Okay, the discussion has got to the point where you are mostly hurling insults at me, calling me a troll, and whining about being misquoted, which probably means it's about time to end it.
Looks like a troll, acts like a troll. If you actually regurgitated one thing I said correctly, then yeah, maybe I'd give you some credit. It's not whining, it's asking for the common respect to get what I said right when trying to use it against me (or for me). Until then, you stink like a troll.
As a general commment, I would posit that one of the main differences between our claims is that you seem to believe that if X hasn't happened yet then X will never happen. This is backed up by your earlier statement that "Programming is a high paying job, always has been, always will be." I, on the other hand, like to look at the situation and anticipate people's responses using common sense and game theory. This technique has served me well in the past (always has, always will). The fact that a certain prediction doesn't always happen exactly on schedule or exactly as predicted does not necessarily refute the theory. The underlying dynamics that govern a societal game tend to be predictable, even though additional factors may influence the result.
No, just because X hasn't happened X won't happen. That's just plain stupid to think. However, instead of studying game theory why don't you study economics? Fields don't drastically reduce in payrate, just because of a short (very very short) economic boom/bust. It will go back to where it was *before* the boom. Look at every industry that had a boom. If the IT industry does any differently, then it is an exception to the rule. Not to say it can't happen, just to say it's unlikely.
I cannot disagree; however I also have worked in a very large, non-computer company ($14B company, 400+ IT employees) who would rightly not trust their future to IT but to the sales/marketing/any place else; that is where they grow the business, not in technology groups.
Why 400 IT people? That's insane. I wouldn't trust that department either, seems awfully bloated.
f you are saying that you get to turn the wrench when *they* decide what is a good business technology (Web design, business (competitive) surveillance, Executive decision support, etc.) but do you actually grow a business, a big business unrelated to IT with 5, maybe ten *IT* people? I cannot believe it.
How many people does it take to design an intranet site? 400? Nope. About 2 good people. How many does it take to setup the network. About 3, you have one head admin who sets up policies, two juniors who setup boxes and you contract out hardware installation. Then, you have 5 people. You need a DBA, so that brings it to 6. Then you need someone to manage, bringing it to 7. Good idea to have content management as well, so 8. You have 8 hours in a day, most people don't work half that. You just get people that are motivated (and read slashdot all day )
Considering the IT to budget ratio, we grow at a constant rate and don't spend much on IT. It sometimes is annoying, but it keeps us all busy. I'd rather be busy and stable, than in a bloated department.
Oh really. So GM never closes down whole factories and moves them to Mexico? Coke just laid off some people last week. And I bet Enron never lays people off either... Oh wait, you said "stable company". I wonder if there's a connection there. Maybe stable companies rarely lay people off and it has nothing to do with them being in the tech sector. Hmm... Another case of you not even reading what I wrote. Come on man, try harder. The automotive industry is not a stable industry. End of story.
Can you actually have a valid argument in this, or are you just disagreeing because you have friends that need work even if they aren't qualified?
You said "Go ahead and lay me off, I know I'm worth more to the company here than not here." Let's say that Bob feels unappreciated at his job. Your solution is for him to say "fuck it... I don't care if I get laid off because they'll never find anyone better than me." That may be true, but it doesn't solve the problem at hand. In the meantime, Bob is laid off and someone less qualified than him has a job. How in the hell is that wishing to be laid off? It's like selling stock $40 under what you paid for it when market rate is.. what you paid for it. If that's the best argument you can come up with, I'd doubt your coding skills too.
Before the open source revolution, you still had two sets of developers. You had people producing shrink wrapped software (or customized versions of that software on contract), and the customer had its own developers who would write scripts to interface with the shrink wrapped code or even help us with the development of a custom interface. We had experience dealing with these types of customers. We usually thought their in house developers were useless, but your experience may vary:-) Uhm, what open source revolution? 2 years ago, Apache was still dominant. MySQL and Postgres were still there. Nothing has changed in the OSS software that businesses actually use. Maybe I missed some big meeting where there was a revolution. Nope, that's right, there wasn't one.
The point is, you have proposed that the elimination of one of these two categories of programmers won't hurt the industry, and that's just BS. There are simply going to be fewer jobs to go around. Fewer jobs means more competition and more competition means reduced salaries.
I haven't proposed the elimination of any type. Your troll is really having some problems because you apparently can't read worth a damn. There are not going to be fewer jobs, just fewer programmers who are better, thus demand exceeds supply. Companies aren't going to look at the fresh out of college developers wanting to make $70K. They'll start them at $40-$45K if they're lucky, then they work up. You really need to brush up on economics and corporate dynamics. While you are at it, pick up a book on how to read statements, because you've pretty much misread most of what I've said.
I never said I wanted to get laid off. Saying, "Go ahead and do it, it will cost you more" is saying that it would be a stupid move.
I never said a certain type of developer should be eliminated, for whatever reason. I said exactly the opposite. The only types of developers that should not be in the field are those who can't hack it in the field because they are not smart enough, or not qualified to be in the position they are in.
You've spent most this thread saying that I said things I haven't, when all you have said is that open source is going to revolutionize the IT industry. Well, don't hold your breath. The same open source apps that were in use 4 years ago in businesses are what's going to be in use 4 years from now. Only projects that have corporate backing, and a proven record of stability (Apache) are going to make inroads into business. Until then, Hello Oracle License.
It doesn't matter what their PR department says. An Intel employee who doesn't believe in Intel is an idiot. Can you imagine a Linux advocate working for Microsoft? What would be the point?
What is more stupid is denying your companies competitor is a valid competitor.
If you work for a stable Fortune 1000 company, they rarely do layoffs if they are not in the tech sector. You work in the tech industry, it's an unstable industry. If any part of your company is unstable, you can expect layoffs. That includes industry.
And you can also gauge whether a company will be bought. It would take a huge company to buy the company I work for now. Considering it's already owned by one of the biggest in the world.
I just had a discussion with a guy I know that works on Intel about this. His argument was, "Intel won, AMD should stop being in the consumer market soon." I told him, "Intel is just a giant, but AMD will beat them very soon if I see things right."
I explained to him the problems with Itanium and development (Problematic BSD and Linux support, which is still a huge market on the server line) even with Windows. AMD Hammer solved a lot of the hardware based problems (Granted a lot of work still needs to be done). His argument was, "AMD just rips of Intel's designs and puts their name on them."
Makes me wonder what the Intel PR team tells their employees..
Wow aren't we full of ourselves? Eventualy, the layoffs wil come to you. The accountants demand that profit be high. Sure you are a great programmer who knows a lot of lines of code but after the 3rd round of layoffs and there is a still a loss of money ( Not a real loss to you and me, I'm talking accountant speak), the decison wil be made: ditch some higher paid people but not til we hire a few 'consultants'. So unless you are project manager for Microsoft XP, you are expendable.
Not full of myself, I just study economics. I don't work for a company that does layoffs. I work for a company that has maintained profitable standings with a growing margin for many many years. That's why so many people are dissillusioned with the market, they pick companies that aren't stable. No matter how good you are, if your company is on rocks, so are you.
Then explain the people who got laid off and were hired back as contractors at 2x-3x their former salaries? Some people I know have been working as contractors for their former employers longer than they were as regular employees.
There are many reasons why this happens. Go read up on corporate filings and contractor status, it's a pretty good bit of knowledge. I know exactly why they are doing this. In the end, it saves them money. To contract and make the same, you have to double your salary amount.
Accountability? Is that why every software license since, what was it, Visicalc?, has contained the much beloved phrase ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY in caps?
That's why corporations have software contracts. That contract supercedes the software license, and no major company is going to trust millions of dollars in data to software that's developed by anyone outside of a company that can write such a contract.
Wishing to be laid off because you feel unappreciated is a silly attitude. Maybe 2 years from now they will recognize your genius and wish they had paid you more, but in the meantime you are laid off.
Uhm, when the hell did I say that. Stay on topic here.
I sense that your are a person who values finality. Anyway, your conclusion is silly and extreme. X and Y does not imply X => Y. Wrong, nothing is final. However, if you get laid off, you were not worth your salary to the company. I didn't say why, now did I? I have a friend who they offered to pay him a lot of money to move to their HQ offices. He refused, and they laid him off? Why? Because they were closing down the offices. He wasn't worth enough to keep around unless he moved. If they were worth it, they wouldn't get laid off, now, would they?
You can sue anybody for anything, but you don't always win. You can also get slapped with a fine for filing a nuisance suit. I don't know of anyone who successfully sued Oracle for data loss. Anyway, instead of spending $1M on Oracle software, why not use the free stuff and spend $500k on a whopping huge insurance policy for the data.
You don't need to sue. If a company has a multi-million dollar oracle deal, they have liability contracts. They are very basic, I know of liability clauses in $5K contracts too. An insurance policy is the stupidest idea I have heard, in all honesty. Who is going to ensure credit card transaction data? I don't think Allstate covers that.
These people don't seem all that unsatisfied with their new role as far as I can tell (many of them are free software advocates). All I can say is that I had the equivalent job I would almost certainly quit.
Then what's the issue? They're happy, so be it. Who are you to mind if they're happy doing mundane work? You seem to have some issues thinking every good engineer deserves a good job. It takes more than your engineering skill to get a good job, intuition and perseverence, and interviewing skills go much, much further.
That is very nice to say, but I just finished explaining how open source will make "good" jobs much scarcer. If it's more cost effective to grab a free library off the web than to write your own, what are most companies going to do? Then you have to patch it up a bit (half the time it won't even compile), and then spend time monitoring some newsgroup to keep abreast of any security holes. It's just not my idea of fun. You could say the same thing to the guy working behind the counter at Wendy's but he'll tell you that all the fun fast food jobs are already taken.
The only thing that you explained is that you don't understand how big business works. Big business doesn't give a rat shit about open source or closed source, unless it costs them money if it dies. If it may die, they better have a liability contract. If it's in house, they have someone to point the finger at and call at 3am. That's the beauty of big business, it's all about the earnings. If you are well versed in the open source tools that are out there, for most tasks you can find several that can do certain components well. I prefer to do most development unless it has a stable version inhouse, regardless of how much functionality the beta has. If it's beta, it doesn't go into production. Period. Your whole argument seems to be summed up with, "We're going to get paid less because open source software is free and businesses will use that instead of developing it in house." That is bunk. You have to have developers to even install and maintain open source software. And no open source packages, out of the box, suit big business needs anyway.
Mom and pop shops maybe, but I wouldn't want to work for one of them anyway.
If you don't believe it than why is that the reason everybody cites? Why do I know people that fight over liability clauses in contracts?Which there are in enterprise level contracts, that's a big reason why companies have legal teams. Most contracts will state, "If a flaw in the software costs us money, you compensate." If they don't, it's breach of contract and you can nail them for much more.
What percentage of customers need customized code anyway? I worked in product development at a small company, and there was always the nebulous threat of the customer special, usually from a large potential customer with lots of clout. Customer specials are annoying because they distract you from core development. Typically, the customer is unwilling to pay the full cost of development so you have to recoup the money somehow. Possibly the feature will be sufficiently useful that it will improve the overall saleability of your product or (more likely) the customer is dangling a carrot in front of you, such as the promise to buy 1000 widgets if you deliver features X, Y, and Z. (Of course they are promising the same thing to 3 other companies, but your CEO is young and gullible.
Uhm, go work in a big company. I'm talking at least Fortune 1000. Things where the IT budget accounts for 1% of the revenue and you still get 2 million a year. Then you find out why you have job security, and why you are rarely bored. Those are the companies to work for if you want a stable job. You get paid what you are worth, and it's usually a great environment, but it depends upon your boss.
The point is, it's very difficult to make money from a customer special, fundamentally because the customer doesn't want to pay the full cost of development. So this begs the question why, in general, they would hire a core open source developer to customize an open source project for their own use. Why did you think I was talking about customers? Infrastructure development is a very lucrative market that will never go away. After I did the biotech thing, I went into internal software development. There are a plethora of projects to work with. Server monitoring applications, that utilize some really cool open source toolkits. Yeah, they can buy something that may work -- you hire a small development team and you can make it work just how you need it. That's just one example, but I've worked on some very cool projects. That, and many big companies own smaller companies, that need code done. Work for the big company on their children companies projects, and it all works out.
The fact is there are so many companies that are big, and need people like that, I never have to worry. I know enough about admining to make that point so if we have something that needs to tightly integrate with the system, I can do it. Easy as pie.
Salaries and wages are coming down for a long time, something which was planned by the ITAA (financed by Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc.) who has been spreading millions around Washington for years. In most professional industries - doctors, lawyers, dentists, whatever, you have skilled workers, who work many hours, but who are still concerned enough about the profession to form the AMA, ADA, ABA and so forth. These "super genius" programmers think that economics doesn't effect them. How many dentists say "I'm the best dentist there is, I don't care about what the HMO's are doing"? These people are displaying a lack of professionalism and calling it professionalism. And they always get modded up high.
You drastically missed my point. I'm making about 20% more now than when I started. I used to make 200% more. Where I am at now is right with the industry per my experience and value. It is economics. Proclaiming that all salaries are going to go down below market value is just plain stupid. The example I slated was the autmobile designers who for the most part went through the same thing all the developers are going through now. Yes, you do lose money. No, you weren't worth what you were getting paid.
I know I wasn't. I know that I am now. I see the revenue coming in, and my piece in it. I know that without me, it would have been much different (or without someone like me). Therefor, I know I am worth what the market is paying me for. When I take a job, I generally don't request a salary. When it was hot I would, but before and after I would say, "What is the average pay between your employees who have an equal number of years in the field" then I will say, "That salary will do just fine." Unfortunately you are arguing with someone who has a very major interest in economics, supply and demond, and above all the changes of industry. Study all of the major innovation industries and what happened, then compare with the computer industry. You will be very surprised.
That's a rather silly attitude. I believe it's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Uhm, no, it's called job security. It's not asking for a higher price than what it would cost to replace you with someone cheaper. I can produce more than that person by a significant percentage, and know the software already deployed. There is a small (7K) program that is in production that not many people could understand, much less maintain. It uses some pretty advanced IPC concepts in it, and works very well. That's just one of them, and accounts for less than 10% of the code I've developed here. No noses are being sacrificied.
I am a highly skilled programmer and I still have a job. I know skilled people who got layed off and I know inept people who still have jobs. The transition is not finished yet. Barring the company going out of business, if you were selected for a layoff, you were paid too much for that position. End of story. The only time I got laid off, I was one of the last ones to go. I got to watch the doors be closed and locked for the last time. Every inept person in the company was laid off months prior.
Before the boom, there wasn't a computer in every household and kids didn't learn to use them in school. Back then, programmers were geeks with some very exclusive knowledge.
I know about exclusive knowledge -- good programmers were, and still are, hard to come by. People can write good code, but don't know how to engineer, that's the difference. I'm not a coder, I solve problems.
I fail to see the logic. Don't/. readers complain daily that software providers aren't accountable for bugs? They certainly seemed very vocal about Oracle's misleading "can't break in, can't break it" ad campaign.
Accountability means shit in a courtroom. You get a backend CC providor on an Oracle database experience an Oracle bug that causes them to lose a days worth of transactions that they have to pay for, and you see who gets sued. Remember, you can sue anybody for anything.
You know what... I do mind. I *care* if all the glamourous work becomes free and I can only get paid to do the crufty bits. We had a good thing going and then we went and ruined it. I am lucky in that my job quality was largely unaffected by our shift to open source, but I look at the shitty work some of my co-workers now have to do and it totally depresses me. It is demeaning for a highly skilled programmer to be stuck writing glue code to glue two poorly written, heterogenous open source apps together.
Then they should get a different job. Do the work till they find a job that is more suited for their tastes. Jobs are hard to come by, but they are still there. If all they are doing is writing glue code, they could probably go somewhere else and end up making more money, and having more fun.
The general rule at my company is if we employ the use of an open source tool, and modify the code the changes get submitted to the author. This is on code where the license allows (Which is pretty much all OSI, since we don't redistribute and it's just an internal tool not being used for commercial purposes) We would never subsidize development, but would give back anything we patch.
Unfortunately the only product we started to do that with, we stopped working on to switch to another project.:(
As someone who has purchasing influence across a few companies, I for one am thinking ahead and thinking twice about recommendations for committing to the use of open source software in this current economic environment. Who knows how many open source developers are going to lose employer support for their efforts (assuming they haven't already)? Of course this is a potentially circular discussion w/regards to cause-and-effect. The way to really do it (which is why I have a job) is find someone very versed in open source software, specifically very familiar with the projects you need/want and hire them. Even if you don't get one of the main developers (I'm not) as long as they know the inner workings of the software packages you are interested in, if the developer stops working on it you can still get it stable internally and have the features you need put in.
Because they will get laid off otherwise? Because unemployed IT guys are willing to work for less?
Go ahead and lay me off, I know I'm worth more to the company here than not here. They'd just have to hire someone else in for a couple bucks less an hour who has no clue about the thousands and thousands of lines of code. I'm worth what they pay, end of story. Same thing with everyone else that still has jobs for the most part. If you don't have a job, you weren't worth what they paid for you.
Wishing *will* make it so. Wishing *will* make it so.
Sorry, it is. Just a fact of life. Always has been, always will be. It's up there with being a doctor. If you are a software engineer, you make good money. Just the way life goes, just because you don't want it that way (As it seems) doesn't mean it isn't true. Even before the boom people were making well over $55K a year. You know what percentage of the population made more than that? (1995-1996) Go look it up, you'll be surprised.
And I work on product that is 90% open source and developed using 100% open source tools.
Want a cookie? You are in the minority. Deal with that fact. Open source is not a threat to programmers for big business. Maybe you just haven't ever worked in big business.
I disagree. We're not gullible enough to spend $50 per seat (or $1000s in developer-hours) on an improved product when we can get the stock version for free. Sorry, but for critical database apps Oracle is the way to go? Why? Simple: Accountability. You don't store $1M a day in transactions in Postgres. That makes you dumb. End of story.
I guess because open documentation isn't particularly glamorous work.
Which is why I'll always be paid well, and employed. I don't mind.
They won't fade out, they will move their office down the hall. Companies will no longer go to their IT staffs for IT solutions (they are there to run the servers and wiring). They will go to the Sales/Marketing/Engineering/etc. groups to build things for competitive advantage. You will find your dotcommers there, either as techy sales and marketers, or *their* staff.
In my office space, there are exactly 0 people like what you described. There will never be any like that. I think that this company is the only one who didn't give a rats ass about the.com boom. Our IT budget is grossly under what it should be, but we get by just fine. Because we don't hire those people. You hire 5-10 good people, and they can (be very busy, and) do what needs done without a hitch. My company is also huge. We have our problems. But when a IT need is there, we get it done. There are 3 coders, 1 web developer/HTML person, and a few admins (sys/DB, etc) We never have a problem with projects going under, and we've worked on some pretty massive projects. We just do it right. Then again, our boss is really cool and doesn't shirk off his responsibility to tell the high-ups that their idea sucks weasel nuts.
I think that one effect of having a bloated industry of underqualified individuals, is that those who ARE qualified are being lost in the shuffle. Many of those that came into the industry because of the money, with business degrees, a few tech courses, and little to no real experience also had one thing going for them... something taught in business schools. That is "Networking". No, not packet or switch networks... but people networking. They cling to people they know, thus needing to rely on their own abilities less. Unfortunately, that "networking" mentality is something that many qualified IT professionals tried to avoid being dragged into.
Some will get lost in the shuffle, and it's a shame but there really is no way around it. Every battle has casualties, same with every downsize. When I got laid off, I knew I'd be ok. I have a really impressive resume. Other people that can code just as well, they don't fare so well.
So, while I agree that those.com'ers need to go... let's not forget that that shouldn't include people who were validly entering into the industry at that time, regardless of the boom. Many people who were caught up in the mess chose their majors before the boom occured, or before they were aware of such things. They may be a.com generation, but they aren't necessarily the ones that made the Net go to hell.
It's pretty easy to tell. In 94 my major was CS. When I got my first "real" job in 98 it wasn't in a.com, or even a computer company. It was a biotech company, and I had a blast there. I don't like the fast-paced software world much. I hate customers that I don't work with:) Most people you can tell. If someone held a job at some unrelated field then in the end of 98 or 99, they suddenly switched to IT then it's obvious they have no business in the field. If they loved their work (and plenty of us do that need jobs) they would have done it before then. Managars are opening their eyes to this. I feel bad for anyone who doesn't have credentials pre-1997 though, they are probably the hardest up right now.
I'm not sure I agree. Or maybe I agree but don't realize it. I think we'll start to see a blurring of the lines. There will always be the 'pure' techy jobs, but I think we'll start to see a lot more jobs that blend non-tech and tech skills. Just as non-tech workers have learned to develop their own Microsoft Word templates for memos, or more advanced users have created Excel macros to aid with their work, people will start to develop their own custom software to help them do their jobs. An influx of tech workers into non tech jobs could drive this, provided the corporations don't get in the way. If anything, the non-techies should be getting worried. 'Course, I could be nuts.
You are absolutely right. My mother is a perfect example of it. She is definitely not a techy, yet is exceptionally valuable in the IT world. She manages a customer service department for a very widely used freeware application. She only has a couple people working for her, and they handle a huge amount of volume. Why? Not because she is super techy and can come up with new tools to handle her task, because she got good tools and learned how to use them properly. A few IT positions could have been created by her company to create the software she needed, or she could have looked around and found a few packages that could work together and make it work well.
Everybody in the IT market is going through what happens in any new market. Only the good people keep jobs. The pay still maintains what it was, we'll all be comfortable in what we make, but you actually have to stand out. If someone is managing a restaurant and doing a dumbass job, they get fired. We'll start seeing that much more in the IT world. I knew people who could do anything and not get fired, it really was sad.
(Whoa! major deja vu... wasn't there a similar/. discussion a few years ago?) Yeah, there is every 2 years or so. "Oh no the IT jobs are being overrun/underrun" We really just need to use strncpy() and keep maximum bounds.
"Bigger salaries and more work"? Puh-leez!! Since when has the collapse of an industry caused salaries to go up? The whole reason why unqualified people flocked to IT in the first place was the high salaries. The high salaries were the reason why companies pressured the US government to relax immigration controls. Frankly, I think we will see smaller salaries and more work as proprietary programmers struggle to compete with open source.
Why would people take more pay cuts? I'm in a secured position, for the most part. The only way I can go is up. In 5 years, you better expect me to want a lot more money. The IT field is a high paying field. End of story.
As for your statement, "Since when has the collapse of an industry caused salaries to go up?" that is full of troll-fodder. First, the industry has no collapsed. It has merely gone on a diet, that was much needed. Since the creation of the Ford automobile, there has been 15,000 failed automobile manufacturers. You think when it was a boom people were getting paid a lot to design cars? Yeah, they were. Then, it started to decline and no automobile designers are again making very good salaries and most of them have been in the business for a very long time. Same thing in the corporate world. And saying that open source software is going to compete with developers is just utter I've-never-worked-in-a-large-company-bull-shit. In the company I work at, 90% of the server software (Excluding Oracle and WebLogic) we use is open source. Same with other companies I've worked at, for the most part. You know what keeps me employed? I know a lot about open source software. I know how to code to it, and expand on tools that are already available to better serve the corporation. That's why I still have a job. Most open source software is not ready to be used in an enterprise environment. However, with a few code modifications, and some clever front end GUI applications, they become very usable. I'll never worry about being put out of a job because of open source software. Purely because you need to have a coder in house to understand it.
Unfortunately, the internet is ruined with spam and popups for the vast majority -- no matter what happens. Corporate culture has already sunk it's teeth, and like a vampire, drained it's culture right out of it. We still get to live and be geeky, but it will never be like it was. With how many hundreds of millions online, how will spam ever stop? I like my job, I get to sit and write code. Some is viewed over a web browser, some is never viewed just a network server. This is what makes me happy, not fighting with a dozen clueless dipshits that left the wonders of their fast food job to join a company as a "Senior Perl Developer" because they read a few perl books. I can see it happening now, and it'll be great when the economy does filter it self so that those who do deserve jobs and can't get them, receive them. It's a shame to see good developers go unemployed purely because there is a massive deluge of resumes to try to filter out.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, the discussion has got to the point where you are mostly hurling insults at me, calling me a troll, and whining about being misquoted, which probably means it's about time to end it.
Looks like a troll, acts like a troll. If you actually regurgitated one thing I said correctly, then yeah, maybe I'd give you some credit. It's not whining, it's asking for the common respect to get what I said right when trying to use it against me (or for me). Until then, you stink like a troll.
As a general commment, I would posit that one of the main differences between our claims is that you seem to believe that if X hasn't happened yet then X will never happen. This is backed up by your earlier statement that "Programming is a high paying job, always has been, always will be." I, on the other hand, like to look at the situation and anticipate people's responses using common sense and game theory. This technique has served me well in the past (always has, always will). The fact that a certain prediction doesn't always happen exactly on schedule or exactly as predicted does not necessarily refute the theory. The underlying dynamics that govern a societal game tend to be predictable, even though additional factors may influence the result.
No, just because X hasn't happened X won't happen. That's just plain stupid to think. However, instead of studying game theory why don't you study economics? Fields don't drastically reduce in payrate, just because of a short (very very short) economic boom/bust. It will go back to where it was *before* the boom. Look at every industry that had a boom. If the IT industry does any differently, then it is an exception to the rule. Not to say it can't happen, just to say it's unlikely.
XerithaneZilla just doesn't work though. However I think LawyerZilla.com would be a cool domain.
I cannot disagree; however I also have worked in a very large, non-computer company ($14B company, 400+ IT employees) who would rightly not trust their future to IT but to the sales/marketing/any place else; that is where they grow the business, not in technology groups.
Why 400 IT people? That's insane. I wouldn't trust that department either, seems awfully bloated.
f you are saying that you get to turn the wrench when *they* decide what is a good business technology (Web design, business (competitive) surveillance, Executive decision support, etc.) but do you actually grow a business, a big business unrelated to IT with 5, maybe ten *IT* people? I cannot believe it.
How many people does it take to design an intranet site? 400? Nope. About 2 good people. How many does it take to setup the network. About 3, you have one head admin who sets up policies, two juniors who setup boxes and you contract out hardware installation. Then, you have 5 people. You need a DBA, so that brings it to 6. Then you need someone to manage, bringing it to 7. Good idea to have content management as well, so 8. You have 8 hours in a day, most people don't work half that. You just get people that are motivated (and read slashdot all day )
Considering the IT to budget ratio, we grow at a constant rate and don't spend much on IT. It sometimes is annoying, but it keeps us all busy. I'd rather be busy and stable, than in a bloated department.
Oh really. So GM never closes down whole factories and moves them to Mexico? Coke just laid off some people last week. And I bet Enron never lays people off either... Oh wait, you said "stable company". I wonder if there's a connection there. Maybe stable companies rarely lay people off and it has nothing to do with them being in the tech sector. Hmm...
Another case of you not even reading what I wrote. Come on man, try harder. The automotive industry is not a stable industry. End of story.
Can you actually have a valid argument in this, or are you just disagreeing because you have friends that need work even if they aren't qualified?
Yeah, and I personally like the diarrhea color scheme of Slashdot better than the register.
You said "Go ahead and lay me off, I know I'm worth more to the company here than not here." Let's say that Bob feels unappreciated at his job. Your solution is for him to say "fuck it... I don't care if I get laid off because they'll never find anyone better than me." That may be true, but it doesn't solve the problem at hand. In the meantime, Bob is laid off and someone less qualified than him has a job.
:-)
How in the hell is that wishing to be laid off? It's like selling stock $40 under what you paid for it when market rate is.. what you paid for it. If that's the best argument you can come up with, I'd doubt your coding skills too.
Before the open source revolution, you still had two sets of developers. You had people producing shrink wrapped software (or customized versions of that software on contract), and the customer had its own developers who would write scripts to interface with the shrink wrapped code or even help us with the development of a custom interface. We had experience dealing with these types of customers. We usually thought their in house developers were useless, but your experience may vary
Uhm, what open source revolution? 2 years ago, Apache was still dominant. MySQL and Postgres were still there. Nothing has changed in the OSS software that businesses actually use. Maybe I missed some big meeting where there was a revolution. Nope, that's right, there wasn't one.
The point is, you have proposed that the elimination of one of these two categories of programmers won't hurt the industry, and that's just BS. There are simply going to be fewer jobs to go around. Fewer jobs means more competition and more competition means reduced salaries.
I haven't proposed the elimination of any type. Your troll is really having some problems because you apparently can't read worth a damn. There are not going to be fewer jobs, just fewer programmers who are better, thus demand exceeds supply. Companies aren't going to look at the fresh out of college developers wanting to make $70K. They'll start them at $40-$45K if they're lucky, then they work up. You really need to brush up on economics and corporate dynamics. While you are at it, pick up a book on how to read statements, because you've pretty much misread most of what I've said.
I never said I wanted to get laid off. Saying, "Go ahead and do it, it will cost you more" is saying that it would be a stupid move.
I never said a certain type of developer should be eliminated, for whatever reason. I said exactly the opposite. The only types of developers that should not be in the field are those who can't hack it in the field because they are not smart enough, or not qualified to be in the position they are in.
You've spent most this thread saying that I said things I haven't, when all you have said is that open source is going to revolutionize the IT industry. Well, don't hold your breath. The same open source apps that were in use 4 years ago in businesses are what's going to be in use 4 years from now. Only projects that have corporate backing, and a proven record of stability (Apache) are going to make inroads into business. Until then, Hello Oracle License.
It doesn't matter what their PR department says. An Intel employee who doesn't believe in Intel is an idiot. Can you imagine a Linux advocate working for Microsoft? What would be the point?
What is more stupid is denying your companies competitor is a valid competitor.
If you work for a stable Fortune 1000 company, they rarely do layoffs if they are not in the tech sector. You work in the tech industry, it's an unstable industry. If any part of your company is unstable, you can expect layoffs. That includes industry.
And you can also gauge whether a company will be bought. It would take a huge company to buy the company I work for now. Considering it's already owned by one of the biggest in the world.
I just had a discussion with a guy I know that works on Intel about this. His argument was, "Intel won, AMD should stop being in the consumer market soon." I told him, "Intel is just a giant, but AMD will beat them very soon if I see things right."
I explained to him the problems with Itanium and development (Problematic BSD and Linux support, which is still a huge market on the server line) even with Windows. AMD Hammer solved a lot of the hardware based problems (Granted a lot of work still needs to be done). His argument was, "AMD just rips of Intel's designs and puts their name on them."
Makes me wonder what the Intel PR team tells their employees..
Wow aren't we full of ourselves? Eventualy, the layoffs wil come to you. The accountants demand that profit be high. Sure you are a great programmer who knows a lot of lines of code but after the 3rd round of layoffs and there is a still a loss of money ( Not a real loss to you and me, I'm talking accountant speak), the decison wil be made: ditch some higher paid people but not til we hire a few 'consultants'. So unless you are project manager for Microsoft XP, you are expendable.
Not full of myself, I just study economics. I don't work for a company that does layoffs. I work for a company that has maintained profitable standings with a growing margin for many many years. That's why so many people are dissillusioned with the market, they pick companies that aren't stable. No matter how good you are, if your company is on rocks, so are you.
Then explain the people who got laid off and were hired back as contractors at 2x-3x their former salaries? Some people I know have been working as contractors for their former employers longer than they were as regular employees.
There are many reasons why this happens. Go read up on corporate filings and contractor status, it's a pretty good bit of knowledge. I know exactly why they are doing this. In the end, it saves them money. To contract and make the same, you have to double your salary amount.
Accountability? Is that why every software license since, what was it, Visicalc?, has contained the much beloved phrase ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY in caps?
That's why corporations have software contracts. That contract supercedes the software license, and no major company is going to trust millions of dollars in data to software that's developed by anyone outside of a company that can write such a contract.
Wishing to be laid off because you feel unappreciated is a silly attitude. Maybe 2 years from now they will recognize your genius and wish they had paid you more, but in the meantime you are laid off.
Uhm, when the hell did I say that. Stay on topic here.
I sense that your are a person who values finality. Anyway, your conclusion is silly and extreme. X and Y does not imply X => Y.
Wrong, nothing is final. However, if you get laid off, you were not worth your salary to the company. I didn't say why, now did I? I have a friend who they offered to pay him a lot of money to move to their HQ offices. He refused, and they laid him off? Why? Because they were closing down the offices. He wasn't worth enough to keep around unless he moved. If they were worth it, they wouldn't get laid off, now, would they?
You can sue anybody for anything, but you don't always win. You can also get slapped with a fine for filing a nuisance suit. I don't know of anyone who successfully sued Oracle for data loss. Anyway, instead of spending $1M on Oracle software, why not use the free stuff and spend $500k on a whopping huge insurance policy for the data.
You don't need to sue. If a company has a multi-million dollar oracle deal, they have liability contracts. They are very basic, I know of liability clauses in $5K contracts too. An insurance policy is the stupidest idea I have heard, in all honesty. Who is going to ensure credit card transaction data? I don't think Allstate covers that.
These people don't seem all that unsatisfied with their new role as far as I can tell (many of them are free software advocates). All I can say is that I had the equivalent job I would almost certainly quit.
Then what's the issue? They're happy, so be it. Who are you to mind if they're happy doing mundane work? You seem to have some issues thinking every good engineer deserves a good job. It takes more than your engineering skill to get a good job, intuition and perseverence, and interviewing skills go much, much further.
That is very nice to say, but I just finished explaining how open source will make "good" jobs much scarcer. If it's more cost effective to grab a free library off the web than to write your own, what are most companies going to do? Then you have to patch it up a bit (half the time it won't even compile), and then spend time monitoring some newsgroup to keep abreast of any security holes. It's just not my idea of fun. You could say the same thing to the guy working behind the counter at Wendy's but he'll tell you that all the fun fast food jobs are already taken.
The only thing that you explained is that you don't understand how big business works. Big business doesn't give a rat shit about open source or closed source, unless it costs them money if it dies. If it may die, they better have a liability contract. If it's in house, they have someone to point the finger at and call at 3am. That's the beauty of big business, it's all about the earnings. If you are well versed in the open source tools that are out there, for most tasks you can find several that can do certain components well. I prefer to do most development unless it has a stable version inhouse, regardless of how much functionality the beta has. If it's beta, it doesn't go into production. Period. Your whole argument seems to be summed up with, "We're going to get paid less because open source software is free and businesses will use that instead of developing it in house." That is bunk. You have to have developers to even install and maintain open source software. And no open source packages, out of the box, suit big business needs anyway.
Mom and pop shops maybe, but I wouldn't want to work for one of them anyway.
If you don't believe it than why is that the reason everybody cites? Why do I know people that fight over liability clauses in contracts?Which there are in enterprise level contracts, that's a big reason why companies have legal teams. Most contracts will state, "If a flaw in the software costs us money, you compensate." If they don't, it's breach of contract and you can nail them for much more.
What percentage of customers need customized code anyway? I worked in product development at a small company, and there was always the nebulous threat of the customer special, usually from a large potential customer with lots of clout. Customer specials are annoying because they distract you from core development. Typically, the customer is unwilling to pay the full cost of development so you have to recoup the money somehow. Possibly the feature will be sufficiently useful that it will improve the overall saleability of your product or (more likely) the customer is dangling a carrot in front of you, such as the promise to buy 1000 widgets if you deliver features X, Y, and Z. (Of course they are promising the same thing to 3 other companies, but your CEO is young and gullible.
Uhm, go work in a big company. I'm talking at least Fortune 1000. Things where the IT budget accounts for 1% of the revenue and you still get 2 million a year. Then you find out why you have job security, and why you are rarely bored. Those are the companies to work for if you want a stable job. You get paid what you are worth, and it's usually a great environment, but it depends upon your boss.
The point is, it's very difficult to make money from a customer special, fundamentally because the customer doesn't want to pay the full cost of development. So this begs the question why, in general, they would hire a core open source developer to customize an open source project for their own use.
Why did you think I was talking about customers? Infrastructure development is a very lucrative market that will never go away. After I did the biotech thing, I went into internal software development. There are a plethora of projects to work with. Server monitoring applications, that utilize some really cool open source toolkits. Yeah, they can buy something that may work -- you hire a small development team and you can make it work just how you need it. That's just one example, but I've worked on some very cool projects. That, and many big companies own smaller companies, that need code done. Work for the big company on their children companies projects, and it all works out.
The fact is there are so many companies that are big, and need people like that, I never have to worry. I know enough about admining to make that point so if we have something that needs to tightly integrate with the system, I can do it. Easy as pie.
Salaries and wages are coming down for a long time, something which was planned by the ITAA (financed by Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc.) who has been spreading millions around Washington for years. In most professional industries - doctors, lawyers, dentists, whatever, you have skilled workers, who work many hours, but who are still concerned enough about the profession to form the AMA, ADA, ABA and so forth. These "super genius" programmers think that economics doesn't effect them. How many dentists say "I'm the best dentist there is, I don't care about what the HMO's are doing"? These people are displaying a lack of professionalism and calling it professionalism. And they always get modded up high.
You drastically missed my point. I'm making about 20% more now than when I started. I used to make 200% more. Where I am at now is right with the industry per my experience and value. It is economics. Proclaiming that all salaries are going to go down below market value is just plain stupid. The example I slated was the autmobile designers who for the most part went through the same thing all the developers are going through now. Yes, you do lose money. No, you weren't worth what you were getting paid.
I know I wasn't. I know that I am now. I see the revenue coming in, and my piece in it. I know that without me, it would have been much different (or without someone like me). Therefor, I know I am worth what the market is paying me for. When I take a job, I generally don't request a salary. When it was hot I would, but before and after I would say, "What is the average pay between your employees who have an equal number of years in the field" then I will say, "That salary will do just fine." Unfortunately you are arguing with someone who has a very major interest in economics, supply and demond, and above all the changes of industry. Study all of the major innovation industries and what happened, then compare with the computer industry. You will be very surprised.
That's a rather silly attitude. I believe it's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
/. readers complain daily that software providers aren't accountable for bugs? They certainly seemed very vocal about Oracle's misleading "can't break in, can't break it" ad campaign.
Uhm, no, it's called job security. It's not asking for a higher price than what it would cost to replace you with someone cheaper. I can produce more than that person by a significant percentage, and know the software already deployed. There is a small (7K) program that is in production that not many people could understand, much less maintain. It uses some pretty advanced IPC concepts in it, and works very well. That's just one of them, and accounts for less than 10% of the code I've developed here. No noses are being sacrificied.
I am a highly skilled programmer and I still have a job. I know skilled people who got layed off and I know inept people who still have
jobs.
The transition is not finished yet. Barring the company going out of business, if you were selected for a layoff, you were paid too much for that position. End of story. The only time I got laid off, I was one of the last ones to go. I got to watch the doors be closed and locked for the last time. Every inept person in the company was laid off months prior.
Before the boom, there wasn't a computer in every household and kids didn't learn to use them in school. Back then, programmers were geeks with some very exclusive knowledge.
I know about exclusive knowledge -- good programmers were, and still are, hard to come by. People can write good code, but don't know how to engineer, that's the difference. I'm not a coder, I solve problems.
I fail to see the logic. Don't
Accountability means shit in a courtroom. You get a backend CC providor on an Oracle database experience an Oracle bug that causes them to lose a days worth of transactions that they have to pay for, and you see who gets sued. Remember, you can sue anybody for anything.
You know what... I do mind. I *care* if all the glamourous work becomes free and I can only get paid to do the crufty bits. We had a good thing going and then we went and ruined it. I am lucky in that my job quality was largely unaffected by our shift to open source, but I look at the shitty work some of my co-workers now have to do and it totally depresses me. It is demeaning for a highly skilled programmer to be stuck writing glue code to glue two poorly written, heterogenous open source apps together.
Then they should get a different job. Do the work till they find a job that is more suited for their tastes. Jobs are hard to come by, but they are still there. If all they are doing is writing glue code, they could probably go somewhere else and end up making more money, and having more fun.
The general rule at my company is if we employ the use of an open source tool, and modify the code the changes get submitted to the author. This is on code where the license allows (Which is pretty much all OSI, since we don't redistribute and it's just an internal tool not being used for commercial purposes) We would never subsidize development, but would give back anything we patch.
:(
Unfortunately the only product we started to do that with, we stopped working on to switch to another project.
As someone who has purchasing influence across a few companies, I for one am thinking ahead and thinking twice about recommendations for committing to the use of open source software in this current economic environment. Who knows how many open source developers are going to lose employer support for their efforts (assuming they haven't already)? Of course this is a potentially circular discussion w/regards to cause-and-effect.
The way to really do it (which is why I have a job) is find someone very versed in open source software, specifically very familiar with the projects you need/want and hire them. Even if you don't get one of the main developers (I'm not) as long as they know the inner workings of the software packages you are interested in, if the developer stops working on it you can still get it stable internally and have the features you need put in.
I know someone that could make you feel better. Last years wages, over 6 figures. This years to date: $0.00
And his stock is worth so little, he can't even short it.
Because they will get laid off otherwise? Because unemployed IT guys are willing to work for less?
Go ahead and lay me off, I know I'm worth more to the company here than not here. They'd just have to hire someone else in for a couple bucks less an hour who has no clue about the thousands and thousands of lines of code. I'm worth what they pay, end of story. Same thing with everyone else that still has jobs for the most part. If you don't have a job, you weren't worth what they paid for you.
Wishing *will* make it so. Wishing *will* make it so.
Sorry, it is. Just a fact of life. Always has been, always will be. It's up there with being a doctor. If you are a software engineer, you make good money. Just the way life goes, just because you don't want it that way (As it seems) doesn't mean it isn't true. Even before the boom people were making well over $55K a year. You know what percentage of the population made more than that? (1995-1996) Go look it up, you'll be surprised.
And I work on product that is 90% open source and developed using 100% open source tools.
Want a cookie? You are in the minority. Deal with that fact. Open source is not a threat to programmers for big business. Maybe you just haven't ever worked in big business.
I disagree. We're not gullible enough to spend $50 per seat (or $1000s in developer-hours) on an improved product when we can get the stock version for free.
Sorry, but for critical database apps Oracle is the way to go? Why? Simple: Accountability. You don't store $1M a day in transactions in Postgres. That makes you dumb. End of story.
I guess because open documentation isn't particularly glamorous work.
Which is why I'll always be paid well, and employed. I don't mind.
They won't fade out, they will move their office down the hall. Companies will no longer go to their IT staffs for IT solutions (they are there to run the servers and wiring). They will go to the Sales/Marketing/Engineering/etc. groups to build things for competitive advantage. You will find your dotcommers there, either as techy sales and marketers, or *their* staff.
.com boom. Our IT budget is grossly under what it should be, but we get by just fine. Because we don't hire those people. You hire 5-10 good people, and they can (be very busy, and) do what needs done without a hitch. My company is also huge. We have our problems. But when a IT need is there, we get it done. There are 3 coders, 1 web developer/HTML person, and a few admins (sys/DB, etc) We never have a problem with projects going under, and we've worked on some pretty massive projects. We just do it right. Then again, our boss is really cool and doesn't shirk off his responsibility to tell the high-ups that their idea sucks weasel nuts.
In my office space, there are exactly 0 people like what you described. There will never be any like that. I think that this company is the only one who didn't give a rats ass about the
I think that one effect of having a bloated industry of underqualified individuals, is that those who ARE qualified are being lost in the shuffle. Many of those that came into the industry because of the money, with business degrees, a few tech courses, and little to no real experience also had one thing going for them... something taught in business schools. That is "Networking". No, not packet or switch networks... but people networking. They cling to people they know, thus needing to rely on their own abilities less. Unfortunately, that "networking" mentality is something that many qualified IT professionals tried to avoid being dragged into.
.com'ers need to go... let's not forget that that shouldn't include people who were validly entering into the industry at that time, regardless of the boom. Many people who were caught up in the mess chose their majors before the boom occured, or before they were aware of such things. They may be a .com generation, but they aren't necessarily the ones that made the Net go to hell.
.com, or even a computer company. It was a biotech company, and I had a blast there. I don't like the fast-paced software world much. I hate customers that I don't work with :) Most people you can tell. If someone held a job at some unrelated field then in the end of 98 or 99, they suddenly switched to IT then it's obvious they have no business in the field. If they loved their work (and plenty of us do that need jobs) they would have done it before then. Managars are opening their eyes to this. I feel bad for anyone who doesn't have credentials pre-1997 though, they are probably the hardest up right now.
Some will get lost in the shuffle, and it's a shame but there really is no way around it. Every battle has casualties, same with every downsize. When I got laid off, I knew I'd be ok. I have a really impressive resume. Other people that can code just as well, they don't fare so well.
So, while I agree that those
It's pretty easy to tell. In 94 my major was CS. When I got my first "real" job in 98 it wasn't in a
I'm not sure I agree. Or maybe I agree but don't realize it. I think we'll start to see a blurring of the lines. There will always be the 'pure' techy jobs, but I think we'll start to see a lot more jobs that blend non-tech and tech skills. Just as non-tech workers have learned to develop their own Microsoft Word templates for memos, or more advanced users have created Excel macros to aid with their work, people will start to develop their own custom software to help them do their jobs. An influx of tech workers into non tech jobs could drive this, provided the corporations don't get in the way. If anything, the non-techies should be getting worried. 'Course, I could be nuts.
/. discussion a few years ago?)
You are absolutely right. My mother is a perfect example of it. She is definitely not a techy, yet is exceptionally valuable in the IT world. She manages a customer service department for a very widely used freeware application. She only has a couple people working for her, and they handle a huge amount of volume. Why? Not because she is super techy and can come up with new tools to handle her task, because she got good tools and learned how to use them properly. A few IT positions could have been created by her company to create the software she needed, or she could have looked around and found a few packages that could work together and make it work well.
Everybody in the IT market is going through what happens in any new market. Only the good people keep jobs. The pay still maintains what it was, we'll all be comfortable in what we make, but you actually have to stand out. If someone is managing a restaurant and doing a dumbass job, they get fired. We'll start seeing that much more in the IT world. I knew people who could do anything and not get fired, it really was sad.
(Whoa! major deja vu... wasn't there a similar
Yeah, there is every 2 years or so. "Oh no the IT jobs are being overrun/underrun" We really just need to use strncpy() and keep maximum bounds.
"Bigger salaries and more work"? Puh-leez!! Since when has the collapse of an industry caused salaries to go up? The whole reason why unqualified people flocked to IT in the first place was the high salaries. The high salaries were the reason why companies pressured the US government to relax immigration controls. Frankly, I think we will see smaller salaries and more work as proprietary programmers struggle to compete with open source.
Why would people take more pay cuts? I'm in a secured position, for the most part. The only way I can go is up. In 5 years, you better expect me to want a lot more money. The IT field is a high paying field. End of story.
As for your statement, "Since when has the collapse of an industry caused salaries to go up?" that is full of troll-fodder. First, the industry has no collapsed. It has merely gone on a diet, that was much needed. Since the creation of the Ford automobile, there has been 15,000 failed automobile manufacturers. You think when it was a boom people were getting paid a lot to design cars? Yeah, they were. Then, it started to decline and no automobile designers are again making very good salaries and most of them have been in the business for a very long time. Same thing in the corporate world. And saying that open source software is going to compete with developers is just utter I've-never-worked-in-a-large-company-bull-shit. In the company I work at, 90% of the server software (Excluding Oracle and WebLogic) we use is open source. Same with other companies I've worked at, for the most part. You know what keeps me employed? I know a lot about open source software. I know how to code to it, and expand on tools that are already available to better serve the corporation. That's why I still have a job. Most open source software is not ready to be used in an enterprise environment. However, with a few code modifications, and some clever front end GUI applications, they become very usable. I'll never worry about being put out of a job because of open source software. Purely because you need to have a coder in house to understand it.
Unfortunately, the internet is ruined with spam and popups for the vast majority -- no matter what happens. Corporate culture has already sunk it's teeth, and like a vampire, drained it's culture right out of it. We still get to live and be geeky, but it will never be like it was. With how many hundreds of millions online, how will spam ever stop? I like my job, I get to sit and write code. Some is viewed over a web browser, some is never viewed just a network server. This is what makes me happy, not fighting with a dozen clueless dipshits that left the wonders of their fast food job to join a company as a "Senior Perl Developer" because they read a few perl books. I can see it happening now, and it'll be great when the economy does filter it self so that those who do deserve jobs and can't get them, receive them. It's a shame to see good developers go unemployed purely because there is a massive deluge of resumes to try to filter out.