Good for you being able to avoid responsibility to the point where you can- I've got a mortgage and a family to pay for.
Changing jobs when it suits you is not avoiding responsibility, it's called managing your career. If you've got the skills then your financial obligations shouldn't prevent you from "right-sizing" your employer at your convenience... unless of course you're a socialist moron who expects to have his livelihood handed to him without putting out any effort. If that's the case then you should have been more conservative with your finances. Either way you are not deserving of any sympathy.
You're not worth every penney- you're worth the $2.50/hr your job can be done in India for.
If your skillset can be exported to India for $2.50/hr, then that's probably where you ought to move if you're not willing (or able) to stay ahead of the curve and put yourself in a position to command more for your skills (or find some skills that CAN'T be exported for $2.50/hr).
First, calling me ignorant does nothing to further your arguments.
Perhaps not, but it states the obvious.
Nor does talking across my arguments.
Perhaps if you made them consistently then you wouldn't seem to think others were talking across them.
You clearly think that illegal immigrants have a negative impact on the US economy. I disagree.
Based on what evidence/assumptions? (I can't wait for this).
Forcing Mexicans to stay in Mexico under a repressive regime strikes me as more 'wrong' than giving them jobs no one else wants.
That's about the most ignorant thing you've said yet, for the following reasons:
a) It is not the U.S. government's responsibility to look after Mexican citizens.
b) The whole "jobs that no one else wants" phrase is self-fulfilling nonsense, given that if I lower the pay of ANY job enough, "nobody will want it" by definition. It's not about the job... it's about the job for what compensation is being offered.
As I said before, ignorant.
The evidence of a large pool of abused H1-B workers is missing.
One need only look at the H1B regulations to see that once an H1B visa worker enters the U.S. they may not leave their employer/job unless they are willing to leave the country. That sounds to me like indentured servitude and it gives the employer free reign to treat the visa holder however they like, given most visa holders eventually want to end up as citizens. As I said, ignorant.
I can even imagine a scenario where hiring H1-B workers allowed employers to profit on projects that they could not have taken on while paying standard US wages. Any such project is a net gain to the collective US.
So by allowing a corporation to make a profit on any particular project, that's a net gain to the country (regardless of circumstances)? That's an ignorant (and obviously false on it's face) argument.
I do not work in IT, nor have I. So yeah, perhaps my view isn't quite as 'from the ground' as it could be.
The word I would use is ignorant; that describes people who are not familiar with the material they choose to speak about. I give you credit for admitting you are, by your own admission, ignorant of the business.
The unemployment rate is relevant to any discussion of jobs.
Not when the government specifically employs programs like H1B/L1 visas to flood a given labor sector with the specific intent to keep employer's costs down. If you've ever studied economics (which obviously you haven't), a rise in wages follows a "shortage" in a particular labor sector. That's called "The Law of Supply and Demand". If you preclude demand by supplying a lot of cheap labor, then you can ensure that there will be no increase in the cost of the labor.
The recent bad times in IT are due to an abundance of workers, not offshoring, out-sourcing or H1-Bs. Strangely, they are getting better. It's almost as if IT is growing explosively.
An interesting (but ignorant) statement, given that according to most IT groups there are currently about as many employed IT workers as there are jobs in the U.S. Of course given as you say you're not "in" IT, you'd be blissfully ignorant of that fact.
My union hayday comment isn't particularly relevant to IT,...
I give you credit for admitting that you didn't make a consistent argument with your previous post. Maybe if you did, people wouldn't construe you to be so ignorant.
I'm not proposing that the US goverment do anything other than remove as many barriers to trade as possible.
That's fine with countries where the standard of living is equal to our own, but there has to be some factor when dealing with countries whose standard of living is below the U.S. standard, o
For companies like Oracle etc, what they are doing now is stop hiring in the US but continue to increase their headcount in India and China. The reason is simple: US IT staff salaries are just too high to be competitive. I can get the Chinese engineers to produce the same code for 10% of the cost.
Sure, because Oracle code is mostly crap. The only decent stuff is done in California, and that has a lot of issues as well. I'm surprised that Oracle can save a lot of money by doing work in China given they pay so pisspoorly here in the U.S. (I've erased more than one message from Oracle managers looking to bring me on as an employee in the U.S.) The only people who will take a job with Oracle here are people who are pretty much clueless and want some product training so they can quit Oracle and make real money elsewhere.
For instance, I need all my software engineering staff to be able to read and write English and Chinese.
Oracle could save more money by firing your incompetent ass and hiring someone who had a clue and would hire a couple of people to translate and the rest to code. (That rationale is so pathetic as to be stupid, really.)
When I started hiring in China, 100% of the local candidates can read and write English (though not perfect). The reality is it is only going to get worse for the US IT staff.
Actually things are going to get worse for Oracle as they try and stay ahead of the open-source software curve while trying to manage ever-increasing salaries of people overseas who can't speak English (not that most Oracle "consultants" do such a hot job themselves). I hope Larry's portfolio is diversified.
Hate to break it to you when you're about to graduate but engineers are the business guys bitches. In a few years your business major friends (the ones that mostly partied during college) will be making more money than you. Be nice to them, you may need their help to keep employed down the road.
Yeah, looks like the rookie near-graduate know-it-all is about to embark on his real education. Just don't forget to put the Vaseline in your briefcase, Junior.;)
Would you say the same if a Mexican or Indian citizen advocated that the American policitians should be 'eliminated' (to use the GP's words)?
The context that he used the word 'eliminated' inferred (to me at least) that he meant that their political lobbying influence should be eliminated from American government, not that any person should be eliminated.
In fact I would expect most people (and governments) to serve their own interests, and some to go to great lengths to do so. To expect otherwise would be both ignorant and irresponsible (from a government perspective, certainly).
It is also possible to look at it as an overall increase in the wage scale for Mexicans. But they aren't part of your artificially small labor pool. Poor America gets just as much sympathy from me as poor Mexico(very little).
And why should Americans who live in the U.S. sacrifice their standard of living for Mexicans who are not served by their own government and are forced to come to the U.S. illegally in search of a better standard of living at the U.S.'s collective expense (basically because the oligarchy in Mexico supports the ruling elite clan of 14-16 very wealthy families which run the entire country to their own benefit at the Mexicans' collective expense)? Seems to me you have a very poor sense of right and wrong... wow, what a surprise!!
As far as imported labor being artifically cheap, is it? It seems to me that those people are coming here willingly and accepting the wages they are paid. Sucks for people that want to get paid more than the going rate.
Again you show a gaping ignorance of the situation. In fact, illegals here work without benefits (which include safe working conditions mandated by government regulations) and a government-mandated minimum wage. It's not that people want more than the going rate, in some of cases they just want the minimum (pay and benefits) as specified by law.
The problem with H1-b's isn't that they are cheap, it's that they are temporary. They likely end up in a net export of expertise. It would be better to keep that expertise here, paying taxes.
Wow, your level of ignorance is astounding. In fact, like most immigrants, most H1B/L1 visas end up staying here (with the exception of the 2000-2002 time frame when the dot-com bubble burst and there were too many Americans out of work to justify H1B/L1 visa levels) eventually. They work in bad situations as captives (per the H1B regulations) that most Americans wouldn't work in for what the company will pay the H1Bs, hence they provide a willing labor pool for companies who want to pay less/treat their employees worse than they could had they be required to employ Americans. So not only does the taxpayer lose revenue to lower wages, Americans lose jobs.
Unemployment in the United States is near historical lows and has been for years. There have been some tough patches, but nationwide unemployment hasn't been above 7% for 15 years.
Irrelevant given the fact that this thread involves IT workers specifically. Ask anyone what it was like in 2000-2002 to get a decent IT job (and educate yourself regarding recent history somewhat, please).
The recent lack of real wage growth is troubling, but there isn't really enough data to decide if that is a long term or short term trend. Some of it is undoubtedly swingback from the union heyday, but just how much is anybody's call.
If you'd been in the IT business for more than the last 2-3 years you'd know what the trend is; obviously you haven't. I have colleagues who have been in the business 20+ years who say they have never seen a worse job market than they've seen in the last 5 years. The "union heyday" reference is just plain irrelevant.
The hard truth of globalization is that wages will equalize. Third world wages will come up and first world wages will go down. That sucks for the first world, but hey, there aren't all that many malnourished people walking around the US just now.
True, it would seem that cool-aid alone is fine for some.
Don't get used to it. The human population is currently exploding, to the point that there are not enough resources on the planet to support the current planetary population with first world life styles. The earliest estimates for when the global population will start to shrink are around 2050.
Wow, with insightful (albeit completely ignorant) intellects like yours I'm sure mankind will do just fine. Not.
Cheap labor imported from Mexico damages the people whose jobs are taken; the rest of us get cheaper goods(primarily produce) and services.
What a wonderfully ignorant statement. The fact is that not only do people (who would typically get paid more) lose their jobs, but the entire wage scale for all workers is lowered. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
The overall benefits undoubtedly outweight the overall damages. If they didn't your free market, *by definition*, would stop doing it.
We don't have a free market... we have a market where certain types of businesses get subsidized by the taxpayer at large given that the government provides those businesses (which lobby the government heavily) with artifically cheap, imported labor (illegals or H1B/L1 visa) which the rest of the taxpayers subsidize through increased infrastructure costs (who do you think pays for illegals to get health care and goverment services in addition to the tax revenue lost from displaced workers who would earn and pay more taxes?).
Protectionism would not give us a healthier "free market".
A "free" market only exists between countries with a relatively equal standard of living. There is no "free" market between the U.S. and Mexico, India or China.
If you're a decent programmer, you'll always have a job.
You obviously weren't looking for a job in the 2000-02 time frame. Or should I say a job that paid better than a new-hire's salary for someone
If programming is something you love to do, then do it. If it's just something you want to do because you've heard it'll earn you "big bucks", don't.
Here's the real bottom line: if you want to be able to consistently pay a mortgage, live in one locale (for an extended period) and be able to afford some of the finer things in life then a career in engineering/comp. sci/IT is not your best choice. If none of that matters to you (and never will) then it's probably just fine.
Not that you can't make a good living...you can.
Of course you can, it's just that with all the economic forces driving wages down you probably won't.
It's just that unless you love something, you shouldn't go into it.
A wonderfully quaint but absolutely worthless point. An intellectually astute person can typically find satisfaction in a lot of careers, and for most people their salary/earnings contributes to that satisfaction. It's not all about the work.
You might be able to handle it for 10 or even 20 years, but unless your heart is really into it, you'll regret it long term.
Yeah, I should've gone into IT instead of being a multimillionaire lawyer, I sob huge tears while I polish my 911 Turbo in back of my million-dollar house. Please.
Ever heard of lawyers been "outsourced" or replaced with H1B/L1 visa labor? Ever heard of a "down" cycle for lawyers, or lawyers salaries being driven down by outside labor forces?
If you really like engineering/computer science, get your four-year degree and head to law school. The patents/intellectual properties field pays very, VERY well and you can leave the coding to the monkeys (either here or offshore) and the management to the recently-labotomized while still earning a princely, CONSISTENT salary (WITHOUT having to deal with the IT employment "cycles").
Programming is dry, and not what I do all day - why should it be taught that way?
Because at the end of the day, that IS what your employer basically wants you to do: turn out good, working code. All the kibbutzing/boot licking/boss rimming you do won't get the code written. Maybe this person/that person who "manage" or "organize" the team don't do a lot of code-cutting, but the bottom line is that someone has to. In my experience the people who don't or can't typically aren't worth the chairs they sit in.
Who are the best compensated people in the IT industry? The contractors/consultants who are brought in because they have the technical skills that the employer can't hire (typically because they won't pay enough to get those people in the door as die-wrecks). They can turn out working code; that's what they get paid for.
The image of CS is set by the corporations who employ the grads, not by the schools who train them. Unfortunately that image is of a bunch of H1B/L1 visa-holders working at well-below market compensation and living 8 to an apartment or by CS grads getting laid off in a downsizing. That's been the job market for CS grads the last 10 years, like it or not.
The real title of the article should be: Power Architecture directions: Two-year-old Academic Initiative enhances computer science curricula, seeks to reverse student decline and sell as much IBM stuff in the proccess.
Bingo!;)
Shows you where IBM's real bottom-line concern is... for their profit margin.
There's no shortage. Employers just aren't paying enough. If they pay more, supply will increase. No problem.
Succinctly said and right on the money.:)
The bottom line is that if you're intellectually talented (which I think most people would consider to be a requirement for a good computer technologist) you can find a way to make a good (or better) living in a lot of different careers outside of computer science/engineering. It's hard to expect talented young people to choose computer science/software development as a career when morons who sell homes or the average tax attorney can make several times what an engineer can make.
Ask some of the experienced software people who lived out the 2000-2003 job market what that was like and people will understand why there's been a huge drop in the number of potential computer-related career graduates. Add to that a government whose policies are shaped by a business-only perspective (hey, Bill Gates can't find enough trolls to work for him at what he wants to pay now, let's increase the H1B visa count so that he doesn't have to pay more for talent, he can't afford to do that) and you have a formula for a declining technology workforce. The law of supply and demand works for labor just like for product.
Pay them and they will come. Unfortunately the law of supply and demand has been broken from a worker's perspective by bad government policy (or good policy if you're a corporation like MicroFlaccid) which immediately turns to H1B/L1 visa increases every time companies face the prospect of having to pay more money for talented people. There isn't any shortage of competent people; there's a shortage of companies willing to raise their offered compensation packages to get them to come work for them instead of making a living doing something else.
I got into the field in the late 80's/early 90's when the Reagan defense buildup was winding down. The big influx of grads in the 80's got hit with a shrinking job market in the 91-93 timeframe in a big way. Then there was the boom years from 96-00, followed by an absolutely terrible job market in 00-03. Things are just now starting to turn back again in favor of computer technologists (that I can see, anyway). In the 15+ years I've been in the field I will say I've NEVER seen the computer technology job market at a lower general level in all that time. A lot of the people who I used to work with have left the field entirely to pursue other careers (which pay equally well or better than their previous engineering jobs). Job/salary stability is also a factor in a given job market just like compensation is.
Just be glad that you learned the reality of the business at 27 while you had a lot of career left in front of you. Try getting put out of work for 18 months when you're thirty-something after the dot-coms bust and flood the industry with all the cheap labor the government helped the corporate fatcats import because there was a "shortage of qualified candidates" (i.e., cheap candidates).
There's only people who are ever going to look out for your interests in the corporate world stare back out of the mirror at you every time you look into it.
There will always be a shortage of IT workers because corporate management will always want to hire people for less than they're paying now (or for what they think the person SHOULD make, versus what the free labor market demands), hence the unending demand for more H1B/L1 visas and outsourcing. When the free labor market gets really tight and they have to pay IT people the same (or more) than they make themselves (a-la the late '90s) then they really howl about a "shortage of skilled workers". They will always say that they want to hire people who live here... of course they do. They just don't want to hire them at the salaries/compensation that it will take to get them in the door. As far as they're concerned, the free market applies to the products their companies sell but not to the labor they need to purchase to create/sell them.
There's NEVER been a "shortage" of IT workers... only a shortage of companies willing to pay the frieght to get qualified, competent people in the door and do what's required to retain them.
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Good for you being able to avoid responsibility to the point where you can- I've got a mortgage and a family to pay for.
... unless of course you're a socialist moron who expects to have his livelihood handed to him without putting out any effort. If that's the case then you should have been more conservative with your finances. Either way you are not deserving of any sympathy.
Changing jobs when it suits you is not avoiding responsibility, it's called managing your career. If you've got the skills then your financial obligations shouldn't prevent you from "right-sizing" your employer at your convenience
You're not worth every penney- you're worth the $2.50/hr your job can be done in India for.
If your skillset can be exported to India for $2.50/hr, then that's probably where you ought to move if you're not willing (or able) to stay ahead of the curve and put yourself in a position to command more for your skills (or find some skills that CAN'T be exported for $2.50/hr).
First, calling me ignorant does nothing to further your arguments.
... it's about the job for what compensation is being offered.
.
...
Perhaps not, but it states the obvious.
Nor does talking across my arguments.
Perhaps if you made them consistently then you wouldn't seem to think others were talking across them.
You clearly think that illegal immigrants have a negative impact on the US economy. I disagree.
Based on what evidence/assumptions? (I can't wait for this).
Forcing Mexicans to stay in Mexico under a repressive regime strikes me as more 'wrong' than giving them jobs no one else wants.
That's about the most ignorant thing you've said yet, for the following reasons: a) It is not the U.S. government's responsibility to look after Mexican citizens. b) The whole "jobs that no one else wants" phrase is self-fulfilling nonsense, given that if I lower the pay of ANY job enough, "nobody will want it" by definition. It's not about the job
As I said before, ignorant.
The evidence of a large pool of abused H1-B workers is missing.
One need only look at the H1B regulations to see that once an H1B visa worker enters the U.S. they may not leave their employer/job unless they are willing to leave the country. That sounds to me like indentured servitude and it gives the employer free reign to treat the visa holder however they like, given most visa holders eventually want to end up as citizens. As I said, ignorant.
I can even imagine a scenario where hiring H1-B workers allowed employers to profit on projects that they could not have taken on while paying standard US wages. Any such project is a net gain to the collective US.
So by allowing a corporation to make a profit on any particular project, that's a net gain to the country (regardless of circumstances)? That's an ignorant (and obviously false on it's face) argument.
I do not work in IT, nor have I. So yeah, perhaps my view isn't quite as 'from the ground' as it could be.
The word I would use is ignorant; that describes people who are not familiar with the material they choose to speak about. I give you credit for admitting you are, by your own admission, ignorant of the business
The unemployment rate is relevant to any discussion of jobs.
Not when the government specifically employs programs like H1B/L1 visas to flood a given labor sector with the specific intent to keep employer's costs down. If you've ever studied economics (which obviously you haven't), a rise in wages follows a "shortage" in a particular labor sector. That's called "The Law of Supply and Demand". If you preclude demand by supplying a lot of cheap labor, then you can ensure that there will be no increase in the cost of the labor.
The recent bad times in IT are due to an abundance of workers, not offshoring, out-sourcing or H1-Bs. Strangely, they are getting better. It's almost as if IT is growing explosively.
An interesting (but ignorant) statement, given that according to most IT groups there are currently about as many employed IT workers as there are jobs in the U.S. Of course given as you say you're not "in" IT, you'd be blissfully ignorant of that fact.
My union hayday comment isn't particularly relevant to IT,
I give you credit for admitting that you didn't make a consistent argument with your previous post. Maybe if you did, people wouldn't construe you to be so ignorant.
I'm not proposing that the US goverment do anything other than remove as many barriers to trade as possible.
That's fine with countries where the standard of living is equal to our own, but there has to be some factor when dealing with countries whose standard of living is below the U.S. standard, o
For companies like Oracle etc, what they are doing now is stop hiring in the US but continue to increase their headcount in India and China. The reason is simple: US IT staff salaries are just too high to be competitive. I can get the Chinese engineers to produce the same code for 10% of the cost.
Sure, because Oracle code is mostly crap. The only decent stuff is done in California, and that has a lot of issues as well. I'm surprised that Oracle can save a lot of money by doing work in China given they pay so pisspoorly here in the U.S. (I've erased more than one message from Oracle managers looking to bring me on as an employee in the U.S.) The only people who will take a job with Oracle here are people who are pretty much clueless and want some product training so they can quit Oracle and make real money elsewhere.
For instance, I need all my software engineering staff to be able to read and write English and Chinese.
Oracle could save more money by firing your incompetent ass and hiring someone who had a clue and would hire a couple of people to translate and the rest to code. (That rationale is so pathetic as to be stupid, really.)
When I started hiring in China, 100% of the local candidates can read and write English (though not perfect). The reality is it is only going to get worse for the US IT staff.
Actually things are going to get worse for Oracle as they try and stay ahead of the open-source software curve while trying to manage ever-increasing salaries of people overseas who can't speak English (not that most Oracle "consultants" do such a hot job themselves). I hope Larry's portfolio is diversified.
Hate to break it to you when you're about to graduate but engineers are the business guys bitches. In a few years your business major friends (the ones that mostly partied during college) will be making more money than you. Be nice to them, you may need their help to keep employed down the road.
;)
Yeah, looks like the rookie near-graduate know-it-all is about to embark on his real education. Just don't forget to put the Vaseline in your briefcase, Junior.
Would you say the same if a Mexican or Indian citizen advocated that the American policitians should be 'eliminated' (to use the GP's words)?
The context that he used the word 'eliminated' inferred (to me at least) that he meant that their political lobbying influence should be eliminated from American government, not that any person should be eliminated.
In fact I would expect most people (and governments) to serve their own interests, and some to go to great lengths to do so. To expect otherwise would be both ignorant and irresponsible (from a government perspective, certainly).
It is also possible to look at it as an overall increase in the wage scale for Mexicans. But they aren't part of your artificially small labor pool. Poor America gets just as much sympathy from me as poor Mexico(very little).
... wow, what a surprise!!
And why should Americans who live in the U.S. sacrifice their standard of living for Mexicans who are not served by their own government and are forced to come to the U.S. illegally in search of a better standard of living at the U.S.'s collective expense (basically because the oligarchy in Mexico supports the ruling elite clan of 14-16 very wealthy families which run the entire country to their own benefit at the Mexicans' collective expense)? Seems to me you have a very poor sense of right and wrong
As far as imported labor being artifically cheap, is it? It seems to me that those people are coming here willingly and accepting the wages they are paid. Sucks for people that want to get paid more than the going rate.
Again you show a gaping ignorance of the situation. In fact, illegals here work without benefits (which include safe working conditions mandated by government regulations) and a government-mandated minimum wage. It's not that people want more than the going rate, in some of cases they just want the minimum (pay and benefits) as specified by law.
The problem with H1-b's isn't that they are cheap, it's that they are temporary. They likely end up in a net export of expertise. It would be better to keep that expertise here, paying taxes.
Wow, your level of ignorance is astounding. In fact, like most immigrants, most H1B/L1 visas end up staying here (with the exception of the 2000-2002 time frame when the dot-com bubble burst and there were too many Americans out of work to justify H1B/L1 visa levels) eventually. They work in bad situations as captives (per the H1B regulations) that most Americans wouldn't work in for what the company will pay the H1Bs, hence they provide a willing labor pool for companies who want to pay less/treat their employees worse than they could had they be required to employ Americans. So not only does the taxpayer lose revenue to lower wages, Americans lose jobs.
Unemployment in the United States is near historical lows and has been for years. There have been some tough patches, but nationwide unemployment hasn't been above 7% for 15 years.
Irrelevant given the fact that this thread involves IT workers specifically. Ask anyone what it was like in 2000-2002 to get a decent IT job (and educate yourself regarding recent history somewhat, please).
The recent lack of real wage growth is troubling, but there isn't really enough data to decide if that is a long term or short term trend. Some of it is undoubtedly swingback from the union heyday, but just how much is anybody's call.
If you'd been in the IT business for more than the last 2-3 years you'd know what the trend is; obviously you haven't. I have colleagues who have been in the business 20+ years who say they have never seen a worse job market than they've seen in the last 5 years. The "union heyday" reference is just plain irrelevant.
The hard truth of globalization is that wages will equalize. Third world wages will come up and first world wages will go down. That sucks for the first world, but hey, there aren't all that many malnourished people walking around the US just now.
True, it would seem that cool-aid alone is fine for some.
Don't get used to it. The human population is currently exploding, to the point that there are not enough resources on the planet to support the current planetary population with first world life styles. The earliest estimates for when the global population will start to shrink are around 2050.
Wow, with insightful (albeit completely ignorant) intellects like yours I'm sure mankind will do just fine. Not.
So it's your assertion that
Cheap labor imported from Mexico damages the people whose jobs are taken; the rest of us get cheaper goods(primarily produce) and services.
... we have a market where certain types of businesses get subsidized by the taxpayer at large given that the government provides those businesses (which lobby the government heavily) with artifically cheap, imported labor (illegals or H1B/L1 visa) which the rest of the taxpayers subsidize through increased infrastructure costs (who do you think pays for illegals to get health care and goverment services in addition to the tax revenue lost from displaced workers who would earn and pay more taxes?).
What a wonderfully ignorant statement. The fact is that not only do people (who would typically get paid more) lose their jobs, but the entire wage scale for all workers is lowered. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
The overall benefits undoubtedly outweight the overall damages. If they didn't your free market, *by definition*, would stop doing it.
We don't have a free market
Protectionism would not give us a healthier "free market".
A "free" market only exists between countries with a relatively equal standard of living. There is no "free" market between the U.S. and Mexico, India or China.
If that were true, we'd all be pornstars.
;)
That's the most insightful thing I've seen posted on this site yet.
If you're a decent programmer, you'll always have a job.
You obviously weren't looking for a job in the 2000-02 time frame. Or should I say a job that paid better than a new-hire's salary for someone
If programming is something you love to do, then do it. If it's just something you want to do because you've heard it'll earn you "big bucks", don't.
Here's the real bottom line: if you want to be able to consistently pay a mortgage, live in one locale (for an extended period) and be able to afford some of the finer things in life then a career in engineering/comp. sci/IT is not your best choice. If none of that matters to you (and never will) then it's probably just fine.
Not that you can't make a good living...you can.
Of course you can, it's just that with all the economic forces driving wages down you probably won't.
It's just that unless you love something, you shouldn't go into it.
A wonderfully quaint but absolutely worthless point. An intellectually astute person can typically find satisfaction in a lot of careers, and for most people their salary/earnings contributes to that satisfaction. It's not all about the work.
You might be able to handle it for 10 or even 20 years, but unless your heart is really into it, you'll regret it long term.
Yeah, I should've gone into IT instead of being a multimillionaire lawyer, I sob huge tears while I polish my 911 Turbo in back of my million-dollar house. Please.
Fulcrum of Evil for President!
Spot on.
WTF? Pardon me, but your arrogance is showing.
Pardon me, but your stupidity is showing. There's nothing "arrogant" about a government looking out for the best interests of its citizens.
Ever heard of lawyers been "outsourced" or replaced with H1B/L1 visa labor? Ever heard of a "down" cycle for lawyers, or lawyers salaries being driven down by outside labor forces?
If you really like engineering/computer science, get your four-year degree and head to law school. The patents/intellectual properties field pays very, VERY well and you can leave the coding to the monkeys (either here or offshore) and the management to the recently-labotomized while still earning a princely, CONSISTENT salary (WITHOUT having to deal with the IT employment "cycles").
Programming is dry, and not what I do all day - why should it be taught that way?
Because at the end of the day, that IS what your employer basically wants you to do: turn out good, working code. All the kibbutzing/boot licking/boss rimming you do won't get the code written. Maybe this person/that person who "manage" or "organize" the team don't do a lot of code-cutting, but the bottom line is that someone has to. In my experience the people who don't or can't typically aren't worth the chairs they sit in.
Who are the best compensated people in the IT industry? The contractors/consultants who are brought in because they have the technical skills that the employer can't hire (typically because they won't pay enough to get those people in the door as die-wrecks). They can turn out working code; that's what they get paid for.
The image of CS is set by the corporations who employ the grads, not by the schools who train them. Unfortunately that image is of a bunch of H1B/L1 visa-holders working at well-below market compensation and living 8 to an apartment or by CS grads getting laid off in a downsizing. That's been the job market for CS grads the last 10 years, like it or not.
Bottom line: you can't polish a turd.
The real title of the article should be: Power Architecture directions: Two-year-old Academic Initiative enhances computer science curricula, seeks to reverse student decline and sell as much IBM stuff in the proccess.
;)
... for their profit margin.
;)
Bingo!
Shows you where IBM's real bottom-line concern is
Not that any of us are surprised, of course.
There's no shortage. Employers just aren't paying enough. If they pay more, supply will increase. No problem.
:)
Succinctly said and right on the money.
The bottom line is that if you're intellectually talented (which I think most people would consider to be a requirement for a good computer technologist) you can find a way to make a good (or better) living in a lot of different careers outside of computer science/engineering. It's hard to expect talented young people to choose computer science/software development as a career when morons who sell homes or the average tax attorney can make several times what an engineer can make.
Ask some of the experienced software people who lived out the 2000-2003 job market what that was like and people will understand why there's been a huge drop in the number of potential computer-related career graduates. Add to that a government whose policies are shaped by a business-only perspective (hey, Bill Gates can't find enough trolls to work for him at what he wants to pay now, let's increase the H1B visa count so that he doesn't have to pay more for talent, he can't afford to do that) and you have a formula for a declining technology workforce. The law of supply and demand works for labor just like for product.
Pay them and they will come. Unfortunately the law of supply and demand has been broken from a worker's perspective by bad government policy (or good policy if you're a corporation like MicroFlaccid) which immediately turns to H1B/L1 visa increases every time companies face the prospect of having to pay more money for talented people. There isn't any shortage of competent people; there's a shortage of companies willing to raise their offered compensation packages to get them to come work for them instead of making a living doing something else.
I got into the field in the late 80's/early 90's when the Reagan defense buildup was winding down. The big influx of grads in the 80's got hit with a shrinking job market in the 91-93 timeframe in a big way. Then there was the boom years from 96-00, followed by an absolutely terrible job market in 00-03. Things are just now starting to turn back again in favor of computer technologists (that I can see, anyway). In the 15+ years I've been in the field I will say I've NEVER seen the computer technology job market at a lower general level in all that time. A lot of the people who I used to work with have left the field entirely to pursue other careers (which pay equally well or better than their previous engineering jobs). Job/salary stability is also a factor in a given job market just like compensation is.
Just be glad that you learned the reality of the business at 27 while you had a lot of career left in front of you. Try getting put out of work for 18 months when you're thirty-something after the dot-coms bust and flood the industry with all the cheap labor the government helped the corporate fatcats import because there was a "shortage of qualified candidates" (i.e., cheap candidates). There's only people who are ever going to look out for your interests in the corporate world stare back out of the mirror at you every time you look into it.
Right on brother!!! ;)
There will always be a shortage of IT workers because corporate management will always want to hire people for less than they're paying now (or for what they think the person SHOULD make, versus what the free labor market demands), hence the unending demand for more H1B/L1 visas and outsourcing. When the free labor market gets really tight and they have to pay IT people the same (or more) than they make themselves (a-la the late '90s) then they really howl about a "shortage of skilled workers". They will always say that they want to hire people who live here ... of course they do. They just don't want to hire them at the salaries/compensation that it will take to get them in the door. As far as they're concerned, the free market applies to the products their companies sell but not to the labor they need to purchase to create/sell them.
There's NEVER been a "shortage" of IT workers ... only a shortage of companies willing to pay the frieght to get qualified, competent people in the door and do what's required to retain them.
Always give to days notice .... "I am leaving to-day." ;)