A Positive Outlook on the Software Industry 379
joechang writes "According to this article in Business 2.0, our IT sector jobs are not as glum as we make them out to be. Despite the downturn in the economy, the article maintains that our jobs are as stable as ever, and that pay increases are actually at reasonable levels. In addition, software development is still one of the largest growing industries, and that Billings, MT is a high growth area. Of course, I haven't heard of any of my co-workers taking a job in Billings..."
show me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:show me (Score:4, Funny)
Re:show me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:show me (Score:3, Insightful)
Will you accept an unstable job, working in constant fear of the next day and the ability to pay rent?
Sure, it beats being unemployed.
Re:show me (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because people would prefer to live in a nice house instead of a dirt-floor shack doesn't mean we have "excessive consumerism". It means we as a society prefer a higher standard of living, and that's what we as profe
Re:show me (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe you're telling me I live in a shack (caves and loincloths, etc.) in order to survive in my profession.
I believe that's called a "Straw Man" argument [nizkor.org].
Generally, when people talk about "excessive consumerism," they're not talking aobut living normally, or even about having nice things. They're talking about people doing stupid things like getting into enormous debt to "keep up with the Joneses." My sister, for example, has a well-paying IT job. She could easily have money put away and not be in debt, except that she thinks she's got to have a Dodge Durango to fit in in the area she's living. (At least she's buying instead of leasing this time. Ack.)
Everybody has the ability to not do that, and nearly everybody (those above the average salary, especially) has the ability to put some cash away for a rainy day.
"Living in caves and wearing a loincloth." Sheesh.
Re:show me reality (Score:3, Interesting)
This led many people to change their behavior which actually made the economy worse.
My question is: Does the mention of the word 'recession' by a national newscast lead to changing business plans, changing spending, which eventually leads to lower spending by individuals and corporations, which eventually leads to recession?
Is it right to change your spend
Fool's day (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fool's day (Score:2)
Re:Fool's day (Score:3, Funny)
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Quantative Analysis = Office Blow Jobs (Score:5, Funny)
Let me get this straight. Thier magazine's quantative analysis (they published thier data and method of analysis) is wrong because the people who read it suck thier bosses dick, and your lack of prospects is caused by your analytical skills?
I'm overwelmed to see my fellow Americans using thier critical thinking skills to spread insightful and informed opinions! Yay!
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're good at your job and disagree, you will not get promoted over someone that's incompetent and an ass-kisser.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
The key is to:
Does this mean some politics? Y
No raises here... but (Score:5, Insightful)
Upswing where? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would the upswing happen in the USA? Theres no real reason to hire an American programmer over a Chinese or Indian programmer, face it, we are in an economic bubble and its about to burst. Programming is not the kinda job thats all that special, theres only about a billion Indians and Chinese in line to take your jobs, lets not forget Africa and South America.
Just like we lost all the factor jobs, and the car industry, we are about to lose the computer industry.
Re:Upswing where? - Going offshore :-( (Score:2)
Re:Upswing where? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think the outlook is that bleak. How many good software products have you seen come out of India or China or anywhere in the east. Or how much of software innovation do you see happening there. I am sad to say this, but somehow all the development work happening in India is usually outsourced and the sad truth is it's not managed very well either.
I don't see the industry shifting to India permanently in a hurry. I think the computer industry will thrive and sustain itsel
Re:Upswing where? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would the upswing happen in the USA? Theres no real reason to hire an American programmer over a Chinese or Indian programmer,
Except that the American programmer can meet with the customer. And the American programmer can talk to the product manager every day. And the American programmer can attend conferences to pick up cutting edge skills. Some areas of programming don't require any of that stuff. Okay, they'll go offshore. But that isn't all programming jobs by a long stretch.
Re:Upswing where? (Score:3, Interesting)
You must be joking. In most companies programmers neither want, nor are allowed to talk to a customer. This is reserved for managers and technical support people (who have their own guidelines, training and clothes).
If a typical programmer meets a customer it would cause a disaster. For example, the programmer will honestly say that feature X that the customer bought not only does not work, its development hasn't even started yet!
Re:No raises here... but (Score:2)
Stability? (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question will be when will we start seeing more hiring to aleviate the huge amount of work loads left on people that held their jobs?
Ah, for the head-hunters to return...
Workload is unique to IT (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, don't get me wrong, I put in long hours -- when I need to. But they warrant some kind of specific need. In IT, everything seems to be a specific need so people wind up working crazy hours "to get things done".
It's absurd. You don't see that kind of craziness in any other functional area (marketing, HR, finance, etc). Only on rare occasions. However, within IT, I would be SHOCKED if I walked in at 7pm and half the staff was actually gone for the day. Unfortunately, we (IT folks) have come to accept that 60-80 hr weeks are the norm.
You don't have to live that way. There is an alternative.
Billings (Score:5, Interesting)
If anyone wants to hire me check my resume in multiple formats at
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticl
I don't know what this guy is saying, but if the industry was in good shape, I wouldn't have to pimp myself on slashdot.
Re:Billings (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.rit.edu/~slr2777/resumes/ [rit.edu]
Like anyone is going to hire a guy who can't even get a link straight. My Karma is excellent however, and that shows a lot.
Re:Billings (Score:5, Funny)
I grew up there... (Score:3, Informative)
Billings jobs (Score:4, Funny)
Billings, MT is a high growth area. Of course, I haven't heard of any of my co-workers taking a job in Billings..."
I have several co-workers who took a job in Billings. They didn't even have a choice: they were transferred from Sales and Collections.
Re:Billings jobs (Score:2)
Well, I guess the author of the article must be wrong then...
As someone in the IT field, I am unconvinced (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As someone in the IT field, I am unconvinced (Score:5, Insightful)
As a contractor I have never been so busy in my life... There is work out there, just not long term, stable, live on the teat of a big company kind of work...
Re:As someone in the IT field, I am unconvinced (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, I know guys who helped develop key infrastructural components of the Internet that can't find work at all and, unlike myself, have been working their butts off trying.
Re:As someone in the IT field, I am unconvinced (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not hitting up HR people for a job, and right now HR people see employees as evil. I'm a quick and dirty project person. I solve your problems and go away. What most people (HR and managment types that is) don't realize is that the problems never go away, so they keep calling me back to work on new things.
Haveing a good network of friends , working hard, solving problems, and having a wide skill set all help a lot too.
I was l
Good news to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, of course! (Score:3, Insightful)
And everyone knew that IT was still strong.
It's just that the jobs are changing hands over to our friendly nontaxed foreign visitors.
Yeah because (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now the cost of living in the USA is high, everything here is more expensive.
Globalism can never work unless we all use the same dollar/euro/yen combined into one global dollar.
Whats our option? Move to China or India because our dollar is worth far too much for us to ever get a job. We also have high inflation, we need the cost of living to be as cheap as the cost of living in India, and we need a global dollar.
Companies should not be able to scam the system by paying workers in other countries c
Re:Well, of course! (Score:2)
What does that mean? Anyone resident in the US is subject to the same taxes as anyone else paid at the same rate. In fact, temporary immigrant worksers are worse off. H1-B workers also pay SS and Medicare taxes, but are not entitled to any SS or Medicare benefits.
If they're cheaper abroad, then they're cheaper. As has been pointed out here before, that's capitalism. That's what "enchancing shareholder value" is about.
Posted too early (Score:3, Funny)
IT is just as bad off as you thought. Go back to your normal lives....
In the long term? (Score:5, Interesting)
And if you believe software reuse must come sometime (I do)
Then you cannot think that there will be a strong market for coders for ever - it just doesn't make sense.
open source != free coders (Score:5, Interesting)
If you believe free software is good (I do)
And if you believe software reuse must come sometime (I do)
Then you cannot think that there will be a strong market for coders for ever - it just doesn't make sense.
I have to point out that just because the code is free doesn't mean the programmers who understand it have to work for free. Many employers actually develop code and release it as open source, but the developers who do the programming are well paid.
Also, the idea that using open source and software reuse in the future will eliminate the need for talented developers and their paycheck is ignorant.
If anything, reusing prior code is much _harder_ than developing from scratch. It takes experience and skill to understand how the parts from an open source package are to be stiched together into an application. There is no magic open-source button that will make it work for free.
This sort of attitude that "all the software has been written" is a lot like the idea that the patent office should be shut down in 1899 because all the ideas have been thought of.
[hannibal.net]
1899 quote refererence
Re:In the long term? (Score:2)
Yes & yes, but no. Code reuse has its limits, so there will still be market for custom solutions. In fact, the market could even get bigger with FS - if a core application is free, the customers have more money for getting it customized.
I'm lucky to work for a company that does just that - c
Exact opposite is true. (Score:5, Informative)
Now, we also spend many, many millions of dollars a year on proprietary software. While some of that software is worth buying, much of it is not - and therein lies the real trend in what you pointed out. With the ability to use free solutions to replace very expensive custom solutions, a business frees all sorts of capital to spend on more workers, so they can get what they need sooner!!
So in fact free software might effect proprietary software quite a bit, but I think that will be more than offset by companies having more money to spend on IT workers instead of very expensive software.
So the real question is when businesses will realize this - it could take a few years to really sink in, as generally people on the business side seem rather dense when it comes to the obvious.
Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
Your jobs are secure for only a few more years, then millions more Chinese and Indians will learn C, C++, VB, etc etc and take your jobs.
Software development is like the Mc Donalds job, anyone can do it, theres no shortage of programmers, people outsource now, and with the internet even small businesses dont have to hire you expensive American programmers.
Face it, the jobs are gone, and as soon as your company is in danger and needs to save some money, you'll be laid off.
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Bah, I'll show you 40 people that can't. They're our in-house development staff.
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course this is crap - only a small percentage of the population, maybe 2% or something like that, has the aptitude to develop complex software.
But the world can use maybe 100,000 software developers
Yes, you can mail a spec in 10 seconds. (Score:4, Insightful)
What you can't easily do is understand what people really want as opposed what they say they want. That involves a lot of face time, and is the reason why corporate development is still the vodoo art that it is.
Simply put, if a company cannot really put down what it wants on paper ahead of time, remote development efforts are doomed to varying shades of failure. Most cannot, so on the whole outsourcing only IT does not work - the only thing that would really work is to outsource whole companies.
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:3, Insightful)
Programming is no different there from most other jobs: people can do them overseas, and they will. And those same people will also become consumers and increase the demand for software and programming.
Software development is like the Mc Donalds job,
No, it isn't. McDonalds is a service industry job for which you have to be physically near the customer--that can't b
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
To which I reply:
Horseshit.
There are two kinds of *professional* software development:
The first kind is performed by well-trained college grads, who have studied computer science and know how to design and build a project that works. We're talking a B.A. or B.S. at least, maybe even an M.S.
The second kind is done by people who decide that there is money in "computers" and think they can enter the profession by taking a six month course at some certificate mill, or reading a couple of books. If they have a degree at all, it might be in a liberal-arts field.
The first group of people have studied data structures, file structures, computer architecture, mathematical logic... Their work will be efficient and well designed. They know software engineering, they understand OOP... And, they probably really love the field, or they wouldn't have spent all those years in school dedicating themselves to it.
The second group of people ONLY know their chosen language's syntax, plus a little bit about some API they plan to work with. They're just cashing in; they don't care about programming particularly. Their designs are sloppy, and generally turn into maintenance nightmares. The sad thing is, they don't know any better, and can't understand what's wrong with their code.
SO, NO, YOU'RE INCORRECT. PROGRAMMING IS NOTHING LIKE A MACDONALDS JOB.
And, before everyone slams me for being an elitist, how many successful open source projects can you name which weren't created by someone with real training in computer science (not some six month seminar)? And, maybe you can tell me, would YOU buy a house designed and built by an architect who took a six-month course? Would you drive over a bridge built by an engineer who took a couple of two week seminars instead of going to college for six years? Of course not. But you'll swear high and low that "anyone" can build, say, your company's enterprise database.
Fuck... What total and utter bullshit. This guy's a troll.
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:3, Interesting)
The first kind is performed by well-trained college grads
I have seen reams and reams of crap code from college grads with CS degrees. I have the misfortune to have to supervise a batch of these people. THe fact is that a CS degree *does not* make you a good programmer.
how many successful open source projects can you name which weren't created by someone with real training in computer science
Sucessful OS projects depend more on project managem
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:3, Interesting)
"THe fact is that a CS degree *does not* make you a good programmer."
Absolutely true! But not having a CS degree will often make you a crap programmer. I think a good analogy is this: Cars with tires may go fast, depending on the car. However, cars without tires will rarely be able to go fast, even if the car would otherwise BE fast. See what I mean? Those tires sure help...
(about the setting up
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:2)
Americans shouldn't need tarrif protections to compete, Americans need to realise that in order to compete they need to work harder and likely sacrifice quite a bit.
Re:Until China and India trains more programmers (Score:5, Interesting)
Well yes that's true in general, but it doesn't work out well in the programmer field. I consider myself fairly talented. I know a few other people in my area that are also on the "pretty damn talented list", and all of us have had serious job/money troubles in the past couple years at one time or another due to the job market. I gaurantee we're in whatever top X percent constitutes being good enough that you shouldn't have to worry, but we're still getting hit.
Part of this can be explained away with the notion that a few good people will always be lost in such a major wash, and that they'll recover hopefully (and I did recover, so have most of the others). But another part of it, I think, is in the nature of good programmers... A large number of the good programmers out there are the geeky-introvert type, and a large amount of the mediocre to crappy programmers out there are regular extravert joes with social skills. So when the job market squeezes, guess who makes all the good connections with the suits, and guess who's sitting on their ass at home with their 1 friend, a bottle of mountain dew, and their dwindling bank account as comfort? In a highly competitive scare-job time, the lower end programmers have superior job-seeking and people-networking skills to leverage over our heads.
Here's why Billings is a growth area (Score:4, Insightful)
Good pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is it? I wonder.
where? (Score:2)
Don't believe it (Score:3, Insightful)
Believe it (Score:5, Informative)
To quote Drudge today & some analysis:
DOW HAS BEST WEEK SINCE 1982... [washingtonpost.com]
DOLLAR HITS MULTI-MONTH HIGHS..." [yahoo.com]
OIL PRICES PLUNGE... [msn.com] with US crude at $26.30. This puts it at about the same price back during the heating oil crunch of 2000. Business Week figures that even the recent spike in oil prices will not lead to a recession [businessweek.com], because of usage cutbacks & OPEC surplus.
GOLD DROPS BELOW $330... [kitco.com] where it was back in december. And even at the recent peak, it's lower than it was in 1995, the start of the boom.
In about a month, the war will be over. Not only will we have thrown out a bloody dictator (freeing his citizens from harm), but we open up their nation for economic progress. Not only will we rebuild what we've destroyed (which if you've noticed, a strong effort is being made to keep this minimal), but we will upgrade them to modern technology. Power plants, water systems, industry, hospitals, roads... all of this means american jobs & products. With embargos removed, Iraq can produce at it's true output, flooding the oil market (destroying whatever little power OPEC & the saudi's have left) and the free markets win. Everyone benefits, the economies boom, and life goes on!
(On a personal note as an Electrical Engineer, my company's 2002 average was a 3.5% pay raise plus a 4% bonus)
Re:Believe it (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, you gotta love this logic: "Iraq's oil wealth will not go to America, it will go to the people of Iraq. They have already decided to spend it on infrastructure, and the contracts have been awarded to American companies with
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Article is speculative rubbish (Score:2, Insightful)
So now their logic is to start declaring the that Tech Bust is over, and....eventually....it will be.
This is true in the DC area, as well... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is true in the DC area, as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all of these jobs are all that boring either. For the next several years I am likely to be working on modernization efforts to convert old Fortran, C, Ada, and other code to Java. Not bad work at all.
Best of a
Re:This is true in the DC area, as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. The opposite actually - during the waves of layoffs beginning in the late 80s, the senior engineering people were kept, while the mid-level people kept getting cut. With each wave, the next crop of junior people that had edged up to mid-level was cut. This is a major structural problem with large government contractors. They act (axe) under the assumption that i
Re:You will be first up against the wall. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wheat from chaff (Score:5, Insightful)
I was in university during the rise of the
Myself, I've always been 'into' PCs, since I got a C64 as a wee kid. I have a passion for it, I enjoy it, I consider it my calling.. I couldnt imagine doing anything else.
So when the bubble burst, I'd imagine the people who got into computers who didnt care about computers simply left. They went and started new careers doing whatever. Some are slow to learn, as we've had a steady stream of employees who have absolutely no interest in doing the job. But they're eventually learning that the free lunch is not to be had, and they're moving on.
I'm still here. I get paid to do what I love (write code and troll on slashdot). I'm not worried about losing my current job, it's in an industry niche that wont go away. But if it came down to it, I'm confident I could find another.
Re:Wheat from chaff (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh, there has to be something else you could imagine doing, if, say, there were zero programming jobs left (there are still about eight or nine in the U.S.). What kinds of things do you code? Systems-level programming? You might also enjoy designing hardware. GUI hacking? You could try engineering consumer products like car dashboards or washing machine controls. Games? How about inventing a new board game or an RPG expansion set, or writing a book, or becoming
Grrr. (Score:4, Informative)
Business 2.0 is shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Define Reasonable.... (Score:5, Interesting)
- Speaking as a Graphic Designer who has never been layed off (so far). I have worked at my current company for 2.5 years. Last year we didn't get pay increases - this year we got a raise - 2% flat to everyone... which made my salary go from 40k/yr to 40,800/yr...um so an $800 raise is considered "reasonable?"
Yeah beggers can't be choosers, but things still suck and the tech industry (at least in San Jose) is getting shit on pretty heavily still with Fujistu laying off people every quarter almost and Applied Materials saying they'll cut another 2k jobs... That doesn't sound like "IT sector jobs are not as glum as we make them out to be"
Billings - Probably Not a Good Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
The deal fell through at the *very* last minute when the city informed the prospective buyer of the building that they would be required to pay the back property taxes on the building.
Yes.
This amounted to no small amount of change. The end result was that the company took its jobs and its money and its tax dollars elsewhere.
Have you ever seen Billings? It's such a dumpy place that I have no problem believing that this story actually occurred (as my father insists that it did). Skip Billings. Go someplace else.
Biz Week ran a "IT Jobs are headed overseas" story (Score:5, Interesting)
ANd this week, they run a story about how we don't need to worry. The jobs will stick around.
Hmmm. Let me see...what are there tactics?
First they run a scare story so that all the programmers will buy the magazine or will visit the website (actually, I don't think that story was online right away).
So, then the business lobbies know that their paid-for congressmen will have to knuckle under to an angry and scared electorate, so they pay Biz Week to run the antidote to the scare story. Biz Week makes out! Mo' money...mo' money....mo' money!
High Growth (Score:2)
As compared to silly-con valley: half-a-zillion programmers last year. A mere third-of-a-zillion this year. Whoa! 33% decline.
IT Industry (Score:2, Insightful)
No other industry lets you work on jobs as varied as a doctor (on medical software) or as a pilot (on aircraft software) or as a banker (on bank software)
Headhunters (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Headhunters (Score:2)
Re:Headhunters (Score:3, Funny)
Billings, MT (Score:3, Interesting)
About IT jobs, however, I have no idea. I personally know of a number of equipment manufacturing companies that have started business in the area, including one that does devolopment for CNC manufacturing equipment. But what with the needs of modern business, just about any sort of company can benefit from the services of a skilled IT dude, so it stands to reason that there might be a few positions open, eh?
But then, what do I know. I'm only a welder/machinist/plumber/housebuilder who codes video games as a hobby.
IT is as bad as it seems. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bad. It's very bad.
Shhhhhhh! (Score:4, Funny)
Good Money In... (Score:4, Funny)
Uhh I live in Silicon Valley (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that I can't find work, I mean sure, I found a great job bouncing at a karaoke bar on friday nights, then I have another job delivering signs for a real estate office, and a third job goin door to door dropping off these little flyers that hang on a door knob for a pizza joint.
I guess i'm pretty good at putting signs in the ground, breaking up fights, and hanging shit off peoples doorknobs..
WTF am I saying? I didn't spend 8 years teaching myself all this stuff to be doing this right now. Even when I wasn't working, I still kept my skills up to date with constant reading, and playtesting on my machines at home.
According to everyone I know, I'm smart enough to do anything. I could have been a doctor they say. Fixing computers, learning about them in the process, fixing networking, it was the only job that I just felt that perfect fit in.
Now I do these useless shit jobs, I do get an occasional call for some consulting work, but it's never steady and never anything more interesting past "Something crashed, my e-mail won't work" I want to get paid for doing something cool again, I want to get paid for running a network that just keeps on running, where the servers never crash and most of your problems are with windows tcp/ip issues.
Companies are tightening their belts. They're outsourcing IT only using it when it's needed and they aren't buying new hardware. I'm sure there is a lot of 2+year old servers out there, that are starting to just fall apart from use, and some poor hapless junior engineer at a consulting firm is having to explain to some CEO why his mail server keeps crashing without telling him "You're running on outdated hardware and MS software"
And I say "MS software" because it's a fact most companies with over 20 employees use MS exchange.
A freind of mine, who still happens to be working at a consulting firm, recently burned the midnight oil to show the president nagios/snort running on freebsd. He explained the whole open source idea to him, BSD licensing, GPL, ect. The president, being in sales instantly saw the potential for being able to tell the customer "The software is free, we just charge you for customizing it
The customer inquired, "How many unix admins you got?" The company just has 1, my friend. "How much would it cost us to find a qualified unix admin in case we break our relationship?" How would they?
In a company of 6 people, only 1 of them is what I would call Unix qualified. The rest of them, are all a mixmash of MS and novell qualified people with no idea of how to move around in a unix shell.
Out of all my geek freinds (about 5 of us) only myself and this cat are unix qualified. So if I were to take the total number of admins I know personally and professionally, only %20 of them know unix!
If definetly tough out there right now for any type of admin. *nix admins will find it especially tough, because companies perceive a higher cost for unix admins over their windows/novell only counterparts. This in spite of the fact that I would GLADLY commute 20 miles to work right now for an $8 dollar an hour Unix admin job if it was 40 hours a week. (Hollar if you're as desperate as me!)
Boy, this is turnin into a long post.
Now I don't want to stray OT here, but I have to mention this war going on.
1. It will cut the number of tech jobs due to war funding.
2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war.
3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries.
From what i've seen over the last 2 years, the pace of companies dying from a lack of funding is greater than that of people leaving. Net result, no real job boom, just a steady decline in the number of "admin wanted" positions.
No, it's not getting better, it's getting progressivly worse. Maybe i'd support this war if I had my old job back.
Re:Uhh I live in Silicon Valley (Score:3, Funny)
Am I the only geek who saw this typo and said "only [space] of them know UNIX? (%20 is space, URL encoded, ASCII 0x20)
Re:Uhh I live in Silicon Valley (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't make any sense - the government is about to drop bags of cash on the defense industry and homeland security, both of which rely heavily on technology.
> 2. It will cut down on the number of younger less experienced people applying for jobs as they head for war
Also false. The younger, less-experienced people headed off to war were never applying jobs because they already have jobs. They are fulltime military personnel. As for the reserves, they'll be back pretty soon.
> 3. Large corporations are leveraging off-shore IT pools in foriegn countries
According to the article:
Speculating for a moment, I think you may be disproportionately feeling the effects of the recession, more so than other IT jobs. It seems to me that admin type jobs would be the first to go. I've read more than a few /. posts boasting about the posters ability to write shell scripts that do 90% of the administration while they play CounterStrike. Conversely, if a you've had some layoffs in your company and your sys admin is overloaded with work, you could probably suck it up and hold out for a while longer. But if you absolutely had to get your product to market because it looked like the ecomony was turning around, and you don't have the programming staff, that's simply not going to work, you have to get more programmers. In short, the consequences of not enough admin staff are less severe than the consequences of not enough programmers.
Of course that's all speculation.
I haven't RFTA yet... (Score:3, Funny)
Poor economic logic... (Score:4, Informative)
By definition, this means that the aggregate price of labor has not changed! I think a more insightful approach to the problem is that labor has become monopolistically competitive, especially in the IT market.
What the hell does monopolistic competition mean? It means that while there may be alternatives similar to a product or service, there is nothing that is exactly like it. You can buy hamburgers from dozens of places, but you can only buy a Whopper from McDonalds. It's the same with IT workers: I can employ programmers anywhere, but I'll have a really difficult time finding another programmer with a background in SQL, assembler and the obscure graphics package we chose to use because he knew it.
The economic logic the article proposes applies to commodities. As frustrating as it seems in the IT market, most labor is highly specialized and is therefore not a commodity.
I live and work in Billings. (Score:3, Funny)
Anything goes, here in billings. Local culture is primo. I've lived in LA, NYC, but I got sick of all the ugly girls. Come here to Billings, where it's nothing but 100% beautiful people, all the time.
I work in an all Linux shop, writing 3D game engines and debating Libertarian politics. It's great!
A few obvious points about this article... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Remember that suits care about only one thing more than profits: P.R. and prestige. They're not going to pay for a magazine that makes their pet initiatives (outsourcing and layoffs, etc) look like bad ideas. They would be outraged if one of their favorite magazines took them to task for their decisions. So, this isn't going to happen.
3. Because this magazine is written FOR suits, BY suits, you can't expect it to NOT have tons of pro-suit propaganda. What sort of propaganda would a suit write up? Basically, stories like this one, about how H1-Bs, layoffs, and outsourcing really haven't hurt anyone and how everything is really just peachy. Gotta keep that consumer confidence up, even if you're going to put them out of their homes in a month or so, take away their livelihoods and ruin their lives. They might buy stuff in the meantime!
4. If the article was honest about how bad company policy has made things for people, it might -- gasp! -- influence politicians, who might -- double gasp! -- DO SOMETHING about the problem. Can't have that! So we've got to keep saying things are just fine.
Overall, this article was a puff-piece love-letter to American business. And, coming from this magazine, how can you expect anything else?
Stop the fear (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not all hopeless. There is a way out, a way to prevent becoming the victim of commoditization. There's one skill that almost by definition will never be a commodity, and strangely enough, I had a friend at Microsoft put the idea in my head. The only way to succeed in software (or services, that tag-along so often accompanying software revenue) is by focusing on innovation.
It's that simple. Think about it for a minute: are you maintaining a bank withdrawal application for a large bank, or are you creating protein folding algorithms to run on a massive grid? Are you building the latest revision of the corporation's brochureware website, or are you designing a web-based logistics tracking system for a freight carrier? Are you working for large body-shop, or did you finally decide to start the consulting business you've always wanted? Pick the job opportunities by their potential for tapping into your capacity to innovate, and you'll never go out of style.
Don't give up. Yes, the run of the mill jobs will inevitably go to the cheapest service provider. But innovation is limitless; that's one of the lessons of the '90s that unfortunately seems to have been lost when the money ran out. And it was the money that ran out--creativity doesn't go anywhere. Innovation: do you got it?
Haven't seen it here (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe some people in better jobs at big companies may have some sort of security, but I wouldn't exactly bet on it.
Naive but cheerful article (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, where to begin... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Last year construction employment declined by 1.3 percent, transportation and public utilities jobs shrank by 2.8 percent, and manufacturing employment slipped by 3.5 percent....Services employment went up 1.5 percent, and finance, insurance, and real estate increased almost 1 percent." In other words, lost jobs in three of the highest paying, productive, employement sectors were partly offset by jobs in the lowest-paying sector (services), and in sales and paper-pushing. If contruction jobs are down and real estate jobs are up, doesn't that mean we have less product(buildings) being peddled by more salesmen(real estate agents)?
Another positive indicator he cites is rising home prices. This may not be so much an indicator of prosperity as it is of insufficient supply. Sure, it's great if you own a house (or two or three), but if you don't and prices are rising faster than your wages, that's not good news.
As for the average salary increasing by 3.7 percent, is that figure skewed by CEOs giving themselves and their VPs huge raises? Did the average guy in the trenches really get his 3.7 percent?
His figure of 2.8 percent growth sounds respectable, but how much of that is real growth? Economists include just about everything in this figure, but investing in prisons, enhanced airline security, etc. does not make us any more productive. Not that it's not worth doing, but counting it as growth is misleading.
It's funny what you can do with statistics. I can't say this article is wrong, but there isn't enough real information there to draw any conclusions.
Why H1-B is not right for the U.S. (karma to burn) (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe the H1-B program, as it is currently being implemented, is just plain wrong for the U.S.A. for the following simple reasons:
- Paying a foreigner less than an American just because you can is immoral and racist.
- Throwing a citizen out on the streets, because you can pay a foreigner less, increases the burden on taxpayers, both by taxpayers paying more to support the unemployed, and by the employer contributing less in taxes.
- Corporations, by increasing the burden on taxpayers so they can make an extra buck, are causing the economy to crumble even further. Cities and States must raise taxes to make up for it, increasing the burden on taxpayers even more.
- These same corporations, by exacerbating the recession, ironically, are causing themselves loss in profit. Corporate accountants don't see it that way. This loss doesn't show up on the books, so it is invisible to them. Their view of the world stops at the edge of the ledger.
What to do?
Either:
- Get rid of the H1-B program altogether.
-or-
- (preferred) Make it mandatory to pay H1-B prevailing wages, and contribute to the tax pool, e.g. social security, etc. the same as you would an American.
That would solve the problems of corporations abusing H1-Bs in order to bilk the taxpayers and pocket the profits. There's nothing wrong with making a profit. There -IS- something wrong with making a profit by ripping other people off.
Oh yeah, any of y'all got your money back from Ken Lay yet?
Re:Why H1-B is not right for the U.S. (karma to bu (Score:3, Informative)
Make it mandatory to pay H1-B prevailing wages, and contribute to the tax pool, e.g. social security, etc. the same as you would an American.
It's already law that H-1Bs must be paid the prevailing wage for the position. Likewise, H-1Bs have the same deductions on their paychecks as Americans.
the story buzzword2.0 was afraid to publish (Score:3, Funny)
In a breaking news flash, buzzword2.0 announces that the 2003 Employment Outlook still sucks. To confirm this claim, buzzword2.0 decided to interview all 127,000 people in the San Jose area unemployment line. To our surprise, 97.876 people said that after they got pinked slipped from their web programmer positions, life has truely sucked.
'I tried to get a job at BurgerBling,' states Joe Smith, 'but they said I was under qualified. Something about lack of any real skill. Now I'm here at the unemployment line.'
Jane Jones says, 'The biggest regret I had in college was to switch my major from deep sea basket english to CS (computers and stuff). I could be doing so much more for the world. But at least I'm making more here than at my previous job.'
buzzword2.0 decided to also interview managers regarding Outlook 2003. Most said that they weren't going to implement Outlook 2003 because they were happy with Outlook 98.
buzzword2.0 didn't stop here. We decided to interview upper management. Warren Whitecollar, senior VP of computers and stuff at International Layoff Machine stated, '[I] really don't know why I laid off 30% of my work force... I was golfing with my friend from Federated Slavery at the Kentucky Kountry Klub, and he told me he laid off 25% of his employees. So I just had to lay off more than him, and replace our help desk team with Indonesian Pigmy Chimps. It worked out great!'
Finally, buzzword2.0 interviewed the heart of Outlook 2003 Gloom... Wall Street. Here is the transcript of the interview we had with investment guru Rober Poorman:
B20: What do you think of the Outlook for 2003/2004?
RP: Sucks...
B20: Well, is it going to get better anytime soon?
RP: It's not really supposed to. We're still profiting off of 9/11 tragedy and the dot com boom we invented.
B20: What's that supposed to mean?
RP: It's kind of hard to find new investors, pardon me, I mean suckers to buy the new stocks we just printed up right now. Plus it'll take us at least a year to architect another 'boom', market it, hype it and sell it. This will give us enough time to print out a few million more shares. Rinse, lather, ripoff.
B20: That's horrible...
RP: I know. You want to buy some stock? Because if you're not, I'm late for a power lunch I'm hosting with some single mother's life savings.
b20: No! Well that concludes this article. Next week we'll publish Outlook 2003 2.0.
The Great Depression- actually not that bad! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an interesting point, and forces me to reconsider that maybe the Great Depression wasn't as bad as everyone says it was! Sure, lots of people are out of a job right now, but if you weren't laid off this month, things are great because none of your laid off coworkers can afford milk and the stores have to lower the price, which increases your spending power! If you think about it, the economy is great! This month, anyway. I hope I'm not laid off next month.
Of course, things aren't as simple as they were in 1930. The economy has some problems it didn't have back then:
-massive consumer debt
-trade deficits
-increasing corporate reliance on previously inaccessible cheap overseas labor
-a housing bubble
-a huge federal deficit
The federal deficit is worthy of more attention than it's been getting. The government has rung up a deficit of $194 billion dollars in just the first five months of the 2003 budget year. In February alone we pulled out the Visa and racked up charges of $96.3 billion. A 10 year $1.35 trillion tax cut has to come from somewhere. The Bush Administration will politically leverage its wartime popularity surge to get another tax cut for People Wealthier Than You for $726 billion during a fucking liquidity crisis. At least the Senate lopped off $100 billion to pay for the war. Think about that. You could have six more wars and still have $26 billion of tax cuts left. I just hope these rich bastards who are getting all this money immediately invest it in ventures that put Americans to work! Although they're not stupid and will probably buy bonds with it.
According to Keynesian theory, unemployment and inflation are supposed to be mutually exclusive- each is supposed to prevent the other from happening. The disproof of that theory came during the 70s and was named stagflation. Things suck when everyone is out of work and milk still keeps costing more than it did last week. I hope the financial markets don't notice these Reagan-sized deficits anytime soon! All this unemployment might not count for much. At least the Fed can increase interest rates to control it, I guess, since they've pushed them down to artificially low levels in their futile attempts to reignite the boom. If you have a house be sure to refinance now while interest rates are so low, because they're going to go up.
I want to know why everyone is talking about a lopsided war with a tinpot Middle East dictator- this shit is the real news.
Re:Brown Out at EDS (Score:3, Insightful)
Dick Brown was a scourge of the IT industry. I hope his $55 million from last year and $38 million in severence serve him well while he's frying in hell for his deeds.
I'm glad I was able to leave EDS on my own accord, and I don't care WHO they put in there, I'd never work there again.
Visit this site:
http://www.edslawsuits.com
LOTS of hatred
Wow (Score:2)
Re:Not so. (Score:3, Interesting)
" Tell my friends who are unemployed, at last count more than 5... Tell the people like me who were unemployed for a year, and finally landed a job making half of what they were before. Tell the people like me who have been trying to get lower interest rates on some debt, and the company asks "Why did you run up so much debt so fast?" and all you can do is wonder if they had been paying attention lately. Tell the people who have had to sell