Programming Jobs Losing Luster in U.S.

[mattpg1]

The research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that up to 15 percent of tech workers will drop out of the profession by 2010, not including those who retire or die. Most will leave because they can't get jobs or can get more money or job satisfaction elsewhere. Within the same period, worldwide demand for technology developers — a job category ranging from programmers people who maintain everything from mainframes to employee laptops — is forecast to shrink by 30 percent.

Full article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050620/ap_on_hi_te/tech_job_decline

[bAdWaYz]

Yes all the coders are up a creek. Part of the problem is that big companies want to save money so they send good jobs to India or the like. They can get the same code for cheaper so its called "long term savings". The sad part is that while some Americans are up in arms over this the poor Indian guy isn't any better off back in India because he makes about two bucks an hour. The other part of the problem is the way alot of young american grads see life. They no longer want to "work" their way up at job. They want to get out of college and hit the ground running as a boss within the company. What happened to paying ones dues? I guess the "me, me, me" attitude that alot of Americans have if finally catching up to us. So the next time some end user calls Dell Tech support and gets India on the phone they should learn to expect it. I don't know about you guys, but I'm brushing up on my Hindi as we speak.

[z1p]

Oh boy, does this hit close to home. I have seen this 1st hand. First, my company started contracting with a company from India, but had most of the contractors in house. Then, they started having them do some work in India. We shipped the equipment over there and they set up shop to do coding for us. Well that relationship ended, but many of the contractors in house stayed as employees.

And the equipment we sent over, we had to now ship back. We had to send all the equipment out to be professionally cleaned because they appeared to have been through a dust storm, it was amazing that they still worked. Most if not all the cost savings of having the work done overseas was eaten up by the high cost of getting equipment in and out of India.

My groups next foray into outsourcing/off-shoring was with another company based in India. Again, we started with all the work being done in house. We had a couple of small projects that were deemed successful. Then we started a couple of larger scale projects with them and had some of the work for those being done in India. While those projects were finished, we never were able to use what was produced. Was the issues we encountered due because it was an indian company? No, but the issues that haunt all outsourced projects was compounded by having some of the work being done at such a remote location and because of the almost wild west atmosphere in the software industry in India.

Now that that relationship was ended, my companies latest attempt to be able to successfully offshore is to set up their own shop. While this may prove to be the most successful, it still has a long way to go and faces many issues that eat away at the cost savings. The equipement costs for setting up in India are much higher than here in the US. The other cost issue they are constantly facing is the cost of hiring. Yes, there is a large work force available in India, but it very mobile. Many of the programmers are constantly jumping from company to company, often in groups. Also, there are the cases where they don't show up after they are hired or call demanding more money before they even start.

I think for most part the cost saving of having work done in India (and other offshore locations) turns out to be minimal and that most companies that setup and keep a shop there, do so more to have a global presence than to save mony.

[Tristansdaz]

Badwayz is 100% right!! I work for a major insurance company and when we were looking for new claims representatives, about all we got applying out of college were the kids that think we should have hired them as supervisors. Not to mention that they had no clue what an automobile is other than where to put the gas in. (and I sometimes wonder about that!) I'm sure that similar things were said as each generation comes up the pipeline but this one seems to be waaaay off base.

[Spider]

When the word Outsourcing was first uttered the cries from the industry
workers was "It's going to kill us down the road!"

I remember when once a couple of the larger PC manufacturers had factories set up
in India, the comps that were coming out for sale were freaking me out! I had never
seen such cheap pricing on full home systems.

Next thing you know we changed to 64bit on the mobos and 16x on the gfx cards.
Freaked out again! Latest tech vid cards coming out first sale at $80.00, 64bit mobos
$69.00

Now that all the large mongers are all in India they all sell cheap comp systems. If your
a manufacturer and your not outsourcing...your dead. There is no choice for manufacturers
and programming firms now but to outsource to remain competitive.

So they are no more "ahead" of the other guy is market share and the end result is we have
something bigger than the dot.bomb and no one seems to be treating it this way. We can't
roll the clock back now, what's done is done.

What I see in the market now id gfx jobs. There seems to be a larger call for gfx gurus.
You can put a uni-grad into a server farm and hope they get up-2-speed one day.
You can put a uni-grad into a programming firm and hope by osmosis they get up-2-speed.
You *can't* put a uni-grad into a gfx job if they have no experience.
Gfx is the logo...
Gfx is the trademark...
Gfx is the company signs...
Gfx is the magazine...
Gfx is the core face of advertising.

Gfx is the future pplz.

(I upped my Photoshop to CS 9 and am asking questions [again] to the gfx gurus I know)

[z1p]

You can put a uni-grad into a programming firm and hope by osmosis they get up-2-speed. And I'd say it's a foolish hope. Most uni-grads is no more capable of performing a complex programming task out of school as a chimp.

I am not saying outsourcing is an evil and that it cannot be done successfully. I do believe it is useful in limited circumstances and is difficult to do successfully.

Is the SW development industry changing and getting tougher? Most definitely. Can a firm deliver competitive quality product with a bunch of kids just out of school (in the US or abroad)? Once in a blue moon.

Managers get trying to assembly line SW and it just doesn't work. It always kills me to here a manager say an engineer is an engineer, if they can write SW, they should be able to write any kind of SW.


Maybe I should do Gfx, 'cause SW devel isn't as much fun as it used to be. ;)