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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.""
I can't speak for the US, but I can state that in South Africa we have a fair number of IT workers, a handful of which are actually worth anything, but on the whole not a shortage. The area of the market that DOES have a shortage, however, and a really massive one at that, is the Tester and Test Analyst side. We are struggling to get even halfway decent people.
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..
Testers, on the other hand, have a great job, good money, and a really flexible career. They also develop a lot of really useful business skills to augment their technical skills, and have no problems finding work.
I can't stand those ComputerTraining.com ads on the radio that reinforce this myth. Find me one person that has a starting salary of 70k from their program.
And I will second that, I am sure in other parts of the country, skilled IT are a dime a dozen. But where I am at (Midwest) actual skilled IT people are hard to find. Sure you can find the guy/girl who was promoted to IT from accounting back in the 90s but that doesn't make them a skilled pro. Show me a cross reference of IT folks who actually know what they are doing, have a passion for it, and I bet that subset is really small. I have no need for joe basement dweller who runs his guild website and knows how to install a video card. I also dont have any need for dilbert principle folks who are in waaaay over their heads and cannot configure a server without serious handholding or an in depth checklist.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
We use some H1B's (and try to get them green cards).
We pay a "decent" salary-- my buds at HP earn roughly 10% more-- those in the oil field earn about 20% more (but have a history of frequent layoffs). We have solid benefits that exceed those of the oil field and HP.
The reality is- we are about to lose positions because we cannot even get under-qualified people to apply for them. Now part of it is that we require people with at least a couple other jobs experience under their belt. Part of it is that being a big corp, our bureaucracy is pretty harsh. I have a friend who was sucked into Schluberje (sp) recently and there you literally have to take a driving class (as a frikkin programmer???) as part of your job duties. Bureaucracy gone mad. I'm sure many of you have seen office space--- we are 3x office space. It really takes a special person to fit in a large corporation. Jobs that would take 2 hours at a small company (and be very satisfying) may take three months. I even know of one project that was finished a year ago and it is still stuck waiting to be prioritized for release.
Sarbanes Oxley takes all the joy out of being a programmer. It just sucks the life out of it. Coders like to code 32 hours a week-- not 32 hours per quarter. You can't even maintain your coding skills at those levels.
I think the IT Worker crunch IS coming- and it is going to be wicked nasty starting in about 2012.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
and let the job market correct itself? We have these same issues in my field. If people were payed what they are worth we wouldn't have to import workers. I see these claims of shortages of workers in any field as simply industry's (quite successful) attempts to suppress wages for a long time to come, rather than be forced to pay the wage that the current supply-demand for that skill set dictates. Once society sees the adjusted pay grades, incoming students will adjust the supply accordingly. You don't honestly think everyone is getting a business degree because they perceive that those are the jobs most in demand. No, everyone does business degrees because the work-pay ratio is seen as being much better in that field than others. Imagine the responses of CEO's and CFO's if we showed that there was a shortage of skilled executives. Actually given the current state of affairs in some industries it seems there is certainly a shortage of skilled CEO's and CFO's. Now rather than pay the existing LARGE salaries and incentive packages, why don't we just import some Cheif Officers from outside the US.
Sure there may not be a shortage of IT resumes on monster... But there sure is a shortage of people who can back up their resumes with actual demonstrated work/skill.
We are offering market wage, and we are hiring entry level people, maybe 1 in 30 of the people we interview actually demonstrates the minimum of critical thinking and problem solving skills needed to be a decent software developer. Our interviews are not concentrated on any one platform, we have stuff in foxpro, java, python, php, c++ and c#... So our interviews are focused on critical thinking and problem solving. We have a couple basic problem solving questions and 2 algorithm questions which we routinely ask.. This is stuff I learned in high school, or my 2nd year algorithms class in college. People who are professing CS degrees and 0-5 years experience are routinely getting these questions wrong.
Even the few people we have hired over the last 3-6 months have been disappointing in their ability to a) learn new languages, b) learn and follow best practices, c) demonstrate real troubleshooting/bug fixing skills. C is probably my biggest pet peeve, as a manager I don't know how many times in the last 6 months I've had to go to a programmers system when they say "I'm getting this error and I don't know what it means" and the error message very clearly lays out the problem, the line it is occurring on, etc...
Either CS degrees are seriously lacking in rigor since I participated ~ 8 years ago, or they are just rubber stamping people that shouldn't be passing the classes.
There could be many other reasons. Some are polite, some are not:
* Your company work environment could suck and frighten off people.
* You could be Microsoft or SCO, with a history of intellectual property deceit, and no one competent wants to work there.
* Your pay scale could be too low.
* Your location could be too far away from where such technical personnel like to live: this makes recruitying very hard.
* Your advertisement could have been poorly written.
* Your recruiters could have been one of those off-shore call cents.
* You could have failed to fund your staff publishing their tools or attending conferences and seminars, where they could network with their peers and make contacts for you.
* Your concept for J2EE could be so ill-conceived that no one competent wants their name on it.
* Your HR department could be so slow that any candidates disappear by the the time you're ready to interview them.
* You could be insisting on too much experience and not willing to pay for training.
Etc., etc., etc., etc.
I've seen all of these happen. A burgeoning number of out-of-work IT professionals would halp with these, but you can only unemploy or underemploy so many before the competent people go to other fields.
Here's a quote from the article:
In the case of industry business people, the motive is to get the Feds to loosen immigration restrictions for cheap foreign labor, to increase supply of workers in order to reduce labor costs and to justify offshore outsourcing efforts, Hira said.I get lots of offers to work in NYC (and other places like Iowa, Kansas, etc.) in IT but at the wages I was making 20-30 years ago. If businesses are going to expect first-world expertise (50+ years of Java coding) but pay third-world wages (you can get by fine on $40/hr in NYC doing senior level coding), well....they have their labor shortage.
One of the best indicators I found for how desirable a field is for workers is to look at the percentage of college-educated workers that are female. Sad fact is that the IT field has very few female IT coders...they've moved into BA roles or PM roles because those jobs won't get outsourced to cheaper labor pools and these other jobs have some career paths defined. Women do tend to take a longer view of work than men, especially at the career level.
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
Pick any two.
How about someone who's been around for a while but does want to learn, who likes to learn new things, who wants to get their hands dirty and likes to solve problems? Would you hire someone like that?
Ditto. I have been working contract for over 5 years now (some of these contracts lasted 9 months to a year so I haven't been looking consistently during those periods.) My previous contract job was supposed to go perm. My supervisor loved me--we even had tickets to travel to the home office in the UK the next month. It was my dream job. But then, her boss nixed the deal making the excuse that he wanted someone with supervisory experience (there was no one to supervise). After offering the job to two others, who turned it down flat because it didn't pay enough, he then re-arranged the job and dropped the salary by 10-12K and hired a fresh-out. Personally I never thought it had to do with managerial or supervisor experience (that was never requested)--he probably decided he didn't want to pay a fee to the employment agency that I had been sent through. He just wanted something cheaper.
After that I tried for the full six months (and even prior to leaving the previous job) to get a full-time job. I did get several interviews and even some second interviews. I'm now working another contract job. The people love me. I would love to get on steady, but the problem is (as usual) I don't work for the guy that could make it happen. He lives in another state although he travels here frequently. It will depend on how much clout the people working for him have.
I had NEVER previously had this much trouble finding full-time work. I dress appropriately, am well-spoken and my salary requests are certainly in-line. My only take on all this is age discrimination is rampant. Which is why the IT shortage is a myth. There are plenty of skilled workers, but they don't WANT the good, but experienced ones. They rather have the young and CHEAP ones.
Most of the time you can forget looking at Monster or other job boards. HR who doesn't understand a bit from a byte, writes up these things like you're ordering a pizza. And if you don't have the matching skills, you're resume is going no where. Which means you'd have to lie to get through HR and find what qualities they REALLY need (risky) or you better know someone on the inside that has the ability to request your resume be sent through. The other problem is when you interview with people who are probably 15-20 years your junior. You can see the look on their face when you walk in.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Back the early 1990's, the recruitment agencies and employers were looking for people with 5 to 10 years experience of Windows 3.0/3.1.
...", and helpfully omit the "looking to move into full-time project management" bit.
And during the start of this decade (2001-2002), just when the dom-com bubble burst, employers were sending out the same job vacancy to every possible recruiter they could find, thus creating a mirage of job vacancies, each of which would be described slightly differently, but the location was identical. The most deceitful was the advert where the agency would advertise "We are looking for a software engineer with 10-15 years experience
When you see job descriptions that are so specific down to the qualifications, API's, hardware, and software experience required that is a dead giveaway that they already know the person that they want.
Otherwise if the job sounds too good to be true, they are probably phishing for new ideas, or just sending out general job descriptions and not real vacancies.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Similarly, I once applied for a contract requiring experience with "RDBMS's". No sweat. On my resume I had listed Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc., as databases I have working knowledge/experience with.
I received a response from the agency rep stating that they were concerned because I did not have any experience with an RDBMS. These are people who staff IT positions everyday.
It's these kind of clueless workers who, unfortunately, are usually in the position of determining which applicants are qualified for a job. I'm certain they, at least in some small part, contribute to the perceived shortage.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Reading all these comments...there seems to be a common theme that "There is no shortage of IT workers, just a shortage of good ones."
Why is that? I'm really asking because I don't know. Why are the majority of practicioners of our profession bad? This doesn't happen with other professions does it? (doctor, lawyer, etc.)
I have a couple of theories:
1) Working in IT requires constant learning and keeping up on the latest technologies. People who already work 60 hours a week and have families just don't have time to keep their skills current. They trust their companies to keep them trained, and the companies let them down.
2) There is no consistent college preparation and certification like there is for every other professional field. I'm a software developer who has a Computer Science degree, but most other developers have MIS degrees, Math degrees, Engineering degrees, no degree, etc. Lots of people who are clever "coders" are actually poor overall software developers.
Anyone have other clues?
Part of the requirements game is intentional. Employers need to demonstrate that they -tried- to find US workers to fill a position before they can apply to hire an H1B. Trick is, when they hire the H1Bs, they don't have to demonstrate that the foreign workers actually meet the requirements and standards they held domestic applicants to.
So HR departments have become very shrewd in phrasing positions to ensure no-one could possibly meet the requirements, so that they can hire a foreign worker for peanuts.
And really, that's what this Labor Shortage myth is all about. There's no shortage of labor. There's just a shortage of well-qualified labor willing to work for peanuts.
Just a theory but do you think your HR reps' BS detector is not working? I keep my resume slim and trim, only listing things I consider myself to be an expert in. I've interviewed plenty of people who list every buzzword and piece of software known to man that (for example) may have looked at a UML diagram once so on their resume it goes. For me, a resume that lists everything under the sun sets my BS detector ablaze. However, I'm sure to HR that means that person is more qualified than the person with a resume more like my own. So the problem my not be a shortage of skilled software devs, just that the resumes of the skilled software devs aren't getting through to your desk.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I'll bite. You're right, a free market works both ways. Let the competition come in an compete on a level playing field. No indentured servitude H1-B visas. No guest worker passes. No passports held under lock and key in the HR office. No two-tier benefits package. Just pure "at will" employment where the employee can switch jobs at the drop of a hat no matter their citizenship.
Let labor be free. I can compete with that and, to be honest, would really enjoy a year or two working in Dublin or Tel Aviv or Bangalore while I'm still young.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
As somebody that has just being replaced by people working in India (hello chaps!) I can categorically tell you there are labour shortages in Western countries.
I did the interviews, the people is just not there. As for myself I will take a few months off because I know there will be a job for me once I am rested and have done a few things I have in the back burner.
The situation in the US is not the way you are portraying it. Foreign workers are well paid (by definition, given the kind of visa they need to enter the country) so they are not driving salaries down, and most importantly pay taxes and spend money in the local economy, which benefits without having invested a dime in the education of these individuals.
The people driving salaries down are the ones working remotely and that never set foot in the country they are serving, very often using the infrastructure in that country, which was originally built to benefit the local population. That is what happened to me. I have no problem with this, I will have to take a lower salary most likely, but this is just natural given the savage competition to which we are being confronted (people in India are forced to work insane hours for a quarter of what we earn in the West, but fret no, salaries are going up and it is a matter of 3 or 4 years before they are comparable to Western standards, the turnover rate over there is atrocious, because techie people over there are not stupid: as soon as they get a better skill set they move on. In my experience this is at the very least 40% a year of attrition rate, so you always have a half competent group of people, half of which will leave very soon. Some companies are waking up to this fact, but some others are going ahead like a blinded lemming with suicidal thoughts).
Techies in developed countries should be writing to politicians about why they are allowing people working remotely in machines based locally, offering services locally. If they are affecting the economy in such way, they should be taxed as if they were working locally, people working remotely get all the money but pay no taxes locally, while the other way around is nigh to impossible to set up shop.
Or we should get free access to Indian and Chinese markets in order to compete in a fair basis. But our politicians are too busy wasting billions of dollars killing innocent people instead of investing in the future of our respective countries.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Try these:
Teleport my Job
Tecoloco the weather is better in Central America.
I sense a subtle bias towards offshore resources, sir. Having worked for many years with exactly those type of resources, I question your assumption that better resources are to be had off shore. In my experience, there is no substitute for the type of domestic, American creativity that comes from having grown up in the United States. So, I will take an American developer 1000 times over a single South Asian one. Over my career, I have seen a consistent lack of creativity, initiative and innovation in those offshore resources. I can't explain it but a pattern remains a pattern. So, I do not accept your premise that it is in the best interest of the United States to pump in this allegedly-valuable offshore "talent". As Exhibit A, I offer this: look at your country, look at ours. Which country is a shithole, which one is not that bad? I do not think you can grow roses out of a shithole. That is the software that we got from our offshore "resources" and all of it had to be scrapped and quietly rewritten stateside.
I've been teaching mathematics for 20 years now, and ever since starting I've been told that there's a shortage of mathematics teachers. What's most puzzling is that 65% of the teaching time at my school is done by extremely low paid adjuncts . . . the union (surprisingly) is the main advocate of low paid adjuncts as it helps reduce the total cost of instruction, which helped a cadre of union old timers reach outrageous salaries ($170,000/year for 32 weeks of work, benefits (~$20,000) not included). The adjunct rate for an equivalent load is a flat $15,000 (I'm not kidding).
The best part of these numbers is that the public routinely buys the mantra that we need mathematics teachers, and the reason that we have such bad outcomes is that few are qualified to teach mathematics. Oh, did I mention that the adjuncts at my school are required to have advanced degrees in mathematics?
Yes, IT often explains away their incompetence as a result of not enough qualified people. Funny, but I think most of the IT staff at my school are low paid part-timers, with a small cadre of well paid people at the top. I hope you see the similarities.