real value. Since my investments are about 1/4 of the size of my debt at this stage in my life, I'm thinking net positive.

Re:Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[OakLEE]

Just to address a few specific claims.

Housing: Housing prices are not increasing? Did you see the losses all of the banks took this quarter? It's because of all of the people who defaulted on mortgages they could not afford to pay. Those people cannot afford to pay because they have no equity in their homes to refinance. They have no equity in their homes because property values have declined by as much as 15% in the last year in some parts of the country. Those houses they walked away from; they are now being repossessed and sold further depressing the housing market. This isn't inflationary at all. It's text book deflationary pressure, and based on the losses some these banks are taking I predict its going to result in a net decrease of at least $40-70 billion in the money supply of this country. This is only going to show in the form of these people decreasing their spending since they won't have that home equity line of credit to draw from.

Fuel: Sure oil is hitting $90 a barrel, but that's still below the inflation-adjusted all-time high of $100 that we saw in late 1970s. Source. And most of this recent spike is due to overblown concerns over Iran and speculators (i.e., people who are just buying oil because they think it is going up in price, not people who actually use it) who are going to start dumping oil in the next few months. I bet you oil is closer to $70 in January than it is to $100. (And as an aside, as someone who wants to encourage renewable energy, I want $100 oil because at this point solar, biodiesel, ethanol, geothermal, and a whole bunch of other alternative energy sources become economically profitable. That'll never happen until oil is legitimately scare though because OPEC will act to keep longterm prices below this point to avoid letting the genie out of the bottle. Source.

Health Care and Education: There are legitimate concerns with respect to inflation in these two areas as their cost increases are far and a way outstripping regular inflation.

Re:Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[voisine]

You got me on the housing... I don't know what I was thinking. That was just a reflex on my part. I've been talking to people about a massive housing bubble for about 5 years now.

I would like to point out that if you adjust oil, or any other commodity for inflation then that kinda defeats the point of using it to measure inflation. :) I think there is certainly some speculation going on, as well as traditional supply and demand issues that has raised oil in relation to other commodities, but a large part of the increase in oil prices is the declining dollar. Other central banks are inflating like crazy to try to prop up the dollar, but the dollar is still dropping like a stone, so measured against commodities the dollar is falling even more precipitously than it is relative to other fiat currencies. This is scary. Once people start spending instead of saving or investing in anticipation of further devaluation, that's when it all comes apart. Inflation isn't only tied to the money supply. If a $100 bill gets spent twice a day, it has the same inflationary effect as two $100 bills that get spent once a day. When everyone tries to spend as fast as they can to get rid of the depreciating bank notes in favor of some commodity that will hold it's value, that's when run away inflation happens even the FED stopped creating new money altogether, which of course it wouldn't.

Re:Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[voisine]

Also the housing crunch is what's prompting the fed to cut rates and try to inflate our way out of the crisis, which is the opposite of what they should be doing. If you're interested read Murray Rothbard's "What Has the Government Done to Our Money?". In several places I've seen it called the best book yet written explaining our monetary and banking system. I have to agree. It's short, free, and fascinating. If you google for the title and mp3 there's even a free audiobook version. It's pretty amazing.

Re:Too bad that doesn't keep up with inflation.

[Alomex]

Inflation IS the increase in the money supply... not supported by increases in goods in the market.

Economic and population growth increase the amount of goods available in the market. The amount of currency, which is then the storer of this value ought to increase.

Averages?

[jnadke]

Duh, when you outsource the bottom 1/3rd (fictitious number) of the workforce, you're left with the top 2/3rds... I'm suprised it only raised by 5.5%.

The Loonie is worth more than a US Dollar

[MichaelCrawford]

Thanks to the war in Iraq - it's being funded by selling Treasury bonds.

XE says the US dollar is worth about 96.6 Canadian cents.

Re:The Loonie is worth more than a US Dollar

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to the war in Iraq - it's being funded by selling Treasury bonds.

XE says the US dollar is worth about 96.6 Canadian cents.

Why do you feel compelled to explain the joke the grandparent made -- that about $1 CAD is equivalent to $31.80 USD? Last I checked, $31.80 is more than $1.

Re:The Loonie is worth more than a US Dollar

[moosesocks]

The US Dollar is certainly tanking, and the Iraq war has no end in sight. Both of these are "very bad things", but I'm not 100% convinced that one is causing the other. I was under the impression that our current economic problems were largely a result of the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry.

That said, Iraq's not helping.

Re:The Loonie is worth more than a US Dollar

[pimpimpim]

70 eurocents... But that isn't all good news. A lot of european companies still do trade in Dollars and lose a lot there, or depend on America as an export market, for which they are becoming too expensive. Exception are high-quality high-cost products that are almost without competition (think: "made in Germany" - the funny thing about that label is that it was meant as a way to have British costumers buy less German goods, but it ended up having the opposite effect).

Re:The Loonie is worth more than a US Dollar

[IamTheRealMike]

Sub-prime collapse is a very recent thing, in the last few months. Inflation of the dollar to pay for Iraq is a much longer-term policy. Inflation has been called the "hidden tax" because you don't feel it coming out of your pocket in the same way you do with regular taxes where there's paperwork and such, but nonetheless, it's a value transfer from you to the government. Bush has been using this "hidden tax" very heavily in recent years.

"hourly" pay specific to contractors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been programming for a living for a decent while - since the late 70's. I've worked for around 8 different companies over that time, from 5 to 120K employees, in 3 different states, doing everything from database development to geographic visualization systems to C/C++ compiler development to email clients to game middleware. I've never been paid by the hour, nor have any of my coworkers. There is always a monthly salary, regardless of hours worked. Sometimes we work overtime to finish a project on time, but that does not have any direct influence on our pay. We just get $X/month, not $X/hr worked.

Is this "hourly" thing specific to contracting positions? Those have been a smallish minority at all the companies I've been with, which like I said, spans quite a range. Most of us normal employees have no idea how much we make per hour. We know how much we make per month or per year. That makes it harder to directly compare, unless you make some guesses about hours worked per year - but you can get some range of answers depending on the assumptions you pick about that. Is there some "standard" assumption there, for the purpose of comparing? If so, what is it?

Brain region

[ConcreteJungle]

Hmm, doesn't look like most people here have a strong rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala

someone has got to mod this up

[theshowmecanuck]

give this some insightful mod points ... it hits the nail on the head

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[mh1997]

Because H1-Bs are paid PREVAILAING WAGES and are only necessary because there is INSUFFICIENT LOCAL TALENT!

I believe there is "insufficient local talent" because most of the applicants that I see look good on paper, but lack at least one critical skill for the job (programming and engineering positions). FYI, I get about 25 - 50 applicants per job opening, and after a preliminary technical interview, feel lucky if I can call back 1 person. In my experience the American education system is failing the students and business.

You're such a fool

[Travoltus]

I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.

What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like.

A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE.

Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships.

The wages are rising because America's pool of experienced techies is drying up, and fast. There are few to no new tech 'masters' rising in America; they're all coming from Asia, because that is where all the newb jobs are.

Those H-1 visas are coming here to compete with rock bottom wages, too.

Re:You're such a fool

[dkleinsc]

A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE.

Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships.

While not quite no chance, I have to say this is definitely a major issue. (I myself nearly ended up on the street at about the 1-2 year mark due to lack of experience.) I was chatting with a recruiter recently, and he told me when I brought up the problem that nowadays in tech an "entry-level" programmer is someone with 2-3 years of experience. I then asked him how his clients ever hoped to find someone with that level of experience if no one will hire programmers right out of college.

The fundamental problem is that it's more advantageous for each individual firm to hire people with some job experience (because they won't make novice mistakes), but if every company follows that rule then no one can enter the industry.

Re:You're such a fool

[jollyreaper]

I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.

What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like.

A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE.

Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships. It's the Republican hyper-capitalist mentality. There's no sense of a 'commons' anymore. Anyone doing something for the community is seen as a sucker. Time was when companies saw a benefit from being good stewards. You gotta take on beginner technies in order to grow veteran techies. Gotta give them continuing education, too. "But wait, this guy might not work for me in five years! Fucking commies are screwing me!" No, he might not be. But someone else who got the same kind of leg-up will be. Don't worry, it's all good.

The best analogy I can think of would be to compare the economy to an ecology and these hyper-capitalists are the top predators, eating their fill of the best the land has to offer. They shit in a cave because they feel that letting their feces back into the life cycle is somehow ripping them off. Then when they end up with a barren, lifeless land and a cave full of shit, they'll say it's because of the liberals.

Honestly, you see this mentality everywhere. "Why the hell should I pay for public schooling when I don't have kids?" Because these will be the people taking care of you in your old age and paying your part for social security then. "Why should there be social services for the poor?" You might be in that position yourself one day. Also, giving options to the poor will help steer them towards productive pursuits instead of taking the easy way out and stealing your shit. But no, this idea of community and giving back is completely alien, beyond all understanding, ungrokable.

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Well guess what: you're part of the problem.

Yes, you're looking for "high end techies", and new people have no chance. Well where do you think those high end people came from? That's right, they came from people like you who hired them when they were perhaps somewhat underqualified, and then trained them.

Only hiring high end people is a result of focusing on the short term. You have needs today, and you try to fill those needs today, and that's the end of the story. As a result, you need guys with 20 years of experience, and your competitors all need them too, and they can pay a ton of money which you have to match to attract anyone.

Meanwhile if you'd been hiring these lowlife know-nothings and then exposed them to your operations, shared your expertise, and brought them up to speed, then you wouldn't need these high-powered people you're paying so much for, because you'd already have them. And if you don't start doing this now, it's only going to get worse.

The pool of experienced people comes from you. If you aren't making any, you shouldn't be surprised when you can't find any.

Re:You're such a fool

[KlomDark]

What is this guy talking about?

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they don't have any position for an entry level tech what are they supposed to do? Hire the entry level tech to work as the senior network admin? The job I currently work at has no room for entry level people, if we hired one we wouldn't have any work for him, he'd just sit there twiddling his thumbs.

Re:You're such a fool

[TerryOutOfWork]

I saw this coming.

The tech industry practices hunter-gathering, not agriculture. They devour what's already there but they refuse to plant anything new. I have been on their ass about this for decades and they. won't. do it.

Stupidity has it's own terrible strength.

Donald Knuth said only one person in fifty has the brain wiring to do computer science and I interpret that as almost no one can be good at this. We've seen a lot of 'why Johnny can't program' stuff lately. That's why.

What they SHOULD do is find the people with this brain wiring and train them. But they don't. They want good ones someone ELSE has trained.

So it starts to look like Jesus parable of the seeds that fall on the good soil and some that fall on the rocks. It's chance that determines who gets in and that is not good enough for this important industry

WHEN will it pull it's head out of it's ass?

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I hate those guys who go around quoting bits of the bible.

Re:You're such a fool

[__aawavt7683]

If you're looking for serious techies, I'll be looking for someone like you. If you don't intend to micro manage me so much, provide a decent place to work with a decent wage, benefits, some introduction to what you use and how you use it, proper documentation, and patience to let me learn the atmosphere and improve things I'm assigned (I like to automate -- I write scripts _all_the_time_; Takes longer now, saves time forever more), and I'll be interested.

E-mail me. I'll be ready to relocate towards the beginning of the year. Wouldn't mind talking about how things could be made to work out around that time.
light moogle at hotmail

Re:You're such a fool

[Aceticon]

I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.

What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like.

A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE.

Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships.

The point you made matches the article: they're figures are about contractors (a.k.a. freelancers) and in my experience (granted, all of it in Europe), contractors tend to be very experienced. Basically (at least in Europe), the 2 biggest pathways a Software Developer has for career growth (read: better income) beyond a certain level of experience are either go into management or start contracting.

Thus, and in light of your statements about the difficulty in finding senior people, it's not at all surprising that the rates for the biggest pool of free-moving senior technical people are going up.

Re:You're such a fool

[Fred_A]

What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like. Ah great, now the HR outfits are going to put out ads looking for "Vista admins with 4 year experience" again, like they do every time something new comes out...

Re:You're such a fool

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Just for the record, I am a senior at the University of Central Florida studying engineering (Electrical/Computer).

We are highly encouraged to pursue an internship to learn valuable skills that can be applied in industry. I have an internship (working with Computer Science), as do most of my friends. Here is a short list of people in the area that routinely hire students to work in internships:
Disney
The Government (Navy, Air Force, Army, NASA/KSC)
Lockheed Martin
Harris
Boeing
Jacobs
Siemens
AT&T (Singular hires, are they still in cahoots?)
Florida Power
United Space Alliance
Citrix
Bright House

Many of these companies are at every career fair, which are held every semester (3 times a year). This is Just for Electrical Engineering/Computer Science/Computer Engineering. Yes, many companies don't offer internship programs or continuing education. However, they should offer some other sort of compensation for that (also known as "I ain't workin' there unless they pay me the big dollars"). Besides, most of the time you can screw interns (pay them $12/hour so they can eat but make them do the work of someone that makes $20/hour). Really, we're students, if you pay us more than the Bookstore/Olive Garden/Library then we're all yours.

Re:You're such a fool

[thebdj]

Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships. You know what is funny about your statement is that I found places never liked hiring interns. I remember having an internship interview in college and being told we want someone with more experience. I seriously gave them the WTF are you saying look. I only had one company say, we aren't worried about your experience, it is our job to give you that. The great thing about interns used to be that you would hire them. Get relatively cheap labor and then upon graduation offer them a job at intro salary and get an already trained employee.

The wages are rising because America's pool of experienced techies is drying up, and fast. There are few to no new tech 'masters' rising in America; they're all coming from Asia, because that is where all the newb jobs are. Doesn't your next statement contradict this? I mean, either wages are going up because there are fewer of us, or they are going down because H-1s are taking our jobs. I think what is happening is places are hiring less people but are replacing less experience with more. Replace two or three people at $15-$20 with one at $25-$30 and you save money or break even if the workload is the same. (More like save, since you only have to give raises and benefits to one instead of two.)

Those H-1 visas are coming here to compete with rock bottom wages, too. And some people are wondering why we are becoming Xenophobic and anti-foreigner? Why we want to restrict H-1s more? This happened before in the early 1900s. An influx of Italian, Polish, and other European immigrants dropped wages and took factory jobs from "established" people and citizens who were already living/working in the US. This created a lot of tension then, and fast-forward 100 years and you will see history is repeating itself. The only difference is where the immigrants are coming from and the job sector they are working in. It is even more ironic for people like me who descended from those Italian immigrants.

Re:You're such a fool

[mi]

It's the Republican hyper-capitalist mentality.

Do you seriously accuse Travoltus, who — in his sig — uses the term "neo-Conservative" as a derogative, of being a Republican?..

He-he :) Go ahead, the two of you, bite each other's heads off...

Re:You're such a fool

[mi]

I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.

Good for you. But the topic of my post was that most of things an American is buying do not rise in price, when the dollar is falling, and that the earlier poster's assertions, that the dollar's fall negates all benefits of the higher salaries, is thus without merit.

You chose to attack (with an ad-hominem, no less) my secondary point, used merely for illustration — that the anxiety of would-be techie immigrants is the proof of how lucky we are to be in this field at this time and in this place. Your objection is self-contradictory:

A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE. [... vs ...] Those H-1 visas are coming here to compete with rock bottom wages, too.

Right. A born-raised-and-educated American has "absolutely NO CHANCE", while the immigrants — who need to not only find a job (overcoming the long physical and cultural differences), but to also jump through numerous hoops to get the coveted visa — find countless thousands of opportunities. They would've found even more, had the protectionist quota on H-1 visas not been set so low.

Such a fool, indeed... Care to post some links to actual numbers of freshly-graduated ("newb") American engineers unable to find employment?.. Put up or shut up, so to speak.

Re:You're such a fool

[jollyreaper]

Do you seriously accuse Travoltus, who -- in his sig -- uses the term "neo-Conservative" as a derogative, of being a Republican?.. No, I was agreeing with him.

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

There are few to no new tech 'masters' rising in America; they're all coming from Asia, because that is where all the newb jobs are.

BS.

I know several. It's more likely they just don't want whatever position you are trying to throw at them. The rising technology "master" today knows they have a rare skill set and knows they are orders of magnitude more productive than their rank and file counterpart. As a result, they will market their skills to the progressive companies looking to pay them well, let them leverage those skills, allow them to make decisions, and realize that more bodies is typically worse than less.

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Republican hyper-capitalist, I take issue with your position. As a capitalist, providing education for your employees makes sense because it makes them better, and, since you're providing a better opportunity than the other employers who don't, they're more likely to stay with you, giving you a return on your investment in training.

"Why the hell should I pay for public schooling when I don't have kids?" Because these will be the people taking care of you in your old age and paying your part for social security then.

You make assumptions here -- that there should be government-run public schooling and government-run social security. I disagree with both of those.
It's true that poor people need schooling too, but churches have, historically, provided a measure of free education. And if you complain about the religious teaching that goes with it, nothing says an atheists' group, or a charity with no religious alignment at all, can't run similar schools. And, by relying on voluntary donations, they'll be more efficiently run than the government -- people will support some other charity if this one wastes their donations.
And support for old people? What ever happened to their children supporting them?! Well, I guess that kinda went out of style when the government started doing it, but that's how it used to work. (And probably how it'll work again, since children aren't being born fast enough to support the Ponzi scheme called social security.) For the people who don't have children, nieces/nephews, or the like, again, private charity works.
And, if private charity is not considered a sufficient guarantee in either of these cases, and you feel that government must give people a hand who fall through the cracks, it plainly should be the least attractive option, to ensure that people turn to other sources first.

Also, giving options to the poor will help steer them towards productive pursuits instead of taking the easy way out and stealing your shit.

No, it will steer them towards taking the easy way out and taking the shit you are handing them.
If you want them to see options as being, in order of preference:

1. Working
2. Receiving handouts
3. Stealing your shit

then you've got to make that same list in order of easiness. They will _always_ take the easy way out. So you make working easier, by giving them wages for it. You make stealing harder by giving them jail time for it. And you jolly well better make riding the hand-out train more trouble than it's worth for those who can get a job. If not, your society winds up losing twice: you lose the productivity of those taking hand-outs, and you lose the hand-outs. Your society would be better off shooting people in such situations, as bullets are comparatively cheap. But the best way of all: by making the "free" ride uncomfortable, and the outlaw track completely unbearable, you can force all rational people to be as productive as possible.

Re:You're such a fool

[mi]

No, I was agreeing with him.

He — Travoltus — is (or claims to be) a manager in a "fairly large IT outfit". Who but not his ilk are responsible for companies preferring to hire ready talent, instead of nurturing it in-house from the early apprentice stages?

Your politically-slanted rant was foolish — there is nothing particularly "Republican" about the practice...

Re:You're such a fool

[kent_eh]

I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one.
What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like.
A newb trying to get into this field has absolutely NO CHANCE.
Go look at the job ads and see what they're looking for as far as experience is concerned. You can't even meet those requirements with internships.
The wages are rising because America's pool of experienced techies is drying up, and fast. There are few to no new tech 'masters' rising in America; they're all coming from Asia, because that is where all the newb jobs are.

So, you're only looking for experienced people, just like everyone else in your position.
Yet you won't hire less experienced (and less costly) people and allow your existing experienced workforce to mentor them and help them gain that experience.

Where do you expect someone to get experience?!?

You (and those like you) made the bed, now you have to lie in it.

Re:You're such a fool

[Travoltus]

Show me a job ad looking for someone with a degree and no experience. Or someone who's taking interns.

Please. I dare you.

Re:You're such a fool

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm a manager at a tech outfit, a fairly large one. Well, I'm the manager at a tech outfit, a fairly small one. And I see things very differently from you.

What we are looking for are high end techies, and the wage inflation is due to our desperation to get high end techies - programmers and network admins the like. Well, I can't afford to pay those salaries, so I'm not in your market. Instead, I go find inexperienced, yet really fast learners who are personable and throw them into the fire.

Sure, they leave after 5 years or so to go earn more money, but I can always find more. The colleges turn them out at a surprisingly high rate.

Re:You're such a fool

[stewbacca]

Where do you expect someone to get experience?!?

My guess is they don't care because their company isn't in the business of building YOUR experience levels? Not saying that's right, but it is reality.

Re:You're such a fool

[stewbacca]

Yes, because there are no Democrats in Big Business? Have you examined the resumes of our Democrat Representatives and Senators? Have you noticed that nearly every Presidential Candidate on the Democrat side rose to prominence via business? Pinning this on Republicans is stupid and cheapens your otherwise well thought out post.

Re:You're such a fool

[jollyreaper]

Your politically-slanted rant was foolish -- there is nothing particularly "Republican" about the practice... Would you prefer the term "corporatist asshole?"

Re:You're such a fool

[stinerman]

I can back you up. I'm 6 months out of college, and I'm still unemployed (BS Mathematics, 8 years experience tech support). I live in an economically depressed area of an economically depressed state, but anything up to and including an hour's drive away simply isn't hiring.

Re:You're such a fool

[KlomDark]

Not trolling, just reading "I'd be happy to debate those social issues, on a state level. Not in Article 2 Section 8? Not the federal government's f-ing job." and not making any sense of what it might be that this person is referring.

Re:You're such a fool

[jollyreaper]

Yes, because there are no Democrats in Big Business? Have you examined the resumes of our Democrat Representatives and Senators? Have you noticed that nearly every Presidential Candidate on the Democrat side rose to prominence via business? Pinning this on Republicans is stupid and cheapens your otherwise well thought out post. Well, I did neglect to mention the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. At this point, I don't know if there are many real Dems left in office. God knows, the Dem-controlled Congress couldn't agree to pass a non-binding resolution to declare kittens cute, let alone bring about any effective legislation.

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I'm sure your senior network admins couldn't possibly use an assistant, who would then learn the job over time.

Re:You're such a fool

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Try a little thing called the US Constitution.

I'd argue that interstate corporations, let alone international ones, violate Article 2 Section 8. But looking at the Bush Administration, I'd have to say that document is invalid when talking about the US Government anyway.

Re:You're such a fool

[letxa2000]

The fundamental problem is that it's more advantageous for each individual firm to hire people with some job experience (because they won't make novice mistakes), but if every company follows that rule then no one can enter the industry.

See also: The Secret of My Success

Unnamed employer: I'm sorry, Mr. Foster. We need someone with experience.

Brantley Foster: But how can I get any experience until I get a job that GIVES me experience?

Unnamed employer: If we gave you a job just to give you experience, you'd take that experience and get a better job. Then that experience would benefit someone else.

Brantley Foster: Yeah, but I was trained in college to handle a job like this, so in a sense I already have experience.

Unnamed employer: What you've got is college experience, not the practical, hard-nosed business experience we're looking for. If you'd joined our training program out of high-school, you'd be qualified for this job now.

Brantley Foster: Then why did I go to college?

Unnamed employer: [laughs] Had fun, didn't you?

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you're like a large number of employers in this town, you're advertising for people with "3-5" years of experience.

You're discarding your future because you want people who can "hit the ground running". You're cutting out serious experience because you don't want to pay for it. And, since it's been about 3 years or so since college students abandoned CS majors in favor of a job that hopefully wouldn't be offshored before their loans were paid off, you're trying to slake your thirst from a mud puddle instead of a lake.

Forgive me if I see this as chickens coming home to roost, but those who don't invest in the future have no future, and those who won't pay for experience have no way to gain from experience. And, of course, when you lay off significant chunks of your IT staff every 2 years or so, you can't exactly expect to have your staff understand the particular needs of your company.

Of course, you and your company may be wiser than that. However, there's plenty of others who manifestly are not.

Re:You're such a fool

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The true tech master understands that like Marvin, his brains will never be used to their full capacity, and thus he's going to need to take a job far beneath his skill level to keep body and soul together.

Otherwise you end up like this guy

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Very well said.

Early in my career as a software developer I used to run into interns frequently. Now, I never see them. Litterally, I haven't seen one in over 7 years now. Very few companies seem to have them anymore and if they do, they take a very small number of them. They don't care because ultimately they plan to get cheap development labor from asia. The U.S. is surrendering all it's technical skills so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that we're giving up software development too. That's ok, there's plenty of jobs flipping burgers around. I think my local Starbucks is looking for a new barrista!

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

The best analogy I can think of would be to compare the economy to an ecology and these hyper-capitalists are the top predators, eating their fill of the best the land has to offer. They shit in a cave because they feel that letting their feces back into the life cycle is somehow ripping them off. Then when they end up with a barren, lifeless land and a cave full of shit, they'll say it's because of the liberals.

iow, the busheviks are like scar and his cronies in the lion king. yeah, i can get with that.

the lion king analogy ends there. the democrats suck, too. they just happen to suck less than than scar's clan.

Re:You're such a fool

[Quikah]

http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?fn=543&fn=6&q=entry+level&cy=US&vw=b&re=14&JSYESREG=1&brd=1

Re:You're such a fool

[Bill Dog]

That's okay, I can't figure out what the hell the guy he responded to is talking about. One minute we're on how the high pay is only in the experienced, and then all of a sudden there's this stuff about community service and "Republican hyper-capitalists" and shitting in caves. ?!?

Re:You're such a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to their children supporting them?!

As a parent, you used to have many children (because some would die), not educate them seriously, and use them as serfs around the farm. They would then settle nearby and divide the burden of feeding you until you die at home of the first major medical problem to come along. It was a Third World-type economy, which sort of works if you have unsettled frontier (or wars or disasters) for dumping the appalling population growth.

But now raising a child is a huge economic drain on the parents. Advances in medicine and public health mean your lifetime and the total cost of supporting you during old age (nursing homes, major surgeries, exotic drugs) sometimes exceed what both you and your only child (who is probably straining to support your grandchild at the same time) could conceivably pay. We as taxpayers have spread that risk among all of us rather than sit back and let you die of bad insurance or poverty.

How could charity money ever be better? It has a way of dwindling exactly when times are tough and it's most needed, and anyone more rational then sentimental will be a free rider.

Re:You're such a fool

[bigtangringo]

Amazing how my original post's parent was modded "insightful" while I'm a trollbaiting flamer. How far we've fallen.

Re:You're such a fool

[kent_eh]

Not saying that's right, but it is reality.

I think it's denying reality.

It seems like they expect experienced people to just appear out of thin air???

Re:You're such a fool

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Worse yet- it's amazing how many proles have never read the Constitution to begin with.

Re:You're such a fool

[Travoltus]

Okay, you found some, can't take anything away from that.

Although I used to see that many ads just for IT newbs in Los Angeles in 1999; and you found 433 jobs spread all over the country.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[billcopc]

If you're having that much difficulty staffing your positions, maybe you need to rethink the requirements. You don't need an all-star team to run a tech shop, you really just need one star and a gaggle of willing juniors.

Not in my city

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ... I think this research is for US only, in Hong Kong technician or so-called engineer's wages always like diving ... LOW!

Today's the "management" got highest pay whatever their ability is, they can mess up a company, walk away a few weeks, and get a job elsewhere doing the same things again and again.

Usually I didn't post anonymously, but I have to say the truth that someone didn't like to hear.

I saw quiet a number of US and Japan "engineer" did their projects like a mess - no preparation work, without a good contact of the 3rd party provider, missing parts or cables or even equipments, following those "standard" procedures strictly without thinking why, and don't know what means "flexible", without double check after the job done ... amazing LOW quality!

I wonder WHERE the guys who taught us these valuable knowledge and experience ...

Re:Not in my city

[DragonTHC]

agreed, though I live in Miami, FL, USA.

Wages here are always low because of the high rate of immigration. The Hispanics are willing to work for peanuts. I'm not.

Re:Not in my city

[Tablizer]

in Hong Kong technician or so-called engineer's wages always like diving ... LOW! Today's the "management" got highest pay whatever their ability is, they can mess up a company, walk away a few weeks, and get a job elsewhere doing the same things again and again....I saw quite a number of US and Japan "engineer" did their projects like a mess ... amazing LOW quality! I wonder WHERE the guys who taught us these valuable knowledge and experience

It should be clear if you put the above clues together: us slipshod US techies are training for management.

Re:Not in my city

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend who is a retired engineer at Boeing Commercial. She is shocked at the poor quality of the engineers that Boeing has been hiring. I would stay away from Boeing planes but I hear that the situation at Airbus is even worse.

Re:Not in my city

[Anonymous Coward]

And those HK government officials are so fond of talking about "creative industry" these days, wasting billions of dollars into meaningless construction projects (e.g. Cyberport) while turning a total blind eye to the people and local culture.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Lord Kano]

I believe there is "insufficient local talent" because most of the applicants that I see look good on paper, but lack at least one critical skill for the job (programming and engineering positions).

If they have a CS or Engineering degree, it's a safe assumption that they can be trained. Invest in your employees, it'll pay off.

LK

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[mcrbids]

It's just more proof that H1-B's are all about cheap labor and not about a lack of talent.

Uh, that's like saying: "It's just more proof that one is smaller than two, and not that two is larger than one."

It doesn't make sense. Simple supply and demand - when talent of a particular flavor is lacking, the price for that talent climbs. People who pay for that talent probably want to increase supply and reduce demand. Those who have that talent want to decrease supply and increase demand.

Econ 101. Come back when you are familiar with this concept...

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Firethorn]

Bingo - How do you think that people get experience? The WoW fairy?

Eventually wages will rise to the point that american businesses realize something they should of been thinking about years ago - You need people of all skill levels. Apprentices are necessary.

Heck, I was shocked to see that the USAF is finally acknowledging that - they would ramp up tech school training, give huge bonuses to keep people in(and get them in), then proceed to force people out when they went over their requirements. Result: Fields were unbalanced, with either too many higher ups or too many juniors. Now they're finally accepting that while things might be a little more 'unbalanced' in the short term, plotting further into the future is a good thing. Because then they can adjust course with a tap instead of a sledge.

Businesses need to realize this as well - while you might loose 80% of your apprentices to other jobs, you should keep at least some of them. Provide the right benefits and treat them right, and you might keep over half of those you want - making the program worth it as you collect talent from the beginning.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Duhavid]

I have worked at a couple of places ( San Diego, CA ),
where I have been part of the process of selecting candidates
for available positions. In my recollection, we had
sufficient qualified candidates for these positions, and
were always able to fill them. Now, there are lots of
candidates who look good on paper, and are not in
practice. No doubt. It is real work finding people,
they are not going to jump in your lap.

Could it be that your company was offering low wages,
and keeping talent away? Is there something about your
company other than wages that keeps good people away?
Sounds like you are ending up with a bunch of wonks.

Personally, I think the outsourcing and H1B programs
have some culpability of late in diminishing the
pool of good candidates. Money talks in most
societies, and people entering college are looking at
the long term prospects, and they are not seeing
a career in programming and engineering.

Inflation etc

[cartman]

The actual data indicates that during 2001-2006 tech salaries grew at 1-2% (which is less than inflation), and during 2006-2007 they grew at at 5% (which is more than inflation).

An obvious hypothesis is that the techie market was in disarray following the dotcom meltdown, during which techies lost real (inflation-adjusted) income. But now the market has recovered, and techies are experiencing wage gains faster than inflation because of cyclic recovery and pent-up demand.

Note that techie salaries are still below their Y2001 levels in inflation-adjusted terms. But then again, techie salaries were probably abnormally high during that period.

None of this is really that surprising.

Re:Inflation etc

[currivan]

Two points:

1. Your personal salary is supposed to grow faster than the industry average salary. You advance in your career and gain experience, which gives you gains on top of the cited increase in pay for any particular job.

2. Compensation in tech is highly distorted relative to other professions. When Kai-Fu Lee got a huge ($10M) compensation package to leave MS for Google, his base pay was just $250,000. How newsworthy is it when a doctor or lawyer gets that?

Non-management engineering salaries pretty much top out at $140,000. Companies are using off-balance-sheet stock options to keep reported compensation costs low and report higher profits to investors. The problem is that the link between merit and income is much weaker in tech than in comparable professions. The result of the stock option lottery has been that way too many unimpressive people who were just in the right place at the right time have been bidding Bay Area houses beyond all reason. Top engineers are orders of magnitude more valuable than bad ones, but are lucky to be 50% better paid.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[tompaulco]

Well, when I look at the list of requirements posted by many companies, I become acutely aware that it would be an extreme statistical improbability that anyone could have had the exact duration and breadth of experience that they mandate. In fact, it almost seems that they are being deliberately over-qualifying the position in order to avoid hiring local talent. One almost expects one of the requirements to read "must hold engineering degree from little-known Indian university."
I'll not get into the postings I have seen for companies requiring expertise in a third party software system that perhaps 10 or 20 companies in the world use, or worse yet, ones that require proficiency in a software system that was developed IN-HOUSE and only ever used by a small subset of the people in that company!
As a Manager, if I were to find someone that had strong skills in even 2/3 of the job areas that the job would encompass, I would gladly hire them, because someone with the ability to master 3 or 4 technical areas would have no problem picking up the one or two more that would be needed for the job.

Slashdot "editors" have an Aussie fetish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you noticed? They seem almost desperate to post stories from, about or involving Australia and Australians.

Australia is the world's smallest continent inhabited by a small human population which is fanatically determined to try and be the centre of world attention, and who wish to be considered Americans Downunder, even though almost nothing of significance ever happens there.

I know this because I live in Australia.

Re:Slashdot "editors" have an Aussie fetish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remove your head from your arse.. the very, very, last thing any Aussie would want to be is more like one of you ignorant yanks..

Your culture is the butt of many jokes in our country

I'd sooner be a kiwi!

-Aussie

Re:Slashdot "editors" have an Aussie fetish.

[Anonymous Coward]

the very, very, last thing any Aussie would want to be is more like one of you ignorant yanks.

That must be why every single aspect of Australian life is modeled on American society.

Re:Slashdot "editors" have an Aussie fetish.

[jamar0303]

Oh yeah- even New Zealand is more interesting.

Re:Slashdot "editors" have an Aussie fetish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I disagree. Care to give any examples?

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Anonymous Coward]

come on mods, this is such an obvious troll.

> People forget that each H1-B visa lasts for basically 7 years

wrong, H1-B lasts for 6 years, not seven.

> Starting in 2000, they went from 65,000 to 130,000

wrong. the quota went from 65k to 195k

> So a lot of H1-B's are going home this year.

WRONG! Post ONE SINGLE URL to back that up. Just one link that says people are going home because their 6 years are up.

Most people who came here on H1-Bs in 2001/2002/2003 are working towards getting a greencard. While we wait for our greencards we get 1 year extensions on our H1-Bs. Not a SINGLE person I know of is going home next year because of the 6 year limit. As long as we have a US employer keeping us on an H1-B, we can stay here and keep getting extensions. We cant change employers and we cannot get a raise but thats because of the stupid greencard laws. These same immigration laws are forcing people from India to wait 7 years to get a GreenCard. Without this H1-extension possibility not a single person from India would be eligible for a greencard.

Pot, kettle, black

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, the mods are on the ball here. You're the one who's trolling.

"wrong, H1-B lasts for 6 years, not seven."

Wrong. H1-B's are renewable for up to a maximum period of 7 years.

"wrong. the quota went from 65k to 195k"

Hahahaha. Not only are you wrong, but you're stupid as well. The actual number depends on who you are talking to. The OP was being conservative. But, using your number, it makes his point even stronger. Even less supply, greater pressure on wages.

"WRONG! Post ONE SINGLE URL to back that up. Just one link that says people are going home because their 6 years are up."

Oh brother. I guess you missed the big news that all the H1-B visas were gone in a single day. Go check out the messages on the various jobs boards. I see people whining about this all the time.

Let's see. You're ill-informed, stupid and have problems with basic comprehension and logic. You HAVE to be an H1-B. ROFL.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[xenocide2]

The thing is, you're in a very narrow market. You're failing to find the people you need, possibly because their talents are already put to work elsewhere. Or perhaps you're simply over-discounting the ability of a good engineer to learn new domains. Nobody wants to know ACPI unless they have to, but that doesn't mean they can't spend time reading the specs and do a good job making things.

On the other hand, I've seen seminars on how to advertise for a position and meet "insufficient local talent" laws, because what they're really after is a small army of moderately trained, but more importantly, cheap programmers. One technique could be to require an unusual skill set, say something like, "Experience with: Python, Ruby on Rails, Apache and uClinux kernel programming".

Just a dollar pump trying to maintain status quo

[Nick Driver]

The actual data indicates that during 2001-2006 tech salaries grew at 1-2% (which is less than inflation), and during 2006-2007 they grew at at 5% (which is more than inflation). ...
Note that techie salaries are still below their Y2001 levels in inflation-adjusted terms.

I'm making more money than ever before in my life, but still struggling with consumer debt, driving a nearly decade-old car, and living in a house that's valued on the tax roles far more that I could ever sell it for, and it needs extensive repairs which I cannot afford today. Yet, my salary today is about the same as what the bigshot corporate VPs made, who lived in gorgeous big brand new suburbia houses and drove a brand new Lexus each year, at my first programming job out of college in the early-mid 1990's. My standard of living today in 2007 is roughly identical to what I had in 2001. All that seems different is I'm older, working harder and pumping a larger volume of dollars thru the system to maintain a status quo that doesn't slide backwards at too quick a rate.

Oh really?

[pkcuff]

Out-of-pocket expenses that were once the domain of the employer are not only the employee's responsibility now, but they're also at an all-time high. Health insurance for yourself and your family? You have got to be kidding. Too bad I can't tolerate the cold, I'd move to Canada. Or maybe I should move to Mexico, get my Mexican citizenship, and then sneak back in. Then I'd have healthcare.

Re:Oh really?

[stewbacca]

Look around. You'll find plenty of comanies with good health insurance. ESPECIALLY in the IT field. I just took a job in Austin and the company gives full family medical/dental/vision for FREE. I've gotten used to paying about $150 a month to insure a family of four, but this new plan is pretty awesome. If you are complaining about no Insurance in this field, then you simply aren't looking around.

Re:Oh really?

[lorenzino]

wHAT is the point of the health insurance in the usa if anywaay once you are sick they will say that this is pre-insurance ?

the Fed lies

[Anonymous Coward]

..they stopped publishing the most important aspects of money supply in the M3 stats. Different private orgs have attempted to reconstruct it, the ones I have seen both had the US running over 10% a year inflation,(12 really) significantly higher than the "official" stats they claim. Just pay attention to what you buy, you'll see it isn't a paltry 4 or 5 %. It's the main reason foreigners are doing the slow bailout from the dollar. The chinese were even blunter,in public,an "in your face" statement direct to the US, directly from one of their main bankers, he said they have no idea whatsoever how many dollars are being put into circulation, that any figures from the Fed are no longer trustworthy, so they stopped accumulating them as a reserve (they held at a trillion and change), and have shifted to other currencies and into tangibles in a big way (buying up long term energy and mineral contracts for example). They are being followed by any number of other nations and big private investors. It's in the biz headlines *daily*. These are clues.

I fail to see how people can miss it either, fuel, home heating, electricity rates, medical expenses and insurance, etc, all up WAY more than 4,5 or 6 percent over the past year most places. Food in particular people should be prepped for some serious sticker shock at the grocery store and at restaurants after the conclusion of this fall's grains harvest, the US does *not* stockpile grain like it used to to keep prices up. We used to have years worth of reserve, now we have at best a few weeks tops. Weeks. We have no practical backup food supply now, and what is there will be driven by cutthroat mercenary commodities brokers. You will be paying closer to what food really costs "real soon now". The US has had defacto subsidized food for *generations*. Biofuel demand is kicking in, it isn't going away, and the era of cheap food is now officially over, and you won't ever see it again. Never. Fixating on just a few cheaper electronic gadgets and prices is not the whole economy, or even the bulk of where people spend their money. And just wait until the loony tunes end times Armageddon Israel firsters hit Iran, hoo boy howdy you are going to see some price increases once the straits of hormuz are full of flaming tankers and half the middle east has production facilities on fire. Sky is the limit then on prices, as oil goes, so goes the world economy, and we will be seeing between 100 and 200 a barrel prices rippling through the economy in a very short time frame. There is very little "spare" production capacity to make up for the oily triangle flows globally, most places are already maxed out and it takes a long time to get new rigs in place. Even if the middle east is not the US primary source for oil, what oil we do get is still based on global prices, and them boys will get what they ask for it once 50% is taken off the market within a few days. And it's coming. This is going to be an economic tsunami, and those that can read this security ocean's signs will take precautions in advance, because waiting for the surge to hit is not the time to head for higher and safer ground.

Re:the Fed lies

[moderatorrater]

Insightful my ass. I used to work for the electric company, and then was a customer for them five years later. According to this AC, my electric bill should have been around 55% higher after 5 years, but my bill was strangely about the same (maybe up to 20% higher - maybe). Claiming that what China does is an indicator for the dollar is ridiculous considering the way they treat their own currency. When they let the value of the yuan fluctuate with the market, then you can use them as an indicator.

And then you start rambling about grain. I remember a couple years back that there was a grain scare, where they said the price was going to skyrocket and it never did. As for paying what food costs, I'm all for it, I would rather pay at the grocery store for my food than pay through my taxes to get cheaper food from our farmers and to also pay them to leave land fallow.

I also love the number of links you've put in your article and the complete lack of references. You read like someone saying that they've found a way to harvest free energy, or that you've disproved the theory of relativity - you throw out some terminology, make some up, confuse the hell out of people and then come to a conclusion.

Re:the Fed lies

[IamTheRealMike]

It's a fact that M3 is no longer published by the Fed. They claim it is "no longer useful" or something ridiculous like that, but the timing is rather suspicious - it's well known that the dollar has been massively inflated to pay for the war in Iraq (just look at the Federal budget deficit). The AC doesn't provide references it's true, but just Google "fed m3" to get the gory details. Then compare the reconstructed M3 for the US to other countries like UK or Switzerland. You'll find that the less allied to the US they are, in general, the more slowly their money supply increases. It's a bad trend.

Re:the Fed lies

[jank1887]

you, good sir, win the alarmist prize of the day. For your reward, come to my completely legit website, where I'll give you SUBSTANTIAL discounts on the purchase of completely reliable gold!!!
***price includes a slight handling fee to offset our overhead costs in the form of 124%

Re:the Fed lies

[Anonymous Coward]

yet housing in many communities, especially in tech heavy communities, is up nearly 100% in the same time frame. your world must be a very strange one where your electric bill is more important than your mortgage or rent (which tends to follow housing prices over time).

oh, did i inconvenience your cherry picking? sorry 'bout that one.

also, the impact of zodiac bush murdering the dollar might not be felt right now, but it is coming. when you import most of your crap and your dollar drops 30% relative to the currencies of the countries that export to you - prices will go up to reflect most of that change.

the bullet doesn't kill you once it leaves the barrel. there is a delay. this is no different, the delay is just longer.

Re:the Fed lies

[Anonymous Coward]

You read like someone saying that they've found a way to harvest free energy, or that you've disproved the theory of relativity - you throw out some terminology, make some up, confuse the hell out of people and then come to a conclusion. Isn't that what most 90% of neo-technicists do nowadays substantially?

Status Symbol

[Tablizer]

There are few to no new tech 'masters' rising in America; they're all coming from Asia

Asia pays Masters better than in America relative to 4 year degrees. The "status" of a masters over a 4-yr has more feet in Asia. Asian cultures on average are more status-oriented than in the US, I would have to say, such that a big title is compensated better there relatively speaking. Plus, the title gets them laid more. Nerds are shunned in the US from a social perspective.

Further, universities tend to be out-of-date with regard to much of technology. Knowing more about 10-year-old technology than a Bachelors is not much of a pay booster. The US depends more on cutting-edge technology because commodity concepts get offshored. Thus, getting your face in the field earlier may be more useful than pursuing bigger degrees here.

Re:Status Symbol

[sydbarrett74]

Thus, getting your face in the field earlier may be more useful than pursuing bigger degrees here. I completely agree. Back in '96, I had the option of finishing my CS degree or having a large bank buy out my contract and hire me on full-time. Guess which I chose? Yep -- I went back to school. And by the time I finished, the DotBomb was upon us. Had I kept working, I'd have four or so more years of experience under my belt, rather than a dime-a-dozen degree which I have yet to find applicable to any position I've held since graduation.

Agriculture destroyed by imports?

[FiniteElementalist]

Er, I've seen this issue pop up somewhere else before, but the percentage of food consumed in the US that is imported is a small minority. According to Reuter's, only about 15% of the food supply was imported a year ago. This is up from bit less than 10% a decade ago, but not overwhelmingly so. Do remember there is quite a bit of protectionism over US agriculture.

Yeah, the dollar is going in the toilet, but we don't import everything.

Re:Agriculture destroyed by imports?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

This is another area where I doubt the numbers strongly. the reason why? I live in a state which was once defined by agriculture and lumber. Ask any Oregon farmer why they don't raise strawberries anymore, you'll get Chilian imports as the answer. Same, but with different countries, for beef, chickens, wheat, apples...it just keeps going and going.

Sure it means we're poorer

[paulgrant]

-it means we're poorer because we transitioned from a manufacturing economy
to a service economy in the 80's (and now import everything).
-and then all those jobs were outsourced in the 90's.

and if you don't think we're poorer - don't take my word for it - when you index mean salary against inflation
(and this is without !energy! & !food!) - you see a decrease in wage rate. And that my friend, is an economic *fact*.

and incidentally a 5.5% raise, means 5.5% of *fiat* money. it means I have 5.5% more paper in my pocket - how much
paper is out in the market (or in this case ledger entries) {which have *nothing* to do with import/export), is the
real question -- and I'ld be willing to bet that more effective money has been introduced in the market through
shoddy loans, then that 5.5% increase pay indicates should exist.

Lastly, it was raised, 5.5% since what? 2006? come on now. compare it 2000 or 99 and then I might be impressed.
And give me a total number of people employed so I can judge relative wealth (e.g. area underneath the histogram)

Re:Sure it means we're poorer

[Attila Dimedici]

-it means we're poorer because we transitioned from a manufacturing economy
to a service economy in the 80's (and now import everything).
-and then all those jobs were outsourced in the 90's.

and if you don't think we're poorer - don't take my word for it - when you index mean salary against inflation
(and this is without !energy! & !food!) - you see a decrease in wage rate. And that my friend, is an economic *fact*.

and incidentally a 5.5% raise, means 5.5% of *fiat* money. it means I have 5.5% more paper in my pocket - how much
paper is out in the market (or in this case ledger entries) {which have *nothing* to do with import/export), is the
real question -- and I'ld be willing to bet that more effective money has been introduced in the market through
shoddy loans, then that 5.5% increase pay indicates should exist.

Lastly, it was raised, 5.5% since what? 2006? come on now. compare it 2000 or 99 and then I might be impressed.
And give me a total number of people employed so I can judge relative wealth (e.g. area underneath the histogram)

Just last week they released a study that indicates that the "poor" in the US today have a higher standard of living then the "poor" in the US in the early '70s. By way of anecdotal evidence, I grew up the youngest in a large family. Today, I have a good friend who has a large family. My friend's career track resembles that of my father, his wife's career resembles that of my mother. His family is significantly better off than my family was when I was growing up.

Re:Sure it means we're poorer

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. that's what people always seem to forget. A lot of poor people now have a lot of things the poor wouldn't have had 50 years ago. Computers, internet, television, cellular phone, premade meals and fast food. And before anybody complains about how the poor don't have all this stuff, think about it. I know lots of people who can't afford to feed their family, but only because they won't stop paying for the luxuries.

Re:Sure it means we're poorer

[paulgrant]

Just last week they released a study that indicates that the "poor" in the US today have a higher standard of living then the "poor" in the US in the early '70s

-- which is why at minimum wage, you'ld have to work two jobs, and put your wife to work to support 1 or 2 kids. because the standard of living is higher. right.

do you hear yourself?

and all those uninsured people, they must not want insurance - its so much more fun to get cancer and try fighting it off while working that aforementioned two jobs.

but I guess if you have those two jobs, at least you're lucky - how many people are *truly* unemployed? wait, I can't tell anymore because the administration STOPPED INCLUDING PEOPLE WHO WERE CHRONICALLY UNEMPLOYED in the unemployment report. people say, like programmers after the disasters of 2000 and 2001 (or anything else that was outsourced).

Call me up, when *you* wake up.

You're either severely uninformed (or a republican). Sometimes I think those two are synonomous.

And no I'm not a democrat -- but I do think that screwing 40%-60% of your population on a regular basis is a
*really* bad idea for the health of a country.

And don't even get me started on the abuse of illegals, (h1-b, l1-b, or tn-1) visa or migratory workers (e.g. non-citizens)

Re:Sure it means we're poorer

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah yeah.. I used to live in a lake.

Re:Sure it means we're poorer

[Attila Dimedici]

-- which is why at minimum wage, you'ld have to work two jobs, and put your wife to work to support 1 or 2 kids. because the standard of living is higher. right.

That's right all those high school or just graduated kids have a wife and two kids to support. Get real, minimum wage jobs are held by people with no job skills or experience. Do you have any kind of idea of what kind of businesses pay minimum wage? I don't, because I've worked for companies that most people would expect to pay the minimum wage that paid significantly above the minimum wage.

and all those uninsured people, they must not want insurance - its so much more fun to get cancer and try fighting it off while working that aforementioned two jobs.

Yeah, there's no way that a family that has two properties and three cars can afford health insurance(the Frost family--the Democrats' poster family for S-CHIP). Or maybe they need to rework their priorities and take care of their kids instead of expecting the taxpayer to do it.
Call me up, when *you* wake up.

You're either severely uninformed (or a republican). Sometimes I think those two are synonomous.

And no I'm not a democrat -- but I do think that screwing 40%-60% of your population on a regular basis is a
*really* bad idea for the health of a country.

And don't even get me started on the abuse of illegals, (h1-b, l1-b, or tn-1) visa or migratory workers (e.g. non-citizens)

Stop paying attention to what the Democrat media (NYT, LAT, Alphabet Networks, etc) tell you and look in the real world around you. I don't watch or listen to any news. I get my news from several aggregation news sites on the Internet. I then compare what is reported to what I experience (don't tell me inflation is high when, aside from fuel, my costs have only gone up slightly), if it doesn't match up I do more research to see if my experience is unusual for some reason. Look at history, the world didn't begin when you were born.

Re:Sure it means we're poorer

[paulgrant]

>Get real, minimum wage jobs are held by people with no job skills or experience.
>Do you have any kind of idea of what kind of businesses pay minimum wage?
>I don't, because I've worked for companies that most people would expect to pay
>the minimum wage that paid significantly above the minimum wage.

and your experience has nothing to do with the reality of the situation;
and if you'ld like a clear demonstration of it, I can arrange to have one
set up for you -- a fight, between all the people who have *only* had crappy wage
jobs (jobs for $10 or under), versus all the people who have had jobs above that
rate. care to wager on who will win?

> Yeah, there's no way that a family that has two properties and three cars can afford health insurance(the Frost family--the Democrats' poster family for S-CHIP).

whats their total net worth?
or are they leveraged up to the hilt like some piss-poor south american country?
ah you forgot the magic words for the last 30 years *because* wages have not kept
up with costs -- borrow until you have negative savings rate (last year was the
event where on average, most americans ended up having negative savings) -- also
an economic fact.

>Or maybe they need to rework their priorities and take care of their kids instead
> of expecting the taxpayer to do it.

You're preaching to the choir regarding welfare. I agree that welfare is a crutch.

>>Call me up, when *you* wake up.

>Stop paying attention to what the Democrat media (NYT, LAT, Alphabet Networks, etc) tell you and look in the real world around >you. I don't watch or listen to any news. I get my news from several aggregation news sites on the Internet. I then compare what >is reported to what I experience (don't tell me inflation is high when, aside from fuel, my costs have only gone up slightly), if >it doesn't match up I do more research to see if my experience is unusual for some reason. Look at history, the world didn't begin >when you were born

Lord you are a fool -- you think I got that shit off of Newspapers & TV? those are reports published by economics departments at universities and government agencies. And I had to spend a great deal of time scanning to find them. Incidentally I read everyday for at least 2 hours on a *variety* of topics, for the last 10 years. And inflation is high dork 'cause your moneys worthless; check out how much a coffee costs or a piece of property (hello, bubble?! were you even awake for that?)

>Look at history, the world didn't begin when you were born.

I would suggest, prior to you preaching, you take your own advice first.
And you don't even have to go that far - check out US history from the 1940's on.

and incidentally, didn't I just tell you I'm not a Democrat -- so whats with all the democratic crap?
They spew as much crap as the republicans - but at least Democrats know they're talking shite instead
of believing its the gospel truth.

Anyway luck in life (you'll need it)

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[hibiki_r]

In my experience, most of the time the problem is not experience in advanced skills: those can be taught anyway. The problem tends to be the very basics, which most people from my graduating college class had in 1999. Many of the applicants seem to be unable to show much curiosity in an interview, and state that their goal is to be running the department in a matter of 3 or 4 years.

When it's hard to find talent for entry level positions, I can't imagine what it can be to have to replace someone with 10 years of experience. 5 people out of school and prayer?

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[GBuddha]

Since this limit wasn't expanded this year (yet), that means lots of H1-Bs are starting to go home. So a lot of H1-B's are going home this year. The local labor market WILL get tighter, and wages WILL rise.
H-1B extensions are not counted towards the quota. People are going back because there are more growth opportunities in India and getting a Green Card is simply taking too long these days. No one wants to work as a software engineer for 6-10 years anymore just to get a Green Card. In India you can become a senior manager in the same time.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[ErikZ]

Why is it so terrible to learn ONE new skill on the job? Do you only hire robots?

I think you are off base

[FranTaylor]

with your criticism. This guy is sharing his observations with us. The fact of the matter is that this guy is squeezed. He has no budget for ramping up or internships or anything like that. His business is cut to the bone so he must hire a team of proven sluggers to get things done now. It's not his fault, it's a symptom of what's happening in the economy.

If you think that flaming at him will solve any of the problems you mention, you are mistaken. You would do much better to find some way to understand his predicament and maybe try to help him to steer things in a more positive direction.

Re:I think you are off base

[bjourne]

with your criticism. This guy is sharing his observations with us. The fact of the matter is that this guy is squeezed. He has no budget for ramping up or internships or anything like that. His business is cut to the bone so he must hire a team of proven sluggers to get things done now. It's not his fault, it's a symptom of what's happening in the economy.

This guy has managers that has managers and somewhere high up, someone has decided that training unproven talent is not cost-effective. It is kind of a tragedy of the commons problem. Engineering talent is a resource that every IT company must share, just taking from the talent pool is most cost-effective for each individual company, but means that the pool will dry up. Training talent is not a smart strategy because, as the GP said, no company should expect the trainee to remain in the company.

The corporations themselves choose that way. They erased the concept of loyalty between empolyee and employer. Loyalty is for suckers when everyone at any time can be fired for what ever reason. If the corporations want to maximize their profit, then the employees will do likewise, jumping ship at the first opportunity. It is a situation that is optimal for each individually, but sucks at the whole.

Re:I think you are off base

[jollyreaper]

with your criticism. This guy is sharing his observations with us. The fact of the matter is that this guy is squeezed. He has no budget for ramping up or internships or anything like that. His business is cut to the bone so he must hire a team of proven sluggers to get things done now. It's not his fault, it's a symptom of what's happening in the economy. I don't really see myself as disagreeing with him. He's explaining why the situation is fucked and I'm agreeing and offering my own 2 cents on it.

If you think that flaming at him will solve any of the problems you mention, you are mistaken. You would do much better to find some way to understand his predicament and maybe try to help him to steer things in a more positive direction. I'm not flaming him. He's too far down the decision chain to be the one to point to and say "You're the one at fault." He's a victim like the rest of us.

Re:I think you are off base

[Bill Dog]

Training talent is not a smart strategy because, as the GP said, no company should expect the trainee to remain in the company.

Why the hell not?!? Superior pay, opportunities, and a good working environment will keep the person. There's no reason not to invest in someone, unless you don't plan on following thru.

Double doh.

[MikeFM]

Maybe in Australia techs are well paid. I don't think they are here in the US.

I make less than I did 10 years ago and my cost of living is at least twice as much and the skill and experience required is far far more than what was required 10 years ago. My experience is that most companies these days are rather cheap when it comes to paying their geeks. I didn't even go for the high paying job offers I had back then - if I had, then I would have been making 6 or 7 times what I'm making now. To many wannabes came into the market and watered down the pay rate and made it harder to prove your skill as compared to the average jerk who got a degree but has little personal interest in geekdom. They can do what they were trained for but they don't have large amounts of extra knowledge that makes them exceptional.

I think geeks need to be more organized. Not as a union but as a trade organization of some kind. Not everyone can become a doctor or a lawyer - they have to pass certain exams and have a certain amount of real world experience. Certifications help but they are often more a test of test taking experience than at real world skills. We need something more organized and rigid. Also I think taking the exams should be affordable enough to be accessible to anyone while passing the exam should be hard enough to weed out the posers. Exams should focus on more than one area. It's not enough to be a network admin or a programmer - real geeks are network admins and programmers and system admins and much more. It should be a test to prove who is really up to the title of being a geek. It should cover history, theory, and practical skills on all levels.

Re:Double doh.

[hondo77]

I make less than I did 10 years ago and my cost of living is at least twice as much and the skill and experience required is far far more than what was required 10 years ago. My experience is that most companies these days are rather cheap when it comes to paying their geeks. I didn't even go for the high paying job offers I had back then - if I had, then I would have been making 6 or 7 times what I'm making now.

It looks like, rather than companies being cheap, you just made some bad career moves since, by your own admission, companies are willing to pay "6 or 7 times" what you're making now.

Re:Double doh.

[MikeFM]

No, before the bubble burst they were willing to pay more. That's a much different thing than them paying that much now. Back then I didn't have a family to take care of but now I do so I have different priorities when selecting a job.

Of course the other side of things - if I'd been one of those who'd taken one of the high paying job offers he got during the bubble days then most likely I would have some major financial problems when the bubble burst. Avoiding jobs that sounded like they didn't have a business plan kept me from making as much but it kept me from being left without a seat when the music stopped too.

hypercapitalism?

[sentientbrendan]

Maybe you are referring to laissez faire economics? To be clear, such a system is not practiced in the US, nor is it anywhere near being practiced here. The US has many socialist policies, and only appears strongly capitalist in comparison with countries like France, which I would argue have gone over the deep end with socialism.

Most of the large companies do have internship programs. However, no one can really afford to give handouts and hire people who aren't capable of doing the work.

I will agree with you that the resistance to paying for schools is ridiculous. Any difficulties that hiring managers have in finding competent employees in the US market can be largely traced to lack of a good education system in this country. Our colleges are pretty good, but the crappy K-12 hurts everyone permanently.

However, you seem to have a theme going about social handouts and how selfish republicans are for not wanting to give them. First of all, I'm not a republican, but I am against welfare and social security. These are nonsense policies that have no place in our country. They are contrary to the basic ideas personal responsibility, personal property, and liberty. Furthermore the policies are wholly unsuccessful.

Taking money from working people and giving that money to non working people just encourages people to not work. Also, that money doesn't just materialize out of thin air, and the poor pay more in taxes proportional to their income when compared to the rich, so if you think that welfare is money coming from the rich to the poor you are kidding yourself. Also, large companies pay *very* little in taxes, so don't think that you're stealing from evil corporations and giving to the poor. You're stealing from the working poor and giving to the out of work poor.

Taking money from working people and giving it to retirees just encourages future retirees to not plan for their retirement. Furthermore, the federal government regularly dips into the money collected for social security and uses it to finance wars. Furthermore, social security is the primary reason that people in lower income brackets pay *more* percentage wise than people in higher income brackets, since people in higher income brackets don't pay proportionally more for social security. Thus social security decreases social mobility by putting a higher tax burden on the poor.

Also, note that social security money is not invested (actually the interest on the national debt is *collected against it*). If you took the money that you give to the government for social security and invested it instead, you would have way more money when it comes time to withdraw it. Given that, and inflation, and that the population isn't increasing enough to support social security (it's a pyramid scheme so you need more people paying into it than cashing out, which isn't happening anymore), it makes no sense to continue that policy.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[signifying nothing]

Also, note that social security money is not invested (actually the interest on the national debt is *collected against it*). If you took the money that you give to the government for social security and invested it instead, you would have way more money when it comes time to withdraw it. Given that, and inflation, and that the population isn't increasing enough to support social security (it's a pyramid scheme so you need more people paying into it than cashing out, which isn't happening anymore), it makes no sense to continue that policy.

This distinction between paying for welfare from current income or from investment is often made, but is essentially irrelevant. The crucial question is how much of our national economic capacity should we allocate to non-productive members of society? Once you've decided on this, it doesn't much matter whether you achieve it through an entitlement to a portion of corporate profits (i.e. having bought shares) or an entitlement to a portion of wages (i.e. payroll and income taxes) .

Re:hypercapitalism?

[DeadDecoy]

I disagree with you on the point that we shouldn't have some form of welfare/social security. Social handouts, as you so eloquently stated, are meant to help a community and to prevent it from collapsing upon itself. Consider an event where a major corporation fires thousands of people for whatever reason. The community may not be able to reabsorb all those potential workers and those people may not have reserve funds to keep them or their families sheltered and fed. Now, if these people want to survive, they may not be above breaking the law. In which case, a handout can help many people through hard times. Sure, there may be leeches, but not everyone is going to have the same (bare minimum) standard of living and the cost of added stability should offset the risk of total anarchy. Perhaps our current incarnation of taxes, welfare, and social security suck, then they should be revised or replaced. I concede that I don't know how or if it is even possible to do such a thing. Otherwise, most of your points are pretty valid.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider an event where a major corporation fires thousands of people for whatever reason. The community may not be able to reabsorb all those potential workers and those people may not have reserve funds to keep them or their families sheltered and fed. Now, if these people want to survive, they may not be above breaking the law. In which case, a handout can help many people through hard times.

w00t! That is submitting to a blackmail.

Lock the slackers up immediately after business has no more use of them, along with their families. Crime prevention - better safe then sorry!

Re:hypercapitalism?

[Grym]

Most of the large companies do have internship programs. However, no one can really afford to give handouts and hire people who aren't capable of doing the work.

First of all, this is not a matter of giving handouts. People are not widget-producing robots. Even your veterans might benefit from teaching an apprentice by gaining greater understanding of a topic or at least getting a break from their usual routine. Your team might benefit from having a younger person's energy, perspective, or generational/(sub-)cultural knowledge. Why is it that businesses are so quick to tout the advantages of racial diversity on a team, yet so daft as to see that such benefits clearly extend onto diversity of age and thought as well?

You see, at some point, investors and business managers are going to need to realize that their businesses MUST to look farther in the future than next financial quarter if they want to seriously compete in the next century, and that absolutely requires making investments into the generalized workforce. It's not a handout if you stand to gain some objectively benefit, now is it?

-Grym

Re:hypercapitalism?

[ShiNoKaze]

Furthermore, social security is the primary reason that people in lower income brackets pay *more* percentage wise than people in higher income brackets, since people in higher income brackets don't pay proportionally more for social security. Thus social security decreases social mobility by putting a higher tax burden on the poor. I really don't know about social security in particular, but last I checked all taxes together actually go up in percentage when you hit a certain income bracket. That's the whole reason some people give charitable contributions and it helps their taxes. If hitting a certain income bracket brought your taxes down, noone would ever give "tax deductible" donations. They'd be tryin to get into the next bracket, instead of trying to bring their income down to the lower taxed levels.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[ardle]

The question "how much of our national economic capacity should we allocate to non-productive members of society?" is best answered by members of the society. "Society" is a term that refers to a specific social group. Typically, this group has a large say in the allocation of national economic capacity ;-)

Re:hypercapitalism?

[ardle]

Ha! Was trying to be funny - making sense is a start. I recomment previewing ;-) Excuse: I'm at a course and shouldn't be typing this at all.
Rephrased, the people who have the money want to hang on to it, not use it so support people who smell...

Re:hypercapitalism?

[freakmn]

As far as income taxes go, that is correct. The reasoning behind saying that the poor pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes is that there are more taxes than just income. A major one is sales tax. Those with less income are more likely to spend a higher percentage of their paycheck, which increases the sales tax they pay. Money put in banks doesn't require the payment of sales tax, so the more you put in the bank, the less you spend in sales tax, as a percentage of income.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[ShiNoKaze]

That has nothing to do with rich and poor though, that's the sense of entitlement that people have nowadays. I am going to be "rich" one day, simply because I live signifigantly beneath my means and save for investments in fields that I've studied. The fact that I started with less than nothing is the whole reason I do it. That is totally people listening to ads and TV talking about how they "deserve" stuff. The "poor" may be a little more susceptible to it because of escapism, but rich mofo's think they deserve more than they have as well. Hell my sense of wanting more than I have is the whole reason I work toward having more. I just don't get deluded into thinking "stuff right now" equals "rich". This is far more an issue with education than rich/poor.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[notamisfit]

Like hell it doesn't matter. One is a decision made voluntarily, the other is made (if made at all, I certainly don't get a say in how much FICA tax I pay) under the threat of force (garnishment, imprisonment, death in a shootout with government agents, etc).One is accepting that human beings are, in fact, human beings, and the other reduces them to the level of a meat cow.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[notamisfit]

Social Security and Medicare tax have a fixed rate, but stop at a certain amount paid in per year. Makes sense, I suppose, in that the payouts will be the same in the end (although, when you think about it, those paying higher levels of income tax really don't get anything extra for their money either).

Re:hypercapitalism?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

FICA is capped, I don't remember offhand but above a certain income level you don't pay in at all.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[Fallingcow]

(although, when you think about it, those paying higher levels of income tax really don't get anything extra for their money either).

Looks like the got rich off the system and its (public) infrastructure.

I'd say that's something.

To say nothing of the fact that if we shifted enough of the tax burden to the lower classes to compensate for equalizing the rich/poor tax rate, those rich people would be the first against the wall in the inevitable revolution that would follow.

Preventing an uprising is probably in their best interest, and worth a few $ to them.

There's also that whole "marginal utility" thing, but whatever.

Re:hypercapitalism?

[sentientbrendan]

> those paying higher levels of income tax really don't get anything extra for their money either.

This isn't actually true. Figuring out how much people take out of the system, vs what they put in can be kind of tricky, but generally the richer you are the more government resources you use.

Obviously, the rich don't take out welfare. However, they do tend to spend more time in civil court. Additionally, the government is generally much more responsive to the needs of the wealthy than the poor. For instance, police tend to ignore crime in poor neighborhoods. If someone is murdered in a wealthy vs a poor neighborhood, it effects a lot whether any investigation or prosecution will happen. Generally the wealthy, who are potential campaign donors have their interests met by local, state, and federal politicians. Corporations in particular spend a lot of money on lobbiests to get special tax breaks and to have regulations changed to their benefit.

I'm generally in favor of lower taxes and a smaller government, but I have to admit that it's only fair that the wealthy pay for their larger stake in our society.

It's a honest living

[devfsadm]

I didn't get into this field because I wanted money. I got into it because I loved working on computers and I thought it would be a great way to make a living. Many people in the late 90's would tell me how much they hated computers and were only in it for the money. I hope that attitude doesn't come back. Last thing I want is to work with an overpaid incompetent tech that doesn't know what an inode is or a tech that thinks the Windows command line went away with W2k. I believe that the salaries stabilized over the last 7-10 years and the wages for people in the Computers field is fair for the employees and employers. I remember the salaries back in the late 90's it was easy to make anywhere between 100,000 to 200,000 a year and some employers would even throw in a BWM as your own company car. I believe the people who love their craft and stayed around after the bubble will gain all the financial benefits from sticking around and will still have the pleasure of working on computers. On the other hand Admins today are asked to do more with less and sacrifice more time for their employers. If the Admins are making more money today it's because they have earned it.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Anonymous Coward]

Although assertive, your comments regarding H1-B visas are quite inaccurate.

Visa holders are required to leave the US after 6 years ONLY if they have not already started the application for permanent residency (i.e. Green Card). Unless the sponsor company forbids it, most of them start their applications almost immediately after they are hired. Approx 1 year after applying for residency (which takes anywhere from 3 to 6 years) H1-B holders become eligible to extend their visa beyond the 6 years, in 1 year increments, until their GC application is either approved or denied.

The H1-B quota you mentioned, only applies to NEW applications and does not affect renewals. There is also a separate H1-B quota for foreign students who finished a MS degree or higher in the US. This year this number was also exhausted almost as fast as the regular quota, forcing US educated students to either leave or find other alternatives.

H1-B seems like a good deal for US businesses and economy because it allows them to get skilled people w/o paying anything for their education. It is probably true that these workers are willing to accept lower wages at the beginning, because they don't have all those expensive college loans. However, it all evens out after a few years of having the same cost of living as any American worker. Since H1-B visa holders, contrary to popular belief, can change companies (admittedly with some extra hassle) employers must pay competitive wages if those skills are in demand.

In the short term, a deficit of skilled workers will drive up the wages, but in the long term the businesses will probably just move the jobs abroad. Most of the major tech companies already have offices overseas and w/o the pain of initial investment the decision to hire is mostly driven by the cost of labor.

Considering all the outsourcing that has been going on for the last years and the fact that H1-B quota was exhausted in the first day, maybe the American economy really needs this source of skilled workers.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Beliskner]

Small H-1B caps and become a tech worker, large H-1B caps and invest in software businesses (which is where the profit goes) nothing to see here, move along...

why you don't work for family

[PandoraLives]

See this is why you don't work for family for free.
5.5% pay on gratis is still nothing.

Actually I thought it was the older version...

[MichaelCrawford]

... of the joke, in which a US dollar is worth far more than a Loonie. I didn't realize what he'd actually meant until after I posted.

Unfortunately for me, I'm paid in US dollars, but I have significant Canadian dollar expenses.

I used to work for these guys

[fawzma]

How can you compare pay rate to a contract agency? For some things you do, you can get paid very high rates for. They will also rip you off in a heartbeat. I ended up getting out of my contract because it was actually cheaper to bring me on fulltime, than pay those guys.

But, on the other hand, their contracts are much better than other companys out there. We have some guys who truely are getting screwed. At least Yoh will give you a paid vacation and has a 401k plan. One other nice thing they did was, they would put in your contract that it wasn't required to work holidays (at least for the company I was at).

Re:I used to work for these guys

[stewbacca]

It's usually always cheaper to bring someone on full time (in the short run). They contracted you because they don't want the overhead associated with full-time employment, or at least that was my take the two months I worked contracts. The 6-week contract I was on was for an Interactive Multimedia Instruction developer and the statement-of-work stipulated a whopping $88/hour! Holy crap I was being payed slightly less than half of that an hour, which is still WAY TOO MUCH for an instructional designer in any field, but especially for a grocery company. I asked them why they didn't just hire me full time for $30 hour, because that's what I'd accept for the security of full time work, and they told me they already have a full time staff of developers and they weren't hiring. Makes no sense to me, but I didn't mind the $40 hour I made for 6 weeks.

Re:I used to work for these guys

[fawzma]

Problem is, these aren't short term contracts where I'm at. I was with Yoh for at least 5 years than moved to yet another "contract". I'm being paid more to be a hybrid employee/contractor, and when they fix this mess, they will pay me even more. Honestly, this is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.

$75/hr as a JEE Specialist

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I must confess that my rate has been going up continuously, even after the tech bubble popped.

I have 10 years experience and I'm now based in New York City.

But, that's not what I mean

[walterbyrd]

>>Well, in how many fields could you expect to be paid high wages as an entry-level beginner, with little experience and no specialty?

I have actually done some research on it. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as entry level Oracle DBA, or SAP whatever. Even if you're willing to work for minimum wage, even if you have certifications and/or a college degree.

I suspect that's the reason that those jobs pay so well - it would be nearly impossible to get started, especially with SAP. You can teach yourself ms-access, html, css, javascript, php, etc. you can even create projects to show you know what you are doing. You can always find some small business that needs some work - even if it doesn't pay well. But SAP? How do you learn that?

So my point is: if you're not already an Oracle DBA, or a SAP consultant, it doesn't do you any good to know how well those jobs pay. Either you already have years of recent, verifiable experience, or those jobs are not for you.

At least, that's the way the situation in Denver looks to me.

Re:But, that's not what I mean

[stewbacca]

Whatever happened to the days when corporations where taking people with no skills and training them? If there is such a shortage of skilled workers in these fields (presumably) then why did they give up on hiring the musicians and the artistic people who were suppoosedly better and faster at adapting computer sciences? I assure you that someone like myself or my wife, intelligent people with Master's Degrees and decent computer skills, could learn SAP faster than your average tech-wannabe. We both have a proven track record of trainability, as evident by our wall of degrees (not to gloat, but reality is what it is) and long lists of honors. Now, If we were bumbling idiots on "the computer", I'd say you could wipe your ass with our degrees. But we are are competent, and we don't even call it "the" computer.

My point being, why turn your back on highly intelligent, technology capable people, just because they lack experience in a specific tech skill such as SAP?

Only 5%? No, closer to *15%* per year

[Colin Smith]

Until the M3 figures were pulled by the Fed, the dollar was inflating at around 8-10% per year. It's speculated that has increased since to around 15%. The Pound is inflating at around 15% per year and the Euro by about 12%.

http://www.ecb.int/press/pr/stats/md/html/index.en.html
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/m4/current/

The CPI and RPI figures are there to keep the ignorant and stupid (That's you... Pick one) happy.

Currencies are becoming rapidly worthless, I recommend you avoid them.

Re:Only 5%? No, closer to *15%* per year

[Anonymous Coward]

I, like Colin Smith, urge you to avoid currencies. Buy gold, or better, pig shit, from me. I have pig shit available at bargain prices, and I can assure you that pig shit isn't affected by inflation either. I will take your silly US dollars, and um... recycle them, yes, that's it, I will recycle them.

America is the best country in the world for gold scammers. No question. If you want to sell foolish people bars of yellow metal, the only reason not to do so in the USA would be that the market is already saturated by the dozens of other "entrepreneurs" in the field!

Anyone who hasn't looked into this, here's the simple explanation for why gold is a stupid idea

Country A decides that the gold standard is great, it eliminates government money control and goes to a pure gold economy, although it continues to trade with Country B. Paper "bank notes" in Country A are merely IOUs for gold deposited in the bank's vaults.

Meanwhile Country B like every modern country of our world has a pure fiat currency. Gold in Country B is merely something you dig out of the ground to make electronics or occasionally jewellry.

Country B can simply sell services to Country A, and demand payment in gold, since that's the currency of Country A. Services are renewable, but gold isn't, so eventually Country A's economy dries up.

This only works against countries that try to use objects as money. If your money is purely abstract, like a fiat currency, then you cannot be attacked in this way. A worker oriented currency although very tricky to implement, is also proof against this attack because it is renewable.

As a result of this and since you can't force every sovereign nation to use the gold standard once someone realises how to run an effective fiat currency economy - no-one can use the gold standard except if they're willing to pay a premium. However you can still sell gold coins to idiots, and it's very profitable.

You might want to check the job ads

[walterbyrd]

You sound like an academian. Here in the real world, in IT, it all comes down to x years of experince with y products. Employers, and academians, give lip service to all that stuff about communication skills, and critical thinking, etc. But, when it comes to actually hiring somebody, they want a long laundry list of experience with several specific products. Take a look at the job ads, if you don't believe me.

Re:You might want to check the job ads

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Well, yeah, if you do your job searching on monster.com. Hopefully you realize that our real job consists primarily of what I've described, and that those x years, y product are just a way for people to (poorly) reduce the problem of hiring us guys (and girl). If you think your job is to work with Java for 6 years (and I've met plenty who do) then you're one of the bad ones.

Re:You might want to check the job ads

[Peeteriz]

Looking at the job ads is the wrong way to go.
I have been doing some hiring/choosing potential employees recently. It's the same as in any position - finance, sales, law, whatever - you put on a laundry list of requirements which basically states "big plus for you if you have done this exact thing before so that we can train you twice as fast and potentially get some tips/tricks/knowledge/contacts from your previous position".

Then you get a dozen of persons who basically the same in terms of these qualifications (if the qualification list was stupid and unrealistic, then simply they all fit this list equally poor), and choose the one who looks the most sane thinking and/or seeming good (the last statement basically equals communication skills). So in the final choice all these 'soft' qualifications mean everything.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Firethorn]

The problem tends to be the very basics, which most people from my graduating college class had in 1999.

It sounds like you're in a hiring position. Does your business sponsor/support the local schools? It sounds like your business might benefit long term by lobbying/sponsoring the local schools to get them back to teaching the basics you see lacking instead of things like klingon language courses.

Many of the applicants seem to be unable to show much curiosity in an interview, and state that their goal is to be running the department in a matter of 3 or 4 years.

You should of course hire the best you can get - as for running the department, tell them they'd have to prove that they're the best available - IE they'll have to be hot stuff to meet that goal; they'll have to earn it.

When it's hard to find talent for entry level positions, I can't imagine what it can be to have to replace someone with 10 years of experience. 5 people out of school and prayer?

Ideally you'd do it much like the military does. They still think in terms of careers and progression. IE they KNOW they're going to loose that guy with 10 yrs of experience sometime(though 20 is the standard). So they try to avoid having anything dependant upon one person. Indeed, they have a career progression track*. People come in, bottom of the pack, moving up through the years by talent, drive, and sheer inertia. The 20 year senior enlisted retires - they promote somebody a step to replace him.

So in your 10 years of experience case - there should be a guy with 8 to take over, somebody with 6 to replace the guy, 4,2, and you hire somebody new out of college.

Does it still hurt? Yes - but it's planned for.

*I'm thinking enlisted

You're also in Oklahoma City, that...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I am still doing $anyoldjob, which is a serious waste of my talent, and doesn't pay much to boot.

Reading your website, I see that you're also stuck in Oklahoma City, that vibrantly thriving megopolis of the I.T. market.

Be glad you're not in Wichita Falls.

Re:You're also in Oklahoma City, that...

[tompaulco]

Reading your website, I see that you're also stuck in Oklahoma City, that vibrantly thriving megopolis of the I.T. market.
Yes, but the ridiculous cost of living in the thriving IT areas is causing some companies to move to lower cost areas. So areas like Oklahoma City, which are big enough to have a decent infrastructure and talent base, but reasonable costs of living SHOULD benefit.

Nonsense

[Skjellifetti]

You will also find that the US deficit as a percent of GDP is lower than all of the other G7 countries except the UK and France (which is tied with us). Claiming that the dollar has been massively inflated to pay for the war in Iraq is hogwash. We have been paying for it by sale of public debt, not by printing money. M2 has been growing at about 6% a year. By comparison, it has been growing at 15.5% in the UK and 7.5% in Canada. The Eurozone M1 growth has been around 6.1%.

While I am really, really pissed off at having to pay for an unnecessary and incompetently fought war, we have a long way to go before the cost becomes an economic nightmare. Where the impact is being most felt is in the lost opportunity cost of road maintenance, healthcare for children, fully funding Social Security, and R&D of non-greenhouse gas producing power sources among other things.

Here is what the Fed stated about M3:

M3 does not appear to convey any additional information about economic activity that is not already embodied in M2 and has not played a role in the monetary policy process for many years. Consequently, the Board judged that the costs of collecting the underlying data and publishing M3 outweigh the benefits.

Yes, IAAE.

Bloooomberg!

[Anonymous Coward]

160K for senior developer, apply now!

T.

What happend to those days? Offshoring.

[walterbyrd]

There was a time that there were true entry level jobs in customer service, or operations. I have a friend who started as an operator way back when, now he earns over $100K/year as a sysadmin. The guy is smart, but never even graduated high-school. But, as you said, those days are gone. Those entry level jobs have been offshored.

You can not get a decent job until you have experience, and with much of entry level gone, you can't get experience.

Re:What happend to those days? Offshoring.

[stewbacca]

What I was talking about was when I was in College (ca. early 90s) companies were recruiting non-computer people to do computer jobs, based on aptitude and things like having a musical or linguistic brain (somehow those relate to programming, which is odd, because I'm a musician and speak two foreign languages, but programming is the most foreign thing in the world to me).

Re:What happend to those days? Offshoring.

[Fallingcow]

There seem to be entry level jobs, still, but they're all at small companies that offer very, very low pay (even for entry level), little or no opportunity for advancement ("we have five tech guys, so I guess you can aspire to be tech guy #1, who makes $2/hour more than you other four"), may well expect insane hours from you (if part of the job description is "support", especially), and these companies will not be using the same stuff that the big guys do, so you still won't get the specific experience you need to break in to the higher-paying market.

As a soon-to-be college grad, I'm fully expecting to spend the next 10 years of my life doing php coding and working with mysql/postgresql. Maybe I'll end up with a job doing Java or Python or some light or mid-level admin work, I guess. The only way out of that appears to be to get a lucky break and have a "right place at the right time" kind of moment; working one's way out of it is unlikely to be a successful strategy right now, as far as I can tell.

Yikes!

[Slashdot Parent]

I hereby sentence you to 1 semester of remedial math or econ. Take your pick. ;)

FWIW: Denver pays about 25% less than NYC, or

[walterbyrd]

Silicon Valley.

I don't know anything about Casper. Casper the friendly ghost town?

Re:FWIW: Denver pays about 25% less than NYC, or

[Buelldozer]

Casper is tied for the first largest city in Wyoming with Cheyenne. They both have around 50K people.

You're in Denver and didn't know this? We're straight north on I25 from you! :D

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right. You are so wrong, it's rediculous. On nearly all of your points.

Let's take the major one, that the U.S. needs cheap H1-Bs. Perhaps U.S. corporations would like that, but they hardly need it. And that's completely different from what the U.S. as a country needs. Like all the H1-B apologists, you equate Corporate America with the U.S. as a whole. Sorry, it doesn't work that way, as the Politicians are finding out. What's good for the citizens IS different than what's good for corporations.

And then you trot out the fake bogeyman of offshoring. Please, go offshore and stay offshore. The reality is that the greatest need is for people within the U.S.. Offshoring introduces so many problems that the projects usually fail, or at best are inefficient.

If it didn't work this way, you wouldn't see so many companies trying to get cheap bodies here.

The H1-B program ought to be completely eliminated. The only ones who need it are the quick-buck conartists. Trickle-down economics has never worked except for the CEOs.

Honestly, I'd love to see all the H1-Bs go back home and prove that offshoring is superiour. But it will never happen, simply because offshoring has too many hidden costs. And a general lack of talent.

Approaches all time high

[spun]

Meaning, it's been higher. Why not report that in the headline? "Techie pay still less than previously" provides a lot less reason to lower techie pay...

They aren't publicly available

[paladinwannabe2]

Mostly companies seem to go for people in college as interns- that way they can get them cheap and then hire them (as experienced) once they graduate. I don't know of anyone hiring graduates as interns. As far as a degree and no experience goes, it's pretty hard to find a job still.

$138K Denver java developer example

[Anonymous Coward]

Salary of $72K in 1990

CPI increase 60% Salary increase 91%

Re:$138K Denver java developer example

[Anonymous Coward]

Well heck, throw out all published and sourced information! One anonymous guy anecdotally may or may not really be making more than average! Idiot.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Bobzibub]

Last week h1-bs were driving down salaries. We are in a doomed industry!
Suddenly wages are at an all time high. Damn. This good news really sucks.

But.. wait for it... H1-bs are driving down low end salary! We are in a doomed industry!
New graduate wages are increasing. Damn.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2442/good-news-for-computer-science-grads-sort-of

Well, We are STILL DOOMED! DOOOOOMED!!!!

This means you're getting a PAY CUT every year

[JewGold]

If the dollar is inflating at 10% a year, and you're only getting a 5% per year raise (generous), your pay is decreasing 5% per year.

That means after 10 years, the American middle class is making 60% of what they were previously.

Add in the massive job cuts of companies and jobs moving to China and India and you have in a nutshell why the middle class in the US is doomed to extinction.

ownership is offshored...

[zogger]

..been in all the headlines lately, mortgages are sold upstream and in huge quantities to people outside the US. A lot of the housing market money gets offshored, and there's more of it in the financing than in the actual construction. So those homes are offshored in economic reality.

Once you get down to it, very few people actually "own" their home nowadays, except for some older retired folks and people still working in the upper middle class to rich zones, probably only 2% or so (that's a SWAG) of the homeowners there in the still working class.

Re:ownership is offshored...

[ucblockhead]

That is irrelevant. The "housing cost" is the amount of the mortgage payment and/or the rent. Neither is directly effected by external forces as both are entirely driven by local supply and demand.

You are WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I say you have absolutely no idea about how the H1-B Visa system works. I am a so called H1-B currently in USA. I was initially here as a student for my MS in Comp Sci and then started working in the States under a H1-B visa. The visa numbers that you are quoting are for *NEW* visas. Here's how it goes: When I first apply for my H1B visa, I am given one for a 3 yr period. A given visa at any time is tied to the company that applied for my visa. However, if I decide to move companies, the new company takes the old visa that I have and applies for a ~new~ visa.. BUT .. this visa is NOT counted in the numbers that you are quoting above. Which means, H1 visas are cumulative. It does NOT mean that there are only 65,000 H1B visa holders at a given point of time. There are much much more number of H1B visa holders than that. This process of renewing a visa goes on for 6 yrs. After that I have to leave the country.

But guess what? If the company files for my Green Card process (and trust me, 99% of H1B visa holders file for their Green Card) then USCIS keeps renewing my visa forever until the Green Card application is approved or denied!! So, your theory that H1B visa holders are leaving in hordes and hence you can breathe easy is absolutely wrong. IF you ever do some digging you will notice that India and China face the maximum wait time for Green Card process just for this reason. I am sorry to shatter you miserable little theory.

Also, as a side note to all those morons who shout from the top of the roofs that H1B visa holders do not pay any taxes and hence are stealing from little children on the street: ALL H1B visa holders pay ALL taxes, including Medicare and Social Security along with Federal, State and Local taxes. Not doing so will get me kicked out of the country :-)

-Anon

Maybe it's partially because of inept recruiters?

[walterbyrd]

IT recruiters are notorious for not knowing anything about technology. All they do is match key-words. Certainly they don't consider stuff like:"hmm, this guy has an aptitude for music, might make a good programmer."

IT recruiters is rarely done for the company that does the hireing. Often it's more like multi-level marketing. I'm working three contracts deep right now. A company doesn't want an outside recruiter to evaluate soft skills, instead they just hand the recruiter a long list of products knowledge that they want.

I also think there are just too many people trying to break in to IT today, and you can't count on an IT person staying very long, and you don't know when your own needs will change. Train somebody in SAP, then that person gets a better job else-where. Or, your company is purchased by another company that doesn't use SAP, or the entire department is getting offshored next year.

Realistically, can you find a job without job ads?

[walterbyrd]

From my experience, friends and family, who are outside of the IT field, don't really understand what I do. I have this to be a major problem with the networking approach.

Also, available jobs often go right to the recruiters, nobody knows about them before that.

Networking services like linkedin are a joke.

So if job ads are not the right approach, what is?

Outsourcing killed the heartland

[heroine]

Maybe it's because the jobs R flocking to Silicon Valley.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not.

If someone hasn't figured out how to write a more or less grammatically correct sentence by the time they graduate uni, odds are not good they're going to figure it out on the job. lolcat captions are better English than some of the resumes I've seen over the last few years.

It's also nearly impossible to teach critical thinking, and frankly I don't have the the time to waste trying figure out whether someone is capable of learning, or whether they're a dreg who will go on to earn a fortune consulting for doing nothing useful.

Yoh's a contract middleman (e.g. auto salesman)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Yoh's way of complaining. And, you really cannot trust any contract middleman to give you accurate data.
Yoh's "job" is to siphon off as much money as possible from the client while paying the tech. that least amount possible. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that Yoh has increased it's bill rate 5% across the board while passing along 1% to the contractor. And, from experience, Yoh has typically paid below the going rates anyhow (based on salaried employee versus contractor and the overall benefit level).

snicker

[zogger]

.."Neither is directly effected by external forces as both are entirely driven by local supply and demand."...HAHAHAHAHA! You need to go run that by some actual professional economists, then we'll talk.

OKC, cost of living, IT salaries, airplanes, etc..

[Anonymous Coward]

OKC definitely has affordable cost of living, and not too terrible on the road traffic situation either. But I looked at some jobs there a few years ago, and the I.T. pickins were very slim and the salaries offered weren't very attractive at all. The only decent paying jobs (network / database / systems admin, etc.) advertised were at the FAA and they were only open to folks who were already federal employees. I thought that was really unfair of them.

The D/FW area always has lots of good paying IT jobs, and the cost of living isn't all that terrible, but the traffic is pure hell. I lived and worked there for 7 years and got out at the first possible chance I could, and got what was probably one of the best 3 IT jobs in W.Falls, but at about a $15K/yr salary cut.

BTW, I see from your website that you're also into airplanes. I'm a pilot and own this Piper Cherokee, pic taken at Oshkosh this past July. Been flying for about 9 years, and an owner for about 6 but only just managed my first pilgrimage to KOSH this year.

BTW, You don't want a twin engine airplane... unless you're made of cash. They'll eat your lunch on care, feeding and insurance. For cheap, nothing beats a Cherokee 140, to go much faster cheaply, nothing beats a Van's RV-(4/6/7/8) if 2 seats will do for you, to go fast cheaply and have 4 seats then get a Mooney. All I can afford is a Cherokee, but it gets me there, in the air, and is comfortable.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[HbInd]

cheap does not always mean bad. similarly expensive does not always mean good.

most the h1b's have not gone home after their visa has expired. they have gotten their green cards and are working here in US - yours truly included. A lot of them have and still going back because there is more interesting work being done overseas now.

what has happened is that the talentless and expensive workers ( US and non-US workers) who got into IT because it was good paying during the boom are no longer thankfully in the IT field as a result of all layoffs. they have moved to other more lucrative industries.

the people who are left are more experienced, skilled workers - H1B's , former H1B's and US workers included.

Re:Maybe it's partially because of inept recruiter

[ErikZ]

How is that different from any other job in the company?

[Re:the Fed lies] some interesting ideas

[gr8scot]

I'd love to see what you post when you're sober, and using your own alias.

Let's start with China. They have large investments in our currency. So what? Why do you think you can't email the words "freedom" or "democracy" to China? Because of all the places on Earth where people live, the citizens of China know that their own national government is responsible for their problems. Not some local warlord or the dictator of the moment as in other countries where most citizens live in grinding poverty, but the Communist Party that has been in power since 1945. So, let the hyper-privileged Party Members try to tinker with our money supply. Money is a symbol, and the Chinese people would all prefer a green paper symbol of freedom than a 1 pound gold brick, if that brick was stamped with the likeness of Mao Tse-Tung, or any of their national rulers since. You're blowing smoke, nothing more.

Different private orgs have attempted to reconstruct it, the ones I have seen both had the US running over 10% a year inflation,(12 really) significantly higher than the "official" stats they claim. Just pay attention to what you buy, you'll see it isn't a paltry 4 or 5 %. It's the main reason foreigners are doing the slow bailout from the dollar. The chinese were even blunter,in public,an "in your face" statement direct to the US, directly from one of their main bankers, he said they have no idea whatsoever how many dollars are being put into circulation ...

1. Which main banker? What's your source? At the very least, credibility demands you post 1 URL to accompany such tall tales.
2. Why should a slashdot reader who is not a member of China's Communist Party or of Comintern think there's any problem when the Chinese "have no idea whatsoever how many dollars are being put into circulation"?

A more general comment on your various references to economics and crisis situations: in crisis situations the economic laws that prevail in times of stability are replaced fast enough to minimize the type of damages you're trying to portray as likely. I did not enjoy The Grapes of Wrath, but I'm told by people who lived through it that its portrayal of barter economics and the like is quite accurate. You should read it, both because it will teach you something about real people in economic crises and because I hope you find the experience as annoying as I did.

Contract rates for VP Eng'g in Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a handle on what the going rate for contract Engineering VPs is in Silicon Valley for well-funded startups?

Hyper-biased single data point

[Geminii]

I've done much better in the past year, but only because (a) I moved to a city with a multibilliondollar mining boom, (b) tech personnel are scarce and I'm at the top of the (local) game, and (c) I went from salary to hourly on short contracts.

Couldn't say what the market has been like outside the city, though.

Re:Well duh. The H1-B visa expansion is also expir

[billcopc]

What you need is a little concept called attrition planning. So you have the one guy (or gal) with 10 years, well, were they working alone ? Barring exceptional circumstances, you should have a next-in-command ready to step up. It's never perfectly seamless, but if you've been flying high with the lone gunman for 10 years with no backup planning, you brought it onto yourself.

It is well worth it, more often than not, to have a bit of redundancy in your business. If that means paying an apprentice to shadow the only guy who knows X-task, then you do it before that guy leaves for a nicer job where he will be able to take a day off from time to time. Far better to pay an extra salary now, than lose a few months' worth of business because no one's there to do the job. HR is a heck of a lot more than just doing interviews and payroll.