Tech Unemployment Rising In Some Categories (dice.com)

H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 01:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Great it's all going according to plan.

Re: H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 03:04 · Score: 1

Quick, get more women into Tech, we need those unemployment number higher and their salaries lower!!
Re: H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by Coren22 · 2015-10-29 06:07 · Score: 1

If we are overpaid Janitors, why don't you do the job for the massive increase in pay?
It seems perhaps that there is more to the job, but since it is so easy, there should be no problem with you doing the job for the money.

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APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Re: H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 06:42 · Score: 1

I do the job already, and have been for 20 years. The differences between you and me:
1) I get paid well into the 6-figures.
2) I realize how fortunate I am to be making a good salary doing this work - where I get paid far more than 2x the national median salary (this is called perspective).
3) I don't rail against the "injustice" being done to me if average salaries drop a few thousand dollars because more junior people are entering the industry after me.
4) I am confident in my value to my employers.
5) I make all of this look *good.*
As an insider, I'll say again that MOST people in IT are overpaid janitors with outsized egos and a paycheck to match. Those of you that fear competition in the labor market are simply frauds waiting to be found out. Now go empty my recycling bin, chump.
Re: H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by KGIII · 2015-10-29 08:12 · Score: 1

Hmmm.... You know, janitors work with some fairly complicated machinery, work with a variety of chemicals, and need specific training to deal with certain kinds of hazardous materials or body fluids using the current best practices.
I'm not sure why people think they don't actually have skilled janitors. Have you ever seen what goes in to resurfacing an industrial sized tiled floor? Have you ever seen them use sulfuric acid to clean out clogged drains before needing to call in a licensed plumber? How about needing to repair a the closed units that scrub and buff?
Your nose, it is long for all the good you think you are.

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re: H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by david_thornley · 2015-10-30 02:44 · Score: 1

FWIW, when I was in grad school, one of the most fascinating people to talk to was a janitor. I learned something about his schedule to meet up with him more.
(No, this has nothing to do with anything illegal.)

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re: H1B, L1B, etc Doing their job by KGIII · 2015-10-30 09:59 · Score: 1

I'm not sure why people think they're unskilled or that the job is easy. I also have to wonder if they know what they make... We paid a cleaning company to take care of our offices at night and had an on-site staff that they provided during the day. It was not all that inexpensive. It's not like they're just hiring people who don't know what they're doing. There's some experience required or needed to be learned. There's also some training to deal with certain chemicals or incidents.
It's as crazy a thought as thinking, "We don't need to reinvent the wheel." No, we've been reinventing it since it was mostly square, made of stone, and broke every twenty feet. It's a good thing we have been.

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."

And now you know ... by John+Jorsett · 2015-10-29 01:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

... why we need all those H1B visas: to bring tech unemployment more in line with US unemployment overall. Unemployment inequality affects us all.

Re:And now you know ... by leed_25 · 2015-10-29 01:53 · Score: 2

It is a strange thing that not one of the presidential candidates has even mentioned the H1B visa program.
Re:And now you know ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:02 · Score: 4, Informative

Trump has many times, explaining how it takes jobs from US citizens. He has taken backlash from the media and other candidates for that position, but his poll numbers raised when he doubled down on that statement.
Re:And now you know ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:04 · Score: 5, Informative

Not true. Trump has come out against it as it currently stands, and has an elegant solution: require H-1Bs be paid more than market wages. That way, it's only cost-effective to hire an H-1B if you honestly need them.
Re:And now you know ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:33 · Score: 1

You realize that 3% unemployment is generally considered "none", right? 3% is the normal rate for people just switching jobs, and having a week or two off between gigs.
Re:And now you know ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:37 · Score: 1

That's a retarded idea. What do you think would happen to employee morale if management brought in a bunch of Habib's and gave them 50% more money than they're giving you?
Only an idiot would do that. The whole problem with H1-Bs is that they're supposed to be filling positions that no native Americans are qualified to fill. However, if that's what they were really doing, H1-Bs wouldn't be pools of underpaid grunts, they'd already be able to command premium salaries just by simple supply-and-demand. Nationality would be secondary, and anyone who complained could be told that if they wanted similar salaries that they needed to buckle down and acquire those scarce skills themselves. If you have a morale problem because someone knows something you don't and you're not doing something to change that, it's your problem, not the nation's.
If the USA actually adopted Trump's idea, then companies would still be going the cheap route, but now the cheap alternative would be citizens.
Re:And now you know ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:38 · Score: 1

You realize that that's already a requirement of getting an H1B visa, right?
Re:And now you know ... by oh_my_080980980 · 2015-10-29 02:52 · Score: 4, Informative

Bernie Sanders has.
Re:And now you know ... by majid_aldo · 2015-10-29 03:51 · Score: 1

so FUCKING cynical!

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Re:And now you know ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 03:55 · Score: 2, Informative

Also Bernie Sanders.
Sanders and Trump are the way to go. They're running as R and D, but they're very much opposed to the One Party.
Re:And now you know ... by ShanghaiBill · 2015-10-29 04:11 · Score: 1

Trump ... has an elegant solution: require H-1Bs be paid more than market wages. That way, it's only cost-effective to hire an H-1B if you honestly need them.
No. That way it is cost effective to lower salaries so that no American citizens will take the jobs. Then you can fill the positions with H-1Bs.
As an employer, I used to love the rule that H1-Bs had to be paid at least as much as Americans, because if an American asked for a raise, I could just tell them I couldn't increase their salary, because it was illegal to pay them more than the H1-Bs. So no raise for you! Heh heh.
Re:And now you know ... by NostalgiaForInfinity · 2015-10-29 04:19 · Score: 2

require H-1Bs be paid more than market wages
That's effectively already the rule; H-1B workers need to be paid at least "prevailing wage", which in practice makes them more expensive than American workers. Furthermore, the DOL makes prevailing wage determinations.
Re:And now you know ... by tnk1 · 2015-10-29 04:22 · Score: 1

Did all those people taking a week off file for unemployment benefits? Because they usually use metrics like that to determine who is "unemployed".
Which is also why people who have totally given up are also not considered in the unemployment metrics. Their unemployment has run out and they are no longer on the books.
Re:And now you know ... by phantomfive · 2015-10-29 05:37 · Score: 1

require H-1Bs be paid more than market wages. That way, it's only cost-effective to hire an H-1B if you honestly need them.
It won't work, because there will be loopholes.
Right now employers are required to pay H-1Bs market wages, but they don't, because there are loopholes.

Right now you also need to prove that you can't hire anyone to do the job in America. To get around that, tell someone to interview every candidate that applies, even if there are 50-60 of them, and find a problem with each one of them. Simple.

I like a lot of my Indian coworkers, but the H1-B program right now pushes down wages for everyone. It's not fair (and Trump's idea won't fix that).

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:And now you know ... by Coren22 · 2015-10-29 06:19 · Score: 1

As a Systems Engineer, I laugh at your jealousy. If you think that my job is so easy to do, then apply for it and show me how it is done. I have 15 years in the industry working with Unix, Linux, Windows server and desktop lines, including Exchange. I now design very large email systems and keep them secure. If you think people doing my job are so inexperienced and useless, come do the job instead. I am sure you will qualify for the job with your immense experience.

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APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Re:And now you know ... by radarskiy · 2015-10-29 07:00 · Score: 4, Informative

Actual position of Bernie Sanders: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
"What I do not support is, under the guise of immigrant reform, a process pushed by large corporations which results in more unemployment and lower wages for American workers...."
"Furthermore, as someone who was led to believe that what economics was about was supply and demand, if you need workers in a certain area, you need to raise wages. I have a hard time understanding the notion that there's a severe need for more workers from abroad when wages for these jobs rose only 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2011. You see stagnant wages for high skilled workers, when these companies tell you that they desperately need high skilled workers. Why not raise wages to attract those workers?"
Re:And now you know ... by Coren22 · 2015-10-29 07:56 · Score: 1

Well, my MCSE does say NT on it, but that is only because it never expires and I never needed to renew it for any job.

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APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Re:And now you know ... by jopsen · 2015-10-29 08:01 · Score: 1

... why we need all those H1B visas: to bring tech unemployment more in line with US unemployment overall. Unemployment inequality affects us all.
Low unemployment is bad for businesses and strangles the economy.. It's hard to start a new business if you can't hire people for less than 200k.

So true, nobody wants high unemployment rate (which is obviously also bad), but like everything in life there has to be a balance.
Due to lack of social services in the US, I get that it is hard to accept that zero unemployment isn't a goal.
Re:And now you know ... by KGIII · 2015-10-29 08:21 · Score: 1

Those people didn't apply for unemployment so will probably not be included in the statistics.

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:And now you know ... by KGIII · 2015-10-29 08:46 · Score: 1

I dunno if this clarifies or muddies your point. Starting in 1992ish I was hiring traffic engineers at a pay rate of about $140k/year plus all the various benefits and bonuses. I suspect there was a near 0 rate of unemployment in the field as most of these had to also know a bit of CS and a bit of programming. We were certainly willing to train - we had to.
Yet, when I look today, the unemployment rate is up - near 3% (a bit higher, from a quick search). The fucking median pay rate is less than half of what we gave as STARTING pay.
Now, I am not an economist but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night and I have taken a few courses and I have written a few books. Poorer people have less spending money. More people entered the field. Now there is unemployment (not a lot, but some) and I guess that's pretty normal. But I'm just not sure that it matters. If I'd only been able to hire at 200k per employee then I'd have just made sure that number was in the contract. 'Snot really like I give a shit how much I'm paying (to some extent) 'cause I'm just going to raise the price of services. That and my employees can buy more stuff, spend more in taxes, and the taxes were what paid their salaries or, eventually, their attendance at functions or shopping in stores or malls.
It's kind of a closed system.
Like I said, I'm not really sure if this muddies, argues against, or even if it supports your assertion. I don't really know. I didn't find it easy to hire but I found enough hires and enough people who could demonstrate a history of adaptation and a willingness to learn new things. Of course, at the time, finding traffic engineers was like finding hen's teeth. (They kind of, sort of, maybe existed - some called transportation engineers which is sort of close enough but we didn't deal with choo choo trains while many of them did and they often worked on the 'other side' where they'd do work for fleets like UPS, FedEx, etc.)
If I can only hire A for $200 then I'm going to hire B for $150, spend $30 training, and then raise his or her pay slowly to $200 as they learn their job. Or I'm going to contact the local university and fund some studies and steal the people who do the work. I'm not bashful... Hell, I'll hire person C, make him sweep the fucking floor, and pay for him to attend university so he gets the skills required to do A. I'll go to company XYZ and tell them how much I am paying, what the benefits are, and invite them in to interview - I'll even pay to relocate them.
Why? Well, traffic modeling was lucrative *and* turning into a necessary thing. I'm just going to shunt the expenses off on the taxpayer or the businesses who hire us. If they don't like the prices they don't need the services or they can do something about making sure that I have adequate hiring pools. I didn't mind investing in employees - they are the greatest asset your company holds. Sure, I have patents, intellectual property, and a variety of secret things like predictive or deterministic (sort of) algorithms but those don't do me a whole lot of good without the people who implement them. If I have to pay 10% for staff then you have to pay 20% more for services (overhead and downtime between projects if they happen, call it insurance). If it doesn't work then there's not enough call or need for my business in the first place.
I dunno but I'm not sure I agree. I think part of the problem is the company sees employees entirely wrong these days. You have an obligation to the good ones - a bunch of obligations, really. Train for or educate for the needs you have. It's not a bad thing to go to a university and get some research done - just pay for it, they're happy for the cash and the learning. The added bonus is you can then purloin the good students. I'm not sure that this is bad for the economy as a whole and I'm not sure if I'm qualified to speculate but there you have it.

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:And now you know ... by Holi · 2015-10-29 08:48 · Score: 1

They only count as unemployed if they actually apply for benefits. So I doubt those taking a week off are counted in that stat.

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Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Re: And now you know ... by BarbaraHudson · 2015-10-29 09:18 · Score: 1

Riiight - blame the messenger, not the message. Nice wookie defense you got going there.

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"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:And now you know ... by Cyberax · 2015-10-29 10:43 · Score: 1

Right now you also need to prove that you can't hire anyone to do the job in America.
That's incorrect, there is no such requirement at all. There IS a requirement to pay market wages which in theory should prevent employers from abusing the system, but in reality it's full of holes. Simply fixing the loopholes will go a long way towards curbing H1B abuse.
Re:And now you know ... by l0n3s0m3phr34k · 2015-10-29 11:27 · Score: 1

In Oklahoma, you don't get unemployment even after filing, for the first week. I have no idea why, but the state of Oklahoma also requires you to use an old version of IE to file your claim too. Unless your using IE Tab or something in your browser...I guess my state figures if your a Mac user you don't need those benefits. Of course we also tax people who set up solar panels and our state is turning into a giant sinkhole from fraking....once a big enough earthquake hits the Cushing Oil repository the entire US will wish they had paid more attention as it contains over half the "Strategic Reserves" and will be destroyed overnight.
Re:And now you know ... by phantomfive · 2015-10-29 13:24 · Score: 1

That's incorrect, there is no such requirement at all.
Maybe you're right. A quick search through wikipedia didn't find anything for me. A lot of companies do post a job opening, though.

Simply fixing the loopholes will go a long way towards curbing H1B abuse.
I don't think there's a way to fix all the loopholes.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:And now you know ... by david_thornley · 2015-10-30 02:51 · Score: 1

3% unemployment means that the average person will spend over a year of his or her career unemployed. That seems a bit high to me.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes

Shoddy Workmanship by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 01:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

Web developers, for example, saw their collective unemployment rate hit 5.10 percent

Doesn't surprise me. The declining quality of most modern websites would suggest that the industry has simply stopped hiring professionals altogether.

Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 02:39 · Score: 1

I was already turned off from mainstream medicine due to the fact doctors heavily prescribe the *exact* same medications within the *same* day all the drug advertisements spin up on television, and write your prescription on a pad bearing the logo of said new drug.
Sounds like you're a lousy health consumer. You can ask for the generic version of the drug, talk about alternative drugs or treatments, or get a second opinion. If your doctor insists on prescribing an expensive medication because he's a paid shill, get a different doctor. Playing the helpless victim doesn't get you the best treatment.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by RabidReindeer · 2015-10-29 02:40 · Score: 1

Well, after all, IT isn't a profession. A child could do it. Little Jimmy made a "pong" game just the other day. It was so cute!
Because tech problems are all simple and don't need a whole lot of specialized training. All You Have To Do Is...
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:03 · Score: 1

I would like to see Little Jimmy solve this problem with three different teams involved and less than a dozen emails: "Server is set up with a 40GB OS partition and an 200GB App partition on a single RAID-1 volume. OS partition is running out of space. How to resolve?"
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:18 · Score: 1

Furthermore, if they're advertised on television, these are all drugs still on patent without a generic counterpart, so your "advice" to obtain a generic is erroneous.
A lot of these advertised drugs are replacements for older drugs that are out of patent and have generic versions. Antibiotics is a good example. I often need two or three doses of the newer antibiotic to work effectively, but amoxicillin works effectively with a single dose. Whenever antibiotics are prescribed, I ask for and get amoxicillin.

Please read carefully before you post your condescending comment next time. Thank you.
Still playing the helpless victim. Sad. Very sad.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:46 · Score: 1

Please educate yourself.

When a drug company has a successful product, they get very concerned when it gets close to the time for patent expiration because it means that cheap generic equivalents will soon appear. There are any number of strategies that companies use to protect their interests in this situation, and one of the most common is to take a look at the drug's chemistry to see if there's anything there to exploit. One possibility is to reformulate the product into something that lasts longer than the original, so you'll see things like extended-release or controlled-release formulations being developed.
http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/zimney-health-and-medical-news-you-can-use/old-drug-with-new-name/
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:52 · Score: 1

About 15 years ago my doctor prescribed the newest antibiotics on the market because he got free samples from the manufacturer. They didn't work very well. I've been asking for amoxicillin ever since then.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:57 · Score: 1

It took a dozen emails among three groups to figure out that resizing the partitions was the best software solution to the problem. Not surprisingly, there's no money in the budget for a hardware solution. Now it's taking a dozen emails among three groups to figure out who is supposed to resize the partitions and take the blame if the operation goes FUBAR.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by adosch · 2015-10-29 04:09 · Score: 1

Couldn't agree more. You can thank bootstrap + CMS for that crowd.
And not just web development, but 'true' professionals all-around. So maybe this makes me appear pretentious, but I feel I work pretty hard to know all the tech hats I wear and do wherever I work that mix across all those specific job titles ITFA, but case in point: There's ALOT of self-proclaimed 'professionals' that are hobby-shop single-tech-specializers, one-dimensional in skills and horrible (I mean, HORRIBLE) at their job. It's not surprising most are unemployed if you're a poser and a resident shitbag expert in nothing. Tell me a sys-admin that doesn't need to know about network administration? Tell me a network-admin that doesn't need to know multiple OS's and their supporting TCP stack for tuning? Tell any IT related field that shouldn't know at least ONE type of scripting/programming language (low or high-level) to be better and more efficient/effective to their job? Many don't and that's why they make up that 5%.
I agree some markets and areas are harder to stay employed in with a cut-throat/downsizing/outsourcing mentality, but that still doesn't warrant always consistently being on the chopping block side of things.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 04:35 · Score: 1

The underlying problem is that Windows Server 2008 was installed on a 40GB partition (minimum required is 32GB). Every time the patches are downloaded each month, the server runs out of space. The solution is to resize the OS and App partitions to have equal amounts of space for both. With three groups involved, it's taking two dozen emails to get anything done.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by jbengt · 2015-10-29 05:30 · Score: 1

Technically the law is that the corporate execs must maximize profits for the shareholders, not hire the cheapest developers.
Technically, the law is that the corporate execs have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders within the confines of the corporate charter and applicable laws. That is not at all the same as a mandate to maximize profits at all costs. (There are such things as non-profit corporations, for an extreme example.) Fiduciary duty does mean they're not supposed to spend corporate money on things like corporate yachts used for personal recreation, or hookers and blow.
Also, courts give considerable leeway to executives to base business decisions on their judgements, as long as they meet the standard of reasonable care, even if they choose long-term potential over short-term profits, and even if the decisions were proved wrong in the end. (Though the shareholders might sell in disagreement, they almost never win in court.)
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by phantomfive · 2015-10-29 05:40 · Score: 1

This is why I refused a 401K when I started work.
OK, that was really dumb. You should use your 401k, especially if your employer has matching. You need to save for your retirement.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 06:34 · Score: 1

I'm just a witness to the email thread that came through my Inbox, as my group is responsible for patching Windows. While the platform group set up the server hardware in the data center, it was the developers who set up the OS and screwed the pooch on partitioning the hard drive.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by KGIII · 2015-10-29 08:51 · Score: 1

I've seen on /, many times a public corporation in the US, by law, has to use the cheapest developer possible, otherwise they will be sued for not maximizing their profits.
And yet, I've never seen that. Ever.

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by angel'o'sphere · 2015-10-29 08:52 · Score: 1

Tell me a network-admin that doesn't need to know multiple OS's and their supporting TCP stack for tuning?
Never heard about that. Any pointers how to increase performance on a Linux TCP stack?
I did not know that I was required to know that.
I also did not know that there are type of scripting/programming language (low or high-level) to be better and more efficient/effective ... what is a low level scripting language? What is a high level one?
You sound like an IT manager who has no clue about IT.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by angel'o'sphere · 2015-10-29 09:10 · Score: 1

Perhaps you did not need any Antibiotics but are 'addicted' to the placebo effect of what you believe is working best.

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Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by BarbaraHudson · 2015-10-29 09:33 · Score: 2

I've seen on /, many times a public corporation in the US, by law, has to use the cheapest developer possible, otherwise they will be sued for not maximizing their profits.
There is no such law. People like to repeat this because it "sounds logical." Even government contracts reserve the right not to accept the lowest, or any, bidder.

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"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-30 02:47 · Score: 1

Right. Modern medicine for profit can't be wrong. Must be the placebo effect if an older drug still works better than a newer drug.
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by david_thornley · 2015-10-30 02:53 · Score: 1

Which means that one unfortunate effect of patents is that a company will often delay issuing an improved version until the patent is close to running out.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re:Shoddy Workmanship by angel'o'sphere · 2015-10-31 10:00 · Score: 1

Perhaps you should read up what an antibiotic is and how it works.
For starters, except for one in a billion people, they work the same in every person.
So the first thing to note is: it is a likelyhood of 6 in roughly seven billion that ithe new does not work for you. Because: it is not working for you at all, but killing the bacteria that plague you. And: that is completely unrelated to YOU but is only related to your bacteria.
The second thing is: oh ... I think there is no second thing.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.

100000 low-functioning jobs != employment by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:00 · Score: 1

There's a million underskilled overcertified people out there, and hiring managers/HR is only looking for resume buzzwords. If you're a skilled worker, and you lose your job, you're fighting in the mix with 99 other Jabronis for that 1 job. Unemployment is a real thing in IT.

Re:100000 low-functioning jobs != employment by xrobertcmx · 2015-10-29 03:07 · Score: 1

That was my problem when I lost my last job. I spent 9 years at a company, steadily moving up, and then got cut in the unexpectedly. I knew my job, but had focused on job specific certs since the employer paid. When I hit the streets, the interviews I did get ended up with, so, do you have Security+, do you have ITIL?, do you have Network+. It didn't help that I was job hunting in a market that almost demanded a clearance I did not have and nobody wanted to pay for. It took 6 months and 350 mi move to get back to work.

5% unemployment is healthy by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:01 · Score: 5, Informative

5% unemployment is close to a natural level in a healthy market. The fluctuation around tenths of a percentage points is mostly noise.

Re:5% unemployment is healthy by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:26 · Score: 1

That's 5% in a normal market. The last ten years haven't been normal at all.
Re:5% unemployment is healthy by toddestan · 2015-10-30 13:05 · Score: 1

5% is what they want you to think is "normal", since the great recession. That would not have been called normal 20 years ago. Nevermind that 5% in 2015 would be a lot larger if it was counted the same as it was in 1995.

Seems fitting ... by Qbertino · 2015-10-29 02:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

It is, by very definition, our job to make ourselves superfluos.

Example: I hardly code anymore.
Part of my job constists of setting up WordPress with generic and special plugins. By now mostly automated so that a fresh project can be done by a PM with no clue about web-technologies in less that 10 minutes.

My job now consists of writing requirements, talking to the tech people of our customers and checking the possibilities and the occasional CSS/JS/jQuery and/or PHP Hack to add some obscure special feature to a fresh or existing install. Plus I take care of backups - mostly automated too - and let the bosses know when it's a bad idea to approach project X with strategy Y instead of Z.

Stuff that I do alone today needed 10-15 people 15 years ago. And I only still have work to do because LAMP, WP and all that other stuff is a historically grown technology mess from 2 decades ago. My coding part of the occupation is one smart crew and one MIT licences new-gen web-cms away from becoming totally pointless.

We all know it:
The tech-advancement curve is logarithmic.
The robots are coming and they're taking most of the jobs.
Our's aswell.
The smart people have been predicting this for years. This isn't news at all.

Let's just hope that those at the helm don't screw it up and we all can enjoy an utopia rather than some bizar cyberpunk corporate socialism nightmare.
I personally am looking forward to a 15 hour workweek with still enough to eat and live from. ... I'm down to 25 hours/week already and it feels great.

My 2 cents.

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We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca

Re:Seems fitting ... by Oxygen99 · 2015-10-29 02:35 · Score: 2

Pfft. I don't think automated software development is coming any time soon. At least not for any business problem of any complexity. I received a specification document from a government department the other day. It specifies that certain values in an XML request are mandatory but not required. Now, I know that probably means the request will fail if those values aren't supplied but that, even if they are supplied, they won't be used. Or that they will be used under certain undocumented circumstances. Maybe.

Good luck getting any automated tool to understand that without going Skynet on our ass.

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I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Re:Seems fitting ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:58 · Score: 1

I heard this argument back in 1992. The US might be on the brink of recession though.
Re:Seems fitting ... by ranton · 2015-10-29 03:09 · Score: 2

I think your comments are right in line with the post you responded to. You are claiming that dealing with requirements will keep humans employed, and he was saying how better technology has reduced his job to mostly dealing with requirements.

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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Seems fitting ... by Qbertino · 2015-10-29 03:57 · Score: 1

Bingo!
Cigar for you, Sir.

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We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Re:Seems fitting ... by AmiMoJo · 2015-10-29 04:02 · Score: 1

Software development is just writing a specification document in a language that a computer will understand.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Seems fitting ... by triffid_98 · 2015-10-29 05:42 · Score: 1

It is, by very definition, our job to make ourselves superfluos.

Is that why we keep creating ever more complicated web frameworks that you need to have 5+ years experience in to get jobs? (You know, the ones that have been out for 1-2 years or so)

Yes the simple stuff is getting simpler. The good news for working developers is that there's no shortage of hard stuff left to do.
Re:Seems fitting ... by Tablizer · 2015-10-29 06:40 · Score: 1

It's generally been the trend that a platform matures and tools come along that make common tasks simpler for domain programmers and power users so that specialized "bit diddling" isn't needed any more. VB made in-house-app GUI creation a snap compared to C++, for example.
However, whenever things settle, new technologies come along to create the cycle all over again.
When mini-computers settled, PC's (desktop) came along, when desktops matured, web came along. When web matured, smart-phones and tablets came along with UI and resources constraints that desktops didn't need to worry about.
There will always be the cutting edge that requires specialized bit-diddling (closer to the hardware or OS). However, it still may be in fits and starts such that there may be lulls in tech hiring between new fads/technology/gizmos.

--
Table-ized A.I.
Re:Seems fitting ... by jopsen · 2015-10-29 08:05 · Score: 1

Software development is just writing a specification document in a language that a computer will understand.
I guess you code Haskell :) he he...
Re:Seems fitting ... by david_thornley · 2015-10-30 03:01 · Score: 1

Thirty-five years ago, I would have, on first glance, thought Python a requirements description language, since it looks a lot like the old pseudo-code I used to write to get the process right. Yesteryear's requirements language will be compiled and/or interpreted next year.
There is one part of software development that won't be automated without strong AI: the conversion of human ideas into some sort of precise description that can be further transformed into something executable. Where this comes in development has changed over the years, but it is what programming is all about.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes

Economy is Bad by avandesande · 2015-10-29 02:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Shipments of storage and computers are down- almost always preceding a recession.

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love is just extroverted narcissism

Re:Economy is Bad by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-29 02:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

Honestly, its not a recession. Governments used that term to boost morale. In truth it's a depression. When close to a third of the country is not in the workforce, shit is bad, real bad. Meanwhile, H1Bs and L1Bs are first to be hired, American Citizens last.
Re:Economy is Bad by RabidReindeer · 2015-10-29 02:50 · Score: 1

Governments and economists use the terms "recession" and "depression" to refer to certain specific metrics.
Most of those metrics are abstract numbers of more interest to governments and corporations than they are to people in Main Street.
Over the last decade or so, in fact, the pain on Main Street has become less and less reflected in "official" metrics, but since to bean-counters the metric is the reality and the whole of the reality, people have been getting more and more discontented, uncomfortable, and outright financially injured even when we have an "up" economy.
But the people in charge don't care. Their numbers look good and their incomes are typically either insulated from (for example, government jobs), derived from (for example, quarterly bonuses), or occasionally even counter (for example, Golden Parachutes for failing) to the official economic stats. Until they, too feel their livelihoods threatened, injured, or reduced, don't expect anything to change.
Re:Economy is Bad by ranton · 2015-10-29 03:13 · Score: 1

No, the reason the labor participation rate is low is because baby boomers are retiring. This was predicted 40 years ago. Enough with the doom and bloom and rhetoric.
The labor participation rate I see most often used is restricted to only looking at age 25 to 54. This is specifically to remove students and retirees from the count. And this participation rate is dropping since its two local peaks in 2000 and 2008. At its high it was about 84%, while it is at 80% now. More importantly, it has been steadily dropping since 2008 with no sign of leveling off.

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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Economy is Bad by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 03:37 · Score: 2

The youngest baby boomer today is 51-years-old. The labor participation rate will continue to decline over the next 20 years. The real fun begins in 2035 when retirees outnumbers workers and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare. Taxes will have to go up to pay for everything else and keep the Me Generation in comfortable retirement.
Re:Economy is Bad by ranton · 2015-10-29 05:06 · Score: 1

The labor participation rate for 25-54 is 80% and is at historical highs. Stop lying. If you dont believe me, go look it up.
You know what it was in 1950? 65%
You doom and gloomers are all alike. Liars
Source
Participation rates were far lower before women started to work, but then again the economy was much smaller then as well. We are currently looking at participation rates as low as the mid 1980's.

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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Economy is Bad by wyHunter · 2015-10-29 08:23 · Score: 1

No. The boomers are NOT retiring if you look at the demographics of what age groups are employed. The folks who have no work are young people.
Re:Economy is Bad by ranton · 2015-10-29 09:23 · Score: 1

"As low as mid 1980s" meaning within a FEW PERCENT.
The difference between 10% and 6% U-3 unemployment is only a few percent. It is also the difference between 2000 25-54 participation and today's numbers. A few percentage points can be a big deal.

For Gods sake you people act like everything is falling apart. We are still at historical highs.
Almost every metric of societal advancement is going to be at historical highs if you compare it to the last 100 years. If you start comparing things to the last 30 years, which is far more relevant to our modern economy, we are nowhere near a "high".

That is explained easily by the fact that more women have chosen to drop out of the workforce to raise children, people are staying in college longer, and the tail end of the baby boomers retiring.
I agree these are most of the reasons, but all of these are bad from an economic point of view. The only one I could quickly find strong statistics on was stay at home mothers. The number of stay at home mothers has risen from 4.3 million to 5.4 million in the past 15 years. That is about 25% of the decrease in our workforce. But the number of mothers who stay at home because they cannot find a job has risen from about 200 thousand to 1.1 million. So 90% of those new stay at home mothers are not doing it by choice, but because of a weaker economy. I would not be surprised if the rise in 25+ year old college students and sub-54 year old retirees is also 90% people who feel forced to and not those who want to.
source
source

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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Economy is Bad by KGIII · 2015-10-29 09:50 · Score: 1

It's like the doom and gloom people who say that America has lost its manufacturing base when we are actually manufacturing more than we ever have in our history - other than war times. I think the doom and gloom prophesy is right up there with Plato saying that the younger generation is the ruin of us all and that the future is bleak. The young dislike the old. The old don't like the young. The world's like a honey badger, it doesn't care and doesn't afraid of anything.

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."

Re:Dice? Really? by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 02:31 · Score: 1

When I had a bout of unemployment two years ago, I found Indeed to be a much better job search website. If you responded to a newly posted position within 15 minutes, you often got an interview.

Can't be taken seriously. by ErikTheRed · 2015-10-29 02:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

Whenever somebody uses the U3 unemployment numbers for any purpose that doesn't involve sarcasm or irony, their thoughts are not to be taken seriously. Literally the only purpose of mentioning U3 is political propaganda - the calculation methods divorce it completely and irrevocably from any potential honest use in discussing employment rates.

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Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana

Which "unemployment rate?" by Type44Q · 2015-10-29 02:47 · Score: 2

The technology industry's unemployment rate crept up to 3.0 percent

So these are the unemployed, or the unemployed still eligible to receive unemployment?

Re:Which "unemployment rate?" by xrobertcmx · 2015-10-29 03:12 · Score: 1

Exactly. I think most states now subscribe to a fixed 26 weeks of unemployment and then you are cut off, uncounted, and forgotten. What is worse is when they disqualify a person for benefits due to any number of stupid reasons that result in that person never being counted.
Re:Which "unemployment rate?" by NostalgiaForInfinity · 2015-10-29 04:47 · Score: 1

Unemployment rates are not, and have never been, a useful measure of labor participation. For that, you look at the labor force participation rate. Of course, when you do, you see that that has been steadily going down under Obama, making this one of the worst administrations in history.

Re:Technology != computers by oh_my_080980980 · 2015-10-29 02:53 · Score: 2

Computer systems analysts, programmers, network and systems administrators, software developers, and computer & information systems managers likewise experienced a slight rise in unemployment on a year-over-year basis. So yeah computers.

Could just be cyclical, or the bubble popping by ErichTheRed · 2015-10-29 03:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

In the first dotcom boom, and now the social media/app boom, these same trends started appearing towards the end of each up-cycle:
- Massive hiring of anyone who could spell HTML, barely manage a server farm, or cobble together an application starts dropping.
- Computer science enrollment at universities hit all time highs. (The subsequent bust reverses this trend.)
- The tech news gets wackier every day, as even the dumbest ideas are getting VC funding, IPOing or getting acquired by a huge corporation.
- Job hopping increases, especially towards the top of the boom. (This also explains the voluntary resignation increases.) This is just people hopping for the next crazy salary increase or extra perk, and it decreases during the bust as people are happy to be working.

I've managed to stay employed continuously through 2 of these cycles, and I'm hoping my luck holds out. I think the key is simple -- don't suck at your job. :-) I'm not claiming to be a genius or rockstar by any means (and I think the rockstar moniker is stupid,) but I have had a solid track record and very good work experience grounded in fundamentals. Each of these booms has produced a legion of people who are semi-competent but not exactly suited for the job, and they have all been drawn in by the money. Remember paper MCSEs and certification bootcamps? This boom is all about apps, so it's code academies now -- 9 weeks and you're a rockstar developer writing the latest iPhone sensation!

I think the spikes in unemployment can be explained partially by the boom fizzling, but the systems and network administrator increase is likely due to the cloud shift. Not everything is suited to a public cloud, but enough places will see a benefit in moving their stuff that offsets the control they have in locally owned systems. Again, I think (hope, that is, since I'm in systems engineering) that solid people will be retained either as architects or sysadmins in complex environments. What I do think will start to go away is the hyper-specialists like DBAs of one flavor of database, or VSphere administrators, or SAN/storage guys. As more companies try to get away from proprietary stuff, or shift things offsite, that insanely deep knowledge of EMC, VMWare, Cisco, etc. to the exclusion of everything else is going to be less sought after. Someone who can glue all the parts together regardless of who owns them or where they are will still be able to find work. Hopefully. :-)

Re:Could just be cyclical, or the bubble popping by adosch · 2015-10-29 04:14 · Score: 1

You nailed it. Couldn't agree more.
Re:Could just be cyclical, or the bubble popping by __aaclcg7560 · 2015-10-29 04:16 · Score: 1

I've managed to stay employed continuously through 2 of these cycles, and I'm hoping my luck holds out. I think the key is simple -- don't suck at your job. :-)

I've known many people who didn't suck at their job but got laid off anyway. Most of the time it's because the corporation wants to double productivity at half the cost. So the bean counters lay off half the department. Not the bottom half that sucks in productivity, but the top half that cost more in wages. Everyone else who didn't get laid off hunkered down under the doubled workload.
Re:Could just be cyclical, or the bubble popping by ErichTheRed · 2015-10-29 04:49 · Score: 2

"I've known many people who didn't suck at their job but got laid off anyway. "
Agreed, and I've been in situations like this. Luckily, I've worked at places where things like this start creeping in slowly and you can see the writing on the wall long before they get around to kicking you out. Part of being smart about your career these days is avoiding unemployment at all costs, because unemployed people are damaged goods in employers' minds regardless of the reason. Like you mention, I've known a few people who just got caught out at the wrong time, didn't suck at their jobs, and had a really rough time finding work again because of the layoff.
Unless it's something insane like a year's salary (and you have lots of savings and no debt,) it's never a good idea to wait around for severance pay. The difficulty of getting back into the workforce, even with a solid history, is way higher than if you already have a job.
Re:Could just be cyclical, or the bubble popping by david_thornley · 2015-10-30 03:08 · Score: 1

When I was laid off in 2002, I looked around the conference room they'd gathered us in, and saw people I really respected. The company was having a worse money crunch than I'd thought, and they were trying to keep enough people to do at least a half-assed job of giving the customers what they wanted while eliminating the higher salaries. In that company, we worked on great software, under management that didn't really know how to run a business.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes

Re:Technology != computers by ShanghaiBill · 2015-10-29 04:02 · Score: 1

There are very few technologies that don't involve computers, at least if you count microcontrollers as computers (which they are). The light bulb in my kitchen communicates with my Z-Wave hub, so I can turn it on/off and dim it using voice commands, or link it to a motion controller or timer. But there is bug, and about once every month or two it will start flickering. So I need to unscrew it, and screw it back in, to reboot the light bulb.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2015-10-29 04:28 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

New recession coming? by Billly+Gates · 2015-10-29 04:38 · Score: 1

IT always is the 1st to get cut when the share price or sales go down.

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http://saveie6.com/

Reduce Skill Games (Re:And now you know ...) by Tablizer · 2015-10-29 05:24 · Score: 1

That they be paid more than the prevailing wage? I don't think so.

But there's a lot of job classification word games co's can play to justify their practices regarding "prevailing wages", such as "requiring" a list of 10 specific skills that nobody could statistically have except good liars. The co then scrutinizes the visa application more lightly than a citizen such that all the visa applicant has to do is lie.

I personally think the law should be written that a job requirement list a 1st and 2nd key skill set. If any citizen who has an applicable 4 year degree and experience in the 1st skill set, and something reasonably similar to the second skill, they are obligated to hire the citizen over the visa worker. The co can ask for a near-perfect match for the 1st skill, but has to accept a reasonable approximation for the second, and cannot use 3rd etc.

For example, if the co selects Java as the primary skill and MS-Sql-Server as the secondary skill, then if a degreed citizen applicant has Java experience and Oracle database experience (another RDBMS brand), they should have a crack at the job (barring some justifiable exception).

And citizens should be able to get a written description of the reason for their rejection, which the co has to keep on file for visa auditors.

--
Table-ized A.I.

Correction: Re:Reduce Skill Games by Tablizer · 2015-10-29 05:35 · Score: 1

Re: "then scrutinizes the visa application..."

Should be: "then scrutinizes the visa applicant..."

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Table-ized A.I.

Re:Yet CIOs cannot find talent by tnk1 · 2015-10-29 06:16 · Score: 1

What I have seen is that there are a number of people who got relatively cushy jobs and were paid well at certain big companies, but only did a certain specific task.

Unfortunately, that one thing they did was not really all that skillful or in demand outside of that one place.

However, their title was still "System Administrator" or "Developer"

So, when they get laid off, they come looking for one of those jobs in other companies, but those companies need people who know more than just X thing that this guy did at that one place, so they don't get jobs.

I've had a few of that sort come though looking to be "DevOps Engineers". You can't be a DevOps Engineer in a smaller company if you only ran some cookbooks/playbooks someone else wrote for you. You need to both write and run them and know the whole field. We can't afford to pay you $100K and hire a $140K architect to tell you what to run.

Bootcamp effect? by wyattstorch516 · 2015-10-29 06:58 · Score: 1

Could the rising unemployment rate for web developers be a result of the hundred or more boot camps churning out new candidates. I know most of them are able to place a high percentage of graduates in jobs but what happens if they get a job and then can't cut it. If they are deemed unqualified after a couple of months? What do they do then? It would be interesting if somebody could follow these people over a number of years to see how many stick in the industry.

Tech workers please move to Utah by Ryan+McLaughlin · 2015-10-29 07:41 · Score: 1

The company I work for has had to start hiring H1B workers because there are not enough skilled local workers. Please move to Utah if you are one of those unemployed technology workers.

Re:Tech workers please move to Utah by BarbaraHudson · 2015-10-29 13:00 · Score: 1

You'd probably be better off than some other states.

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"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:Tech workers please move to Utah by dougg76 · 2015-10-29 18:09 · Score: 1

Utah has more than enough good CS grads. Maybe if there were better opportunities for the CS university grads than marketing shops and web dev people might move there. What a waste of human capital.

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I laugh at inappropriate times.

Great, now we're fighting among ourselves by rsilvergun · 2015-10-29 08:31 · Score: 1

Good job, you've just contributed to the working class' rampant infighting. The ruling class would give you a good star of they weren't so busy spending all your productivity gains from the last 40 years on their third summer home and their second gulf stream jet.

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

That's not an elegant solution by rsilvergun · 2015-10-29 08:36 · Score: 1

That's a clever dodge. Like those asshats who say they want to cut medicare for people under 60 so they don't lose votes from people on it. It's child's play to lower the prevailing wage. And you can chip away at how much more until it doesn't matter. Want to do business in America? Hire Americans. You can leave, but you don't get to take the ball.

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

No, we need H1-bs by rsilvergun · 2015-10-29 08:47 · Score: 1

Because corporations got tired of having a training budget. The reason you can't compete with India is that they can live for peanuts while they're being trained. You can't do that because the US lacks their massive underclass, unpaid overtime and complete absence of environmental and worker safety laws.

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

You need to take a look at Salesforce by rsilvergun · 2015-10-29 08:52 · Score: 1

Not automated, but point and click dumb. It's like VB without the hard parts. Sure, it's expressive and slow, but it's worth it to replace all those middle class salaries...

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

Re:Technology != computers by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2015-10-29 14:19 · Score: 1

You could equally well call your computer the product of the metallurgy industry or the petrochemical industry just because it contains metals and plastics. But you don't do that.

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Ezekiel 23:20

Re:Yet CIOs cannot find talent by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-30 09:03 · Score: 1

Some of these places are very top heavy.

I once worked for a state law enforcement agency in the application development division. When I started, they complained about difficulty finding people. Supposedly a number of people had rotated through that team. It quickly became apparent why.

The two senior developers were just guessing their way through everything. They were just awful; checking in non-compiling code, refusing to acknowledge bugs, creating security/usability holes left and right, the works. A project that should've taken a few weeks was into its second year with almost nothing to show for it.

I remember once, upon inquiring about a critical bug that had been ignored for a few months, being berated because he was so very busy with so very many e-mails to deal with. When that idiot turned his screen around and showed not even a dozen e-mails, I could've literally ROFLed. Especially as I'd already solved it twice for lack of anything else to do (other than plan my escape). They always freaked out about time as if everybody was as slow as they were.

Between the two of them and my supervisor (an I-encourage-different-ideas-but-not-really type), there was a quarter million dollars per year squandered. Yet there they were, blaming programmers and analysts and contractors. And once that culture is entrenched, the only chance of changing course is for all of them to be hit by the same bus...

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Tech Unemployment Rising In Some Categories (dice.com)

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