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Demand For Programmers Hits Full Boil as US Job Market Simmers (bloomberg.com)
When the American job market heats up, demand for technology talent boils, an anonymous reader writes citing a Bloomberg report. From the story: Nationally, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in January, and analysts project that it declined to 4 percent, the lowest since 2000, in Labor Department figures due Friday. For software developers, the unemployment rate was 1.9 percent in 2017, down from 4 percent in 2011. While companies are writing bigger checks, they are also adopting new strategies to find engineers for an economy where software is penetrating even mundane processes. Companies are focusing more on training, sourcing new talent through apprenticeships, and looking at atypical pools of candidates who have transferable skills.
"It is probably the most competitive market in the last 20 years that I have been doing this," said Desikan Madhavanur, chief development officer at Scottsdale, Arizona-based JDA Software, whose products help companies manage supply chains. "We have to compete better to get our fair share." What's happening in the market for software engineers may help illustrate why one of the tightest American labor markets in decades isn't leading to broader wage gains. While technology firms are looking at compensation, they are also finding ways to create the supply of workers themselves, which helps hold costs down.
"It is probably the most competitive market in the last 20 years that I have been doing this," said Desikan Madhavanur, chief development officer at Scottsdale, Arizona-based JDA Software, whose products help companies manage supply chains. "We have to compete better to get our fair share." What's happening in the market for software engineers may help illustrate why one of the tightest American labor markets in decades isn't leading to broader wage gains. While technology firms are looking at compensation, they are also finding ways to create the supply of workers themselves, which helps hold costs down.
What is in extremely high demand is programmers with 20 years of experience in a technology that has been around for 5, no older than 19 and working for 20k a year.
And that demand will be high, forever.
Pay more and you get more. Pay this and what you get is code monkeys that couldn't find a better employer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the job market is doing so well, why are we still underpaid?
finding ways to create the supply of workers themselves, which helps hold costs down.
Outsourcing.
US Citizen? These are not the jobs you are looking for.
I'm a software engineer and I'm seeing much of a demand.
If demand is really greater than supply, then programmers should be able to ask for reasonable accommodation from employers (i.e. reasonable working hours and vaca time). If people actually showed a backbone, this has the potential to chance cultures.
Tech is over for white males, only H1B Indians and Afirmative Action women get in. Been this way since after the dot com bust.
...I don't buy it. I don't get to lobby the government to alter the supply and demand curves until I can afford it.
If the market is so good for developers, why do very good programmers in their 60s, who have current skills, have such a hard time finding work?
Go ahead and try. Stand up to your boss/company and tell them that you deserve a more reasonable schedule and vacation time. Then count the number of seconds between the words leaving your lips and your ass being tossed on the curb (anything you left in your desk is now forfeit).
Even in industries with demand outstripping supply, the employers will always have the upper hand. So you can either bend your back under the weight of any paycheck at all, or stand straight while waiting in line for unemployment (assuming they don't try to withhold on the grounds that firing doesn't qualify).
Yeah, but Trump isn't the reason for this.
Just like Obama's attempts to "remake the US economy" based on "progressive" ideals didn't contribute to economic stagnation.
Ha. Ha. No.
Ask for a raise or even some decent benefits and you get branded a troublemaker. Dare to raise the Union idea and you might never work in programming again.
Since the USA make employers (AKA corporations) the only real source of health care the employers hold all the cards.
Wake up. Smell the coffee.
Unfortunately the demand to make money doesn't equate to demand to improve quality of job and life for software developers.
you get what you pay for...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBByfSHxm5M
As a devops engineer with 13 years experience, the job opportunities boil down to a few options:
startup: Web based and the oncall pool is, well, you. pay is decent but your boss is the same age you are and was drafted into the position so the company didnt lose him after 10 years to a competitor. a certified sociopath, your boss will treat you like a whipping boy while upper management blows vc cash on artisan kombucha on tap and vodka shots in the break room. bug reports will languish from your users, completely ignored, as your kanban scrum-bum stand ups quickly turn into sit downs full of hung over or jaded coders ordered to crank out feature after mindless feature.
enterprise: a multi million dollar faceless conglomerate so large your management team has its own newsletter to properly communicate what different groups in your department are doing. Every single idea you propose will be shot down because it didnt show up in a Gartner success quadrant and didnt come with a shiny presentation from some road warrior poured into a wrinkled suit from JC Penny. after 3 years your cynicism will be indistinguishable from personal affectation in most meetings. no one can be fired here unless theyre a meanie-bo-beanie because incompetence is par for the course. Get ready to explain mundane network concepts to your peers, and give brown bag presentations on git until the end of time, because these lifers are here until the second heart attack or the retirement kicks in and they arent about to rock the boat with Docker.
contracts.: typically 90 to 180 days, these specify that you must have a minimum 30 years experience in Rust, Dust, Crust, and the german enigma machine. Bonus points for understanding a 50 year old CMS/RCS/client-server application from a company that went bankrupt 12 years ago. perpetual contracts are either offered without question, or the company in question demands to convert you to full time staff after 3 months because short term contracts are the new hiring process for midwestern midsize manufacturing and callcenter/billing institutions that drive some of the most despicable parts of the american dream. Your raise is capped at 1% and education in the region for your kids is either underfunded suburban white mediocrity or some flat-earth megachurch.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Heck you won't even get an interview. That wasn't the case 20 years ago. Also nobody will train. You better be ready to bang out A grade code day one or you won't make it past the interview.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Pussy.
Programmers don't realize they have more power over their employers than they think. One programmer being fired may be easy to replace. A group of five or ten working on a poorly-documented business-critical piece of software, not so much...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Options (3,4,5) leave the industry, go to academia, or even leave the US under a skilled-worker visa. If you have experience, you can also come back as a consultant, set your own hours, and charge 2-3x as much as if you were an employee. Thanks to Obamacare, in civilized states, everyone pays the same price for insurance regardless of pre-existing status.
... are quite often clueless gimps in their 20s and 30s who don't understand the skills older people can bring - above and beyond years of coding experience - and assume they're slower and dumber than someone in their 20s who's all enthusiam but doesn't have much of a clue.
While technology firms are looking at compensation, they are also finding ways to create the supply of workers themselves, which helps hold costs down.
And this is why the bosses (as opposed to the usually sincere workers) at Google, Microsoft, etc. are all behind these "teach every person on Earth to code" programs.
I'm sorry if little Suzy doesn't want to code, but we need her to help keep down programmer salaries.
We'll know demand for programmers is up when salaries start rising for the first time in 15 years.
Lick those boots!
must be able to work 60-80 hours a week
I've demanded to be allowed to work from home for the last 8 years with an occasional few days a month in the office and gotten it.
I own a business. If my employee asks for more vacation time or higher pay, and they deserve it, then they get it.
It's often the ones who don't deserve it who ask the most, and are the most bitter about their jobs.
I can already tell that you're a 9:30 to 4:00 kind of guy, with two hours of Facebook in between.
and he thought it was a lobster boil and did a double take! He showed up at the interview with a bib and two forks!
The HR person said "you don't have enough body fat to be that hungry!"
CROFL!!!!
It smells too similar to the dot-com bubble for comfort. During the height of the dot-com bubble, co's didn't pay that well because they gave you stock options instead of big salaries as a signing bonus. And when the bubble popped, the market was flooded with programmers such that jobs were hard to find, at least on the west coast. Therefore, you had no savings because you got stock options that are now worthless, and you had no job. My legacy language experience was the only thing that saved me, and barely.
One could say "this time is different", but they also said that during the height of mortgage bubble, in terms of comparing that to the dot-com bubble. The reasoning was that homes had concrete value while dot-coms didn't. Didn't matter: the mortgage bubble created the second worse econ slump on record.
They are saying similar about AI: it's different from the AI bubble of the 80's because real and common products rely on AI now. That may be true, but as mortgages showed, that's not enough. And even if you are not in AI, an AI pop could affect rank and file IT because unemployed AI experts will flood non-AI IT job openings.
It may indeed be "different this time": a different path to misery. The only consistency is that if it smells bubbly, it probably is. The only real uncertainty is the size and scope of the poppage. Keep a rainy-day fund, people.
Table-ized A.I.
I work at a help desk at a software company and enjoy it. A few weeks ago the person who leads the development team asked if I wanted to be a developer. I said my total experience with programming is a few hello world programs and that I barely understand the core concepts. I just never gave it much effort, but learned a little bit to appreciate the art.
Nevertheless, they said they'd pay for any training and school needed and it included a pay increase. I flat out told them that I'm not qualified, but they insisted to think about it. If I get an official offer I'll likely take it.
I find it interesting, even at my own personal gain, that companies are trying this route. I normally hear about how underpaid programmers are or that older programmers with decades of experience can't find work - almost makes me not want to enter the field and suspect this is the wrong approach for companies to take. I also wonder if an over-correction is going to happen, pretty much every middle and high school in America is pushing programming - we're already seeing the start of low supply in fields like HVAC, plumbing, and electrical workers. Logically, pay for programmers will decrease even further if we over correct too hard.
Maybe I should learn how to fit pipes as a backup.
bob suck it up jay our h1b works 80 with no time off. Jays has some friends who will replace you for less.
Up-Or-Out Promotion System Hurts The Military and it's the same for technical work.
If demand is really greater than supply, then programmers should be able to ask for reasonable accommodation from employers (i.e. reasonable working hours and vaca time). If people actually showed a backbone, this has the potential to chance cultures.
Companies are looking for Unicorns... expert programmers in 10-15 languages, on 4-8 operating systems with at least 10 years of experience in each....
yep, definitely a unicorn or a lier ..
Thanks to Obamacare, in civilized states, everyone pays the same price for insurance regardless of pre-existing status.
BZZT! Bullshit.
My 33 year old daughter pays 10x as much as her siblings because of her pre-existing condition. The law says you can't be turned down because of a pre-existing condition, but it says nothing about being able to afford what is offered
It must be terrible for you guys.
I walked into this job in October, receiving a 20% raise over my last one (currently $140K/yr in the Midwest). I already have had one long weekend in December and a 3 week vacation just pass in February and March. My manager had my mobile number and knew I was on different continents, but they never had to phone me because I got everything done prior to my leave. I checked email once a day for any fires but no fires cropped up to be put out.
I also have a vacation coming up in April and September.
Everything is negotiable.
Not our fault you don't know how to business.
And there-in lies the problem. Programmers collectively might have enough power to level the playing field, but an individual programmer by themself does not. And it's going to take time to get enough people to realize that they need to work together on such things.
Dang, just ran out of mod points. This rates a rare AC mod, IMO.
They fit the same as anything else. Unless you're using a proportional font.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The law restricts the spread between highest and lowest premiums for plans bought from an exchange to 1:3. And only allows rating based on age, location, and smoking status. In civilized states, the spread is often lowered to 1:1.
And why is working 9:30 to 4:00 such a mortal sin if you can hack it? Some of us have other interests than flying a desk for 15 hours a day.
programming and IT should be more trades like with unions
Your comment is just the right kind of insight and cynicism. Lots of truth here. So is a career in software development not worth it in the long run?
There is a lot of truth to what is being said here, but like any humor is presents an over the top scenario ... in reality you can find many companies that are decent to work for, especially as another poster noted small to mid size businesses that are not start ups (say 20-100 employees). They are great if you really know what you are doing, because you can have a lot of variety to things you work on, and are very valued.
A software career is totally worth it in the long run IMHO. There are not many other jobs that have so much potential to be enjoyable by working on interesting problems. Sure you can get stuck doing some kind of morning maintenance stuff but all of that is really up to you and your ambition, your desire to make an interesting career from it... In fact I think it is one of the best possible careers, if you like programming.
Seems like it starts nice but quickly plateaus until you get older then you're replaced.
Maybe at some companies but again, if you have not let yourself stagnate you can always find work even when older. Sure some people go into management but that is not a must at all. Even the plateau is up to you, that is the point of stagnation and it is up to you to shift course and find the next hill.
Seems like it starts nice but quickly plateaus until you get older then you're replaced.
That is always a route if you tire of programming but you are much more expendable if you are in those areas.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When salaries go up in lieu of profits, when all jobs are work from home that can possibly be work from home, and when jobs come with some sort of special benefit to rise above other offers, then you know technology companies are really having a hard time finding people. Until then it is just blowing smoke.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Cower in awe, USians, at my leet forn programming skillz...
10 PRINT "I CAN HAZ GREENCARD?"
20 GOTO 10
"Demand Hits Full Boil as Job Market Simmers"?
Please change the subhead to "from the tortured-metaphors dept".
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Get the snowflakes to join a union?
if you browse /r/cscareerquestions there are a lot of people (young without much prior experience) looking for work, and can't even get interviews. I really don't know why some people "make it" and some don't, but rest assured, if the market was really that great, these people wouldn't have any problems.
In a way that's probably good... we don't want a repeat of 1999 where everyone with HTML on their resume got a job, but it really does suck.
The more quality people entering the workforce the better. They create new products, features, and innovation that create more demand for programmers to maintain. They create products that spin up new ecosystems which create jobs.
Tech is over for white males, only H1B Indians and Afirmative Action women get in. Been this way since after the dot com bust.
That's bull. I live in a city that is 2/3rds minorities. My coworkers: Mostly white men, a couple of Asians who are also citizens of this country. Not one person on an H1B visa.
Depends on the company and city.
My last job was mostly white men, a few white women, a couple of black men, and, towards the end of my tenure, a pair of naturalized-citizen women originally from India.
My current job, roughly a third are some type of H1B worker, the rest is a mix of white and Asian-decent (including Indian subcontinent), maybe 60/40 male to female ratio.
Both in an out of the industry, every place in which I have ever worked had a taboo on discussing wages, even in the case where everyone was making the exact same amount (hired at the same time with a fixed starting wage). Management did not have to tell anyone (at least directly), peer pressure was more than enough. Skill wise, the bulk of the H1B workers that lasted any length of time were as competent as anyone else on the teams of which I have been a member.
I will note that I have had at least one previous manager threaten to replace my coworkers and I with H1B worker (specifically stated) and another threaten to remove us from programming into telesales (where he laughed over whether we would survive even a day) when we did question our salaries vs hours worked vs level of skill vs market rates. Fortunately, once passing the three year mark, it was easier to find employment that did not involve such management techniques.
I will also state that none of the employers in which I have recently worked have refused to hire people due to being white or being male. I have seen them use being a minority or being a female as a tie breaker for otherwise equal candidates. I would certainly feel bummed for having to lose a position for such a criteria, but tie breaking tends to be arbitrary anyways. Either way, just a reminder to never stop improving.
captcha: minoring
There are problems on both sides of the "ageism" issue. Yes, us older people tend to be skeptical of new stuff because we've seen wasteful and stupid fads come and go over time. Skepticism is good but not always welcomed.
On the flip side you have to go with the flow to some degree, and when in Rome you have to follow the Romans even if they do some things stupidly. It would be nice if each tool and tool part was carefully vetted, but it's human nature to skip such vetting such that fads shape much of the stack and you have to live with a degree of fad cruft to get stuff done. Humanity often has to learn the hard way*.
Parallelism/distributed application computing, micro-services, functional programming, "web-scale" DB's, the "flat look" (where you can't tell what's a button) and other things have been overblown and used/misused where they don't belong. But sometimes us oldbies have to shut up and move on about fads.
There is indeed a "culture war" between young and old in IT, and both sides usually do have legitimate points or at least partial points. People are just not very good at debating and articulating why they think X is better at Y such that it turns into a flame-war. Choosing tool X over Y is an art, not a science (unless you have big research bucks).
* A lot of IT fads are to solve specific problems or limits caused by new technology, and when that technology matures, the original need often diminishes or changes nature. For example, RDBMS at first lacked distributed "web scale" features. Vendors have since added them to RDBMS such that one doesn't need to toss the upsides of RDBMS to avoid their (original) down-sides. Faster smart-phone CPU's are also reducing the gap between desktop dev platforms and mobile platforms. But the original work-arounds often turn into religious-like movements that get carried away.
Table-ized A.I.
The local paper had two stories on employment this week.
First, was a bitch that all bludgers had it so good on welfare that they refused to work in the local abattoir. As I recall, boning work required a $1,000 medical examination upfront for a 6-month contract; although the company would supply an interest-free loan. It was dull, lonely, repetitive work, frequently in the middle of the night, in a factory fifteen kilometres out of town. I wonder what the pay was for that? On the plus side, If one suffered the 6 months without getting fired and a demand for the outstanding loan, it was guaranteed work for the next contract period too.
Second, was a bitch that tradespeople were job-hopping for a measly $80/week pay-rise. It's interesting the paper used the word "quality" several times; allowing me to read between the lines. Employers can no longer get away with paying their most skilled tradespeople, $30/hour. As I recall, two years ago, most businesses enforced pay-cuts; so this is really the market settling to normal.
And why is working 9:30 to 4:00 such a mortal sin if you can hack it? Some of us have other interests than flying a desk for 15 hours a day.
I avoid working more than 40hr/wk like the plague and have the stance that if someone doing the same job as me regularly needs more than 40 then what makes anyone think that they're better at the job then I am if we're getting the same productivity at the end?
Thanks to Obamacare, in civilized states, everyone pays the same price for insurance regardless of pre-existing status.
Are you suggesting that 62% of the States aren't civilized? That's how many had premiums double since 2013. Most of the rest that didn't double still saw an increase.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news...
Yes, we need to reform healthcare funding, but the ACA definitely wasn't the solution.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
These figures have to be fraudulent and written by the corporations themselves who want to justify 20k per year low wage foreign labor. I know a lot, and i mean a LOT of programmers who cannot find work. Ask college graduates from US universities about this. I also know of many who have been laid off and replaced with indian workers. It is extremely difficult to find work with many months of sending out dozens of resumes per day. The entire H1B program needs to be abolished so these companies will be forced to hire American workers because as it is now, there are mass layoffs of Americans and It is very very, clear, that if you are an American, that the US government is not on your side and will do everything in their power to help foreign aliens steal your job and put you on the street. You need to fight back and to fight back you need to demand that the all immigration be stopped and the H1B programs and all like programs be terminated and all foreign visas be terminated and deported. Fight back, dont let them continue to do this to you.
That guy's not kidding. He needs all the help he can get.
If you've been with a company for 20 years and aren't VP by now, you aren't going to ever move up.
I work for a large tech company (9K employees) and some of the people have been here from the start, 25 years. Many are directors, some are VPs, but most of them are still IC (individual contributor). Any they will remain IC until they retire.
And when women who have worked there for a fraction as long end up being their boss, I am sure they wonder why. But ultimately if you can't distinguish yourself quickly, you can't expect the promotions to come rolling in.
As an engineer who climbs the ladder. I believe you have two real choices:
1. Become an indispensable expert in your field with external visibility, and take on the ownership of large cross-functional projects that interact with multiple domains. This is the principal engineer title, and basically the top someone in the IC track can go with a few exceptions. Learning a bit of Python is not going to cut it. Getting your Six-sigma black belt is not going to cut it either.
2. Management. Demonstrate the functions of a manager. Not to your future subordinates, but to peer managers and to the immediate director. Again visibility out side of your own team is crucial.
Where this can go wrong:
* You have had the same role at a company for more than 5 years. Seniority in position hurts you usually unless you have some serious mentorship. (yes, us old guys still need mentors)
* A younger person, new hire, and/or woman can get mentorship more easily. And with that support and move right past you. Having some guidance and support to get into a management position is necessary to earn confidence in you from the directors and executives.
Software engineer looking for work in Seattle. 4 year degree from CSU Bakersfield in computer information systems, 3 years of industry experience. Looking for competitive market rates. My email is the first seven letters of my user name at "gee" mail. Resume available on request.
Computer engineers should have looked after the word engineering and cared less about the new term computer.
Look at what lawyers and the medical profession do to protect their profession in some nations.
Look at what electricians and plumbers have to show in some nations to start and then keep working.
What to work? Have to pass real exams at a national level and get granted permission to work after passing tests and exams.
After graduation that signature for a project carries legal standing and is valued in the community.
A company wants to create software thats going to be used for more than computer games?
Ensure a number of computer engineers have to be on staff to look after the project. Large project? Engineers have to be on staff.
Use a nations laws to prevent another nations computer "workers" wondering in and taking engineering jobs. Until they pass the same university courses and exams in your own nation. Add in security questions to prove a background investigation was done too.
Make universities graduate on merit again. Everyone has to pass the same very difficult exams to finally become an engineer.
Too many graduates passing well in a generation due to much better education? Make the exam harder again and keep the number of professionals lower.
Wages stay up and emerging competition is reduced over decades.
Computing returns as a profession with experts who have legal standing.
Protect the profession. Keep the numbers of workers low and ensure the wages up.
Stop letting just anyone be an "engineer" as they use a computer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The last two recruiters who called me, I told them what I'm currently making and what I expect in my next position. One offered about 15% lower than what I'm currently getting, the other wouldn't disclose other than saying I was too high.
Sorry folks, time to drastically raise what you're paying.
After all, if they arenâ(TM)t good enough for McD then they would do well to become slaves.
Wikipedia's summary disagrees:
Premiums must be the same for everyone of a given age, regardless of preexisting conditions.
The citation goes to How Much Will Obamacare Cost Me?
How would you like it if Walmart, K-Mart, and Amazon collectively decided to raise their prices?
Couldn't you call that collective bargaining to?
In both cases it is shenanigans. Unwillingness to compete means you don't believe you can do it and need the economics game genie, which is entirely the reason slavery and fuedalism existed back in the day.
We'll know demand for programmers is up when salaries start rising for the first time in 15 years. Web: https://todaylivesport.com/
https://todaylivesport.com
This has got to be bullshit. I have 20 years of programming experience and cannot get any companies to respond to me.