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

Got a labor shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Raise your wages, the workers will come.

The market will fix the problem. No need for special legislation or guest workers.

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[ATMAvatar]

Why raise wages, when you can convince Congress there is a desperate shortage of labor, so that you can import labor from overseas and bully your workers over wages by tying a work visa to a stick and holding it in front of them?

People need to read the statement for what it is. "There is a labor shortage [at the wage we are willing to pay]."

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[GPierce]

Your response bothers me. It's what happens when people put ideology ahead of common sense and facts.

Abusing foreign workers is the POINT of the whole thing. Those who are lucky enough to get an H1-B visa are then owned by their sponsor.

This is not a free market. If it were, we would just throw the doors open and invite any foreign IT worker to "come on down". We set up the rules so they have to have a sponsor or go home.

In general, they are paid less than a US Citizen - and there is not a lot of incentive to give them fair raises. They can't quit and look for a new job unless they can find a new sponsor.

This is a generality. Like most generalities it does not apply to every foreign worker. And it's part of a larger employment situation where IT workers in their twenties are preferred. If you do not yet have a life you don't mind 14 hour days.

And in the mean time, very few have noticed that one of Microsoft's published future plans is to dumb down IT to the point where any idiot can do it with the right software support. This may or may not be a major threat, but once they figure out how to build an operating system that actually works, you had better watch out.

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[minion]

...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.
 
I actually have to agree with Bill Gates for once... There is a shortable of skilled IT workers. Not of IT workers, but skilled IT workers. How many of you have to work other sysadmins from differnet companies? How many times do you want to go over there, and do it for them, because you think they're so inept that walking them through it on the phone is just too painfully slow.
 
Skilled, the key word for today.

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[Blkdeath]

Indeed, the amount of "paper MSCE" employees grows daily, while the amount of people that actually know what they're doing seems to diwndle at nearly the same rate.

I actually left IT because I couldn't compete with the number of letters people waved around all the time. While they were off in their diploma mill classroom environments I was working for a living, gaining critical knowledge and problem solving skills. By the time I got around to college to formalize my education I was in possession of more knowledge than most of my professors. The courses were pure review. I dropped out a year into the program. My cohort moved on primarily to help desk and other menial IT positions. About 5% wound up with skilled IT jobs.

Prior to my college fiasco however I was in a shop that specialized in consumer and small business IT needs. I really enjoyed how my high school dropout boss who taught me more about IT than all my professors combined used to treat these paper MCSEs who'd walk through the door. I'll never forget the guy who came in right out of the clear blue and proclaimed that he would accept a position at a salary of $100k/year. My boss asked him what experience and/or qualifications he had, he responded "I've just completed my MCSE certification."

My boss said something about toilet paper and I was already in tears. My ears stopped working I was laughing so hard. I wonder if he found his dream job. :)

Then there's the guy who phoned in to the store asking for clarification of Windows 98's routing capabilities as he was constructing a network consisting of roughly a dozen computers, two NICs apiece running CAT-5 crossover cables between each computer to form some kind of, well, I guess modern token-ring setup of some kind. My boss offered to sell him a switch but was told that was excessive hardware purchase (as if the extra dozen NICs were just included with the PCs or something) and that he was an MCSE and he knows what he is doing! Now will you help me or not?

Yep. Told the guy he should become a garbage man because he's too damned stupid to work on computers. The guy came down to the store to continue the conversation in person. My boss apologized; said he was out of line. Said he was too stupid to be a garbage man. Never heard from Mr. MCSE again. Never did sell him that switch.

It's all the wording for HR

[techpawn]

there's an ever-present shortage of skilled IT workers to fill the industry's demand

The key there is SKILLED. Most of the skilled IT people are already at work for a company or for themselves. What you have left in the pool is a bunch of low level first year grads who haven't seen the environments that these companies offer.

So, yes it's a myth that there are not enough people to fill IT positions, there are lots of code monkeys willing to pound keys for their banana but what are the skilled IT people that these larger companies are looking for out of the box and where will we find them right now?

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[SatanicPuppy]

Shrug. We've all been fresh out of school at some point...A lot of the time I'd rather have a recent grad who's willing to learn than a guy with 10 years experience who thinks he doesn't have to learn anymore.

I seriously get tired of people who expect high-end experts to explode out of the ground whenever they want one. Lot of the time you're going to have to settle for some people who are bright, young, and inexperienced. Mix them up with some more experienced workers, and they'll do okay.

Lot of people say, "I don't want to train someone, knowing that he's going to leave as soon as he gets a better offer." The English translation of that is: "I did this guy a favor by hiring him, and piling crap work on him, and I can't figure out why he'd be so disloyal." Make your company a good place to work, and you won't have such high turnover.

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[wtansill]

The key there is SKILLED. Most of the skilled IT people are already at work for a company or for themselves. What you have left in the pool is a bunch of low level first year grads who haven't seen the environments that these companies offer.

Which is why I walk around with my shorts in a knot most days.

Where do you get these "skilled" people? It takes years of experience. When companies say that they are "only outsourcing low-level jobs", I call bullshit -- they are, as the farmers say, eating their seed corn. If you don't take in new people and allow them to mature on the "low level" stuff, where the hell does management think that the highly skilled people will come from? You don't normally step out of school with 20 years seniority and experience already under your belt...

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Grimbleton]

Bingo. They don't want the guys who want 95-120k a year, they want to guys who'll be happy with 25-35k a year and work 12 hour days.

Re:No myth here

[MightyMartian]

And even with this shortage, the IT academies and schools out there are churning out MCSE's by the truckfull - rather than getting useful skills, they are giving some poor schmuck a certification that means really little in the real world, and which doesn't really have a descent career path anymore..

MCSEs represent something far worse than that. They represent a severe compartmentalization of skills. After twenty years in the IT profession, I'm pretty much going to be forced to take my MCSE mainly because you just can't get a job. For some reason, management believes that this frivolous piece of paper means that a guy is some sort of uber-tech. Well, I've seen these uber-techs melt when they had to deal with a Bind server, or anything particularly weird or challenging.

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.

Cheap IT labor is a myth

[Black Art]

When they talk about an "IT labor shortage", they are talking about how many people are willing to work for low wages and yet have a large pool of skills, talent and education.

There are plenty of people who have the skill sets they need, they just don't want to pay the kind of wages it takes to get them and keep them.

I am not talking about kids just out of college expecting a high paying job. I am talking about companies that want people with 10+ years worth of experience and want to pay them like a kid out of college.

It has been true for a very long time that the only way you can get a real pay increase in IT it to move somewhere else. Until companies start looking at their employees as a resource and not an expense and pay them accordingly, the situation will not improve.

All these cries to let them import labor is to allow them to rent temporary employees who can be deported at the first sign of "getting uppity" for demanding a living wage.

Re:It's A Fact - NOT!

[hax4bux]

I am a "highly experienced J2EE person" and as a contractor I sit for interviews once a year or so.

I am not disagreeing w/your experience, simply because I wasn't there.

My point is most hiring managers don't know how to interview and frequently don't even know what skills are relevant.

My interviews routinely turn into some sort of geek dick size war (and the candidate must be polite) or a beauty pagent (where did you go to university, my professors are more glamorous than yours) or some other stupid diversion rather than the job at hand.

My least favorite is: are you kewl enough to work in our clubhouse? It's just a job, I get all the love I want at home.

It doesn't help that most jobs are using API's they barely understand. So when someone asks me an obscure question about XML bindings or hibernate, they frequently don't recognize the answer.

Anyway, I'm a little tired of hearing about "the shortage" when in fact there is none. The "shortage" (IMO) is manufactured.

It really is bogus and here's why..

[jskline]

I had not read through all of these today but having survived 5+ years now of business only hiring temps and "independent contractors", I have a fair amount of knowledge in the area. Because of this "outsourcing" that many of us went through, our jobs were cut by moves in business to cut IT costs and improve profits for the shareholders, et al. This really is nothing more than devaluating the duties and tasks that we do to that of a high schooler working at a local Mickey-D's.

The real "shortage" comes about because business is NOT able to find someone willing to come in and be an all-purpose IT person, network guru, server admin., etc. and accept pay to the tune of $11 per hour. Thats the real shortage issue. So they will further outsource the jobs and bring in foreigners on H1B's to do those jobs at substantially reduced rates. IBM and a handful of other international companies are notorious for this.

Really what it will come down to is let these large companies hire the kids for $11. You really do get what you paid for. Eventually when things begin to collapse for many of these companies, they will be force to bring in people with knowledge and experience, and best of all; pay them what they're worth.

Remember that: "What goes around; comes around"

Distorted perceptions

[joeflies]

I think that there is a bit of a distorted perception that there is always a shortage of IT labor, because no matter where you work, no matter how many people are in your staff, you'll believe that your department is understaffed and overworked. Have you ever heard an IT staff say "we have just the right amount of people for just the right amount of work?"

The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[Panaqqa]

Many times in a 30 year IT career, I have seen Human Resources people who are clueless about technology writing ads that have qualifications that nobody could meet. Examples: 5 months after the introduction of the JDK 1.0, there were ads asking for 3-5 years of Java experience. There are ads currently out there asking for 3-5 years of ActionScript 3 (introduced I think June of 2006). Requiring a bachelors degree for an entry level help desk position doesn't add up to a healthy pool of qualified applicants either.

Job ads often have a huge list of "requirements" as well, and an applicant missing even one of them might well be screened out. An example of this? Seasoned web developers might not bother listing FTP on their resume. In their view, requiring a web developer to have FTP experience is like requiring a carpenter to know how to use a saw. But that failure to list FTP on the resume might well mean the application is automatically trashed. I have seen HR screen out applicants for a web developer position because they neglected to list HTTP, DHTML, and Photoshop on their resume. And don't get me started about HR's lack of understanding of the difference between a web developer and a web designer.

If HR departments are the source of some of the statistical and anecdotal evidence being trotted forth in support of the existence of this "shortage", I am not surprised the picture looks grim.

Apprenticeships and lock-in

[evilandi]

where will we find them right now

There's yer problem, right there, guv.

The problem is that the IT industry, like many industries, expects to find a pool of skilled and experienced available staff, at the drop of a hat, without the company putting in any effort themselves.

The solution is apprenticeships - a variant on "I wouldn't start from here", I admit, but the only workable solution nonetheless. Start the recruitment process two years in advance, and train up the monkeys to become experts. Another benefit is that apprenticeships, unlike university degrees, have no fixed syllabus and can quickly flex to meet new skill demand trends.

The problem with apprenticeships is that various governments have regulations against locking-in staff for long periods. Companies who invest in apprenticeships see their newly-trained staff bugger off to a better-paying competitor, who can afford to pay more since they haven't invested in apprenticeships, the moment they qualify. Governments need to relax regulations on locking-in apprentices to their sponsoring employer. Governments also need to give companies better ability to fire apprentices who fail to meet expected grades on time.

Cheap, experienced, immediately available - pick any two.

Re:No myth here

[moderatorrater]

I can speak of my experience for the western US (but east of california) and say that it can sometimes take months to get a good candidate to apply. There are a lot of mediocre or bad programmers out there, most of them with degrees. I'm very suspicious of the claims in this report; they've looked at graduation rates (worthless, since most of the programmers I work with don't have a degree or have a degree in something other than CS) and they've asked HR about applications and overall satisfaction of the people that were hired. At the large shops I've worked at, there are a lot of mediocre programmers that aren't great, but they're good enough to not get fired. If you're someone like Google and you have stricter standards, I could easily see a shortage of good programmers.

So, to sum up, I see no shortage of programmers, just a shortage of good programmers.

Of course testers are well payed

[Nursie]

But who the hell would want to do that for a job? Honestly....

I found out our testers are payed on a par with or more than software developers the other day. At first I was a little angry, because I get angry whenever anyone is paid more than software developers because "we make your fscking products!".

Then I thought "What would it take to get me into that job?" and I realised they were welcome to the money.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[MrMarket]

MOD PARENT UP.

This is what we are facing in our organization. About 66% of our openings are technical, but our HR director is clueless -- not only in writing effective job descriptions and requirements, but also when it comes to setting compensation packages that attract good candidates. Our business analysts (which are a dime dozen) make as much or more than our application engineers.

It's almost a conspiracy: inability to hire good application engineers, limits our ability to automate business analytic processes, and increases the demand for spread sheet jockeys. Good times.

It's all about wages...

[Anita Coney]

Scott Kirwin, founder of the Information Technology Professionals Association of America, put it best:

"The problem is not a lack of highly educated workers. The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S. Costs are driving outsourcing, not the quality of American schools."

http://www.fispace.org/home/2004/01/_when_i_woke_up.html

Re:No myth here

[Foofoobar]

LOL. Never trust the candidate with the cert. It's the candidate who who has spent time in the field for 5-10 years working with the same tools that you are looking to use. This person knows the ins and outs, how to integrate them in weird setups, tweaks and patches for odd problems you may encounter, etc. That cert will never be able to tell the candidate how to figure out all the things that experience will be able to give them and experience only comes with spending time in the field and at home tweaking and learning.

I think this is where the hobbyist has the advantage over the person with the cert.

Re:Completely disagree

[LuisAnaya]

Also...

C is not longer an important language to learn in College. If you want to get a good C programmer, you're looking for somebody of the ages of 38 to 52 years of age. If you're stuck keeping up with legacy systems, that's what you're going to find out.

Now programmers learn Java in fancy IDE's. Never having to learn a pointer or a pointer re-direction. Make sure that you're not maintaining PL/1, COBOL or Assembly... if you have someone decent maintaining that code, make sure that he/she is happy.

You have to keep in mind that a lot of those folks come out of 2 year colleges or with the liberalism in today's universities, many of them spent their time taking macrame or latin literature as part of their CS degree.

My 2 cents...

Re:No myth here

[stinerman]

I've taken to writing a statement as to why I don't have any certs and including it with my resume. I've had places turn me down for not having an A+ cert, even though I have 8+ years experience in the industry.

You're right on the other count, too. 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.

Why should I put up with IT?

[BlueZombie]

Off the cuff estimate, roughly 90% of the best and brightest IT minds I personally know and including myself, the ones that git-er-done, have given up on long days, fixed pay, lousy conditions, incompetent management, threat of outsourcing, and mental cruelty. A lot of your "skilled" people bail out. We're smart, so we take jobs in lower paying, but more secure and laid back not-for-profits, or find a new second career. We've been in the industry for 10-20 years and want to do things like have families, and see our friends once in a while. I was personally told repeatedly by my management that they could hire 2 college grads or 4 foreign workers for the price of me and if I didn't like 80hr weeks I was welcome to leave. So I did.

There's always a shortage

[hey!]

of the best people.

When you bring lots of good people into an area, you don't take jobs away from the less skillful, you create new jobs.

The problem with the H1B program is that it is structured, not just to bring in already abundant entry level labor, but to prime offshoring efforts by kicking that labor out of the country once it's obtained enough experience to be really useful. At the very least, we should not have a guest worker program for highly skilled workers, but one that clears the way for permanent residency and citizenship.

Even better, we should scrap the whole thing and fund a massive postgraduate fellowship program in a variety of technology areas, each fellowship accompanied with a handsome stipend and an invitation at the end to become a permanent resident. Of course, some knuckleheads would say it's unfair to tax Americans to pay for fellowships they can't apply for, which completely misses the point. I'm not talking about people of the caliber that are going to have trouble finding a job. I'm talking about people whose presence will create wealth and jobs.

Or, employers could compete...

[weston]

Governments need to relax regulations on locking-in apprentices to their sponsoring employer.

There is a market solution that doesn't involve short-term contract slavery: employers could compete to retain their valued and newly-trained staff.

Some organizations already do this, and succeed in keeping people for a long time. Others seem to never want what they already have: The new guy with the shiny resumé can command more than the solid employee they *know* has reported to work for two years for $10,000 less. So they talk about salary freezes, while they're hiring people for more -- and that's to say nothing of what they're paying the guys in marketing....

Of course, the market seems to let some of both kinds of organizations survive, so maybe the second type is on to something.

Re:No myth here

[bjourne]

Programming is hard. In fact, so hard that merely three or four years at university won't make you more than decent at it. The best programmers are the ones who love doing it, who got their C64 at 10 and then spent years learning about computers in their spare time. Understandably that is the kind of programmers your company wants. Programmers who have learnt so much by themselves that it would amount to 10+ years in university for someone new in the field. Programmers that are really good, that are better than average. Does your company pay them a fair salary in comparision to their education and skill? Or does it pay average salaries for very much above average skilled personell? If it is the latter, then it's no wonder that you have trouble recruiting people. So, to sum up, companies that are to cheap to pay decent salaries or to offer training programs for their mediocre programmers have nothing but themselves to blame.

Re:No myth here

[computational super]

I've taken to writing a statement as to why I don't have any certs and including it with my resume.

Ok, flame-resistant suit on here, but - what, exactly does that statement say? In other words, why *don't* you have any certs? You say you've been turned down for a job for not having the A+ cert. You and I both know that it's a trivial cert to get, right?

Either the test is trivially simple for you, so you can pick up a quick "A+ certification for dummies" book, skim it on the train over to the testing site (or even walk in with no preparation at all), pass the cert with flying colors, and be out $100 (if you can't get your current employer to cover the cost of the test, which you usually can) and an hour of your life, and not be turned down for a job again for something so trivial.

Or - the test is difficult, it takes some preparation and experience to get through - in which case having one actually *does* say something (much to yours and my surprise) about your knowledge, determination, and commitment.

I was required (strongly asked) to get a couple of Java certifications by my then-employer back in '01. By then I'd been doing Java for a couple of years, so I figured I'd blow through the test with flying colors. Oops - turns out there were quite a few things I didn't know. Turns out that I actually learned some things studying for the test, things that actually turned out to be actually useful.

Contrary to /., taking a test doesn't make you stupider. Passing it doesn't mean you're smart, but it does mean you're at the very least smarter than somebody who can't even pass the test.

Re:It's A Fact

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I suppose it's a variation on the tragedy of the commons; each employer's waiting for the other companies to train people so they can poach them away.

Re:No myth here

[plopez]

why *don't* you have any certs?
because it can cost you huge amounts of money to get one unless your employer actually agrees to pay for it?

I've looked at certs and paying for them out of my own pocket. But $10k or so for something that will be obsolete in a few years isn't cost effective for me.