Slashdot Mirror
Software Development Employment Rises 45% In 10 Years
dcblogs writes "Software employment is rising at 4 to 5% a year, and may be the only tech occupation to have recovered to full employment since the recession. Other tech occupations aren't doing as well. In 2001, there were more than 200,000 people working in the semi-conductor industry. That number was less than 100,000 by 2010, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. Darin Wedel, who was laid off from Texas Instruments, and gained national attention when his wife, Jennifer, challenged President Obama on H-1B use, said that for electrical engineers, 'unless you are in the actual design of circuits, then you're not in demand.' He said that much of the job loss in the field is due to the closing of fabrication facilities. Wedel has since found new work as a quality engineer."
seriously, this is slashdot -_-
if you take a growth of 4% per year, that already reaches over 48% over 10 years (you know, it's accumulative, this nice little exponential growth) -_-
A lot of companies that used to maintain their own fabs have closed them over the years. Trying to keep up with the leaders in process technology is very expensive. It has been a long time since it was even as cheap as $1,000,000,000. Not many companies can afford to build one.
Semi industry fab costs limit industry growth
By 2020, current cost trends will lead to an average cost of between $15 billion and $20 billion for a leading-edge fab, according to the report. By 2016, the minimum capital expenditure budget needed to justify the building of a new fab will range from $8 billion to $10 billion for logic, $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion for DRAM and $6 billion to $7 billion for NAND flash, according to the report.
It used to be that companies could leverage their own fabs for competitive advantage in process or design technology, or simple scheduling. Not any more. Now you outsource the fab to one of the big providers and get in line. More and more of the fabs are outside the US.
Some of the smaller old fabs get retargeted to specialty products, but even that tends to die eventually.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'm curious, what does the data look like for 12 or 15 or 20 years?
An industry average of unemployed people as would be expected pre-recession.
i.e. if under normal economic conditions the unemployment rate is 3%, then software development is at that level.
If you're expecting it to mean 100% employment for all software developers then no that's not the case, because in every industry there'll be a few percent of incompetents who are just always unemployable no matter how desperate that industry gets.
I always thought it was about EE requiring a *different* mindset rather than "more talent". There are lots of "run of the mill" EE jobs too, which don't require the full gamut of skills learnt e.g. during your degree programme - just as most software jobs won't require most of what you learnt at school.
My academic background is in mathematics. I found anything from the purest mathematics to the underlying physics relevant to EEs a lot easier that did the EEs I bumped into, yet I find circuit study entirely unintuitive. I keep thinking that I'm missing something when trying to design/troubleshoot some electronics (always merely for fun). Even something as simple as the various designs for an oscillator, I think, "OK, how come you immediately know it does this [assuming you don't just recognise the circuit from a textbook]? What prompted the original designer to try this particular circuit?" EEs I've met - unlike a lot of mathematicians, I think? - don't seem so keen on explaining their thought processes. This may sound weird, but I'd love to have one as a social friend, who would just lead me through building shit for fun.
Wedel has since found new work as a quality engineer
He's checking the accuracy of the drive thru orders at McDonald's.
It's not just that, as companies have been cutting staff they've also been looking for ways to do more with less staff and turns out that that's where computer automation comes in. The reality is there are some jobs out there whereby you can hire one developer and have him/her write software that will automate the job of 10 people or whatever. It's cheaper to hire a developer and automate, than to keep paying people to do an easily automated job.
That's why software has been fairly recession proof. There have been redundancies of course, but for each redundancy there's been plenty of other companies looking to hire to automate.
The mobile boom has helped as well of course as you say.
To understand circuits "intuitively", you need to train yourself to visualize both the voltage, currents and frequencies at any point in the circuit simultaneously. When you can look at a diagram of a filter and "see" the waveform or frequency comming out, then it is intuitive. It sort of comes with experience. And you start to recognise patterns which simplifies things. It is a lot like learning to read, or program a computer, just more complex in that something further "down" the circuit can have an effect on something further "up".
The trick with most oscilators is to realise that noise starts them. In a perfect world, they'd need a kick to get going. Most things are tried because, like with any engineering, when all the components are understood, all it takes is a bit of intelligence to combine them into useful modules.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
I have a PhD in organic chemistry from a pretty good school and used to have a pretty good career. Most of the people like me, over 50, are out of work or grossly underemployed. And it's very bad for new grads, too. And not great for the rest. We're not so happy about that H-1B and STEM talk coming from everywhere either.