No, The Tech Skills Shortage Doesn't Exist

[OhioChick]

Employers game the system and misrepresent the key market indicators.

By Ron Hira
InformationWeek
January 12, 2008 12:02 AM (From the January 14, 2008 issue)


Employers claim there is a severe shortage of IT workers in the United States. Listen in on any klatch of CIOs, and the conversation inevitably turns to their difficulties finding talent. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Bill Gates, Intel (NSDQ: INTC)'s Craig Barrett, and other captains of tech industry argue that the situation has reached crisis proportions.

But moving beyond anecdotal impressions and vested interests, the employment and economic data paint another picture--one in which the IT labor market is clearing and none of the indicators demonstrates a systemic shortage. While exceptional talent or skills in emerging technologies will always, by definition, be in short supply, the most relevant market indicators--wages and employee risk--clearly show there's no broad-based scarcity of U.S. IT workers. In their zeal to enlist government help to expand the supply of tech workers through foreign guest worker programs, employers are misrepresenting IT labor market conditions.

key indicator of tightness in any labor market is wages--more specifically, whether wages are rising much faster than the norm. IT worker wages grew by a modest 2.9% in constant dollar terms from 2003 to 2005, according to Department of Labor data compiled by the Commission on Professionals in Science & Technology (CPST). This increase is indeed greater than the average 0.6% growth for all professional occupations, but the gains for IT workers were hardly robust and don't indicate any significant scarcity. More recently, we've seen some growth in the wages for newly minted bachelor's degree computer scientists, according to the National Association for Colleges & Employers. Salaries for those entry-level jobs rose from $50,744 in 2006 to $53,051 in 2007, an increase of 4.5%. But those gains were almost completely gobbled up by inflation, which ran about 4.3% in 2007.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601556

[jgraz]

1. The real shortage is in Skilled Tech Workers Willing to Work for Shit

God forbid the board members should have to wait an extra 6 months to buy their private islands. :grr:

[muntrv]

4. Or those who will work for long hours for shit.

[jgraz]

6. As I take a break from work to reply to this post

:banghead:

[OhioChick]

7. Same Here.....

60-80 Hour Work-Weeks for Jack Shit. :banghead:

[jgraz]

8. Well, the pay's a bit better out here

but the living expenses are through the roof.

BTW, I passed 80 hours sometime last night. :boring:

[pnwmom]

17. Exactly. Unless they're freshly minted foreign PhD's. n/t

[yourout]

2. Gates and Co are trying to stay ahead of the curve as it takes....

several years of training to get profiecent. And by claiming there is a shortage now even if there isn't they get people to jump into the field and drive down wages by flooding the market with unemployed workers.

[Yael]

3. This is such crap

They are just keeping their justifications for offshoring and H1b visas out there swinging in the wind.

There are a HOST of underemployed IT people out there with schools like ITT-TECH pumping them out by the boatloads. They are working in retail, distribution and service industries just waiting on a coveted job to open up.

These "industry experts" can kiss it.

[DavidMS]

12. Yes and most of them aren't qualified

I work in IT and know that we have had trouble filling positions. And the pay is good. Its a question of quality, competence and those soft people skills.

[Prophet 451]

5. Of course it's bullshit

I can remember two threads here within the last week asking if young people have unrealistic expectations. The answer is universally "No, you aren't entitled to pay low wages and they aren't willing to be paid shit wages anymore". I actually work in IT and without exception, I've found that the shortage of skilled workers is actually a shortage of people willing to work for low wages. The problem with tech companies is that they want Einstein but they're only willing to pay for Nobby Nobody.

[sam sarrha]

9. th younger people i worked with in Aerospace just didnt want to "Work", they never finished anything

to completion, and never put any effort to do a good job.. about 60% of the team, they got really pissed off if i told them it was their job..not mine to finish what they were given to do.. they said.."you do final Assembly.. you have to finish up everything...

i could not convince them that i just did the "last" assembly.. which took 2 hours, it took me another 2 hours to 'finish up' what should have been done.. during that extra 2 hours the assembly line stopped and 12 people stood around doing nothing or getting in my way and refusing to get out of my way, especially not helping me...while i worked my 58 year old ass off..

at Boeing it was not as bad because they are bad ass-ed slave drivers and would fire you.. but it still wasn't hard to do 2.5 times more work than them. once we did 12/7 for 5 months,.. show up 1 second late 4 times a month. that included back from breaks and lunch, twice a year you're fired.

i have a mortgage, a wife and mother with serious health problems to take care of... any job is a good job. and i just lost my left hand and may not get another job, disability ends in march

[nightrider767]

16. MY condolences amigo

Sorry to hear for your hardship.

Best of luck to you brother.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. American born programmers are often unemployed.

How about one with 2 degrees in physics/math/E.E., 35 years programming experience in Basic and Visual Basic, databases, spreadsheets, and process engineering for sizing oilfield equipment and estimating project costs, correct down to the hundredths of a percent?

Not me, a friend of mine I am talking about.

Give me a fucking break.

They want a Jimmy Highschool, 50,000 of them, they can pay $1 an hour, instead of one experienced programmer earning $50,000. When they should be paying 100 grand or more to people with that kind of experience.

[ChromeFoundry]

11. The shortage is not in the number of skilled workers

There are a lot of brilliant people that have decided to utilize their talents in areas other than to fulfill the monetary goals of these companies crying for more and more "low-wage earning geniuses." The most talented software engineers/programmers do not obtain their skills by taking college courses, nor do they standout in their field based on the number of certifications they list on their resume.

The brightest development efforts are conceived and built from the mind of the visionaries. The skills that cannot be taught. In order to implement a truly visionary idea, you need to have skills far beyond just mastery of a single programming language. Advanced mathematics and the mental ability of abstraction, coupled with a passion for the actual work they are developing. Most highly talented software developers are not the greedy sons-of-bitches that most of these companies claiming shortages in talent would have you believe. The truly gifted developer is focused on the challenge of the puzzle and building the best solution. Their requirements to perform the task are simple. Pay them fairly, treat them with some respect. If the company is primarily a software development company, and the company gains millions in profits from the efforts of the developers... reward them rather than solely rewarding the CEO. There is no bigger let down than for a developer's efforts to be rewarded to someone else.

Is there a shortage of skilled workers? Yes, but only in the area of the latest technologies.

Will this gap be filled by churning out more and more graduates with skills in the latest technologies? No, this industry is not based on the size of the army but on the skills of the individual warriors. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; as an application is only as good as its least skilled developer on the team.

Show me a person that understands the internal workings and limitations of an Operating System, device driver, CPU, Memory, Hard Drive, PCI bus, Network card, OSI model, layer 2/3 switches, TCP/IP, protocols, router, and firewalls; as well as having a deep understanding of advanced mathematics... and I'll show you one hell of a developer that has the ability to troubleshoot and reverse engineer just about anything. Ask the person how he gained all this knowledge. His/her answer will never be "in college." This person has a desire to learn about everything. They have a need for understanding how things work. Also, this person is not an idiot, and will not perform these tasks under direction of a company that will not offer pay comparable to the skills.

Software engineering/development is an art form. Constraining an individual into a 8am-5pm work schedule will not produce a quality product in a schedule offered in some gantt chart. Offering flexibility in working schedule, some level of intellectual respect, and minimizing the individual's financial worries, allowing them to focus on the puzzle and devise the solution, will yield a quality product that offers a larger return on the investment to the company.

The shortage is not in genius or skill. The shortage is in the number of people willing to apply their skills to a market that does not form an equation containing a "=", or places the individual on the wrong side of the ">". The geniuses of the industry have not evaporated, they have simply found jobs in fields that either pay the same or they have found jobs that challenge their intellect other than by way of a compiler. This new wave of "rock-star" computer science majors that these companies are seeking, will result in nothing more than one hit wonders. Companies are focused on next quarter earnings and not in long-term growth. If they can maximize their profits today, they can just buy the companies that have proven long-term stability.

[RuleOfNah]

13. In other words...

It is incredibly difficult to find decent employers, even in the Valley.

[OhioChick]

19. Bottom Line....

Employers are looking for cheap-ass labor. Quality takes a back seat to save $$$$.

[RuleOfNah]

20. That isn't the only problem.

The problem is more complex than cheap + fast - good.

There has been a severe degradation of the quality of employers in the USA for decades. Severe, perhaps irreversible damage.

The inept and immoral have cornered authority and externalized responsibility.

Money has not been saved, it has been redirected into the offshore bank accounts of a select few.

Big Brother has gone franchise.

[OhioChick]

21. "Big Brother has gone franchise."

You Got That Right.

[Skittles]

24. quality when to hell with outsourcing

our number of SEV1 outages shot up dramatically but I have noticed that standards have been lowered to meet expectations

[OhioChick]

27. Quality Sure Did go to Hell.....

You'd be surprised the shitty code I've come across.

[Skittles]

31. uh, no I wouldn't be surprised my sweet

I monitor mainframe systems and see their crappy code every night I work. :o

[RuleOfNah]

22. Only those for sale.

If they can maximize their profits today, they can just buy the companies that have proven long-term stability.

The rest they gut, legally or illegally. Even the vampire losers, delisted and going under, continue to twitch indefinitely.

http://www.groklaw.net/

[Triana]

14. There is no tech skills shortage. There is a DIRT CHEAP tech skills shortage..

...that's why they outsource. It's not lack of skills in the US. It's that they make more PROFIT by paying foreign tech people dirt wages.

Corprats = robber barons.

[Hydra]

15. Dur!

I'm one of those underpaid IT people looking at getting a job in my previous industry because I might get paid better there and have less to do. I can amuse myself shredding and rebuilding programs in my spare time, rather than listening to how our budget needs tightening again.

[dapper]

18. Outsourcing, Temps...etc

I am a Computer Tech with a ton of years on my resume. I worked as a one man crew at a small company for some time and consider myself well rounded. (Mainframe, Terminal, PC Servers, Helpdesk, Breakfix..etc)

Somewhere along the lines, a genius with a Banking background wondered outloud if we could train a "monkey" to do our work. Although the monkey could do some of the work, he did not have the background/smarts to do the job efficiently... but it was okay, the company was saving a ton of money. The company went further and outsources to "monkeys" in a different country...

I have no issue getting jobs in the IT Field but generally it is at a lower salary. But what starts out to be me being well skilled is replaced by how many calls I can take and how little time I can spend on each call. I am a phone monkey.

Somedays I feel that my skill are going to waste as I train a bunch of drone monkey's who just went to a tech school for 2 weeks everything there is to do.

I don't work for the company I work at, I am a "Consultant"... a consultant that they do not consult with. Strange enough, as they fire their employees or their employees leave, I am taking on their responsibility. In fact, I am doing the same work as some of the employees. I have been there over two years... being a "consulant". I think I'm a Perma Temp, err, I know I'm a perma temp.

Yeah, Tech Skill Shortage.... my ass. Maybe if we weren't so concerned with how much money our CEO's (CIO, CFO...) make, outsourcing to third world countries... sweat shops...etc...

Dap

[Skittles]

23. of course there isn't

those of us IT workers still employed know who got let go and the idiots replacing them - NO COMPARISON

[Voltaire99]

25. True. So don't vote for candidates who support outsourcing.

Chief among them, Hillary.

[OhioChick]

26. I Don't Intend on Supporting HRC. n/t

[flashl]

28. The shortage of IT workers mantra is one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.

If you know the IT hoax to be an outright lie, then think about that as you compare other ‘expert’ information hoist onto the U.S. public.

[OhioChick]

30. Sure is a Hoax....

Study: There Is No Shortage of U.S. Engineers
2007-04-04

A new study argues that the offshoring of U.S. jobs is caused by cost savings and not a shortage of U.S. engineers or better education in China. However, the study warns that the United States is losing its global edge.

A commonly heard defense in the arguments that surround U.S. companies that offshore high-tech and engineering jobs is that the U.S. math and science education system is not producing a sufficient number of engineers to fill a corporations needs.

However, a new study from Duke University calls this argument bunk, stating that there is no shortage of engineers in the United States, and that offshoring is all about cost savings.

This report, entitled "Issues in Science and Technology" and published in the latest National Academy of Sciences magazine further explores the topic of engineering graduation rates of India, China and the United States, the subject of a 2005 Duke study.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Careers/Study-There-Is-No-Shortage-of-US-Engineers/

[ihavenobias]

29. K & R

[GetTheRightVote]

32. I concur with many of your comments, I am I/T as well.....

I have seen corps throw American workers out of jobs while bringing in International workers for lesser pay. I have seen many of my fellow Americans not given an opportunity to grow, to learn, to expand, yet I have seen these same chances given to Internationals by other Internationals in this field.

We as Americans need to learn, if we are survive, to network and help to keep each other in jobs like they do. We know that Corporation greed is trying to harm our American Dream, they could care less about their own country men and women while we slave for them behind their mansions and yachts. But this has been and still is happening in so many areas of employment.

We must begin to change the way we view ourselves as singles in the work place but as a community of people who must help each other. For if we do not empower ourselves with the strength of many then they we smash us all, one by one.