American IT companies can not find workers

trader99 · Sep 15, 2011

Quote from newguy05:

comp sci / programming used to be hot, not anymore. it's been completely destroyed by outsourcing. what self respecting lazy american would want to compete with 14hr day oversea indians making min wage or immigrants in the US who are willing to take much lower pay and work twice as hard. India is pumping out programmers like we handout bailouts.

Not to mention the embarrassment of reporting to a manager who speaks broken english and smells like curry. since a lot of indians are mid management now.

it's a self inflicted destruction of talent that started a decade ago.

Law and corporate accounting is the way to go nowdays, unless you want to sit through 10 years of school for a md.

My entire ny team has around 50 people, there are maybe 6 white guys and 4 of them are russian/eastern european. Comp sci and IT is dead for the natives in this country.
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Law is not that great either. Tons of law students come out with
six figures DEBT and no jobs. End up waiting tables.

Law only makes sense if you have a technical background(engineering, physics, chemistry, biology) to do IP
law. There's less need for regular lawyers who is also being
outsourced and automated...

trader99 · Sep 15, 2011

Quote from toc:

9% Unemployment rate and they can't find half way decent programmers? BULLLLL SHITTTTTT! There are lots of decent programmers in the US who would work for $40-50K.

These companies must be looking for Ivy League Whiz Kids to work for $10/hour. Not Happening!

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http://www.geekwire.com/2011/tech-hiring-boom-leads-lucrative-offers-computer-science-grads

"King 5 takes a look at the tech hiring boom in Seattle, focusing on Googleâs growth plans and talking to University of Washington computer science students who are entertaining offers of more than $90,000 right out of school. "

clearinghouse · Sep 15, 2011

Quote from toc:

9% Unemployment rate and they can't find half way decent programmers? BULLLLL SHITTTTTT! There are lots of decent programmers in the US who would work for $40-50K.

These companies must be looking for Ivy League Whiz Kids to work for $10/hour. Not Happening!

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This.

When I graduated in a down economy, all I could find was a job that paid 54k. I quit that job in 4months and within 7 months was making nearly double, then poured all that cash into a speculative bet in the markets that paid off and have long since left the idiotic world of software engineering.

Screw these companies, unless they give you an equity stake. Don't even settle for options with shady vesting periods and terms.

kxvid · Sep 15, 2011

There is always a shortage of talent. There is always employer and employee whining. If these employers actually were willing (and patient and well capitalized enough) to train their workers, they could get good internally developed people.

So this employer just wants qualified people who have already "been there, done that"? The few qualified people like that are staying with their original employers, where they gained their experience. They really need to pay up above market salaries and compensate for the lack of job security inherent in a startup venture to recruit 'talent".

syswizard · Sep 16, 2011

Quote from fframe38:

You want to do software - do it for yourself and use it to trade or further some creative endeavor. Don't bother working for some company that will have you blowing every spare minute of your life toiling away for their bonuses while you get scraps.....
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That's exactly what I intend to do. I am tired of fighting the greedy agencies.

syswizard · Sep 16, 2011

Quote from newguy05:

India is pumping out programmers like we handout bailouts.

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If you remember the "mudmen" from the Lord of the Rings movie series.....that's exactly what's happening.

Hydroblunt · Sep 16, 2011

Quote from fframe38:

I agree completely. Have been in software engineering field for 25 years now. When I started out, software engineers were respected scientists who were paid well, had decent benefits, and solved worthwhile challenging problems. Management believed in fostering creativity, rewarding innovation, results over process, etc. The field also had a sort of cred, although tainted slightly by the geek/nerd image. Even the contracting world of the 1990s was still very good - savvy people with skills could still bring home a decent check with paid overtime.

I remember the first hints of the decline to come occurred with the expansion of H1-B programs to deal with the perceived "programmer shortage". This occurred around 1990-1991, during a very bad recession when many tech firms were laying off by the thousands. The funny thing is every time I hear about these perceived "programmer shortages" it is during a recession when people are laying off engineers. It didn't take too long to put 2+2 together and realize that it was a strategy to replace high cost workers with lower cost workers, and basically alter the supply/demand relationship permanently.

The problem was that in the beginning, the H1-B program was supposed to be used to bring top quality people over here to meet specific niche needs that were hard to fill. Over time, it was abused to a method of importing warm bodies over here, holding them hostage until they could get a green card, and watering down the salaries in the whole industry so that costs could be cut drastically. Instead of the savings being passed onto the customers or investors, it was largely lavished on the executives who had created the "savings". The same thing happened with outsourcing as well. Executives would do stupid things for the long term in order to get short-term results and bonuses.

A simultaneous effect was that the software engineering role became "de-skilled" to a large degree and it was considered more intelligent for a company to hire more average developers than fewer outstanding ones, even though productivity studies have shown up to a 28/1 productivity factor between top flight developers and the average drones hacking up code. The idea was to avoid developers having negotiating power and to be able to easily replace anybody in the organization without losing anything much.

In the old days, innovation and creativity was fostered and respected. It was far better to create something excellent even if it ran over cost somewhat or took a little longer to create than first thought. Later on, it became all about pushing whatever crap to market as fast as possible regardless of quality. Most times, it was some near worthless web weenie crap. In fact, with the subscription based pricing it is almost rewarded to have constant "updates" which are usually just bug fixing of stuff that should have worked correctly when a product was released initially.

The Agile development methology and open source stuff is basically the "Communist model" of development. Reducing everyone to a replaceable widget, facilitating outsourcing and micromanagement. It is no accident that software engineering salaries have basically been cut in half over the past 10 years or so when you take inflation into account. Another side effect is that most companies are no longer offering challenges that appeal to scientist and engineer types.

The end result is that the intelligent people moved on to other fields, or started their own businesses, or invested or whatever, and the field was abandoned to the hordes of Indians and Asians and the clueless MBA management models. Then we wonder why there is no "innovation"? WTF. You can't force innovation, and the incentives in place (or mostly "not in place") do not support it. In fact, software development is becoming more like a union job in most places than any kind of creative endeavor. Mediocrity is rampant, management is clueless, Dilbert-isms are rife throughout the industry, and the whole industry is now infatuated with this shallow web-weenie vaporware BS which doesn't solve any real problem of significance.

You want to do software - do it for yourself and use it to trade or further some creative endeavor. Don't bother working for some company that will have you blowing every spare minute of your life toiling away for their bonuses while you get scraps and watch your dollars evaporating into the night with each successive QE program, and then eventually you will be laid off or replaced by an incompetent idiot who can barely speak English.
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Excellent post! Very enlightening.

Grandluxe · Sep 16, 2011

THis means we have to increase H1B's from India to about 500k a year

syswizard · Sep 16, 2011

Quote from macroman:
Although my pay level is same as in 2000, is still ok.

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In 2000, Lawyers were at $120-175 per hour. Now they are at $225-$300.
In 2000, Doctors were at $90-150 per hour. Now they are at $190-260 per hour.
In 2000, CPA's were at $70-120 per hour. Now they are at $130-180 per hour.

IT professionals today: comparatively at a poverty level.

Chausey · Sep 16, 2011

Quote from trader99:

Actually, startups are paying developers/sw engineers right out
of undergrad about $80-$90K. Those with masters in compsci/EE
gets around $100k-$120K right out of school. I'm not kidding.
Check recent articles from NYTimes and elsewhere. With lots of
perks and benefits.

BUT, the catch is that kind of opportunities is not available to
all new grads. If you went to a top compsci(Stanford,MIT,Cal, etc.)
then yes. Or you had great internships or you have developed a lot
of stuff on your own, then yes those are typical salary ranges.

I agree it's a bit misleading to say that there is more jobs than
talent. There's not enough "right" kind of talent that these startups
are looking. Perhaps, it's unrealistically high standards(?). Perhaps.

The $60K you talk about is for people in IT(technical trade schools
and IT certifications) and not necessarily sw eng.
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In the article they are just looking for PHP/JAVA/OO/C++/Python guys. Just programmers with engineering aptitude with 10-20 years experience. Those guys deserve at 100k. Except these social media jockeys only want to pay 50k. And then they will complain when it takes forever to get to the product launch date.