235,000 Fewer Programmers by 2015 982
RonMcMahon writes "According to a CNN Money article, Forrester Research is predicting that there will be 235,396 fewer Computer Programmers and Software Engineers employed in 2015 than there are today in America. This is a 25% reduction in the number of positions from today's depressed numbers. This sucks. I know that many companies are moving work off-shore, but wow, that's half the population of Wyoming!"
Time for a career switch... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Time for a career switch... (Score:4, Informative)
You'll always have a job if you have a clearance. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Time for a career switch... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wages will be going up very fast. Many of these outsorcers have fairly long term commitments and can raise their prices and renogatiate at will. Plus reports show wages going up very fast in India (a tech. union there would do wonders for this
Plus, there is starting to be a consumer backlash agains non-english as a first language tech. support. What was bad tech. support years ago is now becoming bad tech. support that you can't understand.
Re:Going Out of Business USA (Score:5, Insightful)
US labor is more expensive due to the cost of living. I would hardly take a job at the same wage Indian programmers are getting paid because I can't buy groceries as cheap as they can, or live in a house for as cheap.
You are correct in a change in economics in the world; 20 years ago outsourcing technical jobs would have been almost impossible because of the capital requirements to test and build products, the high cost of communication and goods transportation, lack of an educated workforce, and trade barriers. However, this might be bad for individuals (sadly, including me) but not for the country as a whole. Society is better off as a whole due to the basic economic theory of competitive advantage.
While "Free Trade" agreements do have serious problems - for example, labor is cheaper in India in part because US corporations don't have to worry about pesky things such as unemployment insurance, safety, environmental restrictsion,and a host of other workers' rights there - in principle they do benefit rather than harm to this country. Your complaint about the tax system is misplaced; the government's main culpability in this is helping guide the country to such a high standard of living that we have priced ourselves out of many labor markets.
I knew I should have gone for an EE degree (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I knew I should have gone for an EE degree (Score:5, Informative)
wow i was going to guess... (Score:3, Funny)
Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure, had Slashdot been around back in days of Steampunk, there would have been many articles cursing the disappearance of steam-engine related jobs, complaining that these days, steam trains were only used overseas, etc, etc. Meanwhile, the invention of the aeroplane would receive only a passing mention, everyone would think it was cool, then they would go back to complain about the decline in the use of steam technology.
Moving jobs overseas isn't a bad thing. One thing the third world is good at is being cheap labour*. One thing the third world is very bad at is innovation**. Westerners who are good at what the West does - innovate - will be as in demand as ever. Those who can't or won't work to remain on the cutting edge, well, there's no helping them.
* I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, just that it's a historical fact.
** Also a historical fact. Look at where the new knowledge was and is created over the last 500 years, in technology, pharma, media, you name it - in the West. Even big countries like China and Brazil use Linux, for example - they didn't (or couldn't) start from scratch.
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not really true if you go back in history more than 300 years.
Back then Europe was a third world country. Most of the innovators lived in China, India or the Middle East. Several of their innovations are things like writing, the number 0, arabic (!!) number system, gun powder and I'm sure countless other inventions.
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the book is Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond [amazon.com].
Diamond argues that two cultural families have become dominant in the world - the fertile crescent culture which is the root of today's European and American cultures and Chinese culture which has spread throughout Asia. He further argues that these cultures are dominant for no other reason than environmental and geographic reasons. Both these areas had wild versions of a variety of domesticable staple agricultural products, readily domesticable draft animals, and room to spread out.
Other "root" cultures did not have all these factors. For instance, inidiginous Americans had no draft animals while horse and oxen were available in Mesopotamia. Corn was not readily domesticable in its wild form, and several thousand years passed before the right mutations occured to make corn a good staple crop whereas the wheat, barley, and oats that grew wild in Mesopotamia were easily domesticated. When corn was domesticated, it took a very long time for corn farmers from central America to spread through the deserts of Mexico and the American Southwest to the Mississippi valley. (The great plains are virtually unfarmable without more modern plows and draft animals because of the tough sod.) The Mesopotamian farmers spread far into Russia, the middle east, and Europe before running into barriers.
Arabic numbers were an INDIAN invention..... (Score:5, Informative)
Even the Muslims [islamicity.com] say so. . .
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, paying for the training of offshore people to do the low grade work that has been previously done onshore is a tad dangerous.
All the 'high level' people that understand what the game's about have come up through the ranks of those junior positions to slowly acheive where they are.
The premise of offshoring seems to be "Well, we'll set up the whole of our operations abroad, where it's cheap, and automagically, when we need them, experienced people will join the organisation as we need them.". Except, due to most work at the lower levels being done offshore, thus most training being done there, the experience for the higher level jobs will be required to be performed offshore.
The setup then becomes one of having a shell company in the west, populated by a few suits with little technical knowledge, asking for a product from the real company investment (in workers and experience) in, say, India.
Now, with having few people trained (nobody can get a job in the west, so why study?), and no experience being gained (no job), then the raw ability to innovate in that area vanishes.
Lo and behold, the country that HAS the skills forms their own industries, and makes new products derived from their EXPERIENCE in the old (western initiated) ones.
With sufficient saturation of skill base, and lack of draconian legal restriction, new innovation is pretty much guaranteed. That's how the US managed to kick start it's high tech lead (the "Brain Drain" is still well remembered).
To put this in perspective, the Eastern Countries led development in technology for several thousand years. Only in about the last 500 has it lagged behind (except for Japan which is still at the forefront).
Now, after a period of 'sleeping', the East is beginning to fire up it's technology engine, and get in the 'Innovation' mode.
Definately not good for Western companies longterm, who are taking the short term view of a quick buck now.
And that buck, ten years down the line will most likely vanish into an eastern company who does exactly the same thing for a quarter the price or less.
Your reference to steam engines misses much of the point. Nobody here is crying out about losing jobs on a defunt system.
The point is, that if, once the planes and cars developed WERE actually all made in the 'third world', and all it's engineers and manufacturing were based there when the industry was in it's infancy, then the west would not be where it is now.
India would have the great roads, and the most advanced cars around would be of Indian manufacture. The west would now be playing catchup to the more established Indian markets.
The sad truth is that, these days, companies are run by accountants and lawyers. These are exactly the people who look at what the money does, and NOT at what happens to the world around.
Nobody seems to care about 10, or 20 years down the road. As long as the cash is on the table NOW, and LOTS of it, all is good.
Your premises seem to assume that the world is generally static, and moving one part of an ecosystem and transplanting it to another area en masse will make no difference to either one.
Read up on a good many disasters that have occurred that way.
Computing (and society) mirror nature very closely. The big industries are playing a very dangerous game.
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have it backwards. They are hungry and poor because they don't innovate and create value. Even the ones that aren't hungry and poor don't do much by way of actual innovation.
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Programming requires constant thought/creativity. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that programming requires a lot of expertise. I'd like to find someone else to do some programming for me, but I find that there are too many decisions that affect the quality of the product each hour that I program. I have not been able to find someone else capable and interested in making those decisions.
In my whole life, I haven't seen even one perfectly designed program. I haven't seen even one perfectly designed web site. For example, I was just looking at the Creative Labs web site [creative.com]. There is no large photo available of the products! Creative Labs says, "With over 200 million sound cards sold, Sound Blaster is the world's most trusted PC audio brand." (Under the heading "UPGRADE to Superior Stereo Audio Quality".) After all that business experience, Creative Labs doesn't even provide useable photos of their products.
What will be the result of the work of bored Indian programmers, who are bored because they have to follow some poorly developed specifications, and have no control over the design of the program, and no way to talk to the customer? Eventually the code will be a tangled mess, and will be thrown away.
In the 70s, hiring PhDs was very popular. Then companies found the drawbacks. PhDs were not willing to do the tedious work that exists in every project. Hiring offshore programmers is popular now, but I think companies will slowly begin to realize that good programming requires a high proportion of extensive thought.
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The programmers who treat it as an art are usually computer scientists even if all they think they're doing is programming and all it looks like they're doing is programming. Look at any of the developers on the Linux core kernel team and you'll see a guy who treats programming as an art. I know this because I've seen their code. Superficially it looks like they were just programming but you can't create an OS kernel by just programming. Management does not really understand this and will attempt to hire a batch of grunt programmers and then dictate that they write the kernel in Java. And the grunt programmers will agree, set up XP pair programming teams, require test-first design and will still fail.
So the grunt managers and the grunt programmers will get outsourced to India where they will continue to pass or fail at random at a tenth the cost of the same team of Americans.
Here's the magic piece of the puzzle that Microsoft is looking for: OSS projects have such high quality because OSS projects by their very nature do not include grunt programmers. Grunt programmers have no incentive to work on such projects. That doesn't mean that all computer scientists work on OSS projects, but it inevitably means that all OSS projects are populated by computer scientists of varying degrees of skill and experience (Except when a company is paying people to work on the project, that opens a door for grunt programmers.)
Here's another thing you can put in your crack pipe and smoke; large companies will inevitably have a large number of grunt managers who don't understand computer science nor event the business logic of the requirements they're presented. These are the guys dictating that the entire CRM application should be implemented as a set of JSP web pages because that's the latest buzz in the industry. If a small company emerges that has both managers and computer scientists who understand the requirements and can dictate the implementation of their program, they will take market share (and be profitable) from the larger company, even if they're using an all USA based team and the larger company is using an all overseas one.
Re:Programmers == Carpenters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you insane? Hammers, saws and screwdrivers aren't provided to carpenters, but materials that will stay with the customer, like 2x4 planks, I-beams, nails, are. Why on Earth would a programmer, that's not with a VAR, bring a computer to the job? A programmer's tools are nearly all insubstantial (the notable exception being books, but even those are going electronic [oreilly.com]). Programming is a skill, not a piece of hardware. You don't need a programmer to run a computer. You need the programmer to make the computer do something useful.
The constant equating of programming to an industrial process is without merit and has been debunked before by Fred Brooks, Steve McConnell and others. The construction techniques for software aren't as well understood or as systematized as those known to physical engineers and fabricators. This makes every software project mostly unique, although certainly experiences from previous projects will help the next one. McConnell identifies four legs of software development that must come together to get a successful production. These are people, process, product and technology. In reverse order, the technology piece is simply the OS, the hardware and programming language chosen for the job. The product leg deals with scope of the project, such as listing the required features, inputs, outputs and whatnot. The process bit relates to how the project is (or isn't) managed, risk management and customer feedback. The people aspect comprises the quality of the programmers doing the work. This can have a huge impact on the shipping product.
Outsourcing addresses only one leg of software developement: people. By reducing the cost of this one leg, the cost of the process aspect will go up. It remains to be seen whether paying for more management and process will produce more profitable results than simply working with the native talent pool of programmers. I suspect it won't for most cases. However, there will surely be some outsourcing success stories.
It's grossly unfair to expect the art of programming, which is hardly sixty years old, to be as well understood as construction, which has been a human endeavor for thousands of years. Those managers and market analysts that labor under this delusion are in for a rude surprise.
The real question (Score:3, Informative)
Forrester Research? Pffft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forrester Research? Pffft. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see some research carried out on the speculation these guys (Forrester, Gartner etc) come up with.
They can't even agree upon present day issues, for example, the TCO of Linux is cheaper than Windows or vice versa.
What hope have they of predicting the future.
Are details on who they are calling programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will this match the population reduction? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully that will reduce the supply of programmers enough so that the good ones will still be able to find jobs.
Business 2.0 Agrees With You (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately you can't read the article [business2.com] anymore without paying, but they make a pretty convincing case in the Sept. issue, showing how some models predict an increase in the # of computer-related jobs (they claim the tech sector will soon return, if it hasn't already, as the fastest growing sector in the American economy). Couple this growth with baby boomers retiring, and you get a very tight labor market.
You see, though some of us might not see it everyday (including me), apparently a large percentage of today's programs are baby boomers who are nearing retirement. Starting in a few years there will be large percentages of the programmer population leaving the job pool. In recognition of this, many large companies are already returning to handsome bonuses and good pay.
Having said that, I do suddenly realize that there is a difference in terminology. I shold not talk about the "number of programmers" here, but rather the "number of IT jobs." That is, include project managers, MIS directors, and all kinds of people who are technically oriented, may do some programming or other admin, but are not strictly speaking programmers. So also keep that in mind with this article--how broadly do they use the term "programmer?"
Not to be partisan or anything (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, it is notup to date on the stock market, but I suspect that that may be a shell game anyhow, at least on some level.
Re:Not to be partisan or anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not to be partisan or anything (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. You remember incorrectly.
Re:Not to be partisan or anything (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting theory [cnn.com]. I guess that depends on your definition of [cornell.edu] "people." [archives.gov]
Personally, I feel that the state of the economy is due to the combination of the policies of the sitting president and the president that came before them. For example, Clinton fed the bubble despite a long cautionary history about preventing an economy from expanding too quickly. However, a sitting president is most definitely responsible for the federal deficit [littlepiggy.net] that is racked up during their administration, as they have direct control over such policies.
Re:Not to be partisan or anything (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about that. In his first campain he talked alot about the government investing in the national infrastructure. Then he got elected had some talks with Alan Greenspan, and decided that would be a bad idea for the economy and went back on his campain promises. He also decreased the deficit every year he was in office, exactly what you want to do during a good economy. Perhaps he could have done more to temper the bubble, but he certainly cannot be blamed for feeding it.
From what I understand it was one of the most tempered and drawn out bubble we have had in a long time. I blame the bubble on the tech industry, and the longevity on a wise FED chairman, a president willing to listen to him, and a congress willing to cooperate with the president on lowering the deficit. I likewise blame todays recession on natural business cycles, but will blame tomorrows problems on a president who goes against the advice of a wise FED chairman, and cuts and spends wrecklessly.
Then again, in the macro-economics class I took, one of the co-authors of the text was one of clinton's original (first term) economic advisors, so my understanding might be slightly biast, although I have read other sources.
Computer Science is not everything anymore! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course this does not stop me from getting employed as a programmer if I wanted to.
Why I did engineering.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, CS/IT employed people could benefit from getting organized and professionalized to the degree to which engineers are. Engineering associations look after things like H1B visas (although I'm not an American), and other political policy matters that can directly impact your life. There seems to be an inability of extreme reluctance to do this though, largely because I suspect there are a lot of extremely good programmers without (formal) qualification.
I'm not talking about unions - historically engineering associations have been very outspoken in this respect, but then again, historically engineers weren't employees for the most part, either.
I've always drawn a distinction between programming as art, and programming as a matter of business. Art doesn't always make you money while you're alive.
I beg to differ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think after awhile with enough uproar from consumers, their slumping tech support award will cause them to follow suit for the average joe as well.
I think we can extrapolate this to all of the other area of IT, especially programming. You still need a high level of written and oral communication to perform your job effectively. That is whyI think this big push for over seas IT jobs will eventually backfire in the face of big business.
One partial explanation ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny; I've heard a related but different explanation for the exodus of programming jobs: We have to farm out most of the development to other countries, because most of the world doesn't speak English very well, and you can't develop software in the US that works in any language but English.
Actually, my response to this tends to confuse them
Specialize or change fields (Score:4, Informative)
As much as it does suck I honestly see the only real way forward for software engineers and programmers is to either move into or start a research and development company and develop highly specialized software or to move into a new area of IT.
Honestly I would prefer if you didnt move into the system administration area, that would be mine,
The only way to keep your job secure is to work in face to face/onsite support or IT management although I am sure some clever CEO/CTO will figure out how to move those overseas as well.
One of the funniest things I read this year was a guarntee from our American management that they would not be moving the software development section from Australia to America from Australia, it was originally an Australian company so we didn't steal any American jobs
The real thing I want to know is where will the jobs be that are not outsourced to other countries and why will they be the ones to stay in comparison to those that are sent overseas.
A few years back... (Score:5, Insightful)
To me it looks like they just take the trend of the past 2 years, extrapolate it to 2015, think of a few pages worth of `reasoning' why the numbers go so much down/up, and, hey presto, a new raport available!
Re:A few years back... (Score:5, Interesting)
> think of a few pages worth of `reasoning' why the numbers go so much down/up, and, hey presto, > a new raport available!
Are you suggesting there's somethign wrong with that? It's what all the analysts/consulatants/investment bankers seem to be doing, surely it must be right!
I once suggested during an intership that they quote errors, or at least reduce the number of significant figures from 9 to 1 or 2 when predicting market volumes 10 years in the future... all i got in response was blank stares...
crazy world!
Ponxx
It's the end of the world as we know it... (Score:3, Informative)
Lack of CS Education, market correcting (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there any reason to be shocked that when salaries go up because there aren't enough people in the field that more people will enter the market? It j
Is nothing sacred? (Score:5, Funny)
I should of known it would never last...
Don't jump to any conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
Major issues that ought to be addressed (Score:3, Interesting)
I see this as a "what I want" syndrome that is going to bite people in the ass in the long run.
First off you have the american side of it. The CEOs will ship the jobs off shore, americans will lose jobs and have to go on pogey. So yeah, the CEO makes a short-term profit but pays for it in taxation in the end.
Second you have the foreign side of it. They're willing to sell their time for a heck of a lot less than the americans [leading to the questionable quality issue which is another debate alltogether]. However, in the long run thy're just poising themselves to earn the least amount of money possible. [e.g. no long-term profit].
So really outsourcing is a nearsighted "fix".
However, there are several real concerns. Often software developers are paid way too much for what they produce. $70k/yr to produce buggy programs [re: name the last 10 windows games...] is excessive. Also this is partly americans own fault. Everyone and their brother is now a "computer scientist" [having finished their 3wk course at Devry or what not]. Now the CEOs are just pushing this farther by grabing rice farmers and what not and calling them computer scientists.
So in reality y'all are gonna taste your own medicine in the end!!!!
MUAHAHAHAA
Tom
Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a great market readjustment.
US Dollar crash could be good for programmers? (Score:3, Interesting)
With the way the US Dollar is going, I'm not so sure.
Indian workers were being seen as 40% cheaper in surveys done 6 months/a year ago (at least, that was the number being thrown around by the media). Now consider that the US Dollar has crashed in value by 12% against the UK pound (and more, by the Euro) in the LAST THREE MONTHS. With the deficits the US is running, and with the Euro presenting itself as a viable reserve c
Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
"America and it's corporations will be less relevant to the rest of the world, IT-wise, in 2015."
Something the article didn't mention (Score:5, Interesting)
this. [ieee-kc.org]
So, the jobs that will probably be lost are the ones that suck anyway, the ones that require just painful coding line after line of repetive garbage.
The jobs that will be left will be the high-paid positions of QA-- the ones to go through all that garbage written by the lowest bidder and fix it. O the joy we will have.
For those thinking "I might be in the lucky half" (Score:3, Insightful)
is this a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, it doesn't seem unreasonable that there will be a sigificant drop in software engineers over the next ten years. Why? Because there is so much research going into technologies to transform business workflow more quickly into customized (but not custom) applications for managing business processes. There are an enormous number of developers employed doing precisely that in one way or another, whether its a VB program for managing customer contacts, or a staff of Java developers building internally developed applications on data warehousing applications. All of that stuff is going to become much easier to transform from business requirements to final application. Not drag and drop, but a staff of ten may drop to a staff of five or six.
There will be a lot of jobs for senior level engineers, far less than now for entry-level positions. For those of you who are thinking you may be in one of those positions in ten years, well thats probably good or bad. Bad thing is, there'll be fewer positions to fill, but the upside is that it will probably turn the tide of people away from thinking CS is a quick and easy road to a high paying job -- and it'll be easier to progress up the ladder to senior and principal positions. I know a lot of guys now who get stuck with a virtual glass ceiling because the ratio of engineers to senior or principal engineers is so out of whack, companies just don't have that many positions for them.
I suspect a lot of software development positions will become more business-specific, as well. It'll be expected that anyone over a certain level has an ability to understand and work with the business side of a particular corporate structure. Foul smelling unkempt hacker types may have a harder time finding jobs in that kind of a market. But from a reformed foul smelling hacker type, its a lot easier to get laid if you clean up your style a bit.
Re:My guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets assume, as you do, there'll be a lot of jobs for senior-level engineers. Lets assume there are far less than now for entry-level positions. Now, *I'm* a senior-level engineer (13 years in IT). I wasn't senior-level when I entered the field, though -- I entered the field by doing data entry on registration cards for a software company and becoming known as The Guy Who Could Fix Macs. I know I'm not the only one.
Skilled industries (everything from programming to carpentry to electrical work) have traditionally depended on mentoring, apprenticeship, and a growth path that starts with you being at the bottom. If we're sending all our bottom-feeder jobs to India, where will our next senior people come from? They're not going to burst fully formed from the foreheads of the current generation.
extrapolation? (Score:5, Funny)
In 1977 there were 150 Elvis impersonators. By 1999 there were 35,000. If this rate of growth continues, by the year 2019, more than one third of the world's population will be Elvis impersonators.
Re:extrapolation? (Score:5, Funny)
When I turned two, I felt a great anxiety. In just one year, I had doubled my age. If this goes on like this, I thought, by the time I'm five, I'll be sixteen.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Straight-line extrapolation is accurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Five years ago they did a straight-line extrapolation to predict federal budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. I don't see them anymore, do you?
Nobody can foresee the future. There are 10% as many telephone operators now as there were 40 years ago, handling ten times as many calls. Is that a bad thing?
Over that past 40 years I have seen engineers in high demand and engineers stocking grocery shelves. If it's bad now, give it five years and it will be good. If it's good now, give it five years and it will be bad.
That's the way it goes. Everything is not good all the time.
If you blow your brains out during the bad times, you miss the good times that are just around the corner.
Re:Straight-line extrapolation is accurate? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't extrapolate todays numbers out 10 years. These figures do not take into effect deflation on wages that would occur if these numbers were true. More people chasing fewer jobs drops wages in the US. At the same time wages increase in offshore destinations as the standard of living increases. The labor advantage of offshoring is reduced, if not eliminated.
It also doesn't take into effect the inevitable backlash against companies that practice offshoring. It's not
Been here before (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when FrontPage came out? That was around 94-96 time frame(?), right about the same time every night school on the planet was offering "webmaster" *snicker* certification. Everybody and their dog was calling themselves a web developer. But it never nicked the market for people who could produce really professional looking high-end sites. Then came the marraige of web sites with a database back end and db skills separated the webmaster employed from the rest of the pack.
If you've been in IT a long time you're used to being a techno-chameleon. There will always be new things coming along that will open up new markets. And even if it doesn't, even if I finally transition out of IT into a different kind of business, look at the technical advantage I have. I can build my own web sites, know how to market and promote them, write my own db's, program my own applications, or tweak OSS apps to do something specific for me, run my own network. It puts me miles ahead of my peers in any other line of business.
20 years in IT and analysts keep coming up with the same crap, like some karmic manure spreader. Just keep your head on a swivel, bank cash when times are good, and don't get boxed in thinking the only way to make a living is working for someone else.
By 2015 computers will program themselves.... (Score:3, Funny)
Thats good for programmingdom (Score:4, Insightful)
Universities are churning out students of ADA, Pascal and Java, most of whom applied to the university thinking of the good fortunes of being in IT around 1998.
I doubt many of the developers of the applications in sourceforge will be in this number. A market booms, you get hundereds of thousands of extra golddiggers, then it goes bust, the golddiggers leave, the ones dedicated to the art stay, the market booms again, the golddiggers return, the experienced ones make good money and buy McLarens.
Fewer programmers mean a guy who can port Linux or NetBSD to a specialized ARM MCU will be more in demand, and will not get laid off like today. It by no means means the cults and culture that churn out the code for sourcecode will disappear.
Gloom and Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
Error message from 2015 (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and Narada, the mischief-maker is not to be confused with Mentos, the fresh-maker.
lets off-source all business consulting! (Score:3, Funny)
S/W Engineers vs Programmers (Score:4, Informative)
If you're worried about your job security, start learning more than just programming languages and APIs. (Of course, until we have a proper accreditation system, anyone in the s/w industry can call themselves an engineer...)
A better way to measure this (Score:5, Funny)
For those whose base unit of measurement is not 'Wyomings'... if we lined those programmers up head-to-toe, they would stretch approximately 250 miles from Silicon Valley out into the Pacific Ocean heading towards Asia. At that point, of course, many would drown.
Alternatively, if the computer programmers were laid end-to-end, the chain would be longer than 4,000 football fields. Of course, it would be dangerous leaving so many nerds lying down in fields if football players were around.
Re:Big Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Big Deal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big Deal (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I agree about the notion that moving into management because you suck at what you currently do, might give you a bit of a surprise when you find out that you suck at management too.
Re:Big Deal (Score:5, Informative)
My current manager isn't the most cluefull, but he's a good guy with good management skills. I try to make sure he understands w/o a doubt what i'm doing and why i'm doing it. Not to an atomic degree, but to a good general one.
Re:Big Deal (Score:3, Interesting)
In my case: I'm a skilled US steelworker, trained at own expense (welder/fabrication) and I've seen my career degraded by management continually pushing the desired skill level down to nil over the last 15 years. Enter foreign competition during the same time. Recently (last year) I started going back to school for comp sci.
I now believe that [begin sarcasm] it would
Re:Big Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that steelwork is easy. Shit, I can't do it, so I'd be the first to hurt themselves. There are a few perceptions of programming. One is the science, another is engineering. A third is simple programming.
The science will live on for a long time. It's coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing stuff "better".
The engineering.. it's the architecture and making sure things run like well oiled machines in real life.
The simple programming unfortunately, is what's getting deported or seen as easier. Anyone can become one of these. It's the learning of the simple things and applying them. Writing a program to do factorials, writting something that throws some data into a database. Even web-applications. It's menial programming.
Stuff like writing a web browser, an OS, a painting program, an mp3 player.. HARDER stuff that takes some research and analysis of how it would be implemented for everyone's best interests will always be in demand. It's what gets released as shareware, sometimes freeware (winamp) or opensource, but more of the good ones tend to be commercial.
Too many people in IT because it pays (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of years ago I worked for a UK university and I was so disapointed at the number of people who had no interest in the subject but doing it awayway. It seems that people think you can get a high paying job in IT, so will get the degree in hopes of getting a job despite not having any enthusiasm or talent or skill.
Maybe this will be a good thing, we might see less people going into IT just because they think it will pay well.
Re:Too many people in IT because it pays (Score:5, Interesting)
I honestly have never been able to understand why someone would choose a career they have no great intrest in simply because they could make fairly good money.
There are a lot of places you can make good money apart from IT but people seem to have got caught up in the IT boom period and thought that IT was the only way to make good money and those not in IT would be at a disadvantage somehow..
Re:Too many people in IT because it pays (Score:5, Interesting)
But I wonder - what are they considering programmers? Are people who do drag-and-drop VB6 and don't code and won't move to VB.NET programmers? Are people who can handle data efficiently in Office considered programmers? I know that the COBOL programmer population is supposed to decline by 15% over the next four years due to retirement and death [cobolwebler.com], how many other "programmers" will cease to be because they themselves cease to be or the need for their position (read: not outsourced, just not neccessary) ceases to be.
Actually, there's another point - a lot of people are VB6 programmers - 3+ million of them last count. There are VB6 badasses out there, don't get me wrong, but there's bound to be a large number of them who are simply put not programmer types and can't hang with newer stuff like VB.NET so they won't upgrade and at some point they'll have to change career paths. 235,000 out of 3 million isn't all that much.
And wait a minute. Quoth the article: 235,396 fewer ... This is a 25% reduction. Is the article saying that there are only 941,584 programmers today? At all? That's crazy - there's like 90,000 COBOL programmers alone. These numbers don't make sense.
Regarding "941,584 programmers today" (Score:4, Informative)
585,000 computer programmers [bls.gov]
697,000 software engineers [bls.gov]
And that doesn't include the 887,000 systems analysts, computer scientists, and database administrators [bls.gov], some of which are almost certainly working in programming positions.
However, given that these numbers (1,282,000 computer programmers and software engineers) are from the year two thousand, before the massive layoffs of the past few years really started happening, the 941,584 number doesn't seem all that out of the ballpark.
Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today" (Score:3, Interesting)
I voted for Clinton, in tech, and I'm unemployed. I also have a decent grasp on the facts. The H1-B program was started to meet a need in the United States. We had companies with massive tech needs and not enough workers to fill the positions (I know, sounds crazy today, doesn't it?).
However, given that these numbers (1,282,000 computer programmers and software engineers) are from the year two thousand, before the massive layoffs of the past few years really started happening,
What
Re:Regarding "941,584 programmers today" (Score:4, Insightful)
It really doesn't matter why it happened, or how the Clinton regime justified it. Trust me, there were enough programmers in the 90's to get the job done, and via organic growth (ie, American college graduates coming out of college with C/S degrees) we would have been able to handle the load. The Clinton administration sold you out, which is funny because you eagerly put them there and support them to this day.
Boil it down. Look at the facts. One point three million H1-B visas issued. One point three million software engineers/techs currently working in the United States. Pretty simple math. If Clinton hadn't been in office, it wouldn't have happened and you would still have a job. A good job at that.
-Nowadays, an even cheaper alternative to going through all that is just to ship the whole of your IT operations to India, no muss no fuss. Which brings us to today.
Perhaps had the floodgates not been opened bringing us the brown tide, this wouldn't have been the case.
And those are the facts. Boil it down to simple numbers and those are the facts. And yes, I hold Clinton responsible - completely.
Re:Too many people in IT because it pays (Score:3, Interesting)
I know someone that I work with that can't program for beans (even though she has a masters in Software Engineering) but she sure knows how to "Email." I also know far too many good programmers that have been jobless for over a year which prooves management doesn't know how to tell the good programmers from the bad ones.
Re:Too many people in IT because it pays (Score:5, Interesting)
All I hear on the radio is: "Hey, sick of your job? why not become microsoft certified and make money for doing nothing?!?"
Or on TV: "I was a trucker, never did anything in my life... but then I decided to go to ITT Tech and now after 2 months of distance learning, I'm THE network administrator for a fortune-500 company!"...
People actually buy that bullshit...
I mean... come on.
I also see a lot of people that one day, when it was time to decide to chose a career, decided "Hey... computer talk is cool... I want to be cool!" and also "Hey, I'm pretty good at warcraft III, I probably have some hidden talent for computers, I should go and be a programmer"
I hope they all die.
Re:Too many people in IT because it pays (Score:3, Interesting)
Not if the job counseling professionals have anything to say about it. Every time a manufacturer shuts down a plant around here, you hear them advising laid off workers to get training in "high tech", because that's where the jobs are today and in the future. <sarcasm>That must be why it only took me (ex-analyst, 15 years experience) almost a year to land an entry-level tech support job that pays what I made 10 years
Amen to that (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, most of these IT Experts are unemployed. One of them followed my advice and became a succesful real-estate agent.
If you don't enjoy doing something DON'T BASE YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE ON IT.
common sense 101
Are you in the real world? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Big Deal (Score:5, Informative)
First we made information networked and portable so that anyone is capable of working with it at any place.
Then we actively promoted "free" software that we work on for no pay. We actively promoted others to use "free" software and to produce it themselves.
Now we act surprised when others are capable of writing software in other countries and are willing to do it for low wages.
Survival of the fitest in this case means we ACTIVELY WORKED at making our jobs less valuable and our presense less nessesary. I'm not saying this is a bad thing; we just reap what we sow.
TW
Re:Big Deal (Score:5, Funny)
> you better start looking elseware
What a neat term for software made by overseas contract programmers
"Elseware"
Re:Whatever happened to... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whatever happened to... (Score:3, Insightful)
You remember when Wal-Mart claimed everything was made in America. Apparently you missed the part where they got busted for fudging labels or some such and silently dropped the "Made in America" scam.
Re:Whatever happened to... (Score:3, Insightful)
You've been importing way more than you've been exporting for years now. For a while foreign investors used these dollars to buy up American companies and other investments, but at the moment that doesn't look very promising (and the interest on dollars is way too low). As a result, the world doesn't need any more of the dollars you give them so the dollar is now falling as a rock.
Pretty soon, the rest of the world will be too expensive instead.
Re:Whatever happened to... (Score:4, Interesting)
While the expected outcome of retraining for some segments of the blue collar workforce (older, less skilled) may have been overly optimistic, the idea wasn't at all hypocritical, it was logical -- a guy that worked with machines might likely have become retraied for running a more sophisticated machine tool or something.
Unfortunately, retraining can't take into account the zeal at which corporate management has decided to move ANY job which pays more than minimum wage overseas. In an era in which Wall Street considers a company with jobs that pay something akin to middle-class wages as having "uncompetitively high labor costs", then there will be nothing to retrain for, except operating the fryer at the local corporate fast food place.
In that reality, retraining is fruitless. But we're racing to the bottom, creating a plutocratic society where government and industry collude to create a handful of very wealthy people and a sea of working poor, with little in between.
Re:the, err, rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think a corporation deserves market protection from cheap foreign goods if they're exploiting the lack of labor protection?
If companies want to play the "global market" game, then either A) labor should have tarrifs or B) goods should not. Make it fair for everyone involved. Joe Normal will be able to afford to continue his lifestyle after being laid off in favor of people from Esbotsunania who do a quarter of the work for a tenth of the pay. At hourly wages, he'd probably even be able to buy more DVDs at hong kong prices, more toys for his kids imported direct from china without all those brand names. And afford cheap software written in India by the independent programmers who are not owned by American corporations (or those who defect from their outsourcing agreement and set up a competing shop).
Re:the, err, rest of the world (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly !! if americans had got back isolated, then this outsourcing woud not have happened. I have wrote this in earlier discussions and would say it again. Outsouring is part of so called "globalisation" which is something amrica started , perpetuated and above all BENEFITED the most. More than any other country in the world america has contributed and benefited out of this process. Now you think its not good fo
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely right (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of how much better off in terms of job security, benefits, and salary the IT industry in the US could be today had they unionized early enough. Protection could have also been built in to protect the proletariate from the export of jobs overseas. It's truly a shame.
Re:Absolutely right (Score:3, Insightful)
My father is in a union and has been for the better part of 30 years. He is very good at what he does and many times his supervisors have recomended him for raises based on merit. However, the union always comes back and says 'If we give him a raise we will have to give joe blow on 2nd shift a raise and he sucks'. In a union everything works based off the lowest common denominator, wages, contract negotiations, everything. There is also t
Re:Absolutely right (Score:5, Insightful)
What is he sacks you for _asking_ for a raise? Have you got the money to sue your employer?
How about the guy in the cubicle next to you gets a raise, yet he's no better than you and does no more work than you. You ask for a raise and get turned down.
The boss decides to cut your annual holiday entitlement to 10 days to boost productivity.
Tough. AT least in a union there'd have been someone there to fight for you.
Re:Absolutely right (Score:3, Insightful)
There are unions for skilled workers... Government employees are usually members. (Don't laugh. Government employees include NASA and Ames and Los Alamos and the like, m
Re:Absolutely right (Score:3, Interesting)
The goal! (Score:5, Insightful)
The key for the industry would be to figure out what features of those other industries can be "enhanced" or "embraced" in programming. OSS can be the solution to such a problem, but it has to get big enough to knock down companies like MS...who have commoditized software to a fault. the neat thing about it though is that programming is a "market" and as more people get laid off from the "megacorps" they go out and start the next revolution without the old players. Look at how HP, Apple, NVidia, etc were founded...and realize that it should be about to happen again!
Unions don't save jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions can help protect the safety and working conditions, they aren't an answer when the workers just aren't competative.
Re:is Open Source part of the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Without open source, companies such as IBM, with hundreds of thousands of employees w