Tech Sector Slow To Hire

Iftekhar25 writes "The NY Times is running an article about soaring unemployment rates for IT in the US (6 percent) despite a tech sector that is thirsting for engineering talent. Quoting: 'The chief hurdles to more robust technology hiring appear to be increasing automation and the addition of highly skilled labor overseas. The result is a mismatch of skill levels here at home: not enough workers with the cutting-edge skills coveted by tech firms, and too many people with abilities that can be duplicated offshore at lower cost. That's a familiar situation to many out-of-work software engineers, whose skills start depreciating almost as soon as they are laid off, given the dynamism of the industry.'"

Comments

Read closer

[Anonymous Coward]

IT is not engineering. The two fields are not analogous

Re:Read closer

[Yvan256]

They're digitalous?

Re:Read closer

[AK Marc]

Nothing is engineering. Engineering is like the scientific method. It's a process, a philosophy, a framework. You can be an engineer and be in IT. You can be an engineer and not be in IT. You can have not gotten an engineering degree and still follow the principles of it. It's only the US that has the hard-on for "engineering" only being what a select few professional organizations claim it is. If they want to be purists, then anyone that designs, builds, fixes or operates engines is an engineer. If they get assholish about it, anyone with a driver's license is a licensed engineer.

50% right

[Anonymous Coward]

not enough workers with the cutting-edge skills coveted by tech firms,

Complete bullshit.

and too many people with abilities that can be duplicated offshore at lower cost

This is 100% true.

And don't forget this reason I am adding:

Too few people willing to work heroic hours for non-heroic pay.

Re:50% right

[inKubus]

Yes, companies are "milking the recession". This usually happens at the tail end of a recession, when interest rates are low and inflation is also low, companies are making profits but they are not investing in labor supply. The main thing is maybe capacity isn't fully utilized, maybe they want to buy new equipment, maybe they want to reward the shareholders that stayed through the rough times. I see it at a lot of places, and people I know are seeing it as well. Companies with good balance sheets aren't replacing people as fast, they are milking more work hours out of salary people and they are utilizing temps and contractors as a way to avoid permanent expenses. A few more good quarters and things should start trending back down to the normal structural unemployment rate of around 5-7%. IT is a growth industry so it in turn should return to a normal growth structural unemployment of 3-5%. Having been present on more than a few interviews recently, there's not too many good people out there. If you're out there and you're good, you shouldn't have trouble getting a job. If you can't, you should consider washing your beard and not wearing that T-shirt that looks like the front of a tuxedo to interviews...

Re:50% right

[bhcompy]

That's because you're requiring the piece of paper instead of a demonstration of skills. Instead of saying "oh, no CCNA on the resume, let's roundfile this one", take a deeper look at the resume and recommendations instead. I was a victim of that for nearly a year, until I got lucky and had someone read my resume and verify my credentials(and overlook the lack of certification despite the training being there). I can't afford the 4k for a VMWare class that's required in order to receive certification from VMWare, but that doesn't mean I don't have the skills.

Re:50% right

[Mongoose Disciple]

Lots of candidates put down that they have, for instance, ten years of experience of Java. And maybe they do! But depressingly often they can't do trivial tasks

Sometimes what seems trivial to you might not to someone else. For example, I legitimately have 10 years of professional Java experience, and character encoding has been relevant to my work precisely zero times in that 10 years.

(That's not to say I probably still couldn't answer a question about it, but I think as developers we tend to take for granted that the kinds of tasks we run up against are universal.)

Re:50% right

[Ironhandx]

It is a real issue, but HR is the most massive problem in the IT sector today. They get a list of requirements and filter based on those. Many of the folks that have those requirements that are unemployed are unemployed for good reason. There are however a whole slew of people that could do the job that don't have exactly those requirements that get thrown in the trash by many an HR clerk.

In my experience the above is the leading cause of IT understaffing. Personally I look for a "Skills" section on a resume, and test the claimed skills in an interview. If they can get past my cursory test they're worth a shot, if they are just good at BSing then its obvious within a month, or at least well within their 3 month probationary period. You get more quality employees that are actually interested in what they are doing that way. Of course you end up interviewing more complete idiots as well, but its no loss, as you were going to interview (approximately, again, in my experience) the same amount of unsuitable candidates regardless.

Its partly a problem of the jargon too. Most of the HR folks aren't going to have a clue how your previous job relates to this one or how your own pet projects relate to the job you are applying for, but for an engineer say, they realize that working as building designer for 5 years necessarily includes that you have a lot of civil engineering requirements even if you don't have a degree in civil engineering. If you have 10 years experience working in C with some minor experience in Java but the job requires almost pure Java, the HR girl/guy likely doesn't have a clue how the skills could be transferable and will dump you in favor of someone with a college/uni degree that focused on Java at some point, meanwhile they end up firing the guy because he cheated his way through school and doesn't actually have a clue.

Re:50% right

[vlm]

My employer is hiring, both full-time and contractor. My previous employer was hiring as well. In neither case could we get qualified candidates.

Thats because HR is requiring 10 years of experience with winders 2008 server, so by definition the only resumes that make it thru the HR filtration plant are liars / con men / inside-referrals.

Re:50% right

[jeff4747]

But depressingly often they can't do trivial tasks, like select a random element from an array

Well, if you're hiring a junior level developer, that might a decent question to see if they have any exposure to the language.

If you're hiring a senior level developer, the proper response from the candidate is "I'd have to look up what the API is called. Since I'm here to solve hard problems, I don't spend my time memorizing near-useless trivia that I can look up in under a minute".

I really hate the stupid "we're gonna throw minutia at you" tests used for hiring. They're a useless measure of a developer who has any decent experience, and they're an annoying pitfall when you correct the errors on the test - Some interviewers don't like it when you point out the errors, and others use the errors as another test and expect those corrections.

grapes of wrath

[bugs2squash]

Oh no, there are not enough highly skilled engineers available to depress wages even further. The CEO will starve if he can't drop the payroll enough.

Easy to make qualifications that nobody can meet

[sethstorm]

...then complain about a lack of "qualified" candidates.

A bunch of bullshit to justify offshoring

[sethstorm]

The result is a mismatch of skill levels here at home: not enough workers with the cutting-edge skills coveted by tech firms, and too many people with abilities that can be duplicated offshore at lower cost. That's a familiar situation to many out-of-work software engineers, whose skills start depreciating almost as soon as they are laid off, given the dynamism of the industry.'"

Then train them or make it a legal requirement to hire & train them. It's one thing to complain about regular people having to settle with less, why can't a business be made to do the same?

Reads like an justification for offshoring if you'd ask me.

Software Engineering skills don't depreciate much

[XaXXon]

Software development is more about problem solving and communication skills than actually writing code. These abilities don't atrophy nearly so fast. A solid developer can pick up whatever technologies are needed for jumping into an existing problem space with little effort and apply their problem solving skills.

Re:No kidding

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Especially since the national average is over 9% currently. Seems to me a more accurate story would be "Tech sector hasn't recovered to previous levels, but has much lower unemployment than many other areas."

Presuming that the majority of people in the tech sector have at least a 4 year college degree and thus average nearly the same unemployment rates as other primarily white-collar sectors, I believe "soaring" is appropriate.

This chart shows that people in that category have had no more than 3% unemployment for nearly the last 20 years - including the dot-bomb fall-out. Given that unemployment was roughly 2% before the latest crash, a 200% increase is pretty drastic.

Also is the posting written by an idiot?

[Sycraft-fu]

Had a friend who had a long stint of unemployment. A large part of the problem was companies that use recruiters, and have morons write the job requirements. There were so many jobs that when you filtered through the bullshit, he probably could do. However he'd have to lie about his qualifications to get them, and he won't do that. Shit like "Must have 7 years experience in Ruby, Java, Perl, PHP, and MySQL." Ok so they are looking for a web app and they don't know what they want it in. Fine, he can do that, he's a real programmer in that he can learn new languages. He also has done all those. However he can't truthfully say 7 years of Ruby experience. He's got 15 years of Perl experience, but only 1 of Ruby. Doesn't mean he's bad at Ruby, just that he didn't see the need to use it till recently. However he gets filtered since he doesn't "meet the requirements" and instead they get the liar types who don't know what they are talking about.

That was actually something that the people at the job he did get commented on. He had very little Ruby experience, but generates code faster and of much higher quality than the "Ruby people." They were amazed and he had to explain that he'd done all this before, the specific language isn't really relevant.

So if you want good candidates, make sure the description is written by someone who knows what the fuck they are talking about, and that what it asks for is reasonable. Reason is a good candidate is probably also someone who's honest and thus won't lie on the app just to get in the door. Figure out what you actually need, and put down also what you'd like as optional and go with that.

No "10 years of experience with every single web related language," kind of shit. Instead something like "Someone with 5+ years of software development experience, at least some of it with web programming. Experience in one or more of the following a plus: Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc." Something that tells people what the job actually is, and gives them an idea what you want.

Re:Easy to make qualifications that nobody can mee

[vlm]

the devil you know (and have experience with that might save you from a layoff) is better than the devil you don't. Either way, your solution is correct - a risk premium in salary or benefits are in order.

Or, if they're coasties, their house is (financially) underwater and to switch jobs they'd have to move and declare bankruptcy. I've heard this is an issue, folks whom rent can move, and are making bank, folks with houses can't move and are stuck. Even worse for security clearance type jobs where bankruptcy equals no clearance.

Re:Six percent

[Caerdwyn]

Agreed. Six percent? One in eighteen? Consider the people whom you know who are out of work. Are there at least one out of eighteen whose behavior or lack of skills means they're unemployed for a REASON? Consider the people whom you know who do have work. Are at least one of eighteen of those people whom you think are more of a liability than an asset?

I know several IT/engineering folks who are out of work. With perhaps one exception, I wouldn't hire any of the individuals in question. They're slackers, or in way over their heads, or behave badly in a professional environment. Sure, I'd have a beer with 'em, but hire them? No. That's a higher standard. Wages don't have anything to do with it; the people in question I wouldn't take on at any price.

Tech is doing just fine, at least here in San Jose. I get daily emails or calls from recruiters, my company has unfilled jobs (and is offering a bounty for referrals), and I know that others have the same experience. I'm no hot-shot super-star either, I'm almost 50 (so it's not a cheap-because-I'm-young factor) and it surely isn't because of my looks. I read the required H1B notices that get pinned to the break-room cork board that include the position and salary; we are certainly not lowballing imported labor (I have yet to see one that was less than six figures).

If you're good, you're in.

Other regions may differ; I can't speak to that.

Re:It's called "offshore outsourcing" not unemploy

[phantomfive]

All we have to do is get rid of the H1B bastards and BOOM instant high tech employment.

I love how Slashdot is dominated by liberal sentiments until it comes to our jobs, then it's 100% anti-immigration, dominated with rhetoric that sounds like theminute men. It's sad that you were modded insightful instead of troll.

What we actually need is more immigration, and more emigration, so we can all get to know each other and realize that we're all human brothers and sisters and won't want to kill each other for reading one book or another, and can be happy when someone else gets a job instead of calling them bastards. :) That's my happy dream.

Re:It's called "offshore outsourcing" not unemploy

[TheRaven64]

H1Bs are not offshore outsourcing, they are importing skilled workers. If you fire them all, you'll replace them with people who live and work in another country and you won't get any benefit from them paying taxes to the same government as you.

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[nomadic]

The rules are here. They're (very) restrictive. I'm not saying they work 100% right. But it's not a free for all to hire cheap labor either... at all.

That's cute that you think companies follow the rules like that...

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[Surt]

I DO know the rules, and I have also seen first hand how the companies that abuse them are evading them. The most common strategy is to list an impossible requirement, and then miraculously find that the foreigner they want to hire happens to have that on his resume. Miracle of miracles, the job is filled. Meanwhile, to get an american to do the job would have cost 2-3x the 'prevailing wage', so they have a huge financial win.

Re:What do you expect

[frank_adrian314159]

Let companies keep more of what they earn and they'll feel more comfortable hiring people, it's that simple.

Ummm, it's not that simple. In general, corporate earnings have been improving since Q1 2010 (when the "official" recession ended). Targeted business tax cuts were instituted in 2009 as part of the stimulus package. There are still not robust increases in hiring. If you look at financial reports for companies that are having increases in earnings you find that these corporations are either (a) hoarding cash, (b) using extra cash for acquisitions, or (c) instituting share buyback programs. None of these things "hire workers". In fact, choice (b) often depresses employment, as redundancies are eliminated in the merged entities. Nor is there any indication that lowering the tax rates further at this point would encourage corporations to hire more workers, either theoretically or empirically.

Do you actually observe the economy and research these things, or do you just get your talking points from Glenn Beck?

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[lgw]

Unless someone is cheating (and there are some contracting companies that cheat badly), an H1B is no cheaper than a citizen to employ. The wages are typically slighly lower, offset by legal costs of dealing with the immigration paperwork. Legally, you have to pay an H1B market rate (and all H1B salaries are public, so it's easy to check), and since an H1B worker can change jobs, he'll leave like anyone else if you try to get too cheap (like anyone else, that can be hard right now).

Companies that don't want to pay what it would cost to hire Americans offshore the jobs, they don't muck around with H1Bs.

I can compete with H1Bs, they have the same basic costs of living I do, but there's no way to compete with the cost of living in a developing nation.

Parent has got it!

[AnonymousClown]

My employer is hiring, both full-time and contractor. My previous employer was hiring as well. In neither case could we get qualified candidates.

Thats because HR is requiring 10 years of experience with winders 2008 server, so by definition the only resumes that make it thru the HR filtration plant are liars / con men / inside-referrals.

Whenever I see someone say that "they can't get qualified people" it's always for these reasons:

Unreasonable qualifications as the parent stated or incompetent HR. And it's not just tech skills, it's also for subjective reasons too; such as, "they wouldn't fit in" or some nonsense.

Here's an example that I over heard fixing a friend's computer who lives with an HR person that works at home. They were on a conference call and it was on speaker phone. One of the HR people came on to talk about a candidate. The candidate by her own admission had an impressive resume - all the skills, education and experience required by the job. Anyway, this person commented that when the candidate came in the room "he sucked the air out of the room" and he wouldn't be good for the company.

Now, was it brought up that the guy could have been a bit nervous because he was unemployed for several months? Nope. He was passed over because the HR person didn't think she was allowed to have enough air.

You want qualified candidates? Bypass HR.

Corporate Culture often creates techtards

[nixNscratches]

Sure, there are companies out there doing it right or at least trying, but there are many who are looking to

1. Replace experienced workers with inexperienced ones at half to 2/3rds salary.

2.Hire architects to design and document complex systems and then hire the equivalent of janitors to do maintenance and upgrade work. Eventually the center cannot hold and you end up with a complex nest of band aids and workarounds worthy only of submission to TDWTF.

3.Replace creative thinking, problem solving and innovation with documentation of procedure whereby routine tasks are accomplished by following rote procedures and recipes that a trained monkey can follow, but which don't really address all the real world failure points in the process or how to even detect them much less correct them. Worse yet, since policy is to follow the procedure, updating said procedure is usually next to impossible to get approved.

Most of this comes from a fundamental mistrust and misunderstanding of the value and role of IT within an organization. IT as a whole is viewed as a sausage grinder into which many companies pour their most critical business problems and hope that what comes out is a solution everyone can stomach. IT doesn't fix business problems, it fixes Information and automation problems. If you make poor decisions and ask IT to implement them, and the whole thing goes up in flames it doesn't mean IT failed you and many companies don't seem to grasp that.

Re:skill fade?

[jeff4747]

To me, that's the perfect time to pick up NEW skills.

That only works for so long, at least if we're talking about software development. Once you're a "senior developer"-level person, it stops working. You have entry level skills in your new area, but you have senior-level work experience that requires senior-level pay. Companies prefer not to hire such candidates. They assume that the candidate will produce sub-standard output if they pay at a senior rate. Or if they low-ball the rate, the candidate will jump ship as soon as they find a job in their 'core area'.

Unfortunately, not too many development companies have figured out that once you have legitimately reached a 'senior' position, picking up the new language is pretty damn trivial. Each language is solving the same problem over again, with a slightly different solution. Once you have the basic programming concepts down, it really doesn't matter what the API is called.

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[jeff4747]

and I would have easily gone to $100K for someone with a couple years experience or a PhD.

Let me get this straight....you wanted a PhD for an entry-level applications engineer job, and were surprised you had trouble finding candidates?

Methinks your expectations are a tad out-of-whack.

Re:What do you expect

[MarkvW]

No. You obviously don't get it. The free market is "magical," as Ronald Reagan once said. The free market takes care of everybody's needs.

No big government is needed, because we can trust big business to take care of us. Don't worry about the minimum wage, because the free market will provide what you need.

What? You're not cutting it? It's your fault, you should be succeeding. If you're not, there is something wrong with you.

Trust in the Free Market! Big Business is your Friend!

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[jeff4747]

From his comment, we wanted anyone with a EE degree, but would have been willing to pay an extra $20k if needed to hire someone with a PhD, rather then the normal rejecting of that candidate for being overqualified/too expensive.

The error in expectations is the belief that a PhD would apply for an entry-level position.

From my own experience, we ran an internship program a couple of summers ago, and really would have preferred to hire citizens/green card holders, as the legal costs are quite high relative in the total salary cost of an intership. We got exactly 0 applications from citizens and green card holders

Learn to write better job postings, or find out why HR threw all of the applications in the trash. Remember- it's not only the candidate's job to fill the position.

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[lgw]

It doesn't work that way. You're obligated to look for non-H1Bs first, and to pay your H1Bs at least market rate - you're not obligated to hire an American "at any price." What kind of sense would that make?

In any case, H1B holders often become green card holders and then citizens eventually, which is a fine outcome (an American citizen has the job at that point) and far better than the jobs going to other countries.

Re:Ok

[jeff4747]

This is also know as the "Repbulican president unemployment number", as the press has a habit of reporting the big number when a Republican is in charge, and the small number (the U3) when Democrat is in charge.

[Citation Needed]

The U6 is rarely mentioned by the media regardless of the President's political party.

Re:3... 2... 1... before that old H1B rant

[demonbug]

As it happens, we were focused on interns from graduate programs in Silly Valley, and focused on second-tier schools (Google and MS and the like were so aggressive with the top tier schools it simply wasn't worth our effort there). The percentage of citizens in those graduate programs is pretty small to begin with, but still I was surprised.

Not to flame, but why is it that you were focused on second-tier graduate schools in silicon valley, yet when you were unable to fill the position from this (limited) pool, the next step was to go to an H1B? From that account it sounds like the company did exactly what everyone thinks they are doing - looked at an arbitrary extremely narrow set of potential applicants, and when that didn't pan out (surprise surprise) went straight to finding an international worker. Wouldn't it have made more sense to possibly expand your search criteria to maybe include people from outside a relatively small portion of Northern California rather than jump straight to spending the money on an H1B?

I'm also trying to figure out what second-tier programs there are in Silicon Valley (or the immediate area) that have the potential to turn out PhDs, but I'm not really coming up with much...