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180,000 programming jobs in the US
At the moment
there's a high demand for programmers in the US, especially
female ones (why would an employer pay a higher recruiter's
fee for a woman? Is this a "team-work thing"?) And with
only 25-30 thousand new BSc's a year in IT, it may last. However,
I wonder how much of the demand is temporary, related to fixing
Y2K or in Europe the conversion from national currencies to
the Euro. What do you think?
This is great news for someone like me, who is working tech support at a small software company, and has always had an interest in programming.
How then, to get employed? I want to be a in a position of creating something rather than supporting it, but how should I go about demonstrating the ability to do that? Show the C++ books on my desk? Write an open source app and attach it to my resume? Also, all my programming practice has been on my Linux box (part of the reason I love GNU/Linux so much is because of the availability of these tools) - but, most of the listings I see want MFC experience.
Ideas? I'm not in this for the money, other than the fact that I'd love to be paid for something that I find to be a rewarding challenge.
The latest Forbes has an interview with Ralph Gomory, who essentially built the IBM Research arm, and is now President of Sloan Foundation. Forbes asked about the computer programmer shortage. Gomory replied:
"Late in the 1980s we had a projected shortage of scientists and engineers. At our foundation, every second proposal came in with the preamble 'because of the shortage of scientists and engineers we need to...' Oddly enough, the shortage never materialized. Because it was an invention...Very questionable work, but it suited someone's agenda.
"Ideas that suit someone's agenda are often taken up with great vigor and become widely accepted,
"The immigration bill that recently passed in Congress was intended...to address this 'shortage'. Well, we at the Sloan Foundation...heard a presentation from one of the major proponents of the shortage and found it totally unconvincing."
Well, most of these "in-it-for-the-money-because-it's-easy" CS Students usually hit the wall when the programming and/or really cranks up, or those who squeak by couldn't code worth a shit anyway(read: they copied someone elses work for 4 years). These people wind up NT "admins", and don't code.
Hower, sometimes, during late night hack sessions, I wonder "Why are my room-mate and I the only ones doing this? I thought CS people were supposed to *like* this."
I love coding for fun, but to me, the real CS people also study and develop the theory. More of a math and real research focus is what I'm after. If there were more "real CS students(tm)", we wouldn't need these silly programming classes to try to teach us what we naturally end up doing, anyway!
179,000 will be employed to design a new toilet!!
The other 1000 will be responsible for installing it at Bill Gates house!
HA ha
Whats worse is this notion that somehow its a conspiracy to deprive american workers of their "rightful jobs"... and that every immigrant is somehow inferior but is hired cause they will take less pay....
futhermore the h1b visas are to allow skilled worker to enter the US...at which point they must be paid at least minimun wage not $2.00/hr
but hey you n what they say.... there's lies, lies and statistics......
"The CS majors are the creators and the IT majors are the doers or the users of what the CS majors create"
Yes and no. CS majors create a lot of the lower-level software, which is very important, but it's not enough.
The creative process of building and designing new high-level software is *not* the exclusive realm of CS majors. IS/IT people are just as capable of creating significant, complex, innovative systems at the application level, rather than at lower levels.
All the algorithms in the world aren't worth a damn unless they're used to build something greater. The fastest sorting algorithm in the world isn't of much use unless it's actually used in an application.
Which is more important? Well, the application could use a different algorithm, though it might not be the optimal one.
In the end though, CS majors are standing on the shoulders of giants just as much as the IS majors. You're 'users' and 'doers' too. The true difference is the end product, not what goes into it.
(Also, note that an IS major may well have taken quite a few CS courses. In my case, I would have gone CS, but I suck at Calc., so I went for IS and went for a more technical path with CS electives and OO development co-op jobs.)
This is what I did. After working for a couple of years in admin/support for UNIX/Netware/Windows, I had built up a moderate knowledge of C by tinkering with Linux and inventing reasons to write little bits and pieces at work.
I then went to an agent and said that I wanted to trade my experience in for an opportunity to do some coding, and that was exactly what I got.
I was amazed to find how useful my experience was (is). I started working with people who knew C/C++ very well, but were pretty clueless about the OS they were working with. I saw countless calls to system() and popen() with shell scripts being run to do things that are actually very well documented in man sections 2 and 3, not to mention people writing socket based applications without really knowing TCP/IP.
I think you are well placed to do whatever you want.
Tom
6 months ago, half way through the 3rd year of my BSc, I got a temporary job writing some java stuff for a contracting company. What really disturbed me was:
:))
:)
a) Originally the plan was for one guy to have this project done in 2 months (we're (the 4 of us now) still working on it now...almost there
b) The aforementioned guy had a degree in commerce, with stuff all computing experience, and
c) The companies management concluded that he could do this java thing, because he had done a 5 day course, and hence "knew java".
I don't claim to be a java guru by any stretch, but I have to worry when I'm explaining object subclassing to the guy who hired me...
I really hope that this sort of thing isn't widespread amoungst IT company management, but I have this grave fear...
Anyhow, just thought I'd share my story
I would like to get a position in the USA. But the problem is that i am European. Whats the way to get job in the USA for me ????
dive@student.prov-liege.be
I know that my company needs some people, and it has nothing to do with Y2K. It has to do with the fact that we're looking for real software engineers, i.e. people with a demonstrated aptitude for programming, and that we want Java people. What we keep getting are english and music majors who said "Oh, there's no money in my major, I guess I'd better pick up a book and call myself a Java expert." Or worse, Microsoft-only trained people. We're a Unix shop.
I (and my boss) are of that generation that have been coding for 20 years (i.e. since we were 10 years old), and consider it an art rather than just another job skill. And we're looking for people that feel the same way. They're fewer and farther between these days.
And, by the way, we're in Massachusetts. If you're curious and looking for a job, reply to this with a valid identity and I'll find you. I don't want to get flooded with resumes.
d
Some thoughts on how to get a job, experience, etc...
1 *Finish* a degree. I don't even care if it's CS. (My boss and I differ here, he likes people who have a degree in something else, thus showing well-roundedness. I'm more traditional and like to see a computer-related degree).
A degree demonstrates a certain level of experience in an academic, i.e. structured, environment, and that you can work within it. It shows that you can work within the rules, meet deadlines, that you've likely been tested on your writing and communication skills, etc...
Going to school and leaving shows you're a quitter (fine, maybe there are extenuating circumstances, but it's still starting off on the wrong foot).
Doing everything yourself shows that your communication and teamwork skills have never been tested. I had one poor guy in my office recently who told me of this remote test-taking program he'd written, all in perl. He was very proud of the fact that he'd written it all himself. That, to me, meant "Well, maybe the code is absolute crap, how can you tell?"
2 YES, write something and show it. If you put a web address on your resume, we'll look at it. If you tell me about an open source project, I'll probably take a look at that, too - or at least talk to you about it. If it's a product with a following, that's worth alot - often shows you have project management skills. But honestly, if all you can show me is version 0.1 of something on freshmeat with a date two days before your interview, keep it. Anybody can do that.
3 DONT go in thinking you know everything, or that you can become an expert in everything just by reading a book. I hate that. I know HTML, but I'm not a graphic designer, and would not claim to be an expert web designer. We have a web designer guy here who keeps looking for the shortcut to become an expert programmer, and I keep telling him it's not going to happen. I haven't been living and breathing machines for 20 years just to have somebody take one course and catch up to me.
I ask every interviewee whether they consider themselves to be clientside (gui, human factors, etc...) or serverside (protocols, performance, databases, etc..) Most all of them refuse to answer the question at first, saying "I can do both." People who continue to refuse to answer don't get the job. I want to hear somebody say "I think my skills make me a better client-side guy". Or server-side guy. I'm sure you can *do* both, but I want to know which one you're hopefully going to have a natural aptitude for, and not have to work at in order to be a hotshot.
4 Network network network. I got my first job by working at a software retail shop, and a local businessman walked in and said "Do you know where I can hire a programmer to do some work for me?"
5 Write more on your resume than just computers. My boss and I are music and theatre buffs, and seeing those on a resume will often cause us to give the person a chance we might not otherwise have. I ask people during interviews what they do when they're not at work. "I go home and recompile my kernel" is nice, but the guy who said "I windsurf" was pretty cool, too. We don't necessarily want people who live and breathe their job - we want people that can come out and have a beer with us, too. People who will be fun to work with.
6 Personally, I look at writing and speaking credits heavily. Those skills are important. If you've got any sort of portfolio (asked to write articles, speak at user's groups, etc..) then I'd include that.
d
[I'm a consultant, not (nor probably ever will be) the highering manager]
OK, So how do the quality developers rise above the noise?
I was recently turned down for a C++ job due to my lack of C++ experience. I have used C, C++ (straight, gnu, Visual, Borland, C++Builder), ObjC (gnu, NeXTSTEP), Perl (awk, sed, sh, csh...), Mathematica, Delphi(Pascal), Java; I have tinkered with TCL, Smalltalk, SML, lisp, scheme, Ada, Fortran; I have studied Self, Haskell, and a variety of other research languages. I have written an OO language that went into production under a web server to do simulation of complex systems. I have managed distributed heterogenious Unix networks (AFS or NIS), done Oracle optimization and installation, built a persistance layer for a CORBA server in Java, helped design a web server (not the content). I know Samba, Apache, Linux (since 0.12), WinNT application programming, NeXTSTEP, http, html, DNS, serial communications; I am a VMS user, a Unix admin, etc...
My wife gets mad the I sometimes code in just my towel, because I thought of something in the shower, or I "forget" to eat lunch, or that her Win95 box says "login: "...
I got cut before the interview for lack of C++ experience, yet at work I help "C++ developers" code C++. I have never "lost" a face to face interview, but how do I even get to the interview!? We need a secret handshake or something.
I'm not going to work for peanuts, but if there is a real need, I want the challenge. Now, I just have to find it.
Joe
It was either on ABC or CBS but when the visa increase was first asked by software companies, one of the two news agencies did a little snooping. What they found out that there is actually more programers than jobs, but the companies don't want to hire people in their 40s. People in theirs 40s know what they are worth, these companies want to get people right out of college and off the boats because they are usually in need of cash no matter how much it is.
Why the hell is it that you and everyone else around here instantly assume that to be a programmer you have to have a BS?
I'm here to tell you that not only does the job not require a BSCS, it also doesn't take BSCanything, BSEanything, or BAanything.
Some of us learned programming in high school and found jobs right after that. Some of us learned it in the military. Some us learned it at home while building our own computers or microcontroller devices from components and we're self-taught.
In any case, I find it amusing that you are so concerned about the future career of kids comming out of college. You might be worried for the wrong reason. Your primary concern should be that these BS (and BA) folks have little or no experience when they hit the job market. These folks require on the job training that often requires several years and makes them a liability to a company company compared to those of us who have more experience than education under our belts.
Paying more for female programmers sounds a bit odd to me. I think you should cross check the data there. Sex has little or no effect on how good/bad someone is at programming. At least in my country such a practice would be considered discrimination and is illegal.
That's ludicrous. You're saying that a hacker can't have the discipline to get through a computer science program? You're right, either you're good or you ain't - but there's no law that says that people who get a CS degree ain't.
Sounds like you just don't have a CS degree, and are biased against them. So you got your job because of your fashion sense, not your aptitude. Lucky break.
I probably couldn't change my desktop resolution in Windows and I consider myself to be a rather good programmer. Of course the last time I had a computer with Windows on it was before the release of Win95 so maybe that has something to do with it... :-)
If there is a shortage, you sure wouldn't know it by what companies are paying. I know CS grads are getting $37K right out of college and guys with 5 - 8 years experience still only getting $39 - 43K. Boils down to everyone making what a newbie makes. All those raises were just to keep up with newbies. It's sad when you have to quit to get a real raise.
My company is looking for good programmers for quite a while now. Trouble is, many people apply, but real talent is hard to find. ;-) you could'nt buy games at every street corner. You had to program them yourself. Later, in the C-64 time, games became so widespread, and using computers for games, that many people I knew could only boot up their computers and load a game.
:-) ).
I think I know what the problem is. When I started with computers (ZX-81
Furthermore, computers used to come with their own programming languages, but you'll have to _buy_ a programming language nowadays. (No, I'm not talking about Linux now
Those two things combined remove any incentive for people to learn how to program. More and more people are becoming just consumers.
Problem is: they keep on _thinking_ they now everything about 'computers', but in reality their knowledge is appalling.
I hope that Linux will bring more interest in 'real computing'. But maybe we are a breed that are bound to be extinct....
Greets,
Fenrir
The Nethrlands
Maybe the shortage is because the hirers keep hiring the wrong people and firing the wrong ones.
Unfortunately it is unlikely that the hirers will
look for better hirers to replace themselves...
Looks more like a resource allocation problem than
scarcity of resource.
As for the grumblers about not being hired or being paid crap by people who "don't know anything".
Well hire yourself- start your own company, then maybe you will see things differently, might not be so easy to hire the right people yourself.
The way I see it, there are probably fewer people who are good at controlling (oops managing) people, compared to people good at controlling machines.
Pity it's much harder to figure out who's better at doing the first. And more people seem to want to do it.
talking about.
Having worked "real jobs" (residential construction, _after_ high school) for years, a stint in the Marines with tours in West Africa and Kuwait, and several college degrees, I can speak for both sides. Earning even one college degree *in anything* takes a certain amount of discipline.
Most of the people that seem to deride the value of a college education seem to be suffering from little more than envy. And they always trot out the same story of some incompetent loser with a degree that gets the promotion. Waaah.
And some of us learned programming on our own, while in college earning a different degree. Whoopee do.
It's because of guys like this I can't get a job.
I like to live and breathe computers! That's what I
enjoy. If your windsurfer fellow was a professional,
he would live and breathe windsurfing! But that
does not mean I do it EVERY night of my life.
Sure, I would be more than happy to go out and
have a beer once, maybe twice a week. But the
majority of my time I spend on what I LOVE doing.
If I wanted to be a windsurfer, I would be on ESPN
by now. Geeze...
I hope the big job market continues, I'm a junior in high school and hope to go into CS.
Right now I don't have a computer related job (I'm a collection agent, but == money) and have experience with unix, programming, networking, etc... I think getting a computer-related job before college would help tho.
(heheh, I'll plug my email address for any employers in the MN area: eric@nerp.net)
Sorry to bring you down dude, but people were saying the same thing ten years ago. It's just media hype.
As to your job prospects when you graduate, my advice is - take whatever you can get, but keep looking around until you find something that you feel comfortable with.
There are a lot of companies out there that just love recent graduates. For them, lack of experiance means that they can screw you around. Read the posting on this page about a womans perspective - she definatly knows what she is talking about.
DILBERT, by Scott Adams.
Job Interview.
--------------
PHB:Were looking for a special kind of employee Wally. Specifically, we like people with low self-esteem. That way, we can bully them into working unpaid overtime. Do you think your insecure enough to work here?
Wally:Let me put it this way. Sometimes I pretend to choke in the cafeteria. Then when someone perfoems the Heimlich maneuver on me I spin around suddenly just to get a hug.
Later in the cafeteria...
Wally:Hak! Choke!
Alice:Did he really say your over qualified?
"This posting scores minus two!"
It's a lot less hassle. That way you can program for enjoyment, rather than necessity. Anyway, the police and the syndicates are a lot less trouble to deal with than programming in VB or MSC. Trust me on this, ok?
"This posting scores minus two!"
I said we don't like people with the "Oh, there's no money in my major, I guess I'd better pick up a book and call myself a Java expert" attitude. There are far more people in the latter category. Not all, of course.
There's a big difference between someone who got out of school 4 years ago with a music degree and spent the last 4 years hacking, versus someone who spent the last 4 years working retail at the local CD store and only just recently decided to start calling himself a Java expert. Wouldn't you agree?
Move to Austin. Apply to IBM.
Sometimes, you just gotta go where the jobs are.. Even the Mexicans know that...
Totally agree with you! I'm in a decent sized school with a semi-small CS dept, the College of William & Mary, and the majority (prob. ~80%) of the CS people I know are in it for the money and most CS grads head to major consulting firms (esp. Arthur Anderson and Price Waterhouse) and make > $50,000 a year. :) ) I won't care about the huge salaries offered.
I myself and interested in CS research, esp in AI, ALife, graphics and Robotics, as well as biology research(I'm possibly a double major). I know that I could use these subjects and go into industry in either CS or in biotech, but if I can't do creative research, something that just makes me say "Cool!" (like those genetically engineered mice with Fluorescent Jellyfish genes that glowed bright green when placed under a UV light
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu
why would an employer pay a higher recruiter's fee for a woman? Is this a "team-work thing"?
To meet quotas.
Paying more for female programmers sounds a bit odd to me. I think you should cross check the data there.
This is probably due to companies that operate in states that have quota systems for hiring "diversity". Thus they are often penalized if they don't reach certain "target" levels of women/minorities in their hiring. It would be cool if they were doing it because they felt it was the right thing to do, but in reality the only reason that a company would spend more is if they are forced to do it.
Sex has little or no effect on how good/bad someone is at programming.
I would agree totally, yet very few women even consider jobs in software development. I suspect that it is more that women are pushed into other things than they can't do it.
At least in my country such a practice would be considered discrimination and is illegal.
Unfortunately in the U.S., it is generally only considered discrimination if it hurts a "protected class". If it is unfair to men, or caucasians, then it is considered an "enlightened social policy".
Ok, I'll bite can you send me some info on your company via email? Thanks. See me here http://ro.com/~jmrobert/
I agree with your more art than science, and I started with fortran and basic while a junior in HS.
Regards,
Joe Robertson
Debate about value of affirmitive action is left as an exercise to the reader.
I'll give you a hint: Its a dumb idea.
Too many times their communications skills
are terrible. If I had the option of hiring
a skill level 5 international with average
comm skills or a native english speaker
with a skill level of 4. I would take the
native anyday. Plus 99% of all the arabs males I
have worked with are arrogant, stubborn,
always think that they are right, combative,
sexist, reverse racist, and argumantitve.
Left to my own decision I would never hire one.
Only a clueless media-saturated idiot would take the tech industries word for this "shortage",
I work in the "tech industry", and have been involved in hiring. I don't have to take the media's word on the shortage, I know from experience it is real. It may be overstated or over sensationalized by the media, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all.
and decry those who point out the greed and mendacity of big business as "conspiracy" mongering. Well, try reading between the lines a little when you read this disinformation in the news media. You don't think employers enter into conspiracies to drive down wages?
I believe they would like to conspire to drive down wages, but from what I've seen from real salaries where I live, I see no evidence they are succeeding. My salary has increased dramatically in the past few years.
You don't think they find willing acomplices in Congress? You don't think that immigration plays a major role in this process?
I don't believe that immigration plays nearly the role in high tech industries as it does in unskilled labor markets. However, even in unskilled jobs in my area, the "official" unemployment numbers are down under 3 percent, and the real numbers are lower than that. The only people around here who are chronically unemployed are the unemployable (read as people with substance abuse problems, absenteeism problems, people who have no skills at all, etc). As long as unemployment stays so low, I don't see companies even slowing down the upward movement of salaries.
And forget that $2.00 an hour crap; that refers to overseas programmers - those who come here will work for less than existing workers,
We have a lot of workers here from India, almost all of whom are contractors. I know for certain they cost the same or more than what we pay residents. Despite that the contracting companies skim a lot off the top, I know these guys aren't hurting for money, because all of them drive new, expensive imported cars (Acura, Lexus, etc). The company would like to get rid of all the contractors and replace them with permanent employees, but we can't find enough people who are qualified to fill the slots.
and I have heard from too many tech workers "let go" or "downsized" by the same companies hiring foreign workers and bellyaching to Congress about the shortage of programmers and engineers.
I haven't seen any companies around here letting any tech workers go. Wish I did, I'd be collecting resumes to cash in on the company I work for's referral program.
Time to wake up and smell the coffee, you high tech serfs: you are being proletarianized.
Ahh... The same tired, old socialist/communist rhetoric.
This type of argument really smacks of people who are looking for an excuse for their own underachievement.
I have to say that I am an immigrant ( came to US about 5years ago as a refugee) and I have seen quite a few "natives" ( not meaning indians ) who got extremely jelous when they found out how much money I make. Also I have to say that I am proud to be taking a working place from some ignorant, intellectually-challenged, gym-going, lite-beer-drinking, football-loving american f..ck. I would wanna see the moment when americans realize that >80% of jobs requiring any considerable amount of intellect ( goverment not included ) are taken by foreigners some of whom may not speak good english, but knwo how to learn and work and think.
Thank you for your attention. I am sick and tired of this "foreigners are taking over" BS.
jeld@mindless.com
This is precisely the mentality of many
of the folks who I have met in MIS areas.
They look at a software project as a product.
There is little concern as far as quality and
maintainablility.
They are only concerned with getting it done
on time and within budget.
In a large variety of cases where internal
applications are written, they actually throw
out whole blocs of code between rewrites and
versions, thus the lack of concern with updating
old stuff.
Its a business, not an art, and the bottom line
rules.
you might find it interesting to note that for half the comments i view, it says at the bottom of the page "you are now logged in as bluGill"...it's like straight out of the twilight zone, man (or i guess it could POSSIBLY be a bug in one of rob's scripts)
I am currently enrolled at DeVry, and I only went here because I could enroll at night. I need to work during the day to pay for my car. Several weeks ago I was flamed for my choice of school here, and I have been rethinking my choice. It is not plausable for me to enroll at a "regular" 4+ year school because I need to earn at least 600 bucks a month, and it is hard to do that working retail. So I am employed during the day at a major financial firm in the HR department doing Access and Peoplesoft work, wowing the superiors, but only gettin paid 11/hr. I am not satisfied, and am unshure of my future in the industry. Plenty of my fellow /.r's are established members of the industry, and I was wondering what you all have to say about my current situation. I read on computerjobs.com that employees with degrees from CS/IT related trade schools get better pay then those with BS degrees. I am actually getting a BS from DeVry, but it is a more trade school type curriculum. I went there so I could get experience in the industry before I was done with school, but it is looking quite doubtful. Shure I can write on my resume what i'm doing now, but that means I need one of my managers to vouch for me, since my job description says clerk. God I could use some advice..... =)
see me on IRC, Akira1
akira1@xnet.com
"...but I think that programming is more like writing a novel
or poetry than like building something."
Exactly! I've long thought this to be true (and I've been
coding steadily for > 20 years).
While there's a small amount of "science" in software, and a
slightly larger amount of engineering, the bulk of software
development is "writing".
What? The multi-tiered object oriented thin-client system can't be written in a month?
Pointy-haired Manager/Consulting Firm solution:
1) Higher more bodies.
2) Bill the crap out of the customer
3) Blame the customer for outragous requirements
4) Take the money and find someone else to scam
Just what we need, more racist -- as well as stereotypical, puerile, and just plain ignorant -- ranting. I know of immigrants who can more than do their fair share of work while you go on slandering not just those who do provide the necessary skills and experience but also the whole of humanity.
You bigot, whether or not you can program, do not deserve to work for any company.
I worked for a friend for about 18 months for the princely sum of $5000.00. The company then collapsed, and I was lucky to get even that much, looking back on it. Not much money, but the experience allowed me to quickly get a 'real' job.
;)
Alternately, you could decide that the time you spend programming your shareware stuff was actualy spent as a consulting programmer, and indicate that on your resume. I'd call it 'creative credentials' - close enough to the real thing.
What's the point of the piece of paper, anyway?
(4 years as a programmer, and a grand total of 13 college credits.
john.gilmore#usa.net
The highest payed CEO makes about $100M a year and the highest payed programmer $1M a year, gee programmers are in such shortage that they can make 1% of a CEO's salary! The day I see good programmers make as much as bad CEO's, I'll believe there is a programmer shortage.
I find wind-surfing to be BORING.
I like to ride BMX, but you might thinks it's boring.
I think going to bars is boring.
I like to paint, but you might find that boring.
I think car enthusiasts are boring.
But I like to street car race.
Just because I don't tell my employer what I do
everyday of my life doesn't make me boring.
I can't believe the number is really that high.
It has been my experience, (and this is my ONE
gripe with this industry), that many companies
are simply unwilling to train (potential)
employees, prepfering to hire people with prior,
and very specific, skills. For example, an
engineer with 5+ years experience in C/C++ and
FORTRAN should have little to no difficulty
joining an ADA-95 project. All this would take
is the company investing in training that person
for a week. It won't make him/her an expert, but
should get them relatively comfortable with the
language. If that person has any talant at all,
they should be able to fit in in a month or so.
But there are too many companies who think
short-term. They want the C/C++ expert NOW,
never mind if they have no experience designing
embedded software. Truly sad.
I can't believe the number is really that high. It has been my experience, (and this is my ONE gripe with this industry), that many companies are simply unwilling to train (potential) employees, prepfering to hire people with prior, and very specific, skills. For example, an engineer with 5+ years experience in ADA/ADA95 and FORTRAN should have little to no difficulty joining an C/C++ project. All this would take is the company investing in training that person for a week. It won't make him/her an expert, but should get them relatively comfortable with the language. If that person has any talant at all, they should be able to fit in in a month or so. But there are too many companies who think short-term. They want the C/C++ expert NOW, never mind if they have no experience designing embedded software. Truly sad. Now that company will complain that there
aren't enough software engineers available, dispite the fact that they had rejected dozens of
skilled applicants, Who could have easily done
the job.
I've heard quite often that the demand for programmers will stay relatively high for some time after the Y2k crap. Many companies are putting projects on the back burner in order to provide Y2k related products/services. Afterwards there may be a surplus of projects available.
I once needed a new programmer for a project and asked the main contractor to find me one. I had no say into who was eventually hired; I could only give the contractor a general description of what was needed. The new guy shows up and I give him a quick quiz. This was the highlight of the quiz.
Me: So, are you pretty proficient in C?
New Hire: Yes. I am pretty good at programming in C except that I have problems with pointers.
Me: Oh, ah, hmmm, umm, ahhh....
This guy always had problems with pointers; for instance, I had to show him the malloc command. Eventually we had to let him go as the project ran out of money. The funny (sad?) part was that he was hired for a new programming job almost immediately after we let him go.
I would like to work at a company that pays as much as they (see what I am responding to) were talking. Are we ("good" developers) destined to only work for small companies that can't afford the big time salaries because big companies can't recognize our skills?
I have an issue with the business world's inability to compensate quality software development. To make the money you have to become a manager or saleman. This might be true of other careers, but from my perspective, it seems extremely bad in software. When did you last see an inept stock trader hold his job for 25 years. How about an IS employee? How about the guy over the cubicle wall from you who hasn't done anything at all yet this week? Are you two compensated similarly? Maybe it is just to hard to quantify how well we do what we do. arg...
Joe the whining AC (on this thread)
I most likely will receive flames for this,
but there is an all pervading fact in much
corporate America and it is this:
Business (read that word twice) mindset says that
if an employee has not taken on the responsibility to supervised or oversee (read manage) other employees by his/her late thirties then the
person probably has undesirable personality
charastics. Also after a certain level its
the management folks who are always making a
hiring decision.
This is quite unfortunate for older workers,
especially when you look at career profiles
for those programmers or engineers who get
layed off around those ages. Usuallly the one
layed off will have a great deal of experience
and expertese in a field but have little or
no management experience. Queerely enought
even "bad" management experience counts for
more.
Finding a job and qualifying for a job are two different things. It helps a bunch to acquire skills other than programming to get a programming job: creating a resume, job searching, interviewing, negotiating.
I know some well paid engineers who are very nervous about looking for a new job but have no problems restarting named(8) on a production server.
Read at least one book, may I humbly suggest the "Knock Em Dead" series by Martin Yate.
I'm one of them. If you want to make money on a mainframe you have to move to NY or another area, were you have more than one mainframe in a city, and know CICS and DB2 as well. With this package you can make about 100k in base salary or $600 a day as a contractor.
For more information look into one of the COBOL news groups.
Life is to short not to try to become the _best_ at something.
Actually, I agree with sql*kitten, but there are other perspectives.
sounds like you got raped by one of them.....
That was unnecessary.
I think Pohl was agreeing with you.
Weasel Incognito
OK, I will byte too. I use my work address even. If you recognize tha address, you will know there are a lot of good engineers (software and otherwise) working here. I have twenty one years of coding (including 16 years as a software engineer). No Java, but a few good years in real-time systems, C, Ada, blab, blab. Interested in working in the area North of Boston, preferably off route 3.
Address is duhrenho@vette.sanders.lmco.com
Dave
Come on! Everybody does different things.
If I program device drivers during the day, but
go home at night and code apps, that's totally
different stuff. What does it matter that I spend
20 hours a week perfecting my wind-surfing abilities
or if I perfect my programming abilities?
Great points. Everybody wants products that are
good and cheap, that's why we use Linux. Who
cares about the fact that it's a foreign product?
The same logic applies to companies when they
make hiring decisions: when they can find foreign
employees that can do the work better for less,
why should they hire those American whiners who
don't work hard or work well, but keep whining
about competition and demanding high wages. They
remind me of MS Windows: low quality, overpriced, and American.
I think the LINUX model is different from the Brooks experience. Lets see:
S/360. A huge monolithic OS that tries to do too much inside a few key programs. To build on it you need to know quite a bit of the entire system.
LINUX. Breaks most everything down into tiny specialized processes. If you are working on something you don't need to know exactly how the entire system works only what processes perform which function.
S/360. New. VERY HI TECH - hell the unknown. forget anything like POSIX.
LINUX. A clone of UNIX. There exists a map of the road to travel. You know what behaviors are expected.
I bet there are more but you get the picture. I think Brooks is right and I think LINUX - by the power of Ken Thompson's general UNIX design was able to avoid a slew of these issues. The real challenge to LINUX is where to go after it completes its cloning of the best of Solaris and what not.
I find your experience interesting. I have had trouble getting bites on my resume. I live North of Boston where you can't help bumping in to software weenies all the time. I sent my resume to a head hunter (admittedly he was somewhat clueless) and he claimed I had one of the top three resumes on his plate. Only one company bit, and it seemed to keep losing my resume (never got an interview). I don't know. Age (I am 38)? No M$ experience? I grew up on Unix back in the early 80's, got shunted off to VMS for a few years, and have been developing real-time software for VME on Unix systems for the last 7 years. Loyality? I have worked for the same company for 16 years - great company, but I want to move closer to Boston. Lack of Specific experience. Many years of C, with some Ada, but no C++ (took the class, big deal) or Java. But I know you can kill your performance with initializers, template expansion, or garbarge collection. In the past I have had to show our Unix administrators how to do their job (Unix is quickly falling out of favor here so they don't have to do their job any more). Pay? - I get a decent salary, and would be willing to take a pay cut for the right job. This is difficult to convey sometimes without making myself look like a fool.
I have some trouble believing here is a shortage of Software people.
Dave
Ya don't get it. Part of my job is to find talent that will complement the team. That means finding people who my current employees *enjoy* working with. It's not 100% about how many lines/minute you code. It's also about being able to hold a conversation with your cubemates, or go to lunch with them and talk about something other than work.
I don't ask what a person does in their spare time as some sort of test, like "Oh, he doesn't windsurf, he doesn't get the job." I ask out of genuine curiosity. How do you know I won't find what you do interesting?
Sheesh! Folks are so damned insecure.
said the annoyed taxi cab driver that George Carlin was giving a hard time to. He replied, "Well, in your country, I could be a doctor too!"
Degrees from too many countries don't mean squat. Hell, you can even buy them in Thailand, etc.
There's no shortage of labor. There IS a shortage
of admins/engineers who will work for your slave
wages.
The big consulting shops charge between $150-300
per hour for the work you want done.
I'll fly out there today, but it will cost you
$3200 per day, with a 5-day minimum. Plus expenses.
And I'll bet you can find all the people you want
for just $300 per hour or so.
Now - exactly what was that piddly slave wage you
were offering? I noticed you neglected to say
that.
And you wonder why you can't find anyone? It's
because your competition understands that you
get what you pay for. In your case, nothing.
Aerotek doesn't have the best reputation among contractors. Check out www.cedaily.com for the scoop. There are plenty of other good agencies in the Boston area.
My star Web developer lives in California and I've yet to meet the guy. I spec the work, bounce a few emails back and forth (or pick up the phone if it's really important), and wait for the completed project to be delivered when he says it will be.
After 8 years in the industry and 19 programming
(since 11) and interviewing and hiring many
candidates, both fully degreed and not, I will
state my own $0.02. I can count on a degreed
individual (degree indepnedant) to perform and
act far more *professionally* then a non degreed
one.
PeopleSoft and Access? keep it up for
another year or so, and don't worry.
My cube is across from a contractor
wo is doing PeopleSoft, he make $49
and hour.
Businesses are concerned about getting enough
developers, but do they make use of what they have?
I recently visited the offices of a really big aerospace company. They cram 3-5 developers in an office. With all the traffic in and out of the office, people in conversations, etc. does management expect these people to produce much?
The only reasonable environment for development is a _quiet_ private office with a door and 100sq ft. minimum area. A good work environment seems to be getting rarer in spite of the "shortage".
Does your resume explicitly SAY "C++"?
Many large companies don't have people review every resume. They scan them into a database and when they need, say, a C++ developer they run a query on the word "C++".
It's helpful if your resume has a list of languages/operating systems you understand.
I just got a job offer at a great company because my resume says "BSD sockets" and "C/C++".
Will
My mother leads a team of COBOL programmers for a company that's accelerating bonuses and reviews and begging old-timers to come out of retirement because they can't find anyone else to code COBOL.
Will
tell your friend to grow up.
if you wear the wrong kind of shirt
youre obviously a bad programmer
If you're willing to pay enough and provide good working conditions
where management doesn't nag you at every step, then you'll
find a lot of good programmers/sysadmins/webmasters/whatever.
You get what you pay for.
I don't see why you tolerate living there.
Even New England is better, and that sucks
pretty hard.
I second that. If foreigners are hired, it's because they (we) are better than
"natives". Immigration is one of the worst thing that can happen to you, and
most people don't do it because of material reasons, rather because they are
forced. If we make it, without any support, connections, and often with poor
language skills, it must be because we are that much better.
I also side with your deep disgust for the stupid game they call "football", a game
in which the foot rarely touches the ball. But what do you have against gyms and
light beer?
Lastly, to the guy who posted right above me: up yours!
Isn't Linus a good example of superior immigrants.
You're saying that I should take time off from my 20 year career in programming to finish my BSEE??? Why, I'm happy with my career and the money I make and I've never lacked for employment. Only 22% of our company has sheepskin and they're on the bottom end of the scale.
No thanks, my BSEE will wait for retirement!
Simple rule: Get screwed for 3 years or so, become free agent contracter thereafter. Coding skills are more important than math skills too. If you don't believe it, do a survey on the typical math an engineer uses.
Reality bites.
Am I really the only one who has noticed this? Or just the only one stupid enough to post it? maybe the people with power are quakers as well...
I think you're right about that. Most of the CS guys seem to be off doing other things while the engineers, astronomers, doctors and lawyers write the code. It's an odd world!
The best programmers seem to be either the kids in high school or college who are addicted to hacking or the guys in their mid 30's to early 40's who've spent a decade figuring out just what they really do want to do with their lives. The kids are just too dangerous to hire because they haven't learned things like respect, ethics, etc.
I agree that a degree shows that you can put your effort into something....depending on the degree. But there are a lot of other ways that other folks demonstrate the same thing. Job performance, special projects or hobbies, military service, etc. These folks are a valuable part of the mix and they can show the degreed people a thing or two. I am more interested in these folks than the kids fresh out of school because these guys know what they want, how to get it, and they can prove they've got the balls to do it. (They're aren't any women in our industry, dream on, we're all geeks).
Suppose you've got 3 people apply for a job: A kid fresh out of school with a BSCS, a guy whos been out of school for a few years with his degree in underwater basket weaving but he's been programming and now want's to go pro, or the guy who dropped out of high school at 17 to support his family and now has 10 years of programming experience under his belt.
That, for me, is going to be a tough call but the easiest part is that the kid just ain't gettin the job.
"...but I disagree strongly that the writing analogy works
for a large project."
Well, I believe that a large software project isn't all that different
from a long novel. While it's true that a short story or poem
can be written without much planning or design, a novel
written in that way will likely not hold together very well.
And not a surprise at $3200 - that equates to expected earnings of $320,000 pa, based on the rule of thumb of 1% per day.
What exactly do you do for this? Write 600 lines of bugless `C' per day typing entirely with your penis and juggling chainsaws at the same time?
Now I *would* pay $300 bucks an hour for that --- give me advance notice so I can rent the circus tent and get tickets printed.
Waldo Zhernikov
There's only one criterion for employment, and that is the ability to do the job. That is a combination of technical skills, communication skills, attitude, and other acquired factors. It doesn't matter if the applicant is a man, a woman, from another country, or even some sort of smart robot. All that matters is, can the job be done?
In the USA, they have affirmative action, the silliest system of quotas where companies are pressured to hire minorities. What makes more sense is the system that we have in Canada, called employment equity. Employment equity works a different way; companies have to make sure that they are not -denying- employment -simply- because the applicant has a non-acquired factor such as gender, race, and 11 other factors determined by human rights.
Employment equity works especially well if it is combined with a good education program. Society needs to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve success. Misconceptions about gender and race (e.g. the sillyness about what men and women can and cannot do) must be addressed.
My kind of company. Of course, I'm still in college (only 2 years left)!
Anyway, if you want to wait, you can see my resume at the above URL.
The most important thing is that you're happy in your work. Never take a job just for the money. You will absolutely regret it.
H-1 visa. But since it's hard to get a job while sitting outside US, you can get there by different type of visa, then ask for employment and visa change -- it's more or less a standard practice.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yeah, I don't get that. When you're doing stuff on the computer that is obviously just for fun, it's an "internet addiction" (even when you're not on the internet). Then when you get a computer-related job, it's automatically assumed to be "for the money" - people conveniently forget that you were doing stuff for fun on the computer back when they were trying to get you to quit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Getting a degree in anything shows that you have the determination to do it. Getting a degree in an engineering discipline can teach you how to solve problems, how to efficiently implement solutions, how to engineer. If you don't let it teach you, you won't learn, of course; a degree says very little about your abilities.
Personally, I got a degree in chemical engineering, learned how to program during finals week to get my mind off the finals, and decided I loved programming more than chem eng. Switched careers when the difference between futures was about $20,000 minimum (in favor of chem eng), but now make what I would have expected to be making in chemical engineering ten years from now. I'm not so much an oddity; the best programmers I know do it because they love it, and persued a degree to educate themselves.
This may be true where you're from; I did my CS degree in Edinburgh, UK, and I have certainly found the degree to be a good grounding in CS principles and useful for doing real work. I think this is true of many CS degrees in this country.
--
Xenu loves you!
Go out and buy that book (it was reviews here about augest). By Fred Brooks. Read it. Then you will know what is going on.
I've seen it before, will see it again. I think half the shortage is people hear about internet years and think they should devolpe software that fast. CAn't work, never has, probably never will. Never will without major advances in management theory.
To a point that is true. On the other hand if you have enough work to keep 100 people busy for a year (in a well designed system, one of the mistakes of the S/360 was too many architects who didn't know what they were doing) and you only have 13 months, and 50 people, you need more people. You need to hire 50 people, and get them up to speed in one month or your project goes out the window. Putting them each in a seperate room with the documentation and what not is fine, but only a few will really come up to speed in that time, and your project becomes late.
Linux has a large number of devolpers, but many people contend that the xBSDs are better even though they have less devolpers. Granted that is a religious topic, but they are keeping up with linux rather well with less people. I think this is due to the mentality, linux encourages you to get something done, xBSD wants it done right.
You still don't understand. You need to be interesting. I know what all my officemates do for a living. I know many of the gorey details. We talk about that on work time. We talk about it over lunch ONLY when something interesting happens.
The rest of the time someone talks about something. There are a few musical people here, sometimes over lunch they discuss the music scene. The unmusical people would rather listen to that (not in large quanties like the music people) then think of work most of the time. The next day the FreeBSD geeks are talking about something in -current, and the music people (who are mostly linux geeks) listen. The day after that it is a different group and politics. We don't want to be bored, and all computers bores most people.
The more extroverted you are the more important it is that you have something to say that won't bore everyone else. Even the introverts need to do something though.
You don't know the programing language we use in house, but if you can demonstraight basic programing skills we can teach your our language in just a few days, no big deal. You don't know our hardware, but again we can teach that. You probably don't know fibre channel or scsi, but after a couple weeks here you will. Of course we want to make sure you can learn all of that. Now we have a problem: you know enough about computers to convince us that you might work out, and not even Linus Torvals (sp?) has any advantage on you. (work on Linux, even scsi work is nice to see, but it won't apply directly) Management has to go on to the next steps. Important things for them is that you get along with your co-workers. If your going to fight with your co-workers I don't care if you have done the same thing for linux (and we hire you because you can port it to our hardware in no time) your not hireable. The people I have I know are compitent (or I'm in the process of firing them) Your an unknown. If you have a hobby, you are at least less likely to burn out. At best a hobby gives you something to relate to everyone else about, and indirectly imporves productivity.
BTW, if you go to an interview and don't talk to several people who you are likely to work with on the same level don't take the job. Half of an interview is for them to convince you to work there. I know several people who were called to an interview and it soon became clear that they were already selected for the position and they were the only one to convince. If they aren't trying to sell you on the job at the same time your selling yourself on them, how do you know that you will get along with everyone. If your co-workers are likely to go postal why would you take the chance?
Your bound is correct, and easily provable. All one needs to do is observe that there is a finite number of people, ergo a finite number of good people. QED. :-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Just not many are majoring in CS or getting BSc's and ABC's in it. I know a lot of PhD. Biologists who can program a Linux kernel in their sleep and throw up beowolf clusters in their labs but can't get paid for it. Then there are the B.A. graphic designers who develop their own 3D software that crushes 3D Studio Max but can't even get winked at by employers.
While I was in the Bay Area from 9/97 to 10/98 for a German company (no need to get a visa for working) I had some offers for jobs there. Now I'm trying to get back there - and I find it extremely hard. I have not changed, so what's the reason? And I present a lot of stuff on my web page, so it's not like hiring someone you don't know a thing about. Not that there are no offers (everybody who can spell 'computer' gets some), but everything's in Germany.
By the wa (off-topic, but only for the discussion at hand, not for slashdot), one of the reasons I'd like to switch to another company besides leaving the country is my NAT project (see hoempage). There's still a lot of interest although I haven't done much since 97, simply because I don't have the equipment and no network to try stuff (and it would be great if the employer needed that stuff - my previous one did, that's where I coded it, it just feels different). So much for some open-source developer psychology
Also, Americans forget that the Internet is a world wide medium. Lots of job offers posted in the news and on websites forget to say 'working permit for the US required', although that's what they really mean.
--
Michael Hasenstein; Siemens SBS
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/
You must be confusing C with BASIC.
Malloc is a *function* (technically it can
be also defined as a macro in , but it
must also exist as a function), and a call to malloc is an *expression*.
Yeah, there are plenty of jobs as long as one doesn't look too old in the eyes of the interviewer. For many people in their late 30's and early 40's, it doesn't matter if they have a kick-ass resume or if they update their skills over and over. Jobs for the young, that's the hiring philosophy now.
Maybe, maybe not. If it was only one incident being mentioned by the media, I wouldn't worry about. But when one reading personal testimonies of individuals that are EXPERTS and that they can't get a job for months, that's worrysome. Plus, I've seen a couple of managers or interviewers making bold statements such as "that guy is too old to work here. he is a dinosaur. there are younger people with equivalent expertise and cheaper". Besides, we live in a society where it's not uncommon for people to make career changes in their mid 30's or 40's. When Pan Am went down, I knew several people that worked there, and who decided to study computer sciences. They completed their studies, they have a degree AND they have prior working experience in other fields (administration, accounting and so on.) Clearly they (should) have more knowledge and greater potential than a 23 year-old man-teenager with no working experience at all. Yet these "old" people may be denied a chance to make a living since we keep thinking that "at 40 you got to be an expert." Life doesn't end in the mid 30's. Why should we end their professional lives, then? If an older person has the potential, he should not be denied just because of his/her age. Hiring should be done based on credentials and personality. Doing otherwise is no different from discriminating based on one's race. We cannot possibly generalize over these people, nor make conclusions about their job performance and capabilities just because they are "old" or because they don't know the latest stuff. Whatever new hype language or technology there is, it can be learned regardless of age. It is true that being an expert is valuable, but I think it is more important to be an expert in being adaptable, in being job resilient. There has been this old stereotype that programmers in their 40's are stagnant or unable to update their skills, who keep holding on COBOL as a falling monkey holds to a branch. I just wonder how much of that has influenced current ageist practices. What kind of logic it is to not hire a programmer in his 40's because he may not know C++ for instance but hire a youngster fresh out of college that has no experience, and whose C++ programs are just C programs with cout's instead of printf's? For the record, I'm not in my 40's; I'm 29 and concerned about these trends;)
Peace too;)
OK, I agree that this is false. I've seen it over and over again, and even experienced it first hand: "There's a skills shortage - why then can't you find me a contract???"
So. Why do these companies want to create this false impression? I've got the following, but I would like to know more if someone knows:
- To artificially raise wages (I have no problem with this <g>)
- To lobby the US govt to allow more green cards. (I don't know why they would want this if the shortage really is artificial!).
Anyone got any good explanations?
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
OK - these people aren't stupid. It's not working. Wages are rising, the skills shortage claim isn't saturating the market - the market is the same as it's always been.
I agree with the bit about contractors though - they can vary hugely in skill levels. Sometimes that makes being a contractor very difficult, and it certainly puts companies off hiring them. I'm a contractor, but I don't think I've been at a job yet where the permies knew more than me. I hope to be surprised one of these days though!
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
My mum is a COBOL programmer on a 6 figure (UK pounds) salary. Doing y2k work.
Of course, she's a contractor.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Unfortunately a lot of people who have these "non-acquired" factors (as you so eloquently put it ;-)) abuse the system. I've heard a gazillion storys from my maw-and-paw-in-law (Canadians) about people who threaten to sue when turned down for a job/education/whatever siting the equality laws as reason. The employer/educator/whatever almost always back down - they rarely have the guts to go to court because Canadian citizens have so many rights (a good thing and a bad thing).
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Is this the land of the free where the dream is to work hard and become a self made man?
/mill
1. A country where higher education sucks royally. profs suck, tutors suck, and 'programming' classes suck in especially.
2. CS majors don't know shit and therefore the really good people are self trained and management suck for not realizing this.
3. Because everything suck so much we need to have govt hold our hands and protect us against those evil foreigners that will work for peanuts (i.e. we won't get rich quick if we have competition). We all know foreigners don't need as much food as the rest of us and therefore can take minimum wage happily (oh, and of course moving to a new country with a different culture is only an advantage for those bastards).
Now, lets all take our pity wages and go to Taco Bell for lunch. "Hi, Jose, how are the kids? No signs of immigration fascists, eh?! Heh heh." "Yeah, that Jose guy is a true trooper moving to a new country getting below minimum wage (he is an illegal immigrant after all) and still manages to support his family in Mexico. Not like the wellfare moms here in the USA that won't get off their lazy asses and get jobs. We are the only ones moving this country forward even though we meet fierce competition we pull through thanks to hard work."
..and the story continues..
I welcome any of you to come to work here in Sweden for ~$27,000 that the likes of Ericsson and ABB give a MSc&E fresh out of college. That's before govt take all your money through taxes, btw.
I find it appalling that you who sometimes show up as fighters for freedom of speech, software quality, end-MS'-reign-we-want-competiton, and etc, want to work in a sandbox free from competition from the rest of the world. You should be very happy that the top talent in the world still want to work in your country, generating jobs for the rest of you, despite being viewed as ones who take job away from good 'ole Americans.
If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
Btw, I find my teachers/tutors/profs to be good at what they are doing. Are they perfect? No, and I don't expect them to be. When I get my Master in CS and Engineering I know I won't know everything, but it is a sign that I have the qualifications needed to acquire the knowledge necessary to solve a problem. Or I maybe I get help from someone else (mathematician, physicist, etc), but in the end I will do the part I do best - implementation.
Beware, I will take the job away from YOU. You will be working at Taco Bell competing with the Joses getting a lower and lower wage. Then you will realize that competition is everywhere and that you will somehow get a safe haven in IT/CS is ridiculous.
Or rather that a mixed working environment reduces the "huh huh babes" attitude which is kinda easy to fall into in an all male environment.
/mill
At least I find it easier to work in a mixed environment. The all male one I got enough of in the service and sure it was fun at that age (18), but earning my living in it? No thanks.
It's really funny that everyone here thinks I'm a programmer for the money, since my parents put as much effort as they could to stop me playing "with my addiction" that "won't get me a job" and takes my time away from "more productive activities" like reading, cramming ,etc.
It is easy enough to demonstrate that the "shortage" is a hoax: look at what people are actually being paid.
There are some stories about COBOL programmers with six-figure salaries but I have never met one or known anyone who has met one.
A data point -- the COBOL programmers I know make in the upper 30s and low 40s. They have more than four years of experience (each) writing financial software so they have practical experience as well.
Another data point -- I know a female COBOL programmer with twenty years of experience who was "downsized" and has had trouble finding a new job. Why?
On the other hand, I know of manager-types who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag who get six figures for playing solitaire.
Look at something else: if there is a surplus of lawyers and shortage of programmers, why do lawyers get paid so much more? (HINT: ABA)
People like to delude themselves and think that the world is "civilized" and "fair". It is not. At a company of any size, your boss is not your collegue, he is your opponent. His interests and yours are diametrically opposed.
BASIC is bad. Sure, all your friends will say, "Just try it. It's a rush. It really isn't addicting." So you try it. Just a little at first-- a few "PRINT" statements, maybe a "FOR..TO" loop to print your name 30 times.
And that's when you're hooked.
Next thing you know, you're doing HIRES graphics and "GOTO". And then your "friend" offers you Pascal. "Why not?" you think-- BASIC didn't hurt you.
So now you're doing "DO..WHILE" loops and using procedures. And you can't help yourself-- next thing you know, you're doing C and assembly.
Finally, you end up doing hard stuff: C++, Java, LISP. And once you start down that road, there's no turning back.
So Just Say No to BASIC.
I've been searching for a month and a half now. I have about 2-3 years of Java and am prefer UNIX systems. Mail me at nordwick@xcf.berkeley.edu
Help, I can't find a job at all... arghh.
-jay
I just graduated with a degree in Math at Berkeley and have worked my way through school for three years now, but this time when I started to job hunt, it has been the worst *ever*. I have been searching for over a month now and have had two phone interviews this week and that it all. I don't know what people are looking for, but I don't seem to have it... arghh... $$$ is getting slim and I NEED A J-O-B.
Annoyed by te hype,
-jay
January is pretty slow so far, too. But after talking to a few people, December is just a shitty month, but some even say that January is too, since it is the quarter before taxes and companies don't want to look bad on paper so they refrain from hiring alot.
Arghh.. job hunting sucks.
I've been a unix programmer/admin for over 12 years and its very tough to find good people. I'm not talking about Knuth quality. I'm talking about writing C code that doesn't have one bug for every hour a programmer worked on it. When I interview people I ask them some of the most basic questions and they flub them. I had a guy come in saying that he wanted to get into networking. I thought that was dandy. I asked him what he knew about TCP/IP and his reply was "Huh?". I asked some dude who claimed he had five years unix admin experience (Solaris, Unixware) where the printer configuration information was kept. He didn't have a clue. One joker, when told some of our programs use shared memory to pass information, asked if it was EDO or the SDRAM. He was not joking. These stories all happened in the last year. That is a sample of bad US talent.
Bad Imported Talent. Yes we hire people from half way around the world. You would think if we were hiring people who have traveled thousands o miles then we would be getting the best the world has to offer instead of the best locally. WRONG! I cannot believe that people would come all the way here and be so very terrible. Awful. I try to get them fired or at least off my team. I had a guy who came in as a UNIX kernel expert to help us with our device driver issues. He didn't know a UNIX editor, he didn't understand permissions and he didn't know C very well. (And no he didn't know kernel work either.) He stayed for three months! Upper management would not get rid of him. When he was finally out of there he was going to a job were he was a "MS C/C++" expert. To "practice" he tried to install Turbo C on his PC. I kid you not. And this goof traveled thousands of miles w/o a clue?
It is my theory ("Ron's Programmer Bound") that here is a finite number of good people for any task be it programming or physics or acting. No matter what the demand or how much a social fad it is there is going to be a finite number of good people in it based on the size of the population. Computers are invading every aspect of our society and yet there is going to be only a few good people to do all the work. No matter where you look.
Peace
Ron
There's no secret involved in getting a job; you just have to work hard and phone everyone, then ask them for a lead if they don't give you a job. Leads, persistence and references.
If you're young, untried, and willing to work hard, then people will say good things about you. If you've worked at several jobs and been lousy, no amount of degrees or genius will make up for that.
Best of luck...
I agree with you to an extent...
I have met a few 40+ technical folks (mainframers mostly...) and they still go on and on about their killer JCL and their COBOL. COME ON, keep learning new technologies like networking, HTML, SQL....(or even PERL)
I think that the folks that don't want to learn current development and/or networking technology *OR* how to manage folks are setting themselves up to be maintainance programmers only. When their maintaince responsiblity ages out, so will they.
3. Because everything suck so much we need to have govt hold our hands and protect us against those evil foreigners that will work for peanuts (i.e. we won't get rich quick if we have competition).
If you are a foreigner and are being recruited to come to the USA then you should aquaint yourself with our job market.
If you desire to be taken advantage of and paid "peanuts" for the in-demand skills you have worked so hard to obtain then you should resign yourself to being resented by those of us who have worked just as hard if not harder to achieve the pay scales we now hold.
You speak of "jose" working in Taco Bell. Consider the "Joses" that work in our fields picking lettuce for "peanuts", living in squalor waiting for immigration to catch up with them. If you take a "peanuts" job in the USA doing in-demand high tech work then it is YOU who are remembling "Jose", the migrant farmworker.
Apologies to those named Jose, in fact I have a very good friend and former colleague named Jose who comes from El Salvador. Jose makes good money. And so should YOU if you come here and work hitech.
Until then, work for 27k and pay 50% to taxes and flame those of us who have been able to get a decent chunk out of corporations who care not about us, but about the bottom line.
btw, My wife is an IS manager for a large insurance firm, she hires out of college to do IBM Mainframe work starting at about $55k US dollars + retirement and insurance benefits.
Why would you consider undercutting a good market?
Why not join it, instead of working to wreck it?
Free software, not free labor!
COBOL programmers making 6 figures? I know at least 10 people who do COBOL/DB2/CICS who make that EASY as consultants. not even Y2K, just normal maintentance tasks. amazing yes, and very cool for those making it.
:-)
:-)
on the other hand, I also know many, many more COBOL programmers who make the 30-40k. to be honest, some of them are lucky to have a job at all (thanks to large beaurocracies who never seem to be able to fire anyone), as they have zero initiative to learn anything new. they wait for their employer to drop something better in their lap. it doesn't work that way.
As a former COBOL programmer who "got out", I did it on my own with hard work, late night classes and personal education via tools like linux/apache/perl/gnu. I know others who have no initiative, but just bitch and moan because their manager does not magically advance their careers/skillsets. (they also tend to not enjoy hearing me tell them this).
and if a magical contract to do COBOL appears, I can do that if I choose (although unlikely).
I agree, the world is far from fair. it's up to us to carve out our own living. i have found that if you work hard, smart and ethically, things will work out.
as far as the "hoax", I think there is a HUGE shortage of experienced quality people. there is more to IS than coding. People, communication, analysis skills and adherence to proven development and design disciplines are much more important than just the ability to create "cool code".
Most of the very best "programmers", while showing deep appreciation for, wouldn't necessarily be winning any perl obsfucation contests.
There is a shortage of qualified software engineers and system administrators, at least in the midwest. Six years ago we ran a newspaper ad for programmers and received 300 resumes. Two years ago we ran an ad and received 30 resumes. Last year we ran an ad and received 9 resumes. And those numbers are the total number of resumes received, not just those left after filtering.
Right now I'm trying to find a junior-level Unix system administrator and an intermediate-level Unix software engineer. Last month I ran ads in a half-dozen appropriate newsgroups and contacted three local recruiters. To date I've received a grand total of three resumes, all blatantly unqualified for the positions.
If there isn't a shortage then where are all of the candidates? Given the exploding popularity of Linux I can't believe the shortage is limited to Unix-savvy people.
Ed
P.S. If you're from outside the U.S. and you're looking for a job here the absolute most important qualification is near-flawless spoken and written (english) communications skills. You may be an incredible programmer, but unless you can communicate effectively with your co-workers your productivity is going to be hampered from day one, and any knowledgable potential employer is going to take that heavily into account.
Anonymous Coward writes:
> There might be other reasons for your "shortage".
Since it's currently about 15 degrees F here I can empathize with your enjoyment of the California climate, however I don't think the locale is one of the reasons for our perceived shortage. (We're in Madison WI, which was rated the top city in the nation by Money in 1996 and remains very highly rated by pretty much anyone who tracks that sort of thing.)
As to salary and work environment, ten years ago there may have been a noticeable discrepancy, but today most software development companies in this area are paying better than west coast firms (adjusted for cost-of-living), and the standard uniform is jeans or shorts and a t-shirt. (Our company is actually headquartered outside of San Jose, so it's easy for me to compare at least Madison and the Bay area with some confidence.)
I also know that our situation is not uncommon in this area because of the number of calls I regularly receive from recruiters trying to hire me, and because of the number of acquaintances I have at other local companies complaining of similar difficulties. Qualified people are really in short supply.
> I find your experience interesting. I have had trouble getting bites on my resume. I live
> North of Boston where you can't help bumping in to software weenies all the time. I sent my
> resume to a head hunter (admittedly he was somewhat clueless)...
I suspect "somewhat clueless" is a big part of the problem. There are a couple of recruiters in our area that I won't deal with (as potential employer or employee) because they don't know how to match candidates to jobs. A recruiter is supposed to save everyone time by putting the appropriate people in contact with each other, but some seem so desperate to fill a position and collect their commission that they'll tell you anything to place a candidate.
When it comes to filtering through resumes, buzzwords are everything, so I'd suggest taking whatever steps are necessary to gain some hands-on experience with C++ or other newer technology. Since you've been around long enough to have a substantial body of experience you might also want to take the time to tailor your resume for each potential job you're going for, to hilight the aspects of your background that are important for that position.
How then to get employed?
Target a few companies that you'd like to work for (Ok to dream a little). Research a company using the web, and by inside info: make a call to somebody who works there, who can help you understand the job and what work needs doing. Then talk to the manager and show him you can do the job.
I know it sounds laborious, but you'll have better luck doing this than sending out a thousand resumes. For more info, check out the headhunter
Good Luck.
I've probably interviewed over 100 people for
development positions over the last 2 years. Out
of that 100 I'd say less than 10 were top quality.
I work in Houston where there is a lot of work
that is neither database nor VB nor Y2K related -
(hint: its "real" programming). Companies are just looking for really sharp people, experienced or not. The demand here is just staggering and believe me - it is only going to increase from here. Though there may be naysayers, I've easily seen the productivity and quality ratio between "top notch" versus "decent" developers be five to one. Being a superior programmer takes brains and a lot of hard work and I certainly don't see these traits suddenly increasing in the general population.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
I welcome any of you to come to work here in Sweden for ~$27,000 that the likes of Ericsson and ABB give a MSc&E fresh out of college. That's before govt take all your money through taxes, btw.
At least in Sweden you won't have to afford a house with a big fence or risk being shot in the streets.
And you get to be paid in Euro's soon...
I used to work for a company of on-line scientific publishers in London. They ripped me off so I started looking for another job and was fired when someone else answered a call to my desk from a headhunter. In the year-and-a-half since I left I have doubled the salary they paid me.
What's interesting is that while I was there I watched their recruitment policy in action. They didn't state salaries in advertisements, but asked applicants to state their requirements with their applications. Despite this, they always had a specific maximum in mind when they placed an ad. Any application asking for more that figure was instantly binned. Usually the only ones left were women as they tended to have lower expectations/demands.
I was replaced by two women (one less well qualified) each working for 5000GBP less than I was. God knows how they could afford to eat. Employers claim to like women employees because they're "flexible", i.e. easy to walk all over, happy to earn a second salary etc etc.
My sister teaches employment law and is a union representative in her college. Her catchphrase is: "Women are their own worst enemies".
Wouldn't want to find out that my up and coming degree will be worthless in the future.
:)
What I'm sick of is all of the people who assume that I'm in computer science because of the money. Assuming we're all nerds in good standing here, I'm not in it for the bucks and I don't think many other people here are either.
I could be wrong though...
The big difference between CS and IT majors - the CS majors are the creators and the IT majors are the doers or the users of what the CS majors create. You may take that as either an insult or a compliment to IT people depending on your temperment at the moment of reading this post.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I've read in some press issue that the Y2K effect would last until 2005 or so. it was told that the main application would be ported for the 1st January 2000 but the second hand application would have to wait and work blindly after the date. moreover, we european people (i'm french) will have another meeting in year 2001 where all the cuurencies will have to definitely disappear for the Euro.
:)
In France, we are said to lack about 10K engineer, and i only know of about 5 french schools that have a real strong course in computer science (Nope, knowing how to reverse a string in basic or C or whatever doesn't make an engineer of ya... sigh...). each of the school makes from 100 up to 500 engineer a year (150 is, IMHO, the average).
Oh well, anyhow, no one need to know how to programm to do cobol stuff
I consider myself a "natural" programmer. I take to it very easily and learn quickly. However, that doesn't mean squat to a recruiter... I have a Associates degree in programming/systems analysis, with a 4.0 GPA and have coded a couple freeware apps (not to mention countless for school and tutorials on my own), but I have no professional experience. :)
To a recruiter, it seems, you're worthless without experience. But how can I get experience? Sigh, I guess it's back to college for a B.S. and an internship ( I wanted to get a real job first ). Or maybe I'll just go door to door... forget the clueless recruiters.
If anyone reading this in the North Texas area (Sherman, Dallas) wants to give an "inexperienced" natural a chance, send me mail andy@koyote.nospam.com
P.S. Yes I run Linux, yes I write my own scripts, secure my system, compile tarballs, customize everything. In short, yes I have a clue
P.P.S. I know Windows and MFC too
Here in New York (and I hear all up and down the coasts) plenty of recruiters place inexperienced people, even without the 4-year degree.
Maybe it's your location. This seems likely.
Or maybe you smell bad. Or you show up to interviews in a Rammstein t-shirt. Or your resume is printed with ugly TeX fonts.
Or maybe you not only advocate Linux (fine) but badmouth Microsoft in pre-screenings (probably not a good idea at that stage).
It sucks when you see people who don't have the same passion for the work as you do making huge salaries. I have seen this a lot. I am in computer engineering, and it pains me to know that my education won't take me as far having some idiotic "certificates" will. One must realize however, that IT can make you old before your time, and if your heart isn't in it, you are already on that path.
Just my $.02
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...
I think one of the things that is most frustrating to me is the fact that though I have over 20 years of coding and computer experience "most" people who interview me have no concept of what I can actually do.
Most of my interviews basically break down into a situation of purely political BS in order to get a job.
The problem is that if the people that are doing the hiring don't understand what a good programmer can do and what a good programmer is worth they tend to lump everyone together and use certificates rather than certifications to determine whether someone can do the job.
I could be wrong on this, but I just don't see a CS or IT professional who spent 2 maybe 3 quarters actually doing beginner coding, comparing to someone that has worked in the field for years, even if just as a hobby.
Just a little frustrated at the moment, currently I work as a UNIX troubleshooter and I want to move back to developement. Biggest problems for me of course is the fact that when I head back to programming it's a significantly harder job than I currently do and I loose 10-20K a year.
I do think that the good developers should be paid more than "market" rate, however as long as CS and IT majors who know nothing and are thus promoted into management control who is hired and fired... Well...
I've been looking for a position for over a year and I'm starting to feel that honesty is not the best policy when applying for these positions.
Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
I've read several articles claiming that there's actually only a shortage of young computer programmers, and in fact there's a whole load of experienced older programmers out there without a job.
Probably made up statistic: for every year you are over 22(?) it takes an extra 2 weeks to get a job...
Don't sweat the school choice. I know of several good people who went to DeVry. One of them is now a VP at a very very large bank client of ours, who is definetly the most competent client contact we have. I also have an aquaintence who went to DeVry, and now has a sweet job traveling around the world doing installations of wireless networks, a few months in Thailand, some time in India, jump over to Hawaii.
Definetly a sweet gig.
craig
Isn't it the sad truth: supply and demand... :)
Eric Taylor
Wow, that's a horrible attitude. I don't think that everyone views foreign workers as a threat. I wish people would stop being so damn competitive and vengefull. God, your comment is just rude.
Eric Taylor
Darn. I guess we should all go tell Linus Torvalds and Donald Knuth that they doesn't know anything about programming.
Come on people. Having a CS degree does not automatically make you clueless. Sure, there are many CS majors who are completely clueless, and there are many self-taught people who are very good at programming. But don't generalize like you just did or you'll just sound like an idiot.
BTW, I'm pursuing a math and CS degree, so I must be in some state of limbo between geekdom and cluelessness, right?
Most software engineers actually don't have a CS degree - it's more than 75% of the profession.
Others like me don't have degrees at all and still are very successful in the industry.
If there is indeed a shortage, it's a shortage of people who are good at software - not those who hold CS degrees. I don't believe these groups necessarily intersect that much.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
they're not hiring someone who teaches him/herself Java. That's what the poster is complaining about. I also have never understood this attitude: they want to hire someone who is doing now exactly what they need. If you are interested in learning new things, where does that leave you?
There is only a shortage of programmers willing to work for peanuts.
The Mythical Man-Month
." thing . . .
i've been involved in enough commercial software projects to take brooks very, very seriously, but i've started wondering lately about the "diminishing returns from increasing staff . .
. . . major advances in management theory.
the linux devlepment model seems to actually gain from mongolian-horde-ing, up to a point, anyway. look at where brooks sees the overhead form adding new programmers: communication. training and coordination. well, the solution is just not to train them and not to talk to them! seriously! i'm not kidding. i know somebody at a large corporation who got a hardware project in on schedule by using a similar technique. he may have been very lucky, of course, but brooks' thinking in that area presupposes that it's not acceptable to pay engineers to sit around staring at the documentation, beating their heads against their desks and getting nothing done -- and that may not be a valid assumption. if they're being trained, you still paying them to learn, but you're also paying somebody else to teach. so let 'em teach themselves. the downside is that this can be brutally painful for a new employee cast adrift without any support.
certainly it's no skin off linus' ass if 20,000 programmers out there in the darkness are staring at the kernel source trying to figure it out. when those poor bastards become useful, they'll make themselves known. so be it.
am i fulla shit? probably!
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Also, what do you do when Microsoft Crack v3.0 comes out? Sell out?
"It's Brazilian"
http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9811/27/t_t/welfare.y2 k/
What do you think these "more likely to be loyal" and "grateful" women will require as far as pay and benefits?
I cannot say for sure if there is a shortage in IT professionals / programmers. What I can say for sure is that no IT professionals / programmers
whom I know are unemployeed. I started working full time my sophmore year in collage and since that time I've had my salary doubled twice. Now I cannot say for sure if this trend is nation wide, but I'm not hurting.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
We are always on the looking for object-oriented programmers--especially Java. We don't care about your degree or your age--but you do need a green card--we don't sponsor H1b's anymore. We only care that you know how to program and can proudly wear the tshirt "plays well with others". If you're interested email laura.young@int.com.
My friend claims he yells "Asshole alert!" into the receiver, then slams down the phone every time he gets a call from Aerotek/Maxim... My personal experience has been that any time I spent talking to Aerotek was a waste of time, and I felt that at least one company thought that being submitted by Aerotek was a major count against me, since their previous Aerotek consultant had walked off the job after 2 weeks. Your mileage may vary...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney