I was a programmer for years. The only time there was ever a good market for regular everyday programmers was during the Y2K nonsense. Outside of that one year, the market has always been cutthroat. No one ever wants to pay up for programmers even though the skill is a hard one to acquire (we're talking about for ordinary folks here, not brainiacs) and an even harder one to keep up your skills on. Basically, it's always been the case that the market wants doctor & lawyer level intellectual skills for sanitation worker wages. So yes, there's a shortage. That's the market's way of telling you the price you're willing to pay is way way too low.
You all sound like you are complaining! WHY? This is capitalism at it's best and innovates the work place! It provides a better employee and better profits for the share holder. This is the same B.S. everyone was talking about in the 80's about computers taking away their jobs...... Look what computers have done for the world! This is what is going to force Americans to adapt (just like global warming; we will all adapt) and become a more productive nation... It also ads the volatility we need as traders to make money! Stop complaining and take advantage of the situation! There are opportunities in stocks for growth and ways to capitalize on those who cannot adapt. It does not matter if it is outsourcing deals or picking the flesh off of what is left of the over priced American workers' family! Get out there and make some MONEY! Merry Christmas!
Well, maybe both demand and the supply are not elastic. Unfortunately, capitalism is capitalism and at some point it makes sense to relocate the company to where the labour is, be it India or Russia. Everywhere I've worked programmers were making 200 k/a and upwards. Not the kind of cash as the front office people make, but even in the New York City, that's a pretty reasonable middle class lifestyle.
Yeah but for what you would need them for I can see that being the pay. Those are the upper crust of programmers. It's like anything else; the top folks make top dollar. I never made anything close to that. I am humble enough to admit here that I was never a top guy. But that's my point: a middle of the road MD can make 200k. Not a middle of the road programmer. But to stay on top of the skills you need you have to invest as much time as an MD or a lawyer. Why would you do that if you can just make the 200k as a regular everyday MD? Makes no sense. Hence the shortage. Markets regulate two ways: by price and by shortage. If the price needed to make the profit that a person figures make sense for a commodity isn't met, the commodity won't be produced, and the commodity will be in a perpetual state of shortage. That's what's happening in IT.
There are doctors (top "crust"), physician assistants and various people with masters degrees that sort-of make medicine happen, nurses, paramedics etc. All of them are "medical professionals", but not all of them are making 200k a year. Similarly, when someone is called a programmer, it can be a dude that writes in Excel/VBA or writes kernel-level functionality for the operating systems. Consistent with their skill, one would be making 50k at an insurance company and the other would be making 250k at Microsoft. While both of them would probably have to stay current on the trends, the first one is in essence a nurse and the second one is an MD. PS. In finance, the key thing that gets IT people paid is domain knowledge - it's more important to know stuff about the business then know how to optimize the last bit out of a linked list.
H1B is much broader then IT - when I just started in this circus, I was here on a H1B and was an exotic derivatives trader for an investment bank. I was involved in the compensation process for the trading support at two places (once you get senior enough, there is not much you can do to escape that sh*t). I am pretty sure some guys were here on H1B, but it did not factor in their year-end bonus. Not to say it was a fair process, cause it was not, but it was not dependent on the visa status. There is no doubt good programmers (not all people in IT, just programmers) are underpaid given the rarity of the required analytical skill-set. Probably only 5% of population has the intellectual capacity to work as a programmer and the pay does not commensurate with that fact. Partially it has to do with locational arbitrage (elsewhere in the world programmers get less in absolute sense), partially by the fact that most companies view IT as a cost and "cheaper is better" until it hits where it hurts (I can recall numerous programming errors that cost my book millions of dollars). I also think there are too many IT professionals to begin with, a lot of custom development projects can be replaced by off-the-shelf products.
All true. The diff is that in programming the middle level guy has to constantly keep on top of technological changes or he's a goner. Not so much if you're a nurse. Taking that as an analogy, once you've learned all the stuff that will get you a degree as a nurse, the lion's share of the rest is on the job stuff you'll learn with experience. Obviously there will have to be time spent on keeping up, but it's not like the skill for putting an IV in an arm changes from one year to the next. For a programmer, there's the on the job experience after he gets his degree, but then on top of that he has to constantly keep up with changes in a multiplicity of things: at minimum, at least one computer programming language and one database language. More than likely, he'll learn a new one in a couple of years, from scratch. The learning is a constant thing. I wound up learning somewhere around 10 or so different languages for doing different things during my career, dealt with at least four or five OS's, and a few different database languages. That's on top of learning the business, as you point out. And of course as you went from one business to the next you had to learn the next one there too. See what I mean? It's a constant thing, far more comparable to a doctor than a nurse. The changes encompass technology, but then if in the middle you move from being employed by a store to being employed by a bank you have a completely new set of business requirements you have to learn on top of keeping up with your skills. And you're supposed to do all that while maybe making a bit more than a cop. I'm married to a doctor. I was on 24 hour call, and doing all the keeping up I list above, and making less than my wife at one point. That was when I took inventory and said screw this. I'm not alone.
Maybe on Wall Street. But they make money out of air on Wall st right? Everywhere else the starting salary is $75k and people make about $120k after 5-10 years of work: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microsofts-starting-median-pay-beats-rivals-91500/ Looks like Microsoft is paying more now but I wouldn't be surprised if foreigners weren't getting the 91K from the start. To make 200K you would have to have a pretty fancy title like principle architect or something. Few people get that far.
That's true about most dynamic professions. I, not being a programmer by trade, have used 10 or so programming languages in the last 15 years and that is on top of learning new models, new products etc. Once I moved to prop, it's only gotten worse - your only skill is ability to learn and generate new ideas. I think in any industry, the only way to relax is to make it into the middle management where your main skill is the ability to kiss ass (yet another proof that EQ > IQ). Medicine is unique since the level of pay there mainly derives from the artificial shortage of doctors, not from the actual skill-set they posses. But even there and around - give it another couple years and people will go to India to get a facelift for a grand vs. paying 10k here and you will heart the same song.