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East Coast vs. West Coast In the Quest For Young Programming Talent
McGruber writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that tech interns are in high demand in the Bay area. According to the author, 'Technology giants like Google Inc. have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response — sometimes even luring candidates away from college.' Meanwhile in NYC, CIOs lament that they are unable to retain 20-something techies according to a report in Network World. Says one CIO, 'It puts us in a really uncomfortable position to have this kind of turnover because knowledge keeps walking out the door. We invest in training people and bringing them up to speed to where they need to be, and boom they're gone. That has been my biggest struggle and concern.' It's the pay, stupid!"
You get what you pay for. If you aren't keeping trainees, you aren't competing on salary. You would think that obvious, I guess it isn't.
This is from the article,
No sooner does he hire a Java programmer and train him in the company's music industry niche, than the programmer is recruited away for a higher salary. Indeed, everyone on Trebino's six-person Java development team has less than one year of experience with HFA, which is the nation's leading provider of rights management, licensing and royalty services for the music industry.
There's only so long you can compromise your principles.
This is another gem,
"They are looking for much more aggressive career development opportunities and the ability to learn new things quicker," says Lily Mok, vice president at Gartner for CIO Research. "Traditionally, it took two or three years for a person to move up into the next level in an organization. They want to be on a faster track than that. They don't want to stay in one spot for more than 12 or 18 months."
Even when CIOs promote 20- and 30-somethings, they often don't have loyalty to the organization, Mok says.
"Don't expect them to stay with you 15 or 20 or 30 years...That's not going to happen," Mok says. "They will stay with you as long as they see certain things, including personal growth or personal value enhancement, whether that's financial reward or career aspirations. But only think about being able to retain them for two or three years. If nothing happens, they will leave after their first year of employment."
Of course Gartner has always had a gift for stating the obvious.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
When one thinks of NYC, the same stirrings of exciting bleeding edge technological progress does not come to mind as say, Palo Alto. People think about scummy hedge funds and ridiculous cost of living. Try making it in NYC or Boston with less than 50k a year. It's not fun.
I've seen it first hand. If the company can afford to pay better than the industry or the market in general, they have staff that actually knows how things work, and how to fix things when they go wrong, because they have been around a while. It means that things get done and the staff is more effective. When it comes to technical people, the company needs to pay a wage that is competitive on a _national_ level, because people are more willing to move than in the past, and they need to pay competitive wages across all industries, since a Java developer for a manufacturer can also be a Java developer for a finance company without a lot of retraining.
Its a two edged sword though. At a company that pays well, people don't leave on their own accord. The power is in the company's hands. A strongly competitive salary means that very few other companies are going to be able to pull you away, and limits your choices when/if you want to leave.
From the article:
"HFA, which is the nation's leading provider of rights management, licensing and royalty services for the music industry. "
The article isn't talking about a small company, which simply can't afford to increase pay. We had a similar issue in our company a few years ago. The solution was to increase pay to competitive rates and ensure that junior staff members have a structured way to climb the career ladder in a reasonable timeframe.
"We invest in training people and bringing them up to speed to where they need to be, and boom they're gone"
as opposed to, say, employees who spend 30 years at a company, and then have their electronic ID turned off one day without anyone telling them, and someone sends them a text message saying 'we will mail you your stuff'.
you just FIRED all those old people in order to make room for the 20 somethings, so that you wouldn't have to pay health insurance or deal with their maternity leave or, you know, ability to understand their rights as employees.
you think the 20 somethings didn't see this happen? you think they don't know what you did? you think they don't understand how the game works?
where did these kids learn to be disloyal? they learned it by watching you!!!!
Do you realize how racist that sounds? Everybody you claim to be a good programmer is essentially from a predominantly Caucasian country. Third world countries have poor schools, desperate people who lie on resumes to get jobs they are not qualified for, and scummy managers who exploit big money contracts and give cheap subpar talent. It has absolutely nothing to do with people in Third World countries being poor programmers in general. They are just being exploited.
In my experience, it's about goals and attitudes. The large east coast firms that pay well are primarily non-tech firms that have what can be loosely described as "east coast attitude" (must be well dressed, seniority over merit, established principles vs creativity). On the west coast we have tech firms that cater to engineers specifically and attempt to create environments where they thrive. On top of that there's the chicken-and-egg problem where engineers want to work with other good engineers, and many of them have gravitated to the bay area because of the companies there, which are there because the talent is there, and so on. I believe engineering to be a primarily creative endeavor, and I think west coast companies, for the most part, are more tolerant of the kinds of attitudes that might come with that (fierce ownership, perfection over production). Of course, these are loose generalizations arrived at through particular examples as well as stories from colleges, but I think this is roughly accurate.
He's got a > 100% annual staff turnover, and practically everything that comes out of his mouth screams "I have no clue about what people want even if it's common sense and even if they tell me to my face".
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I for one welcome our Japanese Caucasian overlords.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
OH, the horror. People don't appreciate that we give them a job and a paycheck. They should be grateful.
Of course, the first time the market slows or we can hire someone cheaper, we can show them the door. After all, we're the employees. We only owe them a paycheck for as long as we need them.
Somehow, I can't garner much sympathy for the poor CIO/CEO/CFO/CPHBO that can't keep staff. They've seen what's happened to their parents, older siblings, and friends at companies, and learned the lesson well. Watch out for number one. Your company, despite all it's statements about loyalty, only looks at the bottom line. That's fine, but loyalty is a two way street, and company's are discovering people care as much for them as they do of their people.
I've seen loyalty - in the military - but it's a loyalty because you know the person next to you would die for you and you'd do the same for them. Most company's have no idea what loyalty is, and will learn, as we used to say "Payback is a MF."
I anticipate, once the economy picks up, a lot of companies are going to be crying about how they can't keep employees despite all they "did for them in the recession" (like layoff people with 3 days notice, demand pay cuts, etc) and how horrible it is.
We're fast becoming a nation of hired guns - which is fine, and as things like health insurance and other "benefits" provided by companies become more portable you see more and more people selling themselves to the highest bidder and moving on whenever a better gig comes around. I'd almost see a return to the guild system - where individuals band together to get group discounts and find work but essentially are freelancers; a modern version of a union hiring hall.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I am one of the 20-somethings who have followed this similar career path.
Simply put - I stay at a company until I feel there is nothing more to learn and/or another company offers a greater challenge & opportunity to learn.
Money generally comes with greater challenges, but it has never been my ultimate driving force. This is the reason why I've never (and will never) accept a counter offer.
So how do you keep 20-somethings from leaving? Build a company that constantly researches & implements new technologies. Build a company that contributes to open-source so developers interact with other (better) developers. Send developers to conferences and maybe arrange for them to speak at conferences if appropriate. Allow them to expense tech books. You get where I'm going here. Nothing is stopping your employees from leaving your company for another hot tech company so it's your job to create an environment that attracts good engineers. A boring Java shop with a CTO that is doing nothing to retain talent is only going to be used as a stepping stone to better jobs.
Jason-Palmer.com
As far as these people are concerned, if you're not in sales, you're losing them money. They're so focused on stocks, margins and anything short term that they are willing to cut and shortchange anything they can. Even if you're essential, or if your job entails customer retention such as tech support for commercial/residential internet service. New professionals might not have the loyalty that older generations once had, and they only have themselves to blame for engendering such attitudes - I sure as shit didn't vote for free trade and globalization.
Far as I'm concerned, with the pay, the studying, the hours and the human factor, I'm done. With the hard work they want from me, focused into another career, I'll hopefully be doing what I really want in the next five years or so. Screw 'em.
I worked as a software engineer for 4 years at a fairly large software company after graduating university. The depressing reality is it's much easier to advance your career by switching jobs than it is by being loyal. I got a glowing review my first two years but did not result in a promotion. Meanwhile there were people who would leave the company, and come back a year later at +1 seniority level.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Yes, Montanna has low taxes. Working there doesn't improve your lifetime after-tax income perspective much though.
In my 20's, I got to work in the Bay Area and Hong Kong, as well as retire for a couple years. One place I was a model employee, and the other I had very limited motivation, great pay, but only stuck around a year because it was a hostile work environment.
If you want financial success, you have to work hard, and smart. Getting some of our youngest employees to work (paid) overtime is like pulling teeth. Paid overtime (within rational limits) is the easiest way to turn a good paying job into a great paying job. People forget that their pay isn't just their salary rate.
That sounds like something from my parents generation where you could get a job and feel like it was stable. Business these days has proven over and over again that a job is not stable like it used to be. The norm is to move on more then it was back then and people have changed. If you want people to stick around longer then the norm needs to swing back to long term with good pay and benefits. Otherwise enjoy the turn over rates staying high as the people you try to employee look out for their own bottom lines since their job isn't helping in that area like it once was.
I will say this, I'm thankful I found a job where I can do the 5, 10, 15 year thing. Maybe I'll get lucky and do it as long as my father did in his 42 years of service at one company. Who knows though in this day and age?
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Maybe it's because you've got a bunch of C+ business majors running the show, continually fucking up simple projects.
And then on top of that, treating your software engineers like 2nd class citizens.
Fuck that noise. I left after 6 years and don't plan to ever go back.
I'm a 2000 man.
Once salary is satisfied, what drives us all are 3 things: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
I get the sense from my friends who work on the West Coast that they get these things from their jobs. On the East Coast, it doesn't seem to occur as often (or at the very least is harder to find.) I'm not surprised that young 20-somethings bail as often as they do in such an environment.
Here's a TED talk about it: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
I'm a senior dev working in Austin. Just ran my salary through some cost-of-living calculators vs. NYC and San Jose. One says I'd need to earn 1.55x my current salary to live comparably in NYC. A second calculator says 2.27x for Manhattan, 1.90x for Brooklyn and 1.66x for Queens. The second one also claims 1.63x for San Jose.
Citation needed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Part of it is simple shortsightedness with regards to cost and all that. However another part is you have a greater chance of getting a worker that doesn't do a good job working with your system.
A problem I've noticed in some older tech types is a real "stuck in the past" kind of mentality. They want to do thing they way they used to do them, not the way they are done now, or the way they are done at this location. Resistance to learning new things often increases with age and in computer work, learning new things is always a requirement.
So despite experience, you can end up having a less productive worker. This is particularly true because every IT system I've ever seen is unique. No matter what you experience, you don't come in at 100% on day one, it takes time to learn it and get trained up. If you are the resistant to learning, that can mean never getting up to 100%.
Just understand that with upsides there are downsides too. We just hired a new guy at work who's older, and he has these problems in a mild way. In general he's good but he's awful stuck on mainframes as being the end-all computer solution, since he used to work on them at IBM for years. That's nice, but we can't afford one and never will be able to so it is useless to discuss it.
An example of it in a more extreme capacity is our older professors. Some absolutely refuse to update their knowledge. I've butted heads with one of them over upgrading Cadence because the old version (9.2, like 11 years old) just flat out won't work on new systems. The new version is very similar, our student figured it out in about 10 minutes, but the professor just doesn't want to learn anything new.
Where the fuck do you live that you run into juniors expecting 100k? The juniors I see would be happy with 45k a year and not being dumped on by superiors and bean counters that contribute NOTHING! Do you know how disillusioning it is to join a team as a developer with less than 3 years of experience, and to work for a bunch of guys who literally dick around on the internet all day and make 3 times their salary? Then they get talked down to, asked to work overtime, get ignored, and not appreciated. It is no wonder they leave.
"We're trying to hire lots of [free] interns - but are unable to retain them [once they're worth something]."
First off, that's kind-of like me trying to hire a lot of domestic/janitorial interns to work at my house, and I'm surprised at no one is jumping at this "learning opportunity".
Yea - our company had the same problem with are Philippine division. We'd hire young people at $10k/yr, and couldn't figure out why they'd all leave after a year. (Answer: Any other company on the street would pay them $20k/yr).
P.S. Janitorial and domestic internships are still available at my house! I will reward you all with plenty of life-experience!! Any takers???
You're like the hardline conservative male politicians in America who rally against homosexuality in public, but then enjoy blowjobs from anonymous men in airport washrooms.
Yes because rallying against racism is what comes to mind when thinking about hardline conservative male politicians... I stand by what I said, because I have seen real racism against an entire people because of corporate decisions from assclowns that have wet dreams about outsourcing as much software development as possible to third world countries. My neighbor runs a small website that he farms all the development work out to Vietnam. You should hear how he talks about these poor saps like he is doing them this huge favor for paying them essentially $4/hr. "Oh yessa massa! I sho is grateful!" It is slavery out and out.
When your workplace uses something, it isn't really up for if we should use something else. A workplace uses new technology X and it does its job, despite being new and shiny. Old guy doesn't like it, talks about how much better technology Y is at his old job and how that should be used. Not a useful situation.
There's a big difference between not moving to a new technology and moving back to an old one, particularly if what you have works. For your Ethernet example yes we use it, gigabit and probably soon ten gigabit. I am not going to go and move back to 10 megabit thin-net and token ring.
Like I said the other part of the problem is refusing to learn new things in terms of the new to them system at a new job. Everyone does things differently. Every job has learning that needs to be done to do it well.
My point is just that older workers are not some wonderful boon of experience with no downfalls other than wanting more money. Like younger workers, they have downfalls as well, different ones, but they have them. Refusal to learn/being stuck in the past is a common one.
Programmers from 3rd world counties are fine, i.e. the ones currently living in the US. I've worked with many of them (I hardly even have any Caucasian co-workers anymore). Programmers in 3rd world countries are crap. I've seen a couple projects outsourced and when they came back is was completely unusable, we just had to throw it away and do it ourselves.
I'm not sure where you're getting western coast is predominantly Hispanic and black from. The two cities I'm most familiar with here Seattle and Redmond claim 69.5% White and 79.26% White respectively... I'd say that's predominantly Caucasian...
In particular, be willing to keep up that sort of thing your whole life, including when you are older and it is harder to do. The reason is there ARE environments that value loyalty, and they'll look at your resume and see you have none. That won't automatically be a "no-hire" but it'll certainly put you behind others that don't job hop.
The university department I work for is big on retention. Major pain in our ass every time we lose someone so we do what we can to hire people who will stick around. It is a good work environment. Pay isn't as good as private sector, of course, but benefits, hours, culture, all very good. I love it and I could conceive staying with it my whole life.
So when we are hiring people, one of the things we look at is length of employment. If I see on your resume that you worked at one company for 10 years, that is a plus. Says to me you may stay put. If I see every job being two years or less, I'm not so interested. I don't want a new co-worker who will get all trained up, start to take on some real projects, work a bit on trying to improve things, and then leave for the next big thing, leaving us to find someone else to try and pick up the pieces.
I have no ill will for people like that, I just don't want to work with them, not in this environment.
Just consider things like that long term. Are you going to want to job hop when you are 40? 50? Because the more job hopping you do, and the longer you do it for, the harder it will be for you to find work at a place that doesn't care for that.
Just remember there ARE work environments that value keeping people around, but they want to hire people who will stay around.
Case in point: I took a pay cut to go work for Red Hat. I now get paid to work on Open Source software, have much better co-workers since Red Hat tends to hire Open Source enthusiasts and sane management. Corporate policies like "it's ok to disagree with a persons ideas, but personal attacks are right out" go a long way to making a good work environment.
luring candidates away from college well IT should not even have college. They should have tech schools mixed with apprenticeships.
Now some internships do have learning to them others are more about getting free work or having a office boy. Now this is where unions can help in setting up real apprenticeships / internships with out abuse.
But we don't need unions to have a good tech schools mixed with apprenticeships. As with that you can get people with skills at the start and not people who just have a highly theory based CS BA. Now even a BA is to much for school for most IT jobs. and I can see why some people may want to drop out at some point and start working why keep paying the high cost to learn more theory when you can start working a real job and lean real skills.
Now that is where we need to look at what is wrong about the college system. The Germany dual education system may be a good fit for IT jobs in terms of giving people real skills.
There's always someone willing to pay more. Companies that pay gobs of money at the expense of other factors have high turnover.
Quoted from the interview:
Years ago, when I was first out of college, IT guys worked round-the-clock. My guys work basically 9 to 5, so I find it interesting that people are complaining. The other big reason that people have left is flexibility. We have moderate flexibility. We do not have work-from-home arrangements all the time, only occasionally. The younger people want full flexibility.
So essentially they're not willing to work unpaid overtime, and they want flexibility, which you won't give them, but other employers will. So they leave. And the manager is shocked. He even admits he knows all this. He even goes on to say:
They don't have the same notion that you go to one place and you stay there for five, 10 or 15 years. But the incentives to do that aren't there anymore because there are fewer pension plans and less profit sharing.
So he's also aware that profit sharing and pension plan improvements would help retain workers. These are easy things to implement (they require some paperwork but it's not like making a massive cultural change level of difficulty). In summary: the manager knows why his people won't stay (they want to work sane hours, be able to work from home, have pensions and profit sharing), but he is unwilling to make these concessions, so people leave after one year. He tops this all off by saying:
The biggest point is to get them aware of and engaged in the new business opportunities here.
How is it a business opportunity for the worker if they don't have profit sharing or a pension? And are expected to work unpaid overtime?
The amount of fail here is staggering
and don't get me started about New Yorkers. The 5% that suck make it so that I don't want to know the other 95% of really nice and interesting people.
Some of the smallest minded people I've ever met in my travels around the world are from NYC and California.
OTOH, if they allowed telecommuting and didn't make me visit either location more than a few times annually, perhaps .. perhaps, we could talk.
Life is too short to work for pricks. It isn't worth the hassle.
Bitter much?
You seem made for Houston, TX.
There are plenty of qualified older folk out there. If you hire them, they probably won't go anywhere because for some reason no one else will hire them. There. I solved the problem.
He wants to hire young people, not for their new ideas, but because he thinks they're cheap labor. He is correct, until they've learned a skill and have some experience. That's the universal training-experience trade-off of new workers. The real reason he is upset is because they don't stay. Here are the reasons.
1. When they have no other options, they'll compromise their values. As soon as someone with half a soul has a viable option, they're going to leave. "Indeed, everyone on Trebino's six-person Java development team has less than one year of experience with HFA, which is the nation's leading provider of rights management, licensing and royalty services for the music industry."
2. He takes unqualified/untrained/inexperienced people, and provides them with low pay, poor benefits, and some basic training. A year or 2 later, these people now have skills, training, and experience, but he doesn't want to provide them pay and benefits commensurate with their skill and experience (e.g. that's why he's after unskilled workers to begin with).
3. He's stupid enough to complain about this to the WSJ. Whenever I had CIO/senior management this stupid, I saw the writing on the wall. They're pursuing a dying technology and a soulless business. Frankly, I'd rather have "porn web development" on my resume. From their site:
What does HFA do? (reordered by commentor for relevance)
HFA provides the following services to its affiliated publishers:
Pursues piracy claims
Conducts royalty examinations
Collects mechanical royalties
Distributes mechanical royalties, and synchronization fees for licenses granted prior to 2002.
Issues mechanical licenses
Investigates and negotiates new business opportunities
A workplace uses old technology A and it does it's job despite being old and dull. New guy doesn't like it and talks about how much better technology B is and how that should be used. Still "not a useful situation"?
Would you consider moving from gigabit Ethernet to 100 gigabit fiber (FDDI)? Even though that's "moving back"?
Face it: you are prejudiced and that's stupid. You think "new" is a feature to be counted equal weight with "does stuff" features.
I'd say it depends on where they were educated more than where they're from. The Indian education system seems to be designed to actively prohibit thinking, so if it's an Indian programmer they're more likely to be competent the quicker they were removed from the Indian education system. If they got away before university then they may be okay. If they escaped as children then they're a lot more likely to be competent.
I'd also add Russia to the original list. Some of the most competent developers I've worked with recently are Russian.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I know people on here will say NYC is a great place and all but just because you make $150,000 a year doesn't mean anything. If you are an engineer in the New York area you are going to be working downtown. That means either you pay $3,000 a month for a one bedroom closet or you live 1 hour+ away so you can hope to afford a big enough place for your family. I've driven the hour ONE WAY before for 3 years and let me tell you - it's a drain on your body, your mind and everything else. I am in Florida and get calls and email asking me to move to NYC, Chicago, Minnesota, etc etc. The guy in NYC thought I would be thrilled to make $150,000 a year since i was only making about $85K but once you run the numbers you figure out quickly that i would be LOSING money by taking the job. I make about 70% more but housing is 3 to 4 times more on average for the same sq footage and that is like an hour away from city. Why in the world would i change jobs where i would lose money and have to travel 1 hour each way every day for the hassle of a city environment. 1 hour each way = 2 hours a day = 40 hours a month. A whole extra week that i would lose to do ... well.. anything that i wanna do that i am doing now. No thanks.
So its just not about the pay. its about the location.
Loyality is a two-way thing. If my employer is commited to me then i can be commited to my employer. If my Employer essentially gives me the feeling that he would replace me by anybody walking in, if the guy works for less, then i may go quickly.
I work for a good employer, and i would be willing to accept a lower payment.
I thought that US programmers (regardless of the coastline) were all being laid off thanks to outsourcing to India, or is that last year's IT gripe?
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
I did Bell Labs One Year On Campus 1979-1980. IF he/she came back at all: first year LOSS, second year BREAKEVEN, third year GAIN.
Nothing has changed...
However, even at those companies, a change of management, a buyout or even just a shift in the market can change things completely and you can be out on your ear in no time. Simply put, expecting anything to long term is not a good survival strategy and let's not forget that landing a job is a skill in itself.
Possibly ... however having gone through university with a few people from India, I would also note that their education system does an excellent job of equipping students with the tools of HOW TO LEARN.
Perhaps it is just those who would have figured it out anyhow, but one fellow in particular had other students putting off taking a course because he was guaranteed to F up the grading curve ... every course, every time in the toughest (at our school) branch of engineering.
My experiences with the Chinese (I am one a couple gens back) and the Koreans and Singaporeans is more in-line with what you suggest of those from India.
Ouch
Ford had the same problem.
His solution was to increase the pay of the worker, so that his profitability increased over the long run.
Seriously, it's the same exact problem (numbers are made up here):
It cost Ford $2000 to train a worker over the course of a month, and he earned back $500 / month per worker. The turnover rate was 2 months. So, if a worker stayed less than 4 months at his company, he lost money; if a worker stayed for 4 months, he broke even; and if he stayed for more than 4 months, Ford showed a profit. Having taken a look at his industry (a survey of his company and his competitors), Ford realized that people were leaving for less stressful jobs all the time, as they offered the same pay.
He raised his wages enough to prevent people from leaving for other jobs. By a careful balancing act, he paid his workers more and ensured that his costs for training a worker dropped. His profitability over the long run increased massively (as he was no longer taking $2000 hits when one of his workers decided bull-castration was less stressful than the assembly line), with his competitors quickly realizing the end game (long term profitability, over short term profitability), and raising their wages as well.
Anyway, the Ford family, a few generations later if the tales are true, started feeling guilty about the money their predecessor had earned (the family fortune), and paid a pair of historians to re-write history (a fair bit of propaganda) to make Ford sound more philanthropic (and less like a raging capitalist / industrialist). This myth persists to this day, and is taught in schools as history. It's commonly phrased something along the lines of "Ford wanted his workers to be able to purchase his cars, so he raised their wages..."
I am John Hurt.
Many of us also consider California part of the West Coast... Heck, even Portland counts I think.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The sad thing is, nearly all upper management at most companies seem to be as clueless as the CIO guy in the article.
It makes me wonder how it is that all these monkeys get upper management jobs in the first place, and worse yet, don't ever get fired.
Who keeps hiring these clueless morons and why?
LOL. Yeah, I've been told that. Pretty sure the British must have put that in their heads.
The cool thing about race is that there is no science behind any of it, so if you meet an Indian that wants to be called Caucasian, well... they aren't wrong in any objective sense.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Do you realize how racist that sounds? Everybody you claim to be a good programmer is essentially from a predominantly Caucasian country."
Facts are not racist. So... as you say the causes are probably geographical and political in nature. So what? Did GP say otherwise? No. Any "racism" exists only in your own mind.
If you have been watching the international job boards, as I have, you would see the trend too. More and more employers posting jobs for "North American or European programmers only." (Unfairly, I admit, excluding Australia, which has its fair share of decent programmers.)
They do that for good reasons. And the reasons aren't racist. After all... these are the same companies that formerly hired those third-world workers in the first place.
No, the reasons are economic: turns out that when your outsourced labor produces low-quality goods and are notoriously unreliable, then they aren't so "cheap" after all.
I remember reading that Google was getting as many 75,000 job applicants in a
week. And yet Google is struggling to candidates?
I have been in IT over 30 years, and in my experience, employers are always shortage shouting. They
are shortage shouting while they are laying off thousands of US workers, they are shortage shouting as wages stagnate. They are shortage shouting when doing so completely defies all logic, and evidence. Asking employers if there is a
shortage is like asking a ReMax agent if you should buy a house, the agenda should be obvious.
Worth nothing, objective studies never determine that there is any great shortages.
You are strong on emotion but weak on economics.
Let's say you want to hire a programmer, and you can pay someone in the US $20 per hour, or someone in Hypothistan $5 per hour to perform (we will assume) the same job.
There are two things to consider here:
(1) The Hypothistani's other "job opportunities" are likely something like working the fields for $0.10 an hour. So in comparison, that $5 is very far from representing "slavery".
(2) In the U.S., that $20 would buy something like 10 pounds of rice, while in Hypothistan $5 buys a 40 kg bag. And if one can assume that exchange rate holds in general (as one often can), you are actually paying the Hypothistani -- in terms of HIS country's economy -- the equivalent of over $40 per hour.
"Slavery" indeed. Get a clue.
I meant to write 20 kg bag rather than 40... keeping it real.
But the point is that you have to consider the pay in terms of THEIR economy, not ours. That is the fundamental error in your thinking.
Where do you live?
Citation needed.
Sorry, "Programmers from Canada are fine, eh?"
You know some of us in IT don't want our profession to be pushed down to just a vocational level. It and engineering are treated like shit so why are you colluding with the enemy. From my understanding of the German system it limits you if you get put into the lower quality school enjoy your career of changing the paper and fixing printer problems.
I don't want a new co-worker who will get all trained up, start to take on some real projects, work a bit on trying to improve things, and then leave for the next big thing, leaving us to find someone else to try and pick up the pieces.
Sounds like a boring place to be frank. I just started a new job, if I'm not running at 100% within two or three months then they consider me a bad hire. I'm expected to give my first recommendations of how to improve various products within a month while working on an infrastructure rebuild. They hired me because of what I learned at my last position and they expect me to use it here before my knowledge decays into worthlessness.
Just consider things like that long term. Are you going to want to job hop when you are 40? 50? Because the more job hopping you do, and the longer you do it for, the harder it will be for you to find work at a place that doesn't care for that.
You assume I can't slowly switch to longer stints at a place as I get older. Plus no one really hires older people that much anyway so the end game plan shouldn't depend on that happening.
Getting a half dozen promotions via switching jobs by 35 is going to net me much better options at 50 than if I had two promotions. An 50 year old IT manager is much more employable than a 50 year old Software Developer.
Just remember there ARE work environments that value keeping people around, but they want to hire people who will stay around.
Then they go under as some hot start up bankrupts them. Then you have 1000 unemployed engineers with no currently relevant experience competing for the fifty jobs they are still qualified for.
“There are two types of fool. One says, 'This is old, therefore it is good.' The other says, ‘This is new, therefore it is better.’" --Twain
Daniel
but then how does 4 years CS help you on the help desk? or doing system admin no maybe no college need at all is better as there are people who can do IT work with out a high cost Piece of paper that does not give you the skill that a tech school does at least there you have real skills with that piece of paper.
Some days you'd think someone patented "A means and a system for retaining technical talent by paying them more money" and is refusing to license it.
If they don't take North American or European programmers who's parent's or grandparents immigrated from some other country, it would be racist. If they only care what country you come from, and not your race, then at worst it would be nationalist. Most people don't understand the difference though.
I worked in Sugar Land and lived in west Houston (off Bissonet), in a very mixed neighborhood - all colors, creeds, nationalities, etc. I enjoyed it. I'm kind of a 'white bread suburban' guy by nature, but I got along fine with everybody. One of the running jokes around the apartment complex was whenever I came out to the pool with my Scottish-extraction lily-white skin, everyone would cover their eyes from the glare! :D
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Your math skills leave much to be desired. San Francisco is over 48% white, which is 15% higher than the next largest demographic, and just under a full majority. San francisco is part of the Bay Area metro area which 52.5% white. The LA metro area is over 54% white, and only 44% hispanic including white hispanic. I don't even need to look at your other stats to know they are inaccurate in their conclusion.
Then be a senior software architect or whatever position is your cup of tea.
Point being that at 50 you're not at the top of your game and a 25 year old hot shot will run circles around you (due to lack of a life if nothing else). On the other hand you do have experience so you're much better off in a position where you aim those hotshots instead of trying to compete with them.
Errrr, then maybe hire somewhat older people who are already trained and experienced?
Oh yeah, that might mean higher salaries and acknowledging they have lives outside the company... yeah makes better sense to just keep on hiring and training 20-somethings and watching them leave...sheesh
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
You are strong on emotion but weak on economics.
Otherwise known as a "liberal".
It's one thing to denigrate overgeneralizations or outright lies, it's quite another to deny that there are clearly evident statistical properties of groups of people that we have identified with the term "race".
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Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
FDDI is 100mbit only. In fact, the only 100 gigabit fibre technology I'm aware of on the horizon is Ethernet. IEEE 802.3ba has standards for 40 and 100 gigabit speeds, though there's little commercial out there with it.
SONET/SDH support speeds over 100 gigabit, but nothing at precisely that speed and even then only via multiple frequencies on one fibre. You can't directly do that speed as far as I know STM-1024 is still being worked on actually being implemented. Remember the OC/STM standards start at 155mbps and move in multiples of 4.
So I have to conclude you are talking out your ass, to try and make a point. FDDI doesn't mean "any fiber interface". It was a particular fiber standard that never developed much, because high speed Ethernet largely supplanted it.
Plus you missed my point about an important one: COST. Yes 100 gigabit would be cool and would be a step up. Only thing is we cannot afford it and don't need it right now. Same shit with my mainframe example. Sure, a mainframe would work to meet our backend storage needs. However we can't afford one and already have a NetApp FAS2020 that does meet our needs for less.
I can't fathom why anyone works overtime if they are young, free time is worth way more than money to me at 28. You'd have to offer me triple pay for me to even think about over time, money is just not that important once it gets beyond the basics.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
Hire older workers. But you cant because they jobs suck and young people will do them because they think it is cool. Instead pay older workers well, provide time for a life and family and you will retain employees. Young people can do whatever they think is in their single best interest. Move wherever they want and switch jobs frequently because they have no one to think about besides themselves. But then again that is why they are desirable workers, they can work all hours for lower pay. Been ther done that.
it's quite another to deny that there are clearly evident statistical properties of groups of people that we have identified with the term "race".
Of course one has to recognize that people like to lump people into races - it would be stupid to deny it. But the minute you try to define the races, you realize how non-scientific it all is. Indians claiming to be "Caucasian" - the same race as northern Europeans - is fine as long as you don't try to claim some scientific basis to the term Caucasian.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Downside: you have to pay them more. Not in this economy. There are too many unemployed and underemployed tech workers. Google and the others need to stop making hiring decisions based on stereotype and start evaluating the existing talent pool based on ability.
I saw some damn good offers in my senior year of college to relocate to the West Coast (Seattle area specifically). I have so far never seen anything like that on the East Coast, which seems ridden with small companies, mostly nontechnical rather than true technology companies, who mostly all seem to want to hire someone experienced rather than even try out a twenty-something like me.
Want to work for a real tech company? West Coast. Want to work for a web startup? San Francisco or, admittedly, Boston-Cambridge. Want to work for smaller companies that mostly don't do any serious technology? Most of the East Coast. Want to work in actual technology on the East Coast? Be 30 and have the experience of a 35 year-old, preferably with a Master's degree.
Or maybe I'm just being pessimistic. Whatever.