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?

[SnapShot]

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.

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?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Raise your wages, the workers will come.

The market will fix the problem. No need for special legislation or guest workers.
I've got to play devil's advocate here, because I am painfully familiar with both sides of this issue through my personal experience. Is it not accurate to say that the market is fixing the problem? People willing to work for the wages currently offered are finding employment. From a global business perspective, lobbying for additional visas only does away with an artificial restriction on the worker pool, does it not?

We don't have a special /right/ to the jobs here; and "globalization of the economy" is serving to drive that home. . Frankly, I find the quality of work that my present company receives from offshore to be abysmal -- which is the other side of this coin. Somewhere between the low-mid quality, underpriced work that most offshore companies (and contractors brought in from overseas) provide; and the mid-high quality, overpriced work that most onshore employees and contractors provide, there's a happy medium.

The process of finding that is a painful and expensive one for everyone.

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[digitalsolo]

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. Perhaps it's that the people that are smart enough to make competent IT staff eventually learn that the money is in management, not engineering, and leave for better pay. Then the idiots come in to fill the void, and so begins the downward spiral of successful companies...

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[TheSync]

Try these:

Teleport my Job

Tecoloco the weather is better in Central America.

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[dbIII]

Abusing foreign workers is the POINT of the whole thing

The core problem is there are still a few idiots with inherited wealth in the USA that think slavery is a good idea and they are propagating systems that descended from it. The illegal migrant exploitation, the minimum wage where hospitality workers have to rely on the charity of strangers to give them a handout (tips) and the system behind the working visas are symptoms of this. The second problem is declining education where not enough skilled people are being trained/educated locally and this is common throughout the west due to poor management of education.

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[aristofanes]

Not only IT jobs.
See:
http://machinedesign.com/ContentItem/71819/LelandTeschlersEditorialFinallythetruthaboutengineeringjobs.aspx

An editorial.Finally, the truth about engineering jobs
Members of the U.S. House got a surprising message during a recent meeting on Americas science and engineering workforce: Everything they thought they knew about science and engineering employment was wrong.
  Specifically, there is no shortage of scientists or engineers. In fact, there are substantially more scientists and engineers graduating in the U.S. than there are jobs

Re:Got a labor shortage?

[colinrichardday]

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.

Isn't Microsoft's figuring out how to build an operating system that actually works a sign of the apocalypse?

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.

No myth here

[jay-za]

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.

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.

Re:No myth here

[Malevolent Tester]

Have you tried England? Every time I go on jobserve I see defence testing contracts in the UK for £300-£500 a day.($600 to $1000 in Monopoly money)

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.

Re:No myth here

[LuisAnaya]

If things continue like this... Monopoly money will have more value than the Greenback :).

Re:No myth here

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, just put it on the resume. almost NO companies check.

Re:No myth here

[TheRealFixer]

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.

That's intentional. A good deal of MCSE training/testing has to do with licensing. MCSE's aren't intended to be technical geniuses. They're meant to be clones, indoctrinated to look at things the way Microsoft wants you to look at them. That's why the key to any Microsoft test, if you get stuck on a question that seems to have more than one correct answer, is to look at it from the perspective of what would make Microsoft the most money. That will almost always be the "right" one.

Not to say all MS training is bad. If you get a decent instructor who has experience with other vendors and solutions, who can cut through all the crap and extract the meat of what you actually need to know to succeed in the field, you can actually learn something useful. There's not many instructors like that, though.

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:No myth here

[Lijemo]

I can't speak for the US, but I can state that in South Africa... 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.

Being a really good Tester or Test Analyst requires all of the skill of other IT positions, with (at least in the U.S., in my experience) half of the pay, and none of the respect. Very few of the people capable of being excellent Test Analysts have much motivation to do so.

(Back when I was in Test Analysis, I had a boss tell me straight up that while my performance was excellent, since Testing was not a "revenue generating" position, he saw no need to pay me anything near what the "revenue-generating" IT positions at the company were paid. I'm no longer at that company, and since then, I've had a strong bias towards making sure I'm in a "revenue generating" position. Things work much better for me this way. And companies wonder why it's hard to find quality Test people...)

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.

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

[Robber Baron]

Throw a bash prompt in front of an MCSE... So just how DO you get a bash prompt to appear on a Windows box?

Comments like this are just plain ignorant. A decent sysadmin (and those are few and far between, the above article notwithstanding) doesn't care what OS a box is running. The actual processes of adminning a system or network are pretty much universal. Whether it's done with a GUI or a command like is just one small detail.

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: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

[MrNemesis]

Agree. I'm a self-taught IT professional that still doesn't have a qualification to his name. I got a computer for my 21st birthday and, instead of doing any work on my degree, spent all day tinkering with it - for as long as I've remembered I've not liked using anything unless I knew how it worked, and now that uni was forcing me into using a computer I had to figure it out.

Cut a long story short and I bollocks up my degreee because I've spent all my time fiddling with computers. Yet somehow I get an IT job and end up writing a crappy PHP-based job management system. I then find myself as a sysadmin for a financial startup. Startup gets bought and I'm transferred across to a Big Fat Sysadmin job and am told at the beginning that I'll have to switch to helpdesk because, frankly, this company doesn't employ people like me and I'm only here because it's illegal to sack me.

2 months later and my line manager is telling me I know more about how windows works than most of the MCSE's, and more about Linux that the RHCT's and the DBA's put together. Given that the old -> new company migration is still happening, I get my Big Fat Sysadmin role. Almost all the MCSE's are afraid of the command line and call me "Linux boy" yet mysteriously within a week the backups on their 12-node ESX cluster are working reliably again and there's a security policy in place to stop everyone logging in as root (3hrs VM downtime in my first week from people running the wrong command as root).

Moral of the story? If the circumstances are right, you can get by just fine without any qualifications, and IMHO my job is more interesting because I took the path less trodden and learnt computers from the CPU upwards (still can't figure out Excel to save my life). When you do get qualifications, alot of them are meaningless when compared to actual experience doing things (and most employers are aware of this - if you have experience, make a BIG thing of it) - I've sat through my MCSA, and precious little of that is about what the computer is actually doing (how can you talk about AD without understanding DNS, LDAP and Kerberos? Without that crucial understanding, how can you comprehend at what the data looks like, what paths the data is taking, how it is stored and transmitted, and how a failure at any of these different points will manifest itself?), it's about what buttons to press. Ambiguous questions usually result in "Use and/or buy Microsoft $software" answers being the right ones. Alot of employers are only looking for people who know which $software to buy, and how to use it The Microsoft Way. Others are looking for people to solve problems. MCS* typically help with the former, but (with the right sort of person) help with the latter too.

Summary fo the moral: interviewers, I hope to god you actually read those CV's and don't just blindly grep for MCSA or MCSE because, if you do, some desperate company going through the dregs of monster.com is going to be pilfering a colossal asset to the company from under your nose.

Sincerely,
Hugely obstinate and arrogant sysadmin ;)

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:No myth here

[TheLinuxSRC]

That's just plain wrong. If all you have is a certificate, it may be true, but if you're a Windows shop, why do you care if your admin can use bash? Likewise, why do you care if your linux admin knows anything about Windows if you're a Linux shop?

I think the point GP was trying to make is that there aren't many single OS shops left anymore. Add to that the fact that most positions above entry level (in regard to IT) usually require a more diverse experience set. If a company is so locked in to one strategy/platform I find it hard to believe the IT management has done their due diligence.

Having said all of that, I hold an MCSE but I am mostly a Linux admin. My experience set makes me more valuable to my employer because I can assess situations based on a problem/solution equation rather than a problem/(my vendors best attempt at a solution) equation.

Re:No myth here

[jim.hansson]

A good tester saves me a lot of embarrassment, and that will save me costumers = revenue

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.

Re:No myth here

[Shadow-isoHunt]

Contrary to /., taking a test doesn't make you stupider.

No, but it might make you more stupid!

Re:No myth here

[catmistake]

I am sorry, but a computer scientist has no business in IT. You are wasting your degree, which was not intendend for administration, but real computer science (research or architecture or modelling or informatics or, God forbid, development). Its because of slackers like you that we are now seeing jobs advertised such as " Wanted: Microsoft Windows Technologist, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science REQUIRED. $12/hr, part time, 5-days a week." Its one thing to take a job below your skills until you find something better, but to make a career out of it speaks volumes about character. By working in IT, a computer scientist devalues the entire discipline. These now all too common help wanted ads are as absurd and anathema as a "Wanted: nurses assistant. M.D. REQUIRED." How about you stop dicking around and get SOMETHING done!

Re:No myth here

[schiefaw]

By working in IT, a computer scientist devalues the entire discipline. These now all too common help wanted ads are as absurd and anathema as a "Wanted: nurses assistant. M.D. REQUIRED." How about you stop dicking around and get SOMETHING done!

Mostly because I don't want to live in India. But, if it makes you feel better, I have managed to get back into the architect role. It is just getting a little hairy staying technical when all the jobs are going overseas.

BTW, you are right. Working in IT is like turning tricks on the corner. You may get the bills paid, but you are not going to feel good about it.

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.

Isn't it obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a shortage of *cheap* IT labor...

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: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.

Been perpetuating the myth since the 90's

[boris111]

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.

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

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

[openfrog]

I don't understand your logic. The point of this well documented article is to show that self-interests are at work in those regular shortage claims and that this short-sighted behavior ends up hurting the industry and everyone working in it.

I actually don't believe that on Slashdot, people don't RTFA, but in any case, here is the conclusion of the article. Pretty strong and pretty damning IMHO.

In both cases these efforts have flooded the market with lower-cost foreign workers who are supplanting an already ample field of home-grown IT labor. The result is that the myth of an IT skills shortage could just end up be self-perpetuating.

"The trouble is that it creates a disincentive for Americans to study these technical fields," Wadhwa said. "We're hurting ourselves; computer science enrollment is dropping because the incentive is not there for students to study computer science."

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.

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:It's all the wording for HR

[techpawn]

I don't understand your logic.

What's to misunderstand? When companies are looking for Mid to High level IT staffing and all they can find in the pool is low level that they'd have to train up or the mid level that doesn't quite work of course they're going to call shortage of skills. Find me a senior level Vax Admin in the midwest and you're going to be SOL but I assure you there are companies there that would use them.

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[penguin_dance]

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.

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[SatanicPuppy]

Eh. It's hard. The interview process is like a collision of paradigms...On the one side, you have management, and on the other side you have techs. Most management doesn't do a great job of spotting tech talent. Everything is measured in "years" like programming experience works that way...I have about 10 years of Java experience, but I'm not primarily a Java guy, and I'm certainly not a Java ubergeek...But I do tend to churn out a minor Java app or two a month. So what do I put on the resume? 10 years is disingenuous; I've been working with it since forever, but it's not what I do, and someone looking for someone with "10 years of Java experience" is going to be disappointed. But 10 years (almost 11) is what I've got.

A better approach would be to look for people who have completed certain types of projects, but there you don't often get a good sense of what kind of contribution the individual has made. Did he just do the gui? Did he do esoteric network socket stuff that doesn't apply to your needs? So we get these weird "Knowledge tests" which vary between ridiculous and absurd. You get asked specifics about some weird method or interface, the sort of thing a quality programmer would rarely waste brain space with, when you can look it up in seconds. Or its a logic puzzle, like I need to be able to move foxes, grain, and chickens as part of my daily grind.

It's even worse if you're not a specialist. My "specialty" is applications support and extension. That guy you hired, who programmed that critical thing that no one can support, and then got hit by a truck? If you want to replace him, I'm not your guy. If you want someone to transition his applications into something clean and supportable, that's me...To use the Microsoft metaphor: I'm great at embracing and extending, but not so hot at innovation...My original stuff is clean and functional, but nothing special. Right now I'm transitioning ~50 years of legacy Cobol, Speedware, and RPG (all programmed with zero comments) to Java and Perl. It's not the kind of thing people usually know to look for. I have a freaking TON of language experience, but I'm not a specialist with any language, and I'm miserable when people start badgering me with specific syntax questions...If you work with enough different crap, it's easy to get mixed up.

So how do you present when your primary skillset isn't the sort of crap that ends up posted on job sites? Emphasize "problem solving" not "learning new skills"; means the same thing, but problem solving is proactive. Don't claim to be a hard worker; that can be interpreted as a slight on your skills, oddly enough, because if you were more skilled, you wouldn't have to work hard, right? Taking initiative is something you don't want to over-emphasize unless they're asking for it specifically...Managers don't want someone who is too aggressive; either you're after their job, or you're going to be making headaches for them with other departments...Better to say your a "Team player."

In the end its all a crap shoot. Gotta interview interview interview, and hope that you'll eventually find a not-stupid job at a worthwhile salary.

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[tompaulco]

I even had an interview for a job in which the description and what I am doing were virtually identical.
Lucky you. I once found a job posting where they had copied several paragraphs out of my online resume and listed that as job requirements. I mean it was word for word. They didn't even change the syntax to make it sound like job requirements. It read like a resume, because, well, it was.
I contacted them seeing as how I felt I fit the bill, but I never even got a call back, let alone an interview.

Re:It's all the wording for HR

[NorbrookC]

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.

This isn't a situation limited to IT. A long time ago I interviewed for one job, and thought I had it nailed. I didn't get it. A friend of mine who worked there told me that I'd "asked for too much money." I had to scratch my head about that, since I didn't think I was being unreasonable! As it turns out, my friend told me that this company liked to hire young, inexperienced people right out of college for a pittance. Of course, the problem was that as soon as those people realized they couldn't live on that salary, they were out the door! Which was what drove my friend to eventually leave. As he told me, "I got tired of having my shop down for half the year, because we were busy either training the new people, or looking for them. We'd get 6 months of work out of them before they left, and we'd have to start all over again. I just couldn't get it through to HR that we were better off hiring people at a living salary, and keeping them, than what we were doing."

My favorite HR screwup was when we'd specifically recruited someone. They were highly skilled, able to hit the ground running, someone who would fill a position we desperately needed filled. Two weeks went by without seeing their application. My boss called them to ask why they hadn't applied, and was told "I did! I dropped it off right after we talked!" A quick phone call to HR found it was there - they'd "filed it" because the person "wasn't qualified for the position." Some really nasty things got said, and after that, all applications for our department came directly to us!"

It's A Fact

[CowboyBob500]

Over the course of last year I needed to hire 10 experienced J2EE developers. I literally interviewed hundreds, but was only able to find 6 suitable candidates. While it is true that there isn't a shortage of applicants, there is most certainly a shortage of people who can actually perform the advertised job.

Bob

Re:It's A Fact

[Antique Geekmeister]

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.

Re:It's A Fact

[sorak]

In the end that's kind of the solution we went for. We took on 4 more junior level people to train up alongside a couple of contractors to keep the project going while the training was ongoing.

BTW, unlike some of the other posts have suggested, we were offering a highly competitive salary of £60,000 per year (~$120,000).

Bob I'm glad to hear that. As a low-level IT worker who remembers how difficult it was to get a foot in the door, it is painful to see all this complaining about how there are so many jobs that need to be filled, and so many people who need jobs, but most of them do not have the requisite 3-5 years of experience, or will have to learn about a new technology.

Re:It's A Fact

[nomadic]

I personally will NOT touch a IT job for less than $20.00 an hour here in the midwest, my happy target is $26.00. Yes, I am that good and that experienced. While the unskilled with their fresh A++ and MCSE take the $8.95 an hour Geek Squad and NextIT positions.

Man, remind me never to move to the midwest. You make $26.00 an hour working retail around here.

Re:It's A Fact

[Quattro Vezina]

Just like how, in 2004 and earlier, some job requirements called for at least 10 years of Java experience...

Java was released in 1995.

I once had a professor who loved to lambast companies that posted insane job requirements like that (and of all the professors I had when I was in college, I learned the most about the industry from him).

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.

SHORTAGE

[COMON$]

skilled IT

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.

Re:SHORTAGE

[ArcherB]

I've 4 years in small business doing monkey work (tech support, some admin), and 2 years supporting a 1.5k user network with 9 servers including dedicated Exchange, proxy, and DHCP servers. I've experience with HP & Cisco managed switches, resolved some of the most horrible network issues you can think of (Ever seen what happens when a 12 year old little bastard plugs a patch lead into itself? Two words: CASCADING FAILURE.) I've even came up with an improved disaster recovery policy for my current employer, and been sub-contracted to another business based on performance.

I've no "theory of Computing - The Valve years" computing degree or MS "Our way or no way" brainwashing. I got a D in Computer Science at college. I work bottom-rung tech support changing print toners for a school because nobody wants an Sys or Network Admin without a degree.

THAT'S where your shortage is; managers who can look past the letters "BSc" after someone's name. Funny. I have a BSIT after my name and I'm sitting here doing technical support for banking software (ever see Office Space?). I can not get into an IT department because I've never worked in one (5+ years experience required), yet frequently, I find myself explaining to the IT guys at our corporate HQ that just because you can't ping a box, doesn't mean it's not running!

Living Wage

[Frosty Piss]

"This whole concept of shortages is bogus, it shows a lack of understanding of the labor pool in the USA."

Yes, the lack of understanding that resident U.S. IT workers wish to make a living wage.

The IT labor "shortage" is a profit issue.

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:Cheap IT labor is a myth

[SatanicPuppy]

Meh. IT is still a "non-revenue generating department" for the vast majority of businesses. That means their budgets suck hind teat; but worse, the bulk of the budget goes to things like hardware and software, so you're left with the dregs to supply salary money for your workers.

If they don't take it seriously, they can't expect to attract top talent.

Re:Cheap IT labor is a myth

[PatSand]

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.

Okay-- joke done.. now reality at a big corp

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:Okay-- joke done.. now reality at a big corp

[molarmass192]

First, Sarbox does suck, having auditors question ever code push is a tremendous waste of time and resources. Sarbox needs to be repealed. IT did not cause Enron to fail, the accountants did. Second, working for large corps is trying, and the majority of the problem is that architects don't have enough authority / responsibility to just get the job done. There shouldn't be 6 different review boards for every code push. On that note, I don't think there's a worker shortage. Please disclose the "decent" salary range for which people will not apply. I have 10+ years of Java/C dev / DBA / UNIX sys admin and I make between $110K and $125K depending on bonuses while living in the southeast. I've worked for several high profile companies. Is your "decent" salary something that would convince me to switch jobs? Unless your company is paying in that range, then it is not competitive. The solution is either for your company to increase their pay scale or lobby to bring in workers who will work under market pay. This is just as if I wanted a Ferrari but I only wanted to pay $20K for it. I have a choice, I can pony up the extra $100K the Ferrari costs, or lobby to have government subsidize Italian cars by $100K for me. If the pay is right, you will *always* fill the position. If nobody is willing / qualified to take a position, then the pay is too low. It's very basic supply / demand economic theory. Also, keep in mind that if IT salaries go up, more students will get into the field, and push prices back to equilibrium. If there are not enough students in the field, then salaries are too low to attract talent. If you think I make a lot, this is *peanuts*, and I mean pocket change, compared to friends I have that work in finance. I know several people in that line of work who make well above $400K and a few who make $1M+. There's no shortage of labor in IT, it's just that the pay scales need to move up to meet the realities of the market.

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

[Tsar]

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

Why not pay more?

[bamwham]

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.

Completely disagree

[pavera]

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.

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:Completely disagree

[wynler]

In paragraph two, you explain your hiring practices.  Then in paragraph three, you complain that the candidates you hire suck.  Could it be that you're hiring practices are a fault?

From my reading of your hiring practices, the interview questions your using do not correlate to the 3 items for which you're looking.

You're basing your hiring on the following criteria:
Ability to reproduce rote algorithms.
Ability to solve problems on a particular platform. (python, foxpro, php, etc.)
Ability to remember items from high-school and freshman year college.

A number of highly qualified hires I've interviewed would fail your process.  The candidates I'm looking for don't waste their time memorizing algorithms, or studying freshman level CS.  All of your interview questions could be solved by googling.

Instead, you should be looking for candidates that can explain the pros and cons of different development methodologies, ask intelligent questions when given a development scenario, and explain how they would approach solving a problem.  These three items would give you a much better correlation to the 3 skills your looking for.

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: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.

Re:The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[downix]

I saw many of those same ads (Java with 5+ years experience) and laughed myself silly. I still find ads asking for such insane things as 10+ years .NET or a Masters for tech support.

I adjusted my resume 4 months ago, listing every possible skill I had, including such oddballs as AMIX administration, and surprisingly got responses. It appears listing every version of HTML I've worked with looks good to HR, even tho they're brain-dead obvious to me...

Re:The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[mikael]

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 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 ...", and helpfully omit the "looking to move into full-time project management" bit.

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.

Re:The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[AutopsyReport]

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.

Re:The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[sco_robinso]

This is also the root of my frustrations. Specifically, it angers me when employers who are looking to fill non-programming positions (i.e. Network Administration / Systems Admin, help desk, hardware support, etc) are looking for people with B.Sc's and CompEng degrees. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a Bachelor of Computer Science degree nor those who hold them, but it's a freakin' programming degree people. Yes, I know, there's 1 or 2 courses in networking and the OSI model and such, but a B.Sc/CompEng is essentially a programming degree. Let's not kid ourselves.

I've told several employers and HR people during interviews that they're misguided in their job descriptions. I actually just went through an interview for a general Systems Admin / Systems analyst position, and this is pretty much how it went:

"So... You don't have a bachelors in computer science or computer engineering, I see..." (although I do have a BA)

"Nope, I'm not a programmer"

"I don't understand...?"

"Those degrees you mentioned are programming degrees. Perhaps it is I who am confused. Are you looking to hire a programmer?"

"No... We're looking for xyz"

"So if you don't mind my asking, why are you looking for someone who hold a B.Sc or a CompEng degree, which are programming degrees?"

You get the picture, totally pisses me off. That and people who want an experienced jack of all trades who MUST have experience with various things that a jack of all trades / generalist wont. i.e. 'Must have experience in Exchange, Server 2003, WhateverSpamProgram 3.2, VB, .NET, C#, TOAD, must know SQL too'. And all of this for $30k a year, too?

Re:The way HR writes job ads is often the problem

[bi_boy]

I applied for a job as a general tech for a small computer shop once. They were asking for someone with experience doing basic Windows/network troubleshooting, and PC building. When I called to inquiry about the position he asked me if I'd ever been to Def Con (wtf?). I politely said no though I knew what Def Con was I just never had the inclination or money to fly out to Las Vegas. He said he was sorry but I wasn't qualified, that he was looking for "a real hacker". A real hacker to build computers and install Windows, at $12/hour. The help wanted ad I had responded that initially had a good description with realistic skill sets, was then changed so that next time I saw it said, "Looking for a real hacker type."

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:Apprenticeships and lock-in

[rnturn]

``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.

That's not too far from what used to be fairly common at a lot of companies, especially those that hired lots of engineers. It wasn't really an apprenticeship but it sort of felt that way in that newly hired engineers would float around between different departments learning different parts of the business for maybe a year before they settled in within a more permanent spot. That seemed to be changing, though, not long after I joined a large midwestern engineering firm. The newer guys were being hired directly into a group and expected to stay there for a long time. I preferred the older way of acclimating new hires. You got a better idea of the rest of the company and the various departments. Nowadays its more of a "hire a hit man" mentality when bringing in new people. It's no wonder they tend to not stick around very long. After they've been hired to fill an immediate niche need, they know the company won't really have any great desire to keep them around.

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.

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

Professor really needs to look again...

[PaulusMagnus]

As others have said, the argument really boils down to skilled IT staff, what employers are willing to pay and what these skilled IT workers are willing to accept.

If you can buy cheaper skilled IT workers from abroad, it makes the employers happy but will ultimately lower the value of these roles making them less attractive to new workers. Rather than being self-serving, it's a short term strategy that ultimately is self-defeating. As a responsible employer that realizes they're only one small cog in the national machinery, they need to realize what this impact will have.

We also have a lack of skilled IT workers coming out of the universities, largely because universities in the Western countries are focussed on number of students and number of degrees awarded. They are driven by income and results, not by the quality of their teaching. Again, this is self-defeating as we, the nation, now pay more for tuition that adds less value to ourselves. So we're spending more and gaining less. Nationally, this is a slippery slope that leads only downhill.

Personally, what we are prepared to accept as a wage is the final part of the problem. Our acceptable wage is largely driven by our expectations of what we want and our living costs. As living costs rise, we expect our income to keep pace. If we're also led to believe that we're chasing an American dream of a white picket fence, wife, 2.4 kids, dog and a pickup then we expect a little more money. After all, isn't that why we're working in this country. Didn't you sell that idea to us? If we can't achieve that dream, we'll go somewhere else.

As a professor and former technology CEO, I'd question whether Vivek Wadwha understands the labor pool in the USA. It's a complex arrangement of personal and corporate expectations mixed in with some realities, aspirations and a need for us to exist in the real world. If you want us to live near you in Silicon Valley, you need to make sure we can live nearby. Wisconsin salaries don't work in California.

I'm a 38 year old freelance computer consultant with no degree, no longer living in the country I was born in and started work in. My skills were honed from experience and were all gained outside of any classroom. I have struggled to find skilled IT workers, struggled to find work myself and been on both sides of the fence arguing for IT staff to be paid more and also trying to keep costs down. There is no soundbite that can solve this problem.

I see H1Bs helping to solve the lack of teaching within universities and its disassociation from industry but this has to be a short-term fix or the country will suffer. Devaluing IT jobs, will only bring fewer CS students so you really need to turn this around by championing more technology universities that focus on quality, not income or results. If anything only 75% of students should pass each year, if you get more you need to make it harder. Life is hard, we pass and we fail in every aspect of our lives. Death is the ultimate failing grade.

Don't bring in H1Bs without fixing the real problem.

Experienced, Cheap, Available

[Fred Ferrigno]

Pick any two.

I remember a job that wanted 10 years Java exp

[WillAffleckUW]

Back when Java had only been out for seven years.

There is no shortage, just a lack of skills reinvestment by the hiring managers.

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:MS Licensing

[bmajik]

I'm a QA guy at MS and beleive me, I understand your frustration. People like me have no say in how things get licensed. I've got friends that ask me licensing questions for their particular business problem and I've honestly got no idea. All i can do is forward the questions into people internally and hope somebody has a lucid response.

Every time I do this, i remind "whoever" is listening: every time a customer has to think about this, they move some deltaE closer to saying "fuck you guys" and jumping to F/OSS, where if nothing else, licensing is certainly _perceptually_ less confusing.

Anytime a business makes it hard for customers to give it money, they're doing something wrong.

Expecting customers to keep track of licenses (with paper and a filing cabinet, in some cases!) and all kinds of other stuff is completely ridiculous. A big part of the problem is that internally, we're for the most part completely insulated from it. We do ok at responding to pain that we know about and have exposure to, and pretty badly at pain we don't understand or know about.

I'm sorry for how lame your licensing experience has been and wish I could offer some help. I'm also interested in knowing more about your virtual test lab.. one of my last projects in Redmond was working on the automation system that ran all of Visual Studio's tens of thousands of automated tests across thousands of PCs. The feedback I get is that very few companies are doing automated software testing, so I'm interested in what you're working on.

The death of the entry level position

[travalas]

Let's face it. The real issue here is that the entry level position has gone away. I went out to monster and did a quick search for IT/Computer Software jobs with less than 1 year of experience in the RTP, NC, one of the biggest tech areas in the US and I got 6 results. 6!! Companies want to hire people with 3-5 years of experience essentially expecting some other company to pay for the training but are unwilling to create entry level positions and provide on the job training to develop the sort of person they want to hire themselves. With the myriad of technologies in IT these days there are only a finite number of technologies that one can learn to any sort of depth. It's unrealistic to expect people to be 100% productive their first day of work. Companies cannot and should not expect to hire talent that they are not willing to develop themselves.

Re:The "no shortage" talk is also self-serving

[Dusty00]

You're right in that they're not trying to cap salaries. H1B is a good program in intent. Unfortunately they left it wide open for abuse and it's being used by many companies (I'll grant not all) as a way to get cheap indentured servants. If a worker under H1B is treated badly by their employer their only option is to go back to their country of origin. The abuses of this program hurt both US born IT workers by driving the market value down and the foreign workers wanting to use this program as they're in a position of which they're easily taken advantage. And now the companies that are abusing the program and probably the company using the program in the spirit it was intended are lobbying Congress to get the cap increased.

I have no problem with the spirit of the H1B Visa program, but with the current manifestation the primary beneficiaries are large companies wanting to keep payroll low.

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.

A shortage of GOOD workers?

[trulore]

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?

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.

Re:There's always a shortage

[curmudgeon99]

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.

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:In my experience...

[molarmass192]

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.

re: testing not a revenue-generating position

[King_TJ]

Wow! The boss you had who said that illustrates exactly why so much software out there is garbage!

I'd say testing is VERY much a revenue-generating component of a business that sells software! Software inherently contains bugs, because people are not perfect. As my software coding friend used to fondly point out, "If I'm 99% accurate with all the code I write, that means roughly 1 line in every 100 I write needs fixing!"

Back when most software development efforts were 1 man projects, it was a "given" that the person writing the code would also find and fix the bugs in it. But when you develop today's large applications in a team, it makes sense to offload some of that work to another department. You don't need to waste a developer's time going back through their code for days, trying to make sure they've caught as many mistakes as possible. Delegate that out to a testing team, who can flush out the problems (even using automated tools to do repetitious stuff nobody will bother to do manually), and turn in the list of flaws found to the developers, so they're working on more focused problems.

In that perspective, a QA tester really *is* a part of the software development team, and IMHO, should be paid equally well. Both groups are working to accomplish the goal of getting a product released that delivers on what it promises.

Yeah, whatever.

[jotaeleemeese]

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.

Re:Yeah, whatever.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

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

Of course they are - increased supply means lower prices.

Re:Yeah, whatever.

[ATMAvatar]

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

Except that you're wrong.

Re:Yeah, whatever.

[rtb61]

Repeat after me: Labour unions, people actually died to get you better wages and working conditions, and companies at that time were quite content to kill as many workers as necessary to keep wages down and working conditions cheap.

Democracy in action: if it were not for a more politically active population at that time those labour reforms still would not have materialised. Which is why modern corporations work so hard to disenfranchise the majority via mass media, you know all the corrupt stuff, you only have 1 vote it doesn't count so why bother, there is no point in voting because all political parties are the same, why vote for any candidate when they are all as corrupt as each other (all this while they prod a motivate their pet ignorant electorate to vote for the politician that will tell the religiously motivated what they want to hear while robbing them blind and as it turns out killing their children).

So yeah IT labour shortage is all about squeezing down on wages and working conditions, basically out sourcing is proving to be somewhat unreliable, and the process tends to mean you give away all your trade secrets to a future potential competitor but, those wages and labour conditions are still desirable so they are looking to import them by what ever means necessary. True the still will be the odd shortages in specific select areas of the market when a required level of experience and expertise is needed but they are few and far between.

Just like in education . . .

[rbannon]

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.