Tech Employment Drops Sharply In 2004 557
Cryofan writes "According to Information Week, the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that
the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has fallen 15% since the first six months of 2004.
According to IT World, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
Disappearing IT jobs...Duuuuuhhhh!!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Great (Score:2, Insightful)
Thus, the percentage of real enthusiasts among IT people must have raised.
a few remarks (Score:5, Insightful)
- the number of it-pro's itself is completely irrelevant : maybe they learned something new and make a living now. What counts is the percentage of unemployed it-pros versus all it-pros, and the number of unemployed it-pro's versus the global unemployment percentage
summary : this article doesn't mean shit.
Re:Disappearing IT jobs...Duuuuuhhhh!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:technology ruins lives (Score:5, Insightful)
Consolidating markets (Score:3, Insightful)
Most computers are being used in offices and in homes. These are folk who, three years ago could get a PIII 700 running Win2k and Office. What reason do thy have to upgrade? What new features are on offer?
Hardware may be moving with leaps and bound, but at the desktop application level we aren't seeing that sort of progress. Nonetheless, things like 64bit computing with faster processors and obscene quantities of RAM will open up real-time desktop video editing to the masses - that might see a whole wave of upgrades. VOIP might see some big changes to POTS, but only if it can offer something new to encourage folk to upgrade. And, of course, we still haven't seen reliable speech processing, possibly the killer app but is there really a huge improvement from ViaVoice of 1999 to the software on the market today.
Frankly there's no reason to upgrade, and unless there is there's going to be a dwindling source of jobs in a consolidated market.
Am I unreasonable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, that must be it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll find the CIO calls himself an IT professional too, and that you are the exception rather than the rule in calling yourself non "IT Professional".
Even if it does represent people climbimg the corporate ladder, its not a ladder, its a pyramid with fewer jobs higher up than lower down.
So even then, it would represent fewer jobs.
Re:Consolidating markets (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the new viruses require at least a 1.5ghz processor
But yea, my mom doesn't need anything faster for email and web surfing. She has a 2.0 Celeron box from Dell that I bought her (live 1300 miles away, wanted the support for her) so she is not likely to need anything faster until it dies. The only reason "regular" people upgrade is for games. Hell, I went and upgraded my video card yesterday just to play Doom3.
The problem with computers isn't speed, its software. I setup a webserver to talk to my X10 modules here at the house, so I can turn lights on and off from anywhere in the world. I had to patch together all kinds of software to make this happen, as I haven't seen any packages that could do everything my kludge of packages can do. Home automation doesn't need powerful computers, it needs software. We are underutilizing the hardware we already have.
Part of this problem, of course, is the fact that manufacturers will not agree on standards for appliances to talk to each other. Each demanding a proprietary system, thinking it will protect them, when it only makes the irrelevent. This is one of the reasons I am pro-OSS, as open standards are what will bring us the really cool software that we could have run on P3/500s had it existed at the time.
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:a few remarks (Score:5, Insightful)
These numbers are regarding the first 6 months of 2004, and April-July 2004 respectively. Did pets.com just experience another layoff? The boom has been over for some time -- I'd surmise these lost jobs had zero to do with the boom being over. I think the self-reassuring comments about "Well these are all Devry grads" or "These were just holdovers from 2000" can be just about completely put to rest, sorry folks.
Re:It's Open Source's Fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Was there a big loss in jobs when Sun came into existence and decided to make cheap (compared to the rest of the players in that market at the time) workstations and small servers with off the shelf parts instead of proprietary, custom stuff?
Did the release of perl 5 cause the numbers of programmers to drop signficantly?
New versions of BLAST cause a sudden drop in programmers doing genetic work?
LLNL releasing some mathematics libraries tank the engineering software market?
Unemployment numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wish they would have broken down the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to agree with the parent. Lot of people who were never qualified to do tech jobs aren't doing them anymore because the companies realised that they aren't value for money.
I wouldn't expect great demand for MSc./PhD. qualifications, just because I think that 3 years of CS theory is more than enough for any IT job. What you then need is experience. This not to say that PhD. is not useful for R&D people, but such jobs are few and far apart.
Also how many people don't call themselves IT professionals because it's no longer "chic"?
Re:Disappearing IT jobs...Duuuuuhhhh!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Decreased demand for your product. Check!
2. Increased competetion from overseas. Check!
3. Changes in technology/methologies that make your job redundant(as Vonnegut reffered to it, aculturation). Check!
With modern tools the amount of work that actually has to be done by programmers has been drastically reduced both by new tools and by new methodologies(like agile/extreme programming) call for a smaller number of people to work on a project. IE you spend less of your time speccing out requirements that will change next week anyhow, and more time getting things done. This is why I think that Indian outsourcing is just a fad, throwing bodies at a problem is rarely the correct way to go about doing anything. Like in the Pacifici in WWII, the Japanese would go blindly charge at a few marines, but the highly specialised and mobile marines would wipe them all out with a few casualties.
The work done by Indian/Phillipine/whatever outsourcers has to be the menial boring work because they aren't close enough to the customer to do the highly challenging/creative stuff(for the US market anyway, in India they are closer to the customer). The work that most of them do(there are obvious exceptions such as certain embedded products where you don't really have to be close to a customer) will be done by something cheaper than Indians: computers. Automated software writers are still at least a decade away, but it's kind of naive to think they will never exist.....
So yeah, it does suck now, but I guess this should act as a warning, find something else to do, because you may be able to use politicians to fight outsourcing, but you can't use them to fight machines....
Re:OR... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe they went back to school. Or they went to other fields after management racheted up the IT industry to insane levels during the Boom and then vomited them out saying it was "a normal business cycle" whilst giving themselves bigger and bigger corporate bonuses.
Re:Am I unreasonable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:3, Insightful)
Statistics are like bikinis. (Score:4, Insightful)
- unknown
RE: Tech employment drops.... (Score:2, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer to your question is in the second sentance of the article:
Read further and you will see the breakdowns by job category. Some are in more demand. Others, such as systems analysts like me, are in less demand. The net effect is an increase in the number of unemployed who call themselves computer professionals. If they had learned another trade - or had jobs - they would have answered the Census Bureau survey differently.
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Even ignoring tech jobs, the job sitation was pretty good under Clinton, and still not break even under Bush
2. Eventually you have to come to the conclusion that either Democrats are all very lucky, or that they're doing something better.
As for the Internet, this seems to indicate that the bidding for the ARPANET contract started in 1968, under the LBJ adminstration.
Here [wordiq.com]
I wonder if this happened during the depression (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a lot of this is just self denial, a way of psychologically dealing when bad things happen to other people that could just have well happened to you. You just tell yourself that you're different and that can't happen to you. Ask any outplacement counselor and they will tell you that one of the big problems is people going into shock because they all thought it wouldn't happen to them.
Stupid stats - read the articles yourselves (Score:5, Insightful)
The plausible stats I saw were:
If we're just going for shock-the-readers headlines based on these stats, try this one:
InformationWeek reports that according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there's now one manager to every 1.85 computer programmers. At current rates, managers will outnumber programmers in a few years.
(InformationWeek reports 341k managers vs 632k computer programmers.. but that report based upon those numbers is obviously misleading.)
Re:I wish they would have broken down the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess what, my total education costs to go to Penn State for 4 years will be about $50,000, and guess what, I paid for about 90+% of it. I worked the crappy jobs thoughout high school and college, I worked 30 hours a week while going to school full time and about 60-70 during the summer. I also got scholarships to help out, and took out about $30k in loans, which if I join the armed forces after graduation, I can get the Army to pay for it. I'm not what you would call, "an academic elite", middle of 3 children of a single schoolteacher mother.
You may be tired of the academic elites, but I am tired of people like you who think school has, "no real world value", guess what, you are in your 20's, that means that you got a chance to get in while the getting was good. Doubtful that very many people like you can get away with that now. And the chance I had to go to Japan(paid for with my own money) to work for 6 months at an R&D lab is just as valuable as your, "real world experience"
Re:yeah, maybe in 50 years it creates more jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll find that success most often comes to those who are superb bullshitters with great ass-kissing and "looking busy" skills but very little else. Shit floats.
What's an IT Pro to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe anybody has the gall to print these alarmist "BSCS graduate numbers are declining!" articles. Companies don't want BSCS's they want slave labor. Such labor can be in the form of:
1) H1B visas
2) Jobs exported overseas
3) USA citizens forced to work for reduced wages.
I wish I had the fore-sight to go to law school and specialize in IP litigation, that is going to be where the money is. Instead of making money by being productive and/or innovative, we'll all make money be suing each other.
I'm open to any career change suggestions. I have a degrees in math and business. But it's been a long time. I've worked in IT for 24 years. There is a lot I like about IT. But, it gets old being treated like a dog to kick around.
Screw it; I'm outta here (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with the rest of the people, I'm just not very good at being whatever-it-you-call it. Successful. Evil. Whatever. I'm over 30 now and through with programming as a profession or even giving a shit what happens in the industry.
I'm content to be a hobbyist dinking with Linux at night from now on and being a total Rodney Dangerfield. I'd rather just be poor.
Explaining oil to /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well oil is to the world economy what Windows is to MicroSoft. Oil is turned into fertilizer [findarticles.com] so all high-carbohydrate crops and the livestock that feed on them are just an "X-Box" from an economic viewpoint.
All transportation, manufacturing, etc. are also 100% dependent on enegy from fossile fuels. All plastics, nylon, etc are made directly from oil.
When oil prices go up it's like Windows ceasing to be the "money printing press" for MicroSoft. The net effect is that the whole world is made poorer.
Re:It's just "Turtles All The Way Down," huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't worry, most of these are the types who got into computers because they thought it would make them rich and are probably the types who have a hard enough time just coding a simple VB app. They will move on to something else. The people who are really into it and have the skills need to put in that extra effort to keep going. This is only a small portion of the 131k.
Re:Am I unreasonable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, some people got greedy. But so what? For all the people on slashdot happily talking about how this "correction" is just a part of the glories of Capitalism: laborers have just as much of a right to be greedy as managers.
Look at the realities of many IT jobs, perhaps nearly all of them:
And the list goes on. I was up till 1:00 last night (yeah, Saturday night but my wife was working next to me), working on learning Smalltalk. I won't be compensated for it, its part of the job. Is there anything wrong with thinking, gee, even though its part of the job, I should be paid for the extra time I spend learning?
IT workers may have been greedy, but not as greedy as management. Why should someone with an undergraduate Human Resources degree, limited hours, very little need to learn new skills, etc. earn the same amount of money as a programmer who has to do the above list?
Managers became afraid that finally, a group of educated and independant individuals were entering the work force and demanding to be paid what they worth. The nerds had entered the palace! And now, managers are delighted because the nerds are on the run... things are back to the way they should be, with accountants, mid-level managers, human resources staff, and others earning more than those geek-ass goobers.
Who moved my Cheese? (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, Your Boss is a Rat
Who REALLY moved your cheese and why!
By: John Shepler
If you think something smells rotten in corporate America, you're right. It's a foul aroma wafting in from the executive suites, where the rats are jumping for joy at the success of their latest manifesto, "Who Moved My Cheese?", subtitled...get this, "An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and In Your Life."
"We moved it," they squeal with delight, "and when we want to, we'll move it again." Why? Very simple. Management has discovered that moving or removing YOUR cheese can be quite advantageous to them. But they've known that for a more than a decade. What they've just begun to realize is that it's possible to sell employees on the idea that this is perfectly OK. I'll elaborate, but first let me tell you how it all began.
It Takes Only a Minute
Management has a Holy Grail and it is known as "the silver bullet," also called the quick fix. It's epitomized in a small, thin book called "The One Minute Manager" by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. (piled higher and deeper) and Spencer Johnson, M.D. (mostly deeper.) The theme of "The One Minute Manager" is that business people, especially managers, spend way too much time mulling over problems, internalizing them, and debating on what to do next. Much better, proposed Blanchard and Johnson, to jump in, collect all the facts that are at your fingertips or can be coaxed out of your subordinates, and make a snap decision in one minute or less. Actually, the primary decision is which employees can best be made to take ownership of the problem, strategically moving the burning acid of responsibility from your stomach to theirs. If things improve, you allocate no more than one more minute to tell them how great they are doing. If the situation deteriorates, you allocate that same minute to making darn sure that they feel terrible about it and will work even harder to keep the problem from returning to you.
A Revolution in Business Thinking
Think this is funny? It's revolutionary. The enabling power of one minute management has caused the entire Fortune 500 to refocus from the concept of stewardship, with a responsibility to the community that spans generations, to a slavish devotion to the needs of the institutional investor, primarily an increased stream of earnings every fiscal quarter. White-collar layoffs, almost unheard of prior to the 1980s, are now a standard tool of expense management. With only a minute needed for problem solving, the span of control for managers has increased as much as ten fold and the number of people assigned to non-producing supervisory functions proportionally reduced. Productivity, as measured by corporate earnings, soared to create the raging bull market of the 1990s. Johnson and Blanchard are lauded in corporate circles. But the emphasis on rapid decision making has led to shortened attention spans. It's already time for something new...
The Big Cheese
The toll of one minute everything is burning out once naive and eager employees, anxious for their leg up the corporate ladder. The abuses of ever increasing demands have created calluses of cynicism that are best portrayed in the characters of Scott Adams' Dilbert. Now everyone sees themselves as an oppressed Dilbert or Wally and adopts a passive/aggressive approach to corporate survival.
Re-enter Johnson, sans Blanchard, with a new silver bullet, this one cleverly disguised as an irresistible morsel of cheese. And who can resist the power of cheese? It's a story that is designed once again to get the onus of action into the mind of the common employee. Without giving too much away, here's how it goes.
It seems that there are two mice and two small people living in a maze. They dine on a seemingly endless supply of cheese provided by an unseen benevolent caretaker. All are complacent and happy with this scenario, until one day the cheese is gone. The mice shrug and take off down the corridors of the maze to find more
My story (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:3, Insightful)
Still looks good for the Clinton presidency, but staggeringly so.
Yes, IAE (I am an economist).
Re:A Colossus With Weak Knees (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfettered free trade is not helping this country, mainly because it isn't free trade. China wants to send stuff to the US, but has no interest in buying US products. Besides the obvious under-valued currency, there are also a lot of other barriers to US goods in the Chinese market. There are huge tariffs and quotas on everything imported into China from the US. If the US tried to impose these quotas on China, China would scream bloody murder at the WTO. In order to even sell stuff in the Chinese market, you have to make a large percent of it in China, and transfer a lot of technology to the Chinese government.
Why is the US standing idly by you ask? Because our leaders don't give a shit about you and I. The huge tax cust is funded China is buying a large amount of the US deficit. We are esentially borrowing from China to buy Chinese goods and making a lot of influential people in Washington very rich.
This is a country who's top general said as recently as 1996 that war with the US was inevitable.
The US is losing the war on communism with Wal-Mart leading the charge!
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:2, Insightful)
I really think a lot more is attributed to presidents than is actually the case. Sure they "set the tone," collect aids and cabinet, make speaches, etc. But if one person is really affecting something this big and important, then there's something wrong with our checks and balances system.
Re:What's an IT Pro to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
But perhaps the most interesting question is why they are at such a rush for cheap labor. I think blaming "the competition" (i.e., India) is not quite right, and long-winded rants about Reaganomics are really missing the mark. A widespread job market crunch toward the bottom of the wage stack cannot be caused so easily by an American president giving a tax refund.
It's actually the same force that causes companies to be so keen on DRM. There are too few corporations that are too large in size. They don't have normal routes to growth in the marketplace and so they must use "monopoly growth" strategies -- so instead of competing for customers they compete to lower wages, or compete to raise barriers to market entry.
There is probably nothing that can address downward-spiraling wages other than breaking up the monolithic corporations that have gobbled up so much of the economy.
Good Riddance (Score:1, Insightful)
To suggest that this is the result of either offshoring or opensourcing is chicken***t. Going offshore only works, and is only economical, if you need an army of programmers. And what worthwhile software was ever produced by an army? There are more then enough good jobs for good programmers in the U.S.A. If your job has been offshored, improve your skills.
And as for opensource, has anybody noticed how many sysadmins it takes to run a data center built on opensource components. Far more "IT Professional" jobs are on the user side than in ISVs. The number of people employed keeping Apache software alone up and runnning is staggering. FWIW, ~mark
Re:I wish they would have broken down the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Fresh grauduates from anywhere, university or tech school are not very in demand right now (unless you are walking out of Standford with a PhD and into someplace like Google). Two of my friends who graduated from a university with me have been un/under employed for the past 2-3 years. What gets you the job these days is experience, or so I'm told.
No, you should be looking at getting experience somehow, somewhere... unless you want to stay in school for a few more years in hopes that the demand for tech labor will be back up by the time you graduate... but that is a bit of a gamble.
Re:yeah, maybe in 50 years it creates more jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks, I would rather fail while trying, than cry and die because I may fail. Guess what: life is full of risks, I would rather decide my own risks, rather than be a drone in a company where the risks are there but hidden from my eyes.
Yes, most start up businesses fail in the first few years. What you didn't mention was that most businesses fail from mismanagement, not circumstances. So the answer is that no one should start a business? No one should take risks? We should all abandon all hope and just go "get a job"?
No thanks. I choose to not live with such a doom and gloom outlook on life, making myself a "victim". Life has thrown me many curve balls (which I won't cover, because they are irrelevent, we all have challenges and mine are no more important than yours), but I have come out swinging and done fine. I am not better, smarter, better educated or luckier than anyone else. I just refuse to roll over and die, and willing to make the sacrifices for something that is important to me. Its more about attitude than anything else. I choose to not give up.
History is full of people who faced more adversity than you or I know, and the ones that gave up, we don't know about as they are forgettable and forgotten. The ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and succeeded in spite of the odds, should provide enough inspiration for the rest of us.
Abe Lincoln is the best example. Go read about all his failures, lost elections, failing law practice, limited education, for decades before becoming president. Just about everything he tried before becoming President was filled with failure, yet it was his unwillingness to quit that best defined him, and presented him with the opportunity to become argueably our most important President ever.
Re:Changing courses (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're making a smart move, despite all the negative replies to your comment. The job of flying passengers from Chicago to LA cannot easily be outsourced to India. Right now, the air tranportation industry is having some temporary problems, but it will recover as it always has in the past. Whereas software development, or circuit design, will never recover because there will never be any reason to bring those jobs back from India/China/Vietnam etc.
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:0, Insightful)
That's partially due to the regulatory effect, or really, the lack of regulatory processes and oversight, during crooked Democratic administrations. Look at Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, etc that happened on Clinton's watch. Combining an underfunded SEC with a directive that certain corporations were off-limits (as long as they shared the wealth with the Dems) and you're certain to see the market get hyped. And don't forget all the money from business technically prohibited, like selling missile tech to China. As long as a donation is made to the right party, everything's cool.
Of course, when the Republicans come in, the fascists pigs start putting rules on all this mess and the market goes down. Actually, much of it seems to do with the fact that the Republicans got hammered with Watergate and have been shy of big scandles ever since (though the Dem's media outlets would have you believe minor bumbling by any Republican is a big thing), while the Dems got the message reinforced during Clinton that the trick is just to stall and lie.
Now they've got a presidential candidate that's pals with Ken Lay (Enron chief scamster), Martha Stewart, Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom) and many other scams. Absent interest in exposing these crooks by the newsmedia, it doesn't look like it is about to change. The funniest thing? These cons fund "grass roots" initiatives like MoveOn.org, tell the masses that they're really not bad guys and it is the Republicans they should fear, while the cons keep playing their game. Look at MoveOn's attack on Bush regarding outsourcing of US jobs. Then go look at George Soros's investments and position on outsourcing: his own advisors instruct the companies he invests in to outsource IT and operations. Most of his holdings, in fact, have boosted profits by outsourcing.
So how does a few million to a guilt-trip organization absolve Soros of his crimes?
Re:OR... (Score:1, Insightful)
I spent 2 years studying in science and 4 years in computer science. In all the jobs I worked between 98 and 2003 at least half the "developers" where just amateur, script kiddies and wanabes that picked up "Learn Java in 21 days" or build 4 web sites for family members and used that portfolio to get a job when no technical questions are asked in the interview by desperate managers (no wonder so many
That "fake half" did not understand OOA / OOD or even structured programming. Most never used a debugger; even a CTO with "a very technical background" (say him) that did not understand what a linker would do (Hi Paul, still treecing?).
But they where all claiming to be "IT professional in a
What really bothers me is how much of them have better talent to sell themselves (and sometime just better personal hygiene) to keep the job during cutbacks, while "real competent" coders are laid off.
Re:yeah, maybe in 50 years it creates more jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the ones that sucked it up, worked harder, took risks, and unfortunately failed (as that's what happens with risk). They don't make for good copy, so the successes get more attention.
Abe Lincoln is the best example. Go read about all his failures, lost elections, failing law practice, limited [snip... see parent]
Please read this [snopes.com]. I generally agree with what is said; namely, that Lincoln's achievements do not need embellishment with "glurge" to stand up.
BTW, I agree with some of what you said, but not the "risk-takers always win!" gloss you put on it. Sometimes you have to go in with your eyes open, accept that you might get squashed, and go ahead and risk it anyway.
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:3, Insightful)
If you check back in your history books, left wing governments will always be able to provide more jobs than their right wing counterparts.
Most of the times, historically, where there has been a recovery from an economic recession, it has been due to a left wing government being elected.
The main tactic is to increase taxes, and create new pubilc sector jobs from that revenue. Or to provide companies with hiring incentives (covering a portion of an employees salary).
These strategies will not make anybody rich, but they do stop a recession. What you need to get out of a recessions is jobs for everybody. The more people that have jobs, the more people that have money to spend. With more spending comes a higher success rate for jobs in the private sector. As these jobs increase, the employers hire more people.
Then they all want more money, and elect a right wing government to lower their taxes and the recession starts again.
Re:It's just "Turtles All The Way Down," huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it interesting that you would quote exactly what he wrote, and then baldly mischaracterize his statement in the rest of your comment. He most pointedly did not say "just 'work my ass off.'" He said, "taking risks and working your ass off."
In other words, he's not claiming that you and the 131K should all merely compete against each other for the same corporate jobs by working hard. He's saying you have the ability to take a risk and start up your own business. And that if you are successful, you will not only employ yourself but in all likelihood several of the 131K unemployed tech workers. Jobs don't just exist in the ether. Someone had to create them. And the next someone could be you. And if it's not you, some of your fellow unemployed group will have an entrepreneurial drive and will create jobs. It'sl likely that when all is said and done, more jobs will be created than were outsourced or destroyed. That is how the economy grows. How do you think all those computer jobs came about in the first place?
Re:It's just "Turtles All The Way Down," huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you should look into another profession. He didn't say that hard work and taking risks would necessarily get you work as a software engineer. Adapt! I've been a programmer, trench digger, electrician, soldier, telecom technician, and a locksmith at various times over the last 15 years. There's always work.
Dot.bubble comparisons considered harmful (Score:3, Insightful)
America can either Open Source or Out Source (Score:2, Insightful)
In fact, the costs of IT have ballooned, directly because of ignorant people, like yourself making IT decisions, or managing IT people.
The problem: Reinvention of the wheel at every business, and over-charging for obvious IT solutions.
Evidence of this:
Most BUSINESS related software is made using MS-related technologies, like VB,
Most OPEN SOURCE software is based on C, perl, php, Java. This means, businesses are paying more for obvious solutions, instead of using open-source software. Why? IT Staff and "consultants", who know only the microsoft way of doing things are lying to non-technical managers and business owners, everytime they tell them, that MSSQL/ASP/VB is the most viable solution.
How many inventory/CRM/ERP software solutions are way too expensive? Most of them.
Example:
ofbiz.org offers a full business solution for free, yet, I find "consultants" charging each company $1,000 per year for something as simple as a "work-flow" manager. This is module #6 in ofbiz. This particular consultant took MS Project, exported the results, made some designer-level changes, along with a customizable syntax by industry, and charges $1,000 a year as an "affordable" solution.
Businesses are over-charged by consultants.
Not only is the wheel reinvented every time a consultant builds a "cusom-solution", but the "custom-solution" has to be reinvented, if another business wants a similar feature. Imagine if Operating Systems were handled like this; Home users would pay for every driver they need by 3rd-party hacks. Lastly, if Linux didn't exist, MS prices for the home version would probably be closer to $1,000
The IT Business Sector is full of people who don't really know what they are talking about, and are costing american businesses alot of money.
I personally know tech-support managers, who don't know why we would want a centralized resolution-database for the techs! Everybody was writing-down their own resolutions, instead of sharing; The irony; The managers stayed, and the IT staff was cut by 30% in the middle of a code-change nightmare, where customers' average hold-time on the phone was an hour. You gotta wonder, how these people are even employable.
Companies pay several thousand dollars to run MS SQL? Why would companies with 1 server and less than 50 people do such a thing, when mysql/postgresql and others exist? Why? Because either an incompetent IT person doesn't really know how to migrate data, the company software isn't "supported" on that db engine (read: so what; most companies don't support the sql-side of things anyway!!!), or a dishonest consultant is ready to make a buck off of this company's ignorance.
American business can embrace outsourcing or open source. Outsourcing only lowers the labor costs for the company who is over-charging for their software; Thus, the rest of the industry still pays the same price, regardless of where it's made. Open-Source software not only lowers the cost of OBVIOUS solutions to zero, it will also get rid of so-called "consultants", who depend on customer ignorance to over-charge.
Remember "Value Added" Solutions?
Basically, this means, add-ons to an existing solution. American business will NEVER see the benefits of "value-added" software without open-source. There is no incentive to share code and solutions without open-source software (free to share/use/change). The alternative is the present-day situation, and man, somebody is ripping someone off big time!
Everyone was a sw engineer during the bubble years (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I will not for for a MA liberal. (Score:4, Insightful)
When you are a big boy come back and maybe we can talk.
Re:Job "loss" (Score:4, Insightful)
Neo-Cons and 'Starve the Beast' (Score:5, Insightful)
But even the traditional policy can lead to disaster. Infrastructure requires constant maintenance. Think of a loose shingle on your roof. Replacing it will cost 50 dollars. If you leave it, the others around will will also come loose. Now you have to spend 500 dollars to fix it. Let this go, and you suffer water damage. $5000 to replace that section of the roof. Ignore this, and the water may get into the house, into the wiring, and cause a fire. Then you lose the whole house. Costs delayed are costs increased. Ignore the state of your highways, power grid, environment, etc, and the costs that you incur when you can no longer ignore it will be crippling.
The danger of 'Starve the Beast' should be obvious. The economy runs on the rails of infrastructure provided by the government; highways, police, courts, regulations which protect business as well as prevent unfair practices, etc. Without the ability to do this, capitalism itself will collapse. Corporations are, first and foremost, legal entities sanctioned by government authority. Their very existence is made possibly by the efficacy of government. And we haven't even touched on the military yet. A bankrupt federal government will mark the end of America as a Superpower. All of this is why large numbers of old school conservatives are furious with Bush.
I still haven't touched on the liberal arguments against what Bush is doing. Those who have little money left over after necessities pay a much larger proportion of their income in taxes, through sales tax. There is no tax on securities and stocks, and the financial slight of hand that uses tax shelters is available only to those with a large surplus of capital. When Henry Ford paid his workers an unheard of amount of money for common labourers, he created a large working middle class, with disposable income which allowed them to buy the products of their own labour. This rendered obsolete what was probably the only legitimate claim of Karl Marx: that when workers could no longer buy the products of their own labour, the markets would collapse. The result of Ford's policy eventually spread to most of the American working class, creating the most powerful economic dynamo the world has ever seen. The decline of the middle and working classes make the pie smaller for everyone. The rich may get richer for while, but they will be fewer in number. It is only a matter of time before they feel the pinch. The wolf that grows fat on the poor will soon go after bigger prey.
Both the long term and the short term consequences of Bush's policies are disastrous. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. It may be disastrous for the Democrats if they win, because they will inherit such a mess that it will be hard to wow the crowd. America cannot afford four more years of Bush. And even the conservatives are beginning to realize this.
Re:It's Open Source's Fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Bascially, little 1-3 person software shops, writing little utilities, are now expected to give their software away for free!
All "Free Software" has done is made a few companies, very very big, and put all the little guys out of business.
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't remember exactly which chart I saw, but, from a search, here is a good one [cedarcomm.com] and here is another version [brillig.com].
Open Source Might Help Jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wish they would have broken down the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
your point 1), I agree with. My bachelors will be in chemistry, but that hasn't stopped me from getting over five years of professional experience at this point. Employers seem to like people that can solve problems. ;)
your point 2), you probably meant GHWB. I don't think that GHWB's rather anemic economic policies can fully or even partially explain the boom of the 90s. If anything, the economy sucked pretty well through '94, two years after he'd left office. I'm not sure what Sen. Kerry's service in Vietnam has to do with this. Re: alternative energy: (a) ford just announced a hybrid, the japanese makers pretty much all have at least one hybrid model at this point. (b)There's a lot of argument in science about fusion, especially the Big Physics establishment that seems to have gathered and self-perpetuated around that area of research in the last fifty years. Too many egos and careers are tied up in that for some to look in directions other than multi-ton fusion testbeds, and those "some" typically run departments and otherwise hold positions of power. Re: Sen. Kerry's "flipflopping", IMHO it's high time we had somebody in office willing to change course if something isn't working, rather than stupidly and doggedly tilting at whatever windmill seems useful, poltically convenient, or profitable.
*shrug* you started off good, but somewhere in there derailed into a rant. ;)
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't say tap it, I just said stop filling it during a time when oil is very expensive and supplies are tight. There is a lot of oil in the reserve already, it would be nice to stop filling it until Yukos and various other problems are sorted out.
"I see you and Michael Moore share the same definition of "fact"."
Uh what are Republicans for then. They are overwhelmingly the party of rich white men and corporations. Those people care about profits and wealth accumulation to the exclusion of just about everything else. They do sucker a lot of less affluent whites into support them but its using sucker social issues like religion, militarism, abortion etc. They have to because there aren't enough rich white men to win an election.
"Yes please, save me from the tyranny of Walmart's low prices. I also understand there's this product called "Linux", created largely with foreign labor, that's cutting into the profits of real American companies like Microsoft and SCO."
The point you are trying to make here is completely lost on me other than I assume you are trying to slam Linux and troll using Microsoft and SCO. Didn't work. Your statement is just bait still dangling on a forlorn hook.
"Corporations don't pay taxes"
Well then why do the Republicans keep howling about the corporate tax burden? You glossed over the basic problem, why should a corporation be able to make money, not pay taxes on it and then dole it out share holders as dividends who also don't have to pay taxes on it. They didn't do any real work for it, they just had money and they made more money and they don't get taxed. Sweet job if you can get it. Meanwhile someone scraping by working for a living can't escape payroll taxes or income taxes and they end up increasingly carry the tax burden.
"But isn't it funny how the left howls..."
You seem to be operating under the delusion that I'm left or Democrat because I'm not a Republican. Believe it or not there are more than two sides in the world. I'm half arch conservative and half populist. I like my government as small as possible which means I'm not really left or democrat, but if you are going to tax I want you to tax the people that can pay first which makes me populist.
Social security was simply a dumb idea in its inception. When it was passed most people didn't live to retirement age. Now everyone lives 20-30 years past it and its eventually going to be untenable, now its just a huge burden on the young. Since the early eighties when the taxes were jack up its been mostly a regressive tax on the young and both parties are to blame for looting. I really just want the money I put in back, with minimal interest, instead of gambling I make it to some ridiculously high retirement age or that there is even any program left when I'm that old.
"Sort of true, except that the Iraq war wasn't intended to show a profit. If we wanted their oil, all we had to do was buy it (like France); that's far cheaper than paying to blow stuff up and paying again to rebuild it."
Excepting of course it was embargoed and only being sold through the corrupt UN oil for food program. The invasion did manage to put it back on the open market at least during the periods their pipelines aren't burning.
Its pretty native to paint it as either we did to take their oil or thats not why we did it. It is telling the Bremer spent a couple percent of the U.S. funds for rebuilding and he spent every bit of Iraq currents and near future oil revenue and most of it on U.S. companies like Halliburton.
The U.S. is in Iraq because the U.S. wanted a permanent military force in the heart of the oil rich Middle East. They had it in Saudi Arabia but the Saudi's put to many constraints on the U.S. military based there. In Iraq the U.S. has a compliant puppet government and can use Iraq as the base for future intimidation or invasion to insure control of oil
Re:America can either Open Source or Out Source (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost of obvious solutions will never be zero because the cost of nothing is zero. Even if every empoyee was a PHP or C coder the time to actually gather requirements, test, revise, and implement solutions costs money. There is nothing inherent in F/OSS that changes that.
So with this being the case, if a consultant feels that they can deliver the best product with MS tools them it's their choice. If they are overpriced, then it is the reponsibility of the company contracting the consultant to figure that out. It's called due diligence which is what most real businesses practice, either by getting a specialist to coordinate the contracting or bringing multiple contractors in and hearing what they all have to say.
Personally, as a part-time consultant, I see the aftermath of people getting screwed over by IT "gurus" all of the time so I hear what you're saying, but Open Source is not the magical answer to everybody's needs. There are as large a number of idiots that push F/OSS out of pure zealousness with only a marginal understanding of it as there are Microsoft shills and they all make us look bad. As soon as people stop treating software like it's fucking Jesus and start treating it like a pool of options to satisfy our customers then maybe we can overcome the bad rep that consultants have.
Re:It's just "Turtles All The Way Down," huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It reduces to the same dynamics, anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
It matters because if you work for yourself, you're creating at least one job, probably more. And if there are more jobs than people to take them, salaries go up for everyone.
As the neoliberal policies continue to decimate the job base and increase the unemployed
I find it interesting that few IT people complained when each one of our jobs were effectively replacing dozens of secretaries, accountants, and whole departments of low level paper pushers. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we expect the world to cry over our misfortune.
Re:It's Open Source's Fault (Score:3, Insightful)
A company says it needs a specialised software built for there company. Years ago this would have required big $$$ and for most companies it wouldn't be worth the expense. Now a small company can take an open source program that gets them 80% of the way to the solution and then customise it exclusive for the business. The overall cost of the solution is much less, the company has a package customised exactly for them.
I know people who run small Linux based consultancies doing just this and small teams are able to sell extremely sophisticated systems to large companies at very viable pricing levels.
Re:America can either Open Source or Out Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Using Microsoft so you can blame Microsoft is like drinking from an abundant polluted water source because you can blame the companies that trashed it and you don't know what you will do when the clean not-so-abundant water source runs out,
Excuse me, but when was the last time someone who chose Microsoft happily went out and sued Microsoft for all the security holes. And you can apply this to any large "unsuable" company. Have you ever read an EULA? The amount of non-compete indemnification language infused in those loaded documents should automatically invalidate your argument.
What's really wrong here is that commercial and non-commercial FOSS hasn't developed a model of taking responsibility to compete with the complete lack of it in the proprietary offerings.
I might just do it myself.
Back in the day when 50 programmers was a large team the notion of tracking responsibility after someone else had played with the source was unthinkable. The Internet meant "far, far, away". With tools available now the exact opposite exists as a possibility. The Internet is as close and personal as you can get. FOSS has been touting the many eyes advantage long enough to formally integrate it into the paperwork given to customers regarding their rights and benefits in choosing FOSS.
I really ought to write a proposal for this. It's getting highly ridiculous no one has yet put their liability where their mouth is.
Outsourced outsourcing... (Score:2, Insightful)
I read a number of rants. A number of "gloom and doom postings." I am also aware that the next place for computer programmers to be outsourced to will be where programmers, help desks and so on are cheaper than they are in India. That would be China, folks.
At first NAFTA was a rip-snorting success for Mexico. Problem is, the owners of these new plants didn't see the future coming, they just wanted to cash in on the now. So, while a number of rich plant owners in Mexico got richer (at least momentarily) American companies receiving a tax and labor cost benefit from moving to Mexico were learning that they could move out of the US without significantly harming their business and promptly moved to where wages are even lower than they are in Mexico.
After all, NAFTA rules say that workers have rights to organize, even in Mexico. Why not move somewhere where workers have no rights whatsoever.
In the United States, shortly after the Civil War, prisoners in penitentiaries were traded back and forth between companies doing business in the Deep South more or less as slave labor chain gangs. You can see exactly the same treatment -- and worse -- today in China. I will not knowingly purchase goods marked "Made in China" because I find the practice of near slavery and outright slavery repugnant.