IT Labor Shortage Is Just a Myth

buzzardsbay writes "For the past few years, we've heard a number of analysts and high-profile IT industry executives, Bill Gates and Craig Barrett among them, promoting the idea that there's an ever-present shortage of skilled IT workers to fill the industry's demand. But now there's growing evidence suggesting the "shortage" is simply a self-serving myth. "It seems like every three years you've got one group or another saying, the world is going to come to an end there is going to be a shortage and so on," says Vivek Wadhwa, a professor for Duke University's Master of Engineering Management Program and a former technology CEO himself. "This whole concept of shortages is bogus, it shows a lack of understanding of the labor pool in the USA.""

Comments

How much of the "shortage" would disappear...

[Tsar]

...if /. were only available at night?

Re:Been perpetuating the myth since the 90's

[SCHecklerX]

Heh, reminds me of a ITT Tech article on ED I just saw (Possibly NSFW):

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/ITT_Tech

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[SatanicPuppy]

I think a lot of people would rather gouge out their eyes with a spork than work helpdesk. The problem is, you're going to get people who want to work with people. I'm a reasonably social geek (how can you spot an extroverted geek? He looks at your shoes when he's talking to you) and people in the department live in fear of those rare times I have to interact with users. So the hardcore tech people are going to avoid the job; even if they're just benchtech types, there are a lot of better gigs.

Helpdesk is the worst too; users with stupid problems, who then blame you when you fix 'em. The temptation to put in snarky responses to tickets is overwhelming.

MS Licensing

[jay-za]

The real irony here is the most expertise I've seen out of the Microsoft side of things is the guys that can understand Redmond's insane licensing system.

Well, send them out this way. Or better yet, send them to Microsoft South Africa. One of the big reason's we haven't migrated to MS Exchange yet is because for the last year and a half every time I have to get clarification on licensing issues I get a different response. Once, I got an email where the (really helpful) lady contradicted herself twice in the body, and included a document that contradicted everything the body said.

I'm also busy building a virtual test lab. It's the forst in the Southern Hemisphere, and one of the first in the world, so I expected to be pretty much on my own getting it up and running. What I didn't expect is that Microsoft seems to have no clue how to license software to us.

Re:No myth here

[mcmonkey]

Throw a bash prompt in front of an MCSE and watch them look at you like your dog does when you tell him a joke.

Maybe your jokes just aren't that funny.

Re:No myth here

[cHiphead]

Actually that just shows you spent a lot of time clicking the mouse and yelling "WHY THE FUCK ISNT IT WORKING?" instead of typing on the keyboard and yelling "WHY THE FUCK ISNT IT WORKING?".

Cheers.

Re:Completely disagree

[hemp]

Our interviews are not concentrated on any one platform, we have stuff in foxpro, java, python, php, c++ and c#... Foxpro?? Umm...that may be your problem right there...You want stellar candidates to work on a 28 year old technology? Damn, that does sound exciting? Will I get to work on DOS 2.0 too?

Re:No myth here

[schiefaw]

Probably the best impact that a certification has on the industry is that it indicates a certain base level of core competence. Unfortunately software development is one area where someone can make something "mostly" work. In any given language you can probably make something that takes the required input and generates the desired output. The key is to make an application that is stable, efficient, and flexible. It is very difficult for non-programmers to know when an application has met those standards, so someone could have been in the industry for 15 years and still be a complete idiot. Their employers may not have realized that the guy needed to be fired.

For example: I had to rework part of an application that purged files from a Windows directory when an account had been closed for a certain period of time. The application was set to run at night because it could take between three to six hours to run. When I looked at the code, the developer was comparing every account to be purged against every directory in the repository. When he found a match he would delete the directory and continue comparing against the rest of the directories (thousands of directories). So, he had two problems; he wasn't exiting the loop after finding the match and more importantly he didn't realize that he could just attempt to delete the directory without searching since he knew the path. When I reworked the app it would finish in three minutes. The guy who wrote it was the technical lead who had hired me.

BTW, I have no certifications (other than a BSCS).

Re:No myth here

[jollyreaper]

Throw a bash prompt in front of an MCSE and watch them look at you like your dog does when you tell him a joke. Maybe your jokes just aren't that funny. *tugs nervously at collar like Dangerfield* Ruff crowd here tonight.