The IT Labor Shortage 520
Carnage4Life writes "Dr. Dobbs Journal has a very insightful article on the shortage of IT professionals that is constantly being touted by the media and industry execs. It debunks this myth by discussing the results of the IT Workforce Data Project which indicate that there is anything but a shortage of IT professionals in industry today.
" Good points, talking about the oft-heard of preference for recent grads and such. What do you folks think? Is it hard to find a job?
Re:Depends on the area you live in. (Score:1)
Seriously folks, if you were looking for "IT Staff" wouldn't you want people who knew the technology you were using inside and out, and have worked with it for a few years, or a fresh off the street CS/MIS Grad?
It would depend sharply on the sort of work I was hiring the person for. If I just wanted someone to put a pretty GUI interface on the front of a database that someone else designed, I'd look for someone with lots of experience with the specific technologies I wanted used, and wouldn't worry about their degrees. If I want someone to analyze requirements, then design the database from scratch, I'd look for someone with a CS degree and some database experience, and wouldn't worry a bit whether or not they had experience with the specific database engine I wanted to use. The second sort of person is far rarer, and far harder to recognize when you encounter him or her.
Jobs in 10 years? (Score:1)
Re:IT shortage (Score:1)
The university system is not poised to effectively teach Computer Science. Respected schools like Cal Poly still teach Ada as a core language. The IT world changes much too fast for the university sytem to keep its curriculum current. Recent grads leave with a degree; training in obsolete areas; and a whole lot of theory with little practical relevence.
I have to disagree with the the claim that schools can't teach real Computer Science with Ada. I also have to disagree that a sound theoretical basis is useless.
I have a true Computer Science background. Backed up with a lot of theoretical math background. Having a fundamental understanding of Computer Science is invaluable as a Programmer, Tester, Analyst, Project Manager, and all of the other roles that Programmers fill in most software and IT shops. I've filled all of those roles and more.
What is useless (and comes out of a lot of Universities) is a degree in writing C programs or writing Java programs. My undergraduate work did not involve a lot coding. It did involve a lot of talking and drawing pictures. So many of the young programmers I meet don't really understand the magic box that they are sitting in front of. They lack basic architecture and algorithms understanding. They are clueless about even simple tree-traversal concepts and finite-state machines.
But, they have written moderate-size school projects in 1 to 4 languages. Big whoop.
I'd like to see a lot more sound Computer Science taught (with Turing Machines, Ada, Pascal or even BASIC, although I think I'd prefer Pascal or Java. Its pretty hard to develop certain bad habits (which annoy me personally) in either.).
I'd also like to see some non-programmer oriented IT degrees. The skills that lead to good Programmer/Analysts are not the same as the skills that lead to great sysadmins. Why can't we train them differently?
Geez, I'm starting to sound like a real old geezer. I'm not even 30. Oh wait, approaching 30 is old geezer these days.
DAMNIT: SUPPLY = DEMAND (Score:1)
Not so much a total shortage (Score:1)
*points to the mass of MSCE's next door*
Granted, some of them _are_ smart. But the majority of IT workers I enounter now would have a hard time telling sendmail.cf/apache confs/etc from thier arse. The whole 'I got my cert, Im cool now' attitude I see really bugs me since it devaluates the skilled workers out there.
Like grits? [unlimitedcontrol.com] Who doesn't!
Re:IT shortage - it's the competency, stupid (Score:1)
I agree, it should really be called the "compentent IT shortage". You could say it was just that I didn't look in the right places or didn't study hard enough, but right here in Portland, Oregon I had fair amount of difficulty finding a position programming.
When I did get one in a small start-up, I found myself working with mostly incompetents. In the past year, we've chewed through three contractors who had resumes making them look ten times better than me, but lasted an average of two months after demonstrating that they couldn't so much as write a half-decent web page.
I'm not saying that I'm a guru or anything, but I didn't even know what "ASP" stood for before I started here, so I expected anyone who claims to have three years of web development experience to at least be able to teach me *something*.
</rant>
Re:IT Jobs (Score:2)
Harrumph. I'm looking for good web designers [in NW Philly suburbs? Email me], but the vast majority of designers sit around on their computer all day, thinking they are picking up on little details of web design, yet at the end of those days their designs look *very* average.
I've had about 5 people ask me to hire them, but the URLs they give me are FrontPage, Comic Sans, tables with borders, frames without rhyme or reason, etc. etc. These people are picking up HTML, but NOT DESIGN!
I'd rather hire someone out of art school with some understanding of color and typography. The HTML they might be able to pick up. At least they'll know whether what they do looks good or bad.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
They'd rather say "yeah, we can do anything, everything we do is cool" rather than say "we made a crappy OS [bullshit skipped]
"I" and "we" are completely different, and in this case unrelated things. The purpose of open source community is not to drink beer together, or throw hordes of identical people at large projects but to combine efforts of people with different kinds of experience, goals and background. No one knows everything, but it's very unlikely that among large number of people that deal with the same problem there won't be a person that has the knowledge, experience or idea that will eventually bring the solution. Open source makes it more likely that right people will see others' work at right time.
Have I mentioned that you look like ZicoKnows?
Perfect example of the problem (Score:2)
But it seems to me that you wouldn't consider me for a second, because I don't have EXACTLY the skill set that you want. Nevermind that with my history, anybody with a dullard's amount of brains would figure that I could swiftly move in and do the job. A dullard's amount of brains don't appear to be in the requirements document for personnel departments :-{.
(Note -- I am NOT looking for a job, I am quite happy with my current one... I was merely noting what I saw as the biggest problem facing job seekers: inflexible employers who want a particular set of 'easy to define' skills, rather than valuing 'hard to measure' skills like flexibility, intelligence, and productivity).
-E
Yep, perfect example of the problem... (Score:2)
I'm not looking for a job, BTW, so don't even look for my resume. I'm quite happy with Phoenix AZ and I'm quite happy with my co-workers, who in my opinion are doing a damned good job even when I disagree with some of their decisions. I'll point out that your "must jell well with the other people you are working with" in reality translates to "must be like me". Of course, I must admit that I'm no different... when I'm making hiring recommendations, I'm looking for people who are somewhat offbeat but in a positive way, ability to quote Monty Python optional, and I'm looking for people who I feel can learn anything quickly, even if they don't have the exact skill set for the job. Gosh, people like me :-). But the point is that I realize this, and you, apparently, don't, somehow believing that everybody must be just like you in order to get along. I do believe that there is a value in a diverse workplace. I might not be on the same wavelength as the ex-Air Force officer down the hall (I'm somewhat liberal, he's a staunch Jerry Falwell Republican, I'm the eccentric professor in wrinkled clothing, he's spit and polish etc.), but I do believe he brings something to the company of value, and I don't bother trying to convert him to supporting Al Gore (grin).
-E
Shortages & where to find workers (Score:2)
As for VB apps and $45k or more for new hires, it depends on what part of the country you're in. In the Silicon Valley that would be starvation wages :-). In Shreveport, Louisiana, that would be more than the CEO of the company. I do know that one of our recent new hires (well, "recent" == "last June") said that most of his new-grad friends got a job for between $40k and $45K per year, this being in Phoenix. But they were COBOL/data processing types going out into the cusp of the Y2K-fix job market too... I doubt they'd have gotten that much for doing VB!
One thing I have discovered, BTW, is that there seems to be little correlation between high college grades and "hacker talent". Most hard core geeky types apparently prefer to be hacking on their computers rather than studying :-}. But you wouldn't know this from the recruiting practices of many major companies (such as Microsoft), most of which go almost entirely upon grades for their pre-screening of new grads.
-E
IT Professionals... (Score:2)
An MSCE NT Professional: $40,000.
A Professional UNIX Admin: $60,000.
An Admin who actually knows what that big red button does: Priceless.
Yep, there's a shortage. That's why I'm not worried about a job.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
bull. (Score:2)
Cheap H1B my ass. The INS requires you to prove that you've looked in the local market for someone to fill the position first, and even then you have to pay slightly above the going average salary for the area.
I just recently accepted an H1B job offer in New York (I'm from Canada). The offer was more than generous, and the employer definitely does not have me by the balls. If I don't like it, I'll pack up and drive back to Canada. That's key when you're an H1-B: you can't ever presume that you'll stay in the US. You need a saftey net that will allow you to return home.
And sure, getting out of a lease is annoying, but the signing bonus at my next position would more than make up for that.
H1B Visa = Indentured Servitude (Score:2)
Given the rate of turnover in this industry (I've never worked for the same company longer than a year, ever, and I get the sense that my experience is typical of younger employees in the market), I'm not remotely surprised that lobbying for more H1B visas is the #1 legislative priority for American technology companies. That's why you constantly hear the wailing about a shortage of tech workers - there's a real agenda being pushed in furthering that notion.
For the record, I feel I should note that I personally oppose all restrictions on the movement of humans across national borders. I'm no xenophobe, I'm just making an observation about our present situation.
-Isaac
geek. (Score:2)
Want a tech job? Come to Europe! (Score:2)
It goes without saying that the only people that are of immediate highly productive use in an enterprise are competent, experienced ones ("well-trained" on its own doesn't cut it), simply because the pace of development is far too rapid for companies to be able to carry out their plans by training up raw recruits. It takes years to create a top expert, and the ratio of success to failure is low. Most people end up being barely passable, definitely not the kind you'd want as head designers of anything important.
Having said that, beggers can't be choosers, and alas, while the IT shortage is a matter of some debate in the US (apparently), it is most definitely not a matter of debate in Europe. We're desperate for people in all Internet-related areas except Microsoft, and currently it seems ludicrously difficult to find anyone on the market with even the most basic appreciation of elementary things, say port numbers in TCP. I'm fed up of interviewing guys whose idea of fixing a problem is to phone up support.
So, if you're a real techie and can't find a job in the US and have a means of entry into some European country (especially the UK, please!), then come and offer us your services. The pay is good too, especially if you're skilled enough to be a freelance contractor.
(Maybe if enough folks come over, I could get more sleep.)
Hrm (Score:2)
All I can say is, "Shh!".
Don't say these things out loud...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Don't get me wrong.... (Score:2)
Furthermore, although I believe in paying what the market dictates, I don't necessarily believe this is ultimately healthy for the economy. While many large companies can afford to hire very expensive IT, most startup companies (except for some of these dotcoms rolling in VC money, but that's more of an abberation...) are being priced out by larger companies because they can not afford these kind of cash outflows. Simply put, this has adverse effects on the economy. It seems particularly silly when the US has a very backwards immigration and visa policy, that effectively only lets in nominal levels of skilled (or even semi-skilled) labor, but hundreds of thousands of unskilled people. I can think of many companies that are desperate for good IT, yet they just can't get it, even though there are millions of highly skilled IT people outside the US who're willing to work at rates they can afford. Simply put, these costs (but more importantly the shortage) are needlessly artificially high because of protectionist and backwards immigration laws.
The bottom line: If you see the great value of good IT and realize the rarity of it in corporate America, it's hard to argue economically that it would hurt our country to allow more (but not necessarily completely open) talented workers in.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
I am more of the mercenary type. However there are rules of common decency that apply. 1. Don't divulge any private information about any former employer to benefit your new employer. 2. Don't steal any customers from your former employer.
If someone is going to offer you more money you have no obligation to turn them down. Liking the people you work with/for has nothing to do with it. You need to weigh the importance of the various benefits and how they affect your situation.
This isn't 40 years ago when you could expect to work for 1 company until you retire.
LK
Hell No, (Score:2)
I dunno what the market is like for recent graduates.. It can't possibly be more difficult. My two best friends got geek jobs without CS degrees, and without any real work experience, and both for good money.
But, like everything else, it depends on where you are and who you know. We're all in NC, so the labor market is sweeeeet. I think any metropolitan area is going to have a need for plenty of geeks.
And, warm bodies with 'experience' are never hard to find, but experience (time on a job with a CS sort of title) is no real metric of ability. It all depends on the person - some people work for 10 years at a job and only pick up the minimum to get through it. It would take five of those people to do the work of one person with actual skill.
YMMV.
--
blue
"irrelevant areas" are very relevant (Score:2)
Some CS curriculums really aim for that: they expose students to different subjects and languages in a seemingly haphazard way. That's the way to go. Others, of course, pick some kind of stream-lined path around what sells (Windows, VC++) or what is in vogue (Ada or Java or ... to the exclusion of anything else). That doesn't prepare the students for the crazy and ever changing real world.
Re:Unix admins underpaid? (Score:2)
The TOP TEN (serious) reasons why a shortage claim (Score:2)
The TOP TEN reasons why business says there is an IT labor shortage are:
Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows (if you didn't sleep through the course) the laws of supply and demand. When the demand goes up and/or the supply goes down, the prices go up. Correspondingly when the supply is up and the demand is down, prices go down. When the unemployment is high, business is happy because salaries and wages stay low. People are willing to work for less when the alternative is no work at all. Business fights to prevent efforts by the government to raise any salaries or wages, as well as fights efforts to impose more benefits like health care. Business insists that economics are at work and things should be left alone. Turn the tables on business and give it a situation where there are indeed fewer people, which would cause salaries and wages to go up, then business suddenly doesn't want to play by the same rules, and wants the government to step in and change things to their benefit.
I suggest that the real problem in the USA is a shortage of competent management.
No shortage up top - what about the ground floor? (Score:2)
Everything but the Big Picture . . . (Score:2)
Reading the article is very informative:
Overall, we have more people that CAN do IT, but many aren't or are too limited or in the wrong spot.
Me, I get plenty of calls a month. I'm 32 (supposedly over-the-hill), and going fine. My guess is there's not a gap statistically - but there's a gap in will and standards.
Depends on where you are v2.0 (Score:2)
I have just started with a new company(after fielding a few offers and at least 1 headhunter calling me per day for a month) and am working with a client in Kanata, the "Silicon Valley North." Out there comapies like Newbridge, Nortel, Mitel and Lockeed Martin have giant banners on their building asking, nay, begging for skilled workers. Nortel actually has a store in the mall across from their HQ rented out as a recruiting centre - like the Army! Newbridge (who is hiring again after being bought by Actel of France) laid off hundreds of workers a few months ago during restructuring. The competion for labour was so fierce that Nortel had recruiters in sandwhich boards getting candidates outside their AGM in the Corel Centre (arena where the Senetors play). On the day of the layoffs, they rented a Greyhound bus, which waited outside of the Newbridge offices for the laid off workers to be escorted out. HR people then brought them onto the bus, interviewed them and offered them positions then and there.
Sounds like an IT labour shortage to me up here...
Re:"Fresh college grad" != "no experience" (Score:2)
>didn't choose to work at low or no-pay
>"internships" *ahem!*slavery*ahem!*
Hmm... Don't know what internships you were looking at. After my freshman year I made $18 and hour programming and gained a HUGE amount of real-world experience that made me a MUCH better programmer. Most CS students I know had similar (and often higher-paying/more-productive!) experiences. If I were an employer looking at recent grads, I would definitely look for strong internship experience, because there is, as has been discussed a lot on this board, a big difference between academic and hands-on experience (though both are valuable).
--JRZ
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
A wise man once said there are three types of computer users.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Actaully you go to a college not to learn a specific language, but to learn how to program. To learn about data structures and algorithims. To learn about CS theory and about writing structured modular clode. If you understand the core basics of thinking like a programmer you should be able to learn a new language with little trouble.
If you are going to school to learn a programming language then you are getting short changed. There is more to programming than knowing syntax.
Re:MSCE = job?? I don't think so! (Score:2)
I think the original poster has reached the point where they see MSCE on a resume as being almost at the level of putting down Basic or Pascal - it makes you question more the wisdom of the person who would choose to present that as something they were proud enough of to include on a one page summary of who they are!
When I look at resumes, I look to them to tell me what the applicant has been proud of, and what they are interested in working on in the future.
No trouble at all... (Score:2)
These people had also been just doing stuff on the side in thier room - I think that real interest like that will always show, and make you very appealing to people at any company with half a brain.
Apart from CS knowledge the ability to communciate well is really important, and you seem fine in that respect as well - I wouldn't worry at all!
Good luck, and enjoy your career. I know I have!
Re:MSCE = job?? I don't think so! (Score:2)
Re:What is an "IT Professional"? Answer this first (Score:2)
I think the shortage may not be so much people with a few skills, so much as people who:
1) have a variety of skills and experiance and can be thrown into various 'ad-hock' situations.
2) can actually learn and expand their skill set relatively painlessly (for their employer) as needed.
and 3) can actually interact with other people (PHB, other programmers, clients).
Re:Not here... (Score:2)
I'll be more precise, although I doubt you'll respond to it since as an AC it's harder to find your comment amidst the myriad of others
You're right. I didn't intend to insult VB, nor DLL's in general, nor any of another million things.
I'm a rather skilled VB programmer (or at least, like to think so). I like the language, and the RAD features. What my comment intended to ennunciate is that my job has been fucked over by those who came before me, who didn't have the skills but were able to present themselves as skilled.
Thus we have about 40 different DLL's to do things in the most complicated when a straight path would do better that crash constantly, but we don't have time or resources to fix them since we're constantly running prod support in addition to development. It's as much a management problem as a coding problem.
I have to say for a project that requires or would be suited to RAD, VB is quite decent. But, if you are skilled at VB as you say, I doubt highly your saying the language is decent.
It's currently at version 6, and about to hop to 7. The IDE is buggy as hell (ever missed a reference in the project file? sit around for about ten minutes for it to open so you can fix it). Optional arguments can't be user-defined types. There's no hierarchical class structure. Forms can't have user-defined properties. Etc, etc, etc. I don't mean to be bashing VB - it has it's place and uses.
We run an embedded system for computer-based testing.
I would be greatly interested in any reason you had that would explain why we should be running said system in Windows, using VB, with an Access backend. I can't personally think of any. And that's not a flame.
*sigh* I'd much rather go for C/C++ with a linux server, have the testing stations on X servers and link off the main server - no more DLL problems on each machine, etc, etc, etc. We have a sick amount of DLL's, and every time we change one thing we have to recompile 90% of them, or else we get the wonderful old "ActiveX Component can't create object". Helpful error, that.
So I guess this rant is both that VB allows people without skills to more easily foist themselves upon unknowing suits, and that VB is, while a decent RAD language, not suited to the markets the M$ targets it to (mission critical applications and doing "hey, we've integrated VB with IIS! run everything in VB").
Anyway.
That's enough from here
ls:
Re:isp outsource tech support (Score:2)
I couldn't agree more either - I've got most of my jobs because I can walk in and say "I've been doing this since 1983. If I don't know something, I can learn it, quickly."
That, and a DEMONSTRATION that i actually know something is usually what gets me in the door. One example of this working actually was when I went to work at SBC. Didn't like it much and moved on, but I was still happy that I had been able to get into a company like that.
Scott
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
Shortage (Score:2)
The recession in the early '90s made companies used to having a hundred overqualified candidates willing to work for peanuts, and now that the situation's reversed, these corporations are whining about having to take what they can get.
Any company who looks at the payscale for the position they're trying to fill and starts offering a salary at least at the middle of that scale rather than the bottom will have no problem getting the people they're looking for. Once they start valuing their IS employees as more than mere maintenance crew / union laborers, they'll find themselves having an easier time both hiring people and keeping them.
-jpowers
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
A friend told me about a potential job candidate that had a nice list of skills, but the person didn't really know any of these tools. He just put them on his resume to try to get hired...and it worked.
Miller
Re:re. the foreign worker aspect (Score:2)
In almost every company I have worked most of the engineers are from India and a lesser extent from Taiwan and China. As a senior engineer who has interviewed many people, it is quite difficult finding talented programmers. It is even more difficult in that in the networking sector I work in most of the work is in embedded systems which requires far more skill than writing standard Unix or Windows programs. For one thing, a bad pointer will likely require a reboot since there's usually no safety net and the debugging tools are often quite limited (and very often home-grown).
Sure, anyone can implement a linked list, but there arn't many people who can implement interrupt handlers or use a logic analyzer to track down a system hang.
The answer depends on the situation ... (Score:2)
OTOH, sometimes you desperately need someone who is an *expert* in some specifc thing and you don't have time to wait for someone already on your team to gain expertice (i.e. your database guru with an MS and 10 years experince just quit and the jr. database guys are good but they aren't gonna aquire 10 years Oracle kung foo in 6 months).
Most situations probably fall somewhere between these 2 extremes.
Of course, if a company has the size and the cluefulness, they try to
While dealing with clueless HR is annoying ("says here you've used HPUX, Solaris and RedHat, but do you have UNIX experience, I really need someone with UNIX experience" True Story!), in some situations the job description is narrow for a good reason.
Additionally, it's good to bear in mind that job listings are brodcast further and further over time (company corkboard -> newspaper) and the signal to noise ratio increases accordingly so a response to newspaper ad is gonna be screened more anally than a response to a personal recomendation. How would anyone deal with 500+ resumes? _What_Color_Is_Your_Parachute_?_ covers this angle well and is a good resouce for anyone who is job hunting.
Headhunters? (Score:2)
IMHO, the best plan is to use any resorces that your school has to offer (a lot of places even do on campus interviews), read _What_Color_Is_Your_Parachute_?_ and research companies and their openings on their homepages.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
People who are out to 'learn Java' or 'learn Perl' to get a job are shorting themselves. Granted, languages do take more than a day to become efficient in (like C++ multiple inheritance/polymorphism, if you go for that), but if you know *what you want to do* and plan it out, you can make fairly elegant code in almost any language (picking the right language for the job should be part of the planning, too).
Courses in Models of Computation, AI, Compiler Theory, Operating Systems (meaning scheduling, mm, kernel/library structure - not UNIX, NT, DOS), and Data Structures/Algorithms tend to separate the specific skill schools from the real thing. A semester of nothing but pseudo code can be the most elightening thing for some, because it focuses on the process, not the syntax. Too many programmers get hung up on 'I know how to do these seven things in C' and try to do everything with them... Curriculums that teach languages should only use them as a vehicle for teaching the real constructs of programming. Computer Science has less to do with the language than it does with processing that language.
I agree that many recent grads may leave without a whole lot of experience or cluefulness. Experience does count - that what internship / co-ops are for, and independant projects. I was bored and was programming BASIC when I was about 7, and by the time I graduated high school, I was proficient in a number of things, and could have gotten work straight out (IMHO). The point is, I went to school, refined my thoughts, processes, and really learned a heck of a lot that, to be perfectly honest, you can't always get from a book (when was the last time your book looked at your code and told you it was ugly? How do you know?). I'm an engineer, not a CS major, so pretty code isn't always as important to me
Some of them are from Mars, though... at least, I wouldn't doubt it...
Re:This does not have to be a binary issue (Score:2)
I completely agree that you can't just learn theory, but a good curriculum will show you how to apply that theory and knowledge, throwing different tools in front of you to show you that, as I said before, there are many different tools (languages) out there, and you can be sucessful with any of them, given the right strategy.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Since I've strayed from my original point (I tend to do that on an empty stomach), I'll recap:
You were right 8^)
So was I 8^)
LAN games are fun 8^)
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Of course, I went into hardware and microcode... figure that one
Finding a job depends... (Score:2)
1. Exactly what skills you have.
2. What region are you located.
3. How much pay you are looking for.
4. Who you know and when.
5. Luck.
6. What non-pay benifits are do you want.
7. How much real world work experience do you have.
Number of workers in a specific job category is, in the end, just one factor in you finding a job.
I'm sure that there is some baker, tailor and candlestick maker out there which always employeed in his/her field.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Programming remains at the heart of all IT work and it is not going to disappear as a profession. Demand for IT specialists is so strong that growth is still forecast for programmers despite effects of outsourcing and automation. Needs for "worker bees" may be diminishing, but interest in the queens and kings of programming is as great as ever. At the top of the field are the gifted practitioners described by Randall E. Stross: "The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order of magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability." 6 At this level, programming is an elite profession.
That is, the report acknowledges what you and I and most others here already know--and that is, there is no shortage of morons out there who want to rake in money by bullsh-tting themselves into a well-paying tech job that is way over their head. However, there is a very big shortage of what you call "competent, well-trained ones", and which the report refers to as the "queens and kings" of programming.
Programming has always been a somewhat "elite" job, where the best programmers can outcode by as much as a factor of 25 or more. (Hell, the book "The Mythical Man Month" aludes to this, and it was written in the IBM OS360 days.) And as more and more complex web sites, applications and embedded operating systems arise out there, the demand for the competent, well trained professionals there will become a "make or break" situation: if you have one on your project, you will ship. If you don't, you will piss several millions of your investor's dollars down the drain real quick.
What strikes me as very interesting is that (1) the success or failure of a project is directly linked to having a gifted programmer on your staff, and that (2) management's failure to recognize the huge disparity between a qualified programmer and an unqualified programmer means that the chances that a qualified programmer works for a particular manager is largely luck.
This is a sad situation, but there you go.
I guess what pisses me off the most is the fact that most managers don't recognize this fact.
Go East young Geeks! (Score:2)
Come to Boston/Cambridge/Rt128. If you can tolerate working for suits and phbs, you can have all the money you want.
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Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
I'm shortly graduating from an EE program, and if I ever called myself a "proffessional", I might have to go sit down and cry. Especially if done when looking for work. And there's $hitloads of jobs out there for people that know how to do things.
Steve
I love technology (Score:2)
Re:FUD! (Score:2)
Where I'm going to school, I'm constantly shocked by the number of people I have to work with in groups that <i>do not know what they are doing</i>.
Yesterday I had to teach a guy how to use sockets for a group project in "Distrubuted Operating Systems" (we're creating a system of 5 replicated values, using 2 different methods of transaction propogation). This is the sequal to the Operating Systems class
I've encountered people that don't know what "return" does in a function! (They "passed" the course that was supposed to teach them the stuff).
Point being, yeah the paper means that they've gone through it, but did they just remember the stuff for a test, or do they really know how to use it?
Understandable (Score:2)
And the rarity of people in that class is also easy to understand. You don't join that class by learning C on your own. Nor by having an MCSE. You learn it by loving computer science, knowing the fundamentals, and gaining experience.
Remember Sturgens law: 90% of everything sucks.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
I chose a different route than you did. I also learned BASIC at 7, and was a pretty proficient programmer and computer tech when I left high school. I chose the the "work straight out" of high school route, worked building computers for a couple of years, and then got Novell certified and did networking for a couple more. I'm now a Software Design Engineer, working with a team of mostly degreed programmers, and my employer is paying my tuition to finally get that fancy piece of paper.
Where I work, we have a heck of a time finding competent Software Engineers. Most applicants just don't have the proper problem solving skills. I think the main skill you need on a programming team is the ability to learn quickly. And I agree that knowing how to program is more important than knowing the syntax of a particular language. When I started my current position two years ago, my main language was C (though I'd played with about 5 other languages). Now I mainly work in Perl, Java, and C++, none of which I knew when I started. I feel as comfortable in Perl and Java as I do C, even though I've known C since 1990.
NT + halon... (Score:2)
Although I know quite well these are implemented for any hardware massed in a small room, somehow I just can't stop smiling. =)
(And yes, unix admins like breathing. in most cases. i've known a few that could live off the supply of hot air in their inflated heads. =D)
Re:Unix admins underpaid? (Score:2)
Re:A students perspective... (Score:2)
Anyone have similar/different experiences?
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? AT&T?
Re:IT Skills and Labour Shortage (Score:2)
Thanks.
Shortage of workers, shortage of jobs... (Score:2)
Those that I know in the tri-state area say that getting an IT job there is incredibly easy, and I believe it. A simple search on dice will show you that - there are SO MANY jobs available it's not even funny (at least not to be because I don't have the money to reloacate).
It all comes down to the area you're in. It looks like NYC and Cali may in fact have a shortage of workers, because their tech economies are booming, and there are more businesses than workers. In places like upstate NY, where the economy is still sub-par, it's the other way around.
Isn't that how unemployment works in every industry?
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
The absurdity of it all! (Score:2)
I was turned down for a "web developer" job because I didn't have enough CRYSTAL REPORTS EXPERIENCE!! Can you believe that? Sheesh... okay, give me two days to look at it and I'll know your stupid CRYSTAL REPORTS. Unfortunately, it's hard to say that kind of thing in an interview.
I think in your case, you'd be hard pressed to find a job in a company that specializes in IT. Me too, apparently. Thus the apparent shortage.
But I can tell you that there are industries struggling to find IT people-- industries you've never even considered.
I work at a poultry company. I've seen my company hire morons because they can't find real applicants. Another problem is the just-in-it-for-the-money people looking for the "fast track IT job" won't even interview here, because it's a poultry company.
No, you won't get the highest of salaries (I make $41k a year, which actually isn't too bad for a single guy) but you will get that elusive Job Experience thing. I don't think anybody here has a CS degree, although at least half have a 4-year degree in something. I have a BS in physics, and another programmer has a degree in chemistry.
I'm learning a bunch of stuff that you can only get with experience, as opposed to schooling. Supply chain? EDI? Barcoding? As well as the underlying database technology, with some web development on the side (ASP). This is the kind of stuff that (hopefully) will be very favorable to a career in B2B (buzzword: Business to Business) E-commerce. Despite what you may have heard, the B2B boom hasn't happened yet, but it's starting to. Why? All the "real" B2B is still happening via good old EDI (875->880 UCS transaction sets, anyone?) which has been around for at least 20 years. That will change, but it won't be going heavily on the internet for another few years. This is very, very different from the "e-commerce" buzzword as most people know it. Actually seeing the internet used in the supply chain is still a ways off, even though the technology is there, which is why now's the time.
So what am I rambling about?
Find an ESTABLISHED INDUSTRY, one that has been around for a while and thus knows how to hire and grow employees. Many of them are just starting to grow their IT departments, and to explore what they can do with this newfangled "internet thing" and are looking for people to do it. Talk to them directly. Search them out. Look at packaging companies, manufacturing-- especially the food industry. Find out where they are headquartered. Generally they'll be hiring people with diverse knowledge as opposed to a lot of knowledge in one area-- i.e., you'll be wearing a lot of hats.
The manufacturing industry as it applies to IT isn't a cash cow (we'll never hire a $80k network admin, don't need to) but it's a definite get-your-foot-in-the-door experience builder for something much more lucrative later.
Somebody who is just looking for an immediate, high-paying IT job isn't really thinking strategically or long-term, and will often be disappointed.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
But the bottom line is, if you can't get your job or can't impress people without lying, guess what? You're not worth paying and you're not impressive. Live with yourself.
Esperandi
When I was a manager... (Score:2)
I do agree with you on certification. It's mostly useless.
Re:FUD! (Score:2)
The availability heuristic is a poor method of proof. While you may have never ever heard of such an employer, you may be surprised to read that I have. MSCE's have a bad reputation at certain companies: as another poster put it, they are stereotyped. At many of the companies I've worked at, they have felt burned by trusting the certification only to hire several vastly unqualified workers in a row. There is often a period of backlash where anyone who is certified is disqualified from the position immediately. This often results in the hiring of a competant person because they are looking at the person's other qualities instead of just the certification. This rewards the belief in the stereotype and perpetuates it to other managers through anecdotal evidence.
I must admit that I am nervous when I see MSCE on a resume. It is really how that particular thing is displayed, though. If it is listed as an important aspect of the person's skills (near the top of a skills section or if the certification section is above the skills section), then I become questioning of the candiate's actual skillset. If it is more subdued, then I with either not notice it or understand that certain things are put on a resume to pass through the "HR filters". The real difference is int one case you are selling yourself as a skilled person, int the other you are selling the MSCE program. Since I, and many others, are disbelievers of the program, it cannot be a large foundation of your sell to me.
Re:MSCE = job?? I don't think so! (Score:2)
A post-secondary degree is not a guarantee for a job, certainly, but it can be an important asset in a candidate, depending upon the post-secondary institute and courses taken. The fact of the matter is that to get a worthwhile degree, you must solve problems in a wide variety of domains that you would have otherwise not have even bothered to look at. This makes the candidate more well rounded. Of course, actual workforce experience in a domain may make a candidate more appealing for a particular task (i.e. a contract postition), but when hiring for versatility (i.e. a perminant employee position), a candidate needs a lot of experience to make up for a lack of degree. Even self study does not mak up for it because, as I bolded above, a degree will force you into problems and domains you would not bother to look at.
IT Jobs (Score:2)
So if CS or IT majors are finding it hard to find the job of their dreams maybe they should quit playing Baldur's Gate or EverQuest all day and have some real human to human interaction. Just a thought...
Kate
Re:Don't you all realize this is a good thing? (Score:2)
--
a bad thing for /. discussion sometimes (Score:2)
-Kahuna Burger
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
You just *CANT* do that if you want any kind of reputation. When im talkingw ith a client and he says, "Do you know how to do this" I will tell him. the TRUTH. If I have an idea and the little mice in my head start turning the wheels I will say, yeah I have good idea of how to accomplish that. Or no clue I can only give it my best and tell you the results. And some of the time my ideas are wrong and things are grossly more complex.
Is that my fault or his? It is *MY* fault for saying I could do it so I spend the time to learn it and do it. My fuck up im at least going to step up to the plate tell the customer its behind and work my ass off to learn and figure out how to do something.
Friends and family yeah propogate untruth to them. They are the people who run around raving (MHZ == ALL) because the guy down the street who was Microsoft certified told them so.
The point is be responsible and just be HONEST!! You are not impressing anyone in the long run.
I cant think of anything I hate more than people who will sit and argue with me or tell me im wrong when I am reading them a comment out of a Programming book and they say that they are right and I am wrong.
People who do this are evil I think. Not willing to admit they do not have a clue. It takes a big fella to admit where his faults are yeah. So.. It is in a joking manner you present this but it is a difficult and true thing that I deal with almost every day as I unlearn 10-20 myths to a client whose got a PC Support guy who is just someone who learned to install all their software.
Problem I can fix it. *reinstall windows*
*GAG*
It is not cool and frankly it offends me when people lie.
Jeremy
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
When I landed in US 4 years ago without knowing too much English, it took me 2 weeks to find work (in fact they found me). Since then, they kept raising my salary as craizy, so the headhunters run away in fear when I start talking about six digits. They don't want even to know the first digit.
And when you think that 5 years ago I was working hard, two jobs for 1k/year... altogether.
Shortage? Yes and no. (Score:2)
Working in Silicon Valley, I've experienced the completely rabid search for IT people first hand. From both sides. There's definitely a shortage, but it's not clear cut, and it's not across the board.
When I was looking for a new job 6 months ago, I hadn't realized that there's a distinct shortage of *nix competent people. Being a sysadmin, the second I put out my resume, I got swamped with calls. But I know of other people who live in the M$ world who barely got any calls at all when they started a job search.
Now I'm trying to get more staff to fill in positions for the company I got a job with. It's REALLY DIFFICULT. We get tons of resumes, and interview dozens of people. But none of them are competent. I've seen resumes that would make you think someone is a sysadmin god, and when they're sitting in the interview, they don't know the name of HP's flavor of unix. Even though it's on their resume!
So no, there's no shortage of IT people. But there's a severe shortage of competent IT people.
it's a myth (Score:2)
some of the russian, german, indian h1b's i've worked with are *extremely* skilled, and work tirelessly.
others are...ahem, as bad as the worst american programmer, actually worse because of poor language skills. their so-called degrees are worthless.
by creating the myth of a shortage, it makes it easier for companies to pressure congress into letting in overseas talent.
additionally, it keeps the pump primed -- "wow, keannu reaves(sp) was cool in the matrix, i wanna be a programmer, no problem getting a job! the paper says so!"
the last company i worked for got (literally) 200-300 resumes submitted for each opening. they whittled those down to the top ten or so, then interviewed those final candidates.
so, nearly everyone in the industry does the old "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" at the so-called "IT Shortage". It's a joke to pressure congress and keep people exciting about being a programmer.
the reality is, programmers are odd, uncomfortable people that most normals don't want to be around. yeech. i guess it's the same for lawyers, or whatever.
Re:What is an "IT Professional"? Answer this first (Score:2)
Senior people in their fields rarely bother learning about distinct aspects of IT outside their own domain. The lead database architect at Oracle most liklely knows nothing of VHDL nor does he/she need or want to. The lead chip designer at Intel likely knows little about implementing terabyte databases.
Because these people are unlikely to cross over into each other's fields, they do not represent one labor market.
Article makes same old erroneous assumptions (Score:2)
Authors of these articles need to break down the market to the same degree we do. That means people who work on databases aren't likely to become VHDL designiers, and operating system folks aren't going to become games programmers.
In web programming, the stats may not reflect a shortage, but we can't fill our recs here at work even by half (and we're in the heart of Santa Clara, with good stock options), so my anecdotal evidence doesn't jive with the author's claims.
Re:IT shortage (Score:2)
Lomion is dead on when he says the shortage is of qualified IT professionals. The huge demand for people who know how to make these darn machines work is incredible, resulting in a huge influx of people in to the field, many (most?) of whom have marginal talent. The popularity of tools like Visual Basic and Lotus Notes, which allow semi-skilled programmers to produce (somewhat) functional software only makes the problem worse -- the ease of developing a new program feeds the demand for more highly specialized one-off programs, hence the need for more programmers. This also feeds the market for low-level administrators, to support the machines these programs are running on. There really isn't much of a shortage for these people; low-level jobs get filled pretty quickly.
The real shortage is of senior talent. This isn't likely to change, because (IMHO) there are only a small number of people who have the drive and intelligence to advance their skills to a true expert level. This is particuarly true when looking for someone with a particular combination of skills or someone with 5+ years experience with a specific tool. In my experience, a senior level hacker with mastery of several different tools & languages is a very hot commodity. Judging from the volume of calls & email I get from recruiters, there's plenty of demand for my particular skill set :-)
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Artificial shortage (Score:2)
I'm told I produced more work in my first two months here than the last two guys did in five years. Could it be that companies are tired of paying for incompetence and having to go through the process of documenting failures so that they can let someone go without fear of reprisal? There seems to be more short term assignments available than permanent jobs.
Another problem I had was that my skillset is fairly narrow (Unix Sysadm, Informix development primarily). I have years of experience, but it has all been with smaller companies who didn't run 24/7 and didn't want to shell out the cash for nicer toys, etc.
carlos
From a potetial professional... (Score:2)
Meanwhile, the reason that many people out of college may not be as intelligent as those who have been in the profession a while is that (as I know from personal experience) many have to work menial jobs while in college that may have no computer exposure in order to simply pay rent. In my college town, the mainly accessable jobs for students are service oriented, not technology oriented. I am very worried that I may not have the job skills to offer an employer that another student who did not have to work through school has from sitting in his dorm room and playing around with his computer for 4 years.
Essentially, this is a problem of self-improvement, for the market will evetually evolve to a point where only the best and brightest will be tolerated in positions of power.
IT is the whole company (Score:2)
Re: IT Labor Shortage (Score:2)
There is a bit of a shortage of top-notch programmers, which is impacting my business greatly. I can find people easily enough, but finding those who can do the kinds of things that we do (internet applications development) without a lot of hand-holding is difficult. A few weeks ago, I had to can a guy with a PhD in Computer Science for poor performance...
Any best-of-the-best CGI geeks who can work as contractors without constant supervision can feel free to send me a resume (plain text only)!
re. the foreign worker aspect (Score:3)
Of the nine current programmers, two are Americans - one of whom is the president and founder of the company. Kinda reflective of the current situation, or what?
FUD! (Score:3)
Let's break this post down, class:
When I'm reading resumes, I immediately toss out any resume with MCSE on it.
MCSEs mean they passed a test. That means they likely have more knowledge about X than someone who hasn't. You may place any value for X that you please, it makes no difference. So, given a blank resume with just a name, and another blank resume with a name and "MSCE" on it, I will hire the MSCE. Knowing nothing else, wouldn't you too? So, automatically throwing out said resume is an act of extreme idiocy.
It doesn't mean anything unless you can back it up with some good sample code or a good answer to an algorithm question in the interview.
You obviously have neither taken the MSCE, nor gotten past your 2nd year of college. Most engineering degrees focus on problem-solving skills - you are presented a problem and it is up to you to solve it. The Cisco certification does similar.
Lastly, do you even know what empirical research is?
Depends on the area you live in. (Score:3)
I am sure that areas such as SoCal, and Boston, alon with the Austin, Texas area have a glut of "Paper" MCSE's who have dropped the bottom out of the pay scale and will work for less than half of a qualified, tech with 3-5 years work history.
If you are talking about the midwest, where "high-tech" companies are supposedly non-existent, finding good people who know the latest technology can be difficult, unless you are in St. Louis, Chicago, or Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Sometimes, however the "IT Shortage" is a result of unrealistic expectations, on the part of middle management.
When companies require a 4 year degree and 3-5 years work expertise, and won't even bother to take into consideration the people who have spent 3-5 years learning, and using the specific technology desired instead, they create a trap for themselves.
Seriously folks, if you were looking for "IT Staff" wouldn't you want people who knew the technology you were using inside and out, and have worked with it for a few years, or a fresh off the street CS/MIS Grad?
[flame disclamier]
I by no means am disregarding CS/MIS Majors, however I do know for a fact that a significant number of CS/MIS Programs don't teach the latest technology, and have a difficult time keeping up with all the changes.
[/flame disclamier]
It was hard for me (Score:3)
Eric
Don't you all realize this is a good thing? (Score:3)
Re:Depends on the area you live in. (Score:3)
As far as I can tell, a lot of these ads are looking for either:
a. The person who developed the whatever
b. A time-traveller
And they wonder why they have trouble finding someone...Hey, they're offering 25-30k per year!
What is an "IT Professional"? Answer this first (Score:3)
The point is, people in these fields rarely cross over to other fields. You need to tell me about shortages in these various fields. If you tell me there is no shortage of Cobol programmers, thats meaningless to me.
The only "shortage" is of **CHEAP** tech workers. (Score:4)
Not here... (Score:4)
I use the term professionals very strictly. At my current company we have a strong proliferation of IT wannabes. Horrible, horrible people. And we do multi-million dollar contracts with high-profile clientele which we frankly don't deserve.
I wouldn't release our product if I had say, but being 19 and definitely the junior in the department, I don't.
It took me 24 hours to be offered this job. It took me 5 days to get 12 different offers. The market here is very hot for someone with skills, even if they don't have that little degree slip of paper or, heaven forbid, and MCSE or similar.
The problem with the current employment situation isn't really a lack of good developers or an overabundance of horrible ones, but rather no good way to certify people so non-IT types can verify who they're hiring.
MCSE as mentioned recently doesn't do the job. No certification does. Programming is as much an art as anything else which, imho, is being hacked away at by things like VB and components people just download of the 'net and hack together to get to work.
Why write my own work when I can stand on the shoulders of others to create my piss poor crap?
Whatever, maybe I'm a little sick of working here. I'm looking for a new job, as is everyone else. It's horrible.
But, with today's market (yes, I've kind of gone tangential) it should be easy to do that.
Enjoy.
Jezz
ls:
labor glut (Score:4)
One would imagine that in a situation where there was even anywhere near enough workers in a given field, there would not be half as many completely knowledgeless people running around with "certifications" and "experience".
Statistics and data projects aside, I think that anyone who looks around them and evaluates the people that he is working with and for can tell you that there are not enough qualified people in this industry.
that said, I'm not sure there are enough qualified peopel in any industry. but that's another story, I guess.
Re:labor glut (Score:4)
I've felt for several years now that most companies are best understood as dysfunctional families. Daddy, the CEO, doesn't understand his own life or the role he plays in it, and takes out his frustrations on various wife- and child-surrogates (the rest of the company). The VPs and middle managers, representing the older children, deal with the abuse they receive from above by passing it on to their subordinates and learning, by example, that the way to be a good parent/executive is to abuse your inferiors and blame them for everything that goes wrong. The grunts (the youngest children) take all the shit and hope to be promoted because then they'll have someone to abuse. (Usually they start out with better motives than that, but such idealism is quickly crushed out of them in most cases.)
To the extent that there is or can be a solution to this, mostly you just need to find relatively non-dysfunctional companies where everyone seems to be not only competent but also pleasant and respectful of other humans. And you need to be pleasant and respectful of other humans yourself, or you'll just contribute to the further degradation of whatever corporate culture you happen to get into.
It is a truism in psychology that abusive parents were almost always abused themselves as children. I suspect that this applies to the work environment as much as to families. It explains many of the nasty things that happen in companies, including why so many of them seem to be staffed by imbeciles. Many corporate drones aren't really stupid; they've just been beaten into submission by the dysfunctional corporate machine, and no longer really care about anything except not being blamed for whatever goes wrong next. Of course, this defensive attitude tends to encourage things to go wrong, since the workers are thinking much more about covering their asses than about doing things right or looking ahead more than a few weeks.
MSCE = job?? I don't think so! (Score:4)
I found out empirically that people who put MCSE on their resumes just can't cut it. MCSE doesn't mean you have skills. It just means you passed a test.
A college degree is no different. It doesn't mean anything unless you can back it up with some good sample code or a good answer to an algorithm question in the interview.
it's easy to get a job (Score:5)
We always get the newest hardware to work on. Right now I'm sitting with a shiney new 12mhz 286 with FOUR megs of ram!!! These beasts are too powerful to even set loose on the commercial sector yet, and let me tell you, it BURNS compared to my last box. My manager assures me that I'll be the first in the department to get the new CD-ROM drives too. I love my manager so much.
Everyone gets a company sponsored apartment. It's like I never even have to drive anywhere to get to work! I have a whole 7 foot square room ALL to myself. The rags and blankets I sleep on every night I didn't even have to PAY for! You can't ask for better than that! And there's a hole in the corner that leads down to the sewers for waste removal. And over that hole is a spiggot with RUNNING WATER. It's soooooo cool! The entire package is in the greatest location too; about 75 feet below my office in the sub-basement! That's prime real-estate there!
And my manager (did I mention he's so cool?) comes and gets me and the other programmers at the beginning of every day. I don't have to spend money on an alarm clock! Not me! He comes down and PERSONALLY wakes us up, and even gives us a good minute to become aware of our surroundings before hauling us out of our rooms by the scruff of our neck! How generous!!!
He's sure to make sure we're all locked in front of our workstations with three manacles, and surrounded with a barbed wire fence. No, no other company is going to come and drag US away! We get to keep this job FOREVER! And at the end of our 18 hour workday (you can get SOOOOOO much done in 18 hours! You wouldn't believe it!) he unlocks us and PERSONALLY escorts us back home, usually taking the time to kick us into our rooms. Sure, sometimes my head hits the wall pretty hard, but we take entertainment where we can get it, and we get the best.
And food . . . Oh, we get the best food here at Microso . . . where I work. Thrice daily they pull out any waste that gets caught in the nets and grates lining the sewers and drainage gutters. I don't know what they do to it, but they turn it into the BEST stew in the WORLD! For FREE!!! And sometimes we even get nifty toys, like shopping carts and old needles. Just like a box of cracker jacks!!!
I know you're jealous and want to hear more, but I have to get back to work before my manager catches me. Last time he saw anyone reading slashdot, they were denied dinner for two months. MAN that must have sucked. But anyway, these jobs are easy to get. Just walk around Redmond Washington. You don't need to look for a job . . . they'll find you.
Is English your second language? (Score:5)
When you say there isn't a "shortage of IT professionals", do you mean people who merely get paid to do the job, or do you mean competent people? The problem is that when you say you use the term "strictly" that would imply the later.
In any case, as you may or may not know, the market for IT employees in Philly is very tight (I, too, live in philly). Witness: rising salaries, employers willing to pay virtually anything for competent help, the plethora of weak certification courses, etc. In what other career can a high school dropout take some certification course and make 60k++ within a year?
While you are certainly right that (atleast if I read this much correctly) employers have a hard time finding competent IT employees, I disagree with the cause(s) and some of your other statements. Although I don't disagree that you'll find atleast 20 idiots for every half competent IT worker, the problems extend far beyond just being able to test it. I think there is a genuine shortage of talented IT workers. Truely excellent IT people stand out head and shoulders above the rest, if for no other reason than 1 good IT person is worth atleast 20 monkeys. Regardless of whatever their formal credentials are, recommendations and the like are highly telling. I happen to know many employers and headhunters, the word generally is: If you have talent, give him whatever he wants. Consequently, employers have a very difficult time finding new (not age) talent, because they're generally quickly devoured.
The bottom line: Most employers have to spend absurd sums of money to get decent IT. Because skilled workers are impossible to find, employers are forced to turn to monkeys. And because monkeys are so damn ineffective, it takes 20 times as many to do the same job. Which causes the market for monkeys to skyrocket as well....
...which of course leads to the need for platforms such as NT. Which, ultimately, leads to the need for more monkeys. Which causes even more employee (non-IT) downtime, which only adds to the cost....Any sane skilled/intelligent person, of course, avoids such environments...Which naturally makes the majority of the up and coming generation virtually braindead when it comes to IT....
...sorry to run on. =)
gotta run
As an ex-manager (Score:5)
People with degrees may or may not be useful. Candidates with a four-year degree in traditional Computer Science were the best candidates. These people generally had the interest to complete the degree and the smarts to apply their knowledge.
People with certifications were not useful. Their certifications don't give them the creative background and basic understanding necessary to solve a problem from the ground up. They are versed only in the know-how needed to use systems popular at the time of the certification.
People with lesser degrees from lesser colleges were not useful. Their situation is similar to those who sought only a certification and tend to have skills that are specialized for the systems at the time of graduation.
Courses and certifications may be useful to those already employed in IT, but they provide little information of lasting value. Those who seek these credentials to get a job in the IT industry generally do not have the aptitude necessary to get the job done.
Students who apply themselves to a higher education in theoretical computer science have a better chance of being able to do the work. They are also more likely to innovate new technology.
I don't personally hold any degree or certification; these are just trends I have observed and will keep in mind the next time I find myself in a management position within IT (if ever).
Re:Don't you all realize this is a good thing? (Score:5)
IT shortage (Score:5)
Missing the Point (Score:5)
I finally managed to get into ddj.com and read the bloody thing. I was not impressed.
It wasn't about whether or not there was a scarcity of tech workers. It was about all the political crap which gets wrapped around that "issue", e.g. whether or not the US should allow more foreign workers.
Look:
And, frankly, connect-the-dots prognostication is silly. What no one wants to admit is that we've managed to create an environment (the net) in which the basics of operating a retail establishment (a store) require personal characteristics (facility with abstract thought) of the store workers (geeks) which only a comparatively small percentage of people have.
It would be one thing if ecommerce sites were like brick&mortar stores. Once you put up your KornerMart, it stays built, and you can pay all your architects, construction workers, HVAC experts, etc. and send them home. It would be one thing if new-media sites were like radio stations. Once you raise your KLUE transmitter and plug it in, you can send away the engineers who put up the tower. You can staff your KornerMart, your KLUE station with non-geeks and have your business run.
But an ecommerce site, a new-media site is constantly being reinvented. What's now is passe, so "five minutes ago". The envelop must constantly be pushed.
So long as that is true, you can expect the market demand for geeks to be rapacious. We are the only people who can run their store fronts in cyberspace, the only people who can keep the store open 24/7. They can't do without us, and as they try to expand, they will only need more and more of us.
----------------------------------------------
What Shortage? (Score:5)
The shortage is artificial. This is nothing more than an attempt to bring in foreign labor cheaper than local market labor. It is the same thing that the trucking companies do. I mean this as no slam on those IT professionals outside the US, but the reality is they are viewed by IT managers (not my view neccasarily) as a "cheap import". Yes, I realize many of these people are certainly not cheap or unskilled, but 98 times out of a 100 they are brought in because they are cheaper. That is the bottom line.
Companies complain about not having enough "qualified" tech workers. I wonder how many of these companies are willing to train their internal employees? I imagine very few. My company provides under $2K a year for school. That doesn't go very far. The fact that I (or anyone in my position) will recieve no pay increase when finished shows a shortage of vision on the part of management.
The shortage could easily be alleviated by companies looking within. When companies raise artificial obstacles (4 yr degree, and 3 years exp for 30K) they are going to suffer. If a company wants a trained & skilled IT workforce they should look at realistic hiring requirements, new people without experience (everybody has to start somewhere), training those employees they do have, and more to the point, keeping them. I have no sympathy for people who throw stones in glass houses and complain of windows breaking...
Re:IT shortage (Score:5)
I've been playing with computers since the age of 12, I'm 18 now. I'm A+ certified, and wear a Linux t-shirt to job sites. I have 7 computers of my own in various places around the house, all networked together, and 3 behind my firewall. I have not one, but two 36inch stuffed TuXes from linuxmall. I am a geek, no doubt, but does this make me a genius?
You see, my friends, family, and the people I have worked with think that I am some kind of computer genius that can fix anything. The downside to this is having to listen to the endless barrage of inane questions I could care less about, and usually don't have answers for. So what do I do? I make them up.
What they don't know is; I'm an idiot. I have no idea what I'm doing. The reason I'm always working on a computer is because they are always breaking and I haven't a clue how to fix it. I make up answers to questions I don't know, because they expect me to have the answers. You know computers right? Well can you find this part to my 10-year-old apple laptop? (actually had this one)
My point is, no matter what people label you as, be it IT Professional, computer genius, or landfill worker, you are what you are, and your skills will show through. No amount of IT training or experience can make up for being an idiot.
A students perspective... (Score:5)
If there is a shortage of good people (like someone else proposed), as opposed to just a shortage of people in general, then I don't see a solution soon. With all of the "carreer colleges" and "professional education centers" advertising the quick buck and easy employment, the number of people doing it for the money will only increase, and will do so much faster than the number of people who are doing it for fun, so to speak. Unfortunately, the former group is likely to have a very small proportion of "good" programmers (someday I hope to find out what that means), but it is the group that will dominate the workforce. The other group (including me, one day, I hope), as well as those "good programmers" from the first group, will have to accept that the skills of many coworkers are inadequate, or alternatively that there won't be enough people who can get the job done, and so they will be overworked.
This may cause incomes to increase, and I believe will only cause the problem to spiral out of control. Eventually the whole poverbial bandwagon will crash, and the I see one of two possibilities:
Either way, something will have to change. Maybe not anytime soon, but eventually.
Then again, I'm only a student. All of my experience is from another industry (construction), so I may be way off base. Comments?
Tim