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by jkameleon

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by jkameleon

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3326979

Sorry, but you'll have to forget about Scotty.

He was downsized years ago, and his job was outsourced to Klingons.
Currently, he's happily shoveling manure on horse farm on Aldebaran,
and he's not coming back. His kids are studying law, investment
banking, and burger flipping.

CEO of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, who owns the contracting firm QRC,
that operates starship Enterprise got a $23 vigintillion bonus after
laying off 17% of Enterprise crew, including all of her's original
officers. As a result, Enterprise became a Darkstar-like accident waiting to happen, bound to disaster, and huge insurance premium for Weyland-Yutani corp.

by jkameleon

This is the most pukeable buzzword soup I've came across in years. Be
sure to pinch shut your mental nose before you read it!

http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1038111

The future of IT is bright. The disciplined IT skill set - precision
programming, estimating specifications-based scope of work,
specifications-driven design of deliverables, project management skills
to integrate resources, testing methodology, logging progress and error
classification - are valuable and transferable as long as they are up
to date. If you have tripped and fallen, rise and climb again. If you
are flying high, soar!

On the contrary. It's time to grab a parachute & bail out.

by jkameleon

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/technology/article/0,1299,DRMN_49_4127320,00.html

And what do the ads look like?

In a 30-second spot, Cate Lawrence, CEO of Boulder-based software maker Warrior Solutions Inc., makes a bullish point: There are more jobs than ever . . .

Cut to a new voice and a new face.

. . . for high-tech people - technicians, engineers, scientists, adds Thomas Marsh, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County.

A printed message soon appears: "Parents, help your kids go further with science and math."

That's typical soviet-style slogan.

And that's how the ad's Soviet equivalent looks like:

Be a metal worker

Translation:

[top] BE A METAL WORKER!
[bottom] LADS ANS LASSES!

Let's help the Soviet state create a powerful manpower resource reserves.

ENROLL
[illegible]

http://eng.plakaty.ru/posters?cid=4&full=1&page=6&id=1975

by jkameleon

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc2.1

. . .

2.1  Industry: Desires for Cheap Labor and ``Indentured
Servitude''

In early 1997, the ITAA industry lobbying group began its massive
national public relations campaign to develop an image of a software
labor shortage in the public consciousness. Many critics speculated at
the time that access to cheap labor, in the form of foreign nationals,
was the ``hidden agenda'' behind the ITAA's campaign. Though ITAA's
Harris Miller originally denied this
(Electronic Engineering Times, December 8, 1997), another ITAA
official blurted out around the same time that its ``number one
priority'' in 1998 would be to push Congress to increase the yearly
quota of H-1B work visas (San Jose Mercury News, November 21,
1997), which turned out to be the case; ITAA led the successful
campaigns to raise the H-1B cap in 1998 and 2000.

Amazingly, the prominent computer-industry business magazine, the
Red Herring, admitted in its July 1998 editorial that the charges I
make in this report are correct, and even more amazingly, actually
endorsed the idea of hiring H-1Bs as a means to accessing cheap labor.
The Red Herring put it this way:

The congressional General Accounting Office found ``serious analytical
and methodological weaknesses'' in the [ITAA/Dept. of Commerce]
reports. The American Engineering Association criticized common IT
hiring practices that eliminate more than 95 percent of applicants. A
University of California at Davis professor decried ``rampant'' age
discrimination by the industry and suggested that technology companies
prefer to hire young, cheap, foreign programmers who are willing to work
80-hour weeks.

Though factually correct, these criticisms are, we feel, ingenuous.
Companies have a fiduciary responsibility to keep labor costs low. If
U.S. technology companies cannot find highly trained, highly motivated
American employees at a competitive cost, then a shortage does exist.
And if companies say they want to hire more skilled foreign workers
because those workers are cheaper, we should believe them - and increase
the number of visas issued.

Equally important as cheap labor as an attraction to industry is the
de facto ``indentured servitude'' of the H-1B workers whose
employers are sponsoring them for greencards. As explained in Section
9.4, such workers are essentially
immobile for a period of five years or more. This means a programmer
cannot suddenly leave the employer in the lurch on an important project
by leaving for another company, an extremely important consideration to
employers. It also enables the employers to give them smaller raises,
work them more hours and so on.

. . .

by jkameleon

http://badgerherald.com/news/2005/10/13/gates_serves_as_surp.php

Despite numerous video cameras and unidentified ?guests?
? including an undercover police officer with a bomb-sniffing dog
in tow ? all under the facade of an ?educational video
shoot,? the unsuspecting students were star struck after a knock
at the door revealed the Microsoft Corporation chairman and chief
software architect as their teacher for the remainder of the period.

Looks like this is the only way Gates could induce students to
listen to his pitch. I wander, if there were armed guards at the door,
preventing students from running hither and thither.

by jkameleon

http://www.desktoppipeline.com/172302308

Corresponding poll says the following

Are IT Jobs Good Jobs?



In Are IT Jobs Good Jobs? I write that there seems to be a disconnect between claims of rising numbers of IT jobs and articles like Is IT Still Worth It?. What do you think?

IT departments still offer good jobs with bright futures.
11%

I'm happy with my IT job, but things have changed around me.

31%

I wouldn't recommend a career in IT to my son or daughter.
45%

In my company the IT department is a rapidly sinking ship.
13%

Note: Poll is still going on at the moment, and percentages may vary.

by michael professional

IT seems to have gotten away from meeting business needs (if it ever was focused there) and more or again into the technology versus other things.  Also, as more and more folks are knowledgable (our kids, etc.) the "mystic" of IT has faded.  Matching IT with business savy should keep you attuned to the future directions.  Hope this helps.

by jason_whiteaker

Here we go again...IT needs to "align itself with business"...blah-blah-blah...

Talk about a worn-out phrase. I would like to ask those people who make this statement time and again, "Why is it that the more managerial among IT staffers think that all of us techies WANT to be managers?" I'm so sick and tired of the attitude that technical work is a dead-end street, that geeks are losers, and that the real action is in management. Frankly, not everyone wants to be a manager, pursue an MBA, or be the CxO de jour.

I admit that being a pure techie can limit an IT career to a point, however, not every technical position can and will be outsourced. The IT pundits purvey ad-nauseum that techies/geeks better become business savvy, or else become extinct. Experience and history has demonstrated that technical people who innovate, adapt, and provide useful and competent customer service are every bit as needed as management. I've worked in about half a dozen industries, public and private, in my career of 13+ years. I have yet to find myself going toe-to-toe with a bunch of suits where my business acumen would even matter. IT is a tool, and we IT folk should be able to recognize where our craft can make a difference in the company's pain points. To suggest, though, IT workers should concern themselves more with budgets, marketing, process alignment, or some other business buzzword as opposed to what IT does best (technology) is an inefficient fit. With business operations being so complex, why should I think that with a limited business view (when compared to the folks who actually run and make decisions for the company), IT's suave business "moves" are going to turn a company on its ear? C'mon! As old-school as it sounds, companies are led from the top down - leadership and the trust placed in staff by those leaders are what sets the tone of and future for the company. I could have a well-managed company with a mediocre IT group, and I would bet that the company will probably still do well despite that group. Conversely, a company with bad leadership and the perfect, uber-IT-process-aligned-business-savvy-project-management-customer-service-oriented superheros will still go bust at the end of the day. I submit that IT should relegate itself to being attune to the pain points of the company and where it can assist. Additionally, management has to be competent and recognize what IT can bring to the table. An IT department that tries to move outside of its core competency by being a pseudo-business operations department is not securing its future. If management can't recognize that IT has a place in its planning and operations, than it doesn't really matter what IT thinks or does. Oh, and by the way, since when was ANY job secure?

Quit trying to ram the management track down my (and many of my colleagues) throats! If management has got it so together, is so happening, and so "with it", then why is it that so many companies have failed due to corrupt management? Comparatively, how many companies have been taken down by corrupt IT techy worker bees?

I'm not suggesting that management is a poor career choice. I'm merely stating that there are those of us who are willing to sacrifice the glitz, politics, and money that a management track offers. And you know what? I still have friends, a personality and rapport with my non-techy customers, and receive an occasional "Thanks!" from those customers.

by keith2468a

There are some great jobs in IT ... in certain parts of the world ... but you can say that about almost any trade or profession.

And people who really really want to work with computers, and who don't
mind moving across the country, should go into IT no matter how bad the
odds are for the general population.


Otherwise IT isn't worth it. 

IT has gone from being a profession to being a trade.  And there
are many trades (not all trades) where you can make more money, with
less formal preparation, have less on-going worry about going
out-of-date, and more stability in what part of the country you work
in. 

The large segment of the population called "baby boomers" are retiring
over the next 25 years.  Their retirement will mean rapid
advancement for those entering the trades and professions they
dominate.  Because IT is a new field, baby boomers are in a small
minority within it.  Going into IT means forgoing the rapid
advancement the boomer retirement is offering others.

Then there is the poor opportunity for career advancement into the
ranks of middle managers and executives.  Managers and executives
in IT tend to come from the ranks of salespeople, accountants, and
business people.  CIOs and managers of large departments generally
did not come up through the ranks of programmers and technicians.

In part our profession has itself to blame for this.  Collectively
we have consistently adopted practices that shun responsibility in the
decision making process.  And collectively we have accepted
working in unprofessional circumstances for supervisors who are
unqualified to lead us.  And finally, we never learned to properly
value our work (so many of us work for free, which violates the
definition of professional), and so others do not value our work.


So my advice to prospective IT students: 

1.  If you want a good income and stability, consider
plumbing, carpentry, aircraft maintenance, and police work. 

2.  If you want to be a true IT professional, that means taking a
degree in engineering, accounting, or project management, and then
directing your career into IT through your choice of optional courses,
your jobs, and continuing education.  If you want to be an IT
executive go into sales.

3.  Be prepared to leave the field at age 35 to 40 to take up
driving a city bus.  The professions that manage our trade like
cheap inexpensive new graduates.  They generally don't appreciate
and won't pay for experience.  When the time comes, it does not
matter how much continuous education you have taken or how versatile
you are.  Do not expect that to change.

If you are working in IT, ask your current boss and future prospective
employers what their educational and career background is.  Also
find out about their peers.  If all the managers above you and
your fellow IT flunkies are people from dis-similar backgrounds, if
they are all MBAs, salesmen, or from "some other socio-economic group"
do not expect that you will ever be joining their ranks.

by jamesrl

Aligning IT with the business does not equal turning techies into managers.

Aligning IT with the business means someone in IT management has to understand the strategic and tactical objectives of the business, and set IT objectives which support the business.

I'm sorry but I've seen too many IT shops where the inmates run the prison. IT is to serve the business. IT is not so you can play with all the neat toys. IT shops that don't realize this find themselves outsourced - I've seen it happen.

Everything you do in IT should be able to be defined as either a cost of doing business (providing infrastructure), increasing revenue or decreasing costs. If your IT organization focusses on this, then the business will ultimately be happy and not look to outsource.

 

James

by jkameleon


http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2005/10/improving_the_i.html

Can you smell it? There's something in the air, but it's not the autumnal
hearth. A smoldering anger, something I'd call "code rage," is everywhere,
spilling over into, permeating, and often dominating every discussion we've had
with readers this year about the state of the IT industry, IT careers, and
education. For each commentator who loves the industry and offers upbeat
advice, you'll find 10 or more cynical, resentful, and seething posts.

1 to 10 upbeat/smoldering ratio roughly matches the results of Desktop Pipeline
poll, mentioned in
the previous blog entry.

Nonetheless, code rage is a very real, very now staffing issue bubbling under
the surface at many IT shops. I know the fundamental underlying issues fueling
that rage are unlikely to change for many workers, but perhaps there are
adjustments, changes, and accommodations that can be made in the workplace to
make work a better place for everyone. I wonder how IT managers and HR
departments are dealing with workers who feel undervalued, overworked,
underpaid. Of course, there's a degree of that in any industry, but it seems
like a full-blown epidemic in IT. And regardless of how the business side views
or values IT's role in your company, IT managers have to address this issue.
You can't change the reality of the industry or even necessarily the
attitude of your business compatriots, but you can, at minimum, effect some
changes within the confines of your department. In other words, how can you
make a tough situation easier to bear?

Sorry, but there are only two options here:

  • To go and change the reality.
  • To sit and wait for reality to change by itself.

Any attempt of sticking the bandaid over it will just add
another layer on decades old deposit of toxic waste, remnant of thousands of
management fads.

by jkameleon

http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/labor/story/0,10801,81112,00.html

. . . For IT workers in the trenches, the good news is that layoffs are
slowing, actual pay cuts are largely a thing of the past, and only 4%
of corporate IT departments are considering moving jobs offshore in the
next year.

Yeah -- that's what qualifies as good news these days.

Trouble is, the survey doesn't show what lies just beneath that feeble
good news: Corporate IT morale is in the toilet. And the No. 1 reason
is the one thing you can't do much about: the long, long hours.

You can't do much about the hours your people work because the work has
to get done and there's no budget for hiring more people to do it. So
more and more of our best people are coming to the conclusion that
there's a better life to be had than grinding away in an IT shop.

And who will you lose at the first opportunity? Your smartest, sharpest
people, that's who. Your IT shop leaders. The ones who best understand
the connection between IT and business. The ones you'll need the most,
once you get the green light to start building new projects again.

They're the ones who don't have to stay -- who can take their corporate
IT experience and parlay it into a new career, whether that means
conventional IT consulting or a new specialist gig combining law and
IT, medicine and IT or some other profession and IT.

And why should they stay? They're smart enough to understand that this
crunch isn't a one-time thing. We've been through it before. First
there's an IT skills shortage: IT shops go crazy looking for ways to
fill critical jobs, and IT becomes the hot place to work. Then a few
years later the business tightens up, layoffs mount, salaries fall,
hours get long and college students switch their majors to anything but
computer science. Which, a few years later, results in another shortage
-- and the cycle begins again. No wonder your best people want to
leave. They love their work, but what sane person would want to build a
career on that sort of manic-depressive boom-and-bust cycle?

Amen.

by jkameleon

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=39197

American companies have to look overseas to fill their I.T. openings, ...

Ooooh, poor dears! It breaks my heart. Honestly.

American women miss out on a growing and, let's be honest,
potentially well-paying career.

So, normally you are not honest. It figures.

It's
getting worse. The Information Technology Association of America says
the country needs more I.T. workers than ever, and it expects the trend
to continue.

So what. ITAA always says the country needs more I.T. workers than ever. Even in 2000: http://www2.cio.com/metrics/2000/metric86.html

Organizations desperate for the right
I.T. workers are either outsourcing to
other countries (a practice that gets a lot of press, but has in fact
been on the decline)

"Right" means cheap, obedient, and witlessly enthusiastically geekish. It might
just turn out, however, that even India & China combined can't
produce as much such right I.T.workers as IT industry is willing to consume, wear out, and throw away.

Judging from theese here writings
http://www.indicthreads.com/blogs/316/software_job_india.html,
our Indian collegaues are on a fast track to a massive burnout. This is
the only possible cause of decline of outsourcing- if there really is a
decline, which I doubt.

. . . even the tremendous shortages of I.T.
workers noted in the I.T.AA studies could be filled," it wrote in a report
entitled, "The Supply of Information Technology Workers in the United States."

Tremendous
shortages!? I wander what the author of this article smokes. Now let's
see... "The Supply of Information Technology Workers in the United
States." ... http://www.cra.org/reports/wits/cra.wits.html

Dotcomboom/Y2K -ish drivel written in 1999... Nuff said.

The perception that a computer career means working alone

"They don't see the I.T. field as being a field where they can help people,"

"Girls tend to imagine that computer professionals live in a solitary,
antisocial and sedentary world,"

Theese perceptions are quite correct.

Hollins and Seckinger agreed wholeheartedly. "I don't want to sit in front of a
computer all day," they said, disturbingly, in unison.

Yup,
women are definitively smarter than men. I doubt "horrible IT workforce
shortage" crowd will ever manage to delude them into IT.
So, who's gonna be next? Well, if everything fails, there are always
primates
http://www.newtechusa.com/ppi/main.asp

by gardoglee

Yep, I just sit in front of my computer all day.  At least, on some occasions when there aren't client specification meetings, leadership and teamwork meetings, design/code/documentation/testing review meetings, training sessions, team meetings, staff meetings, and travelling to and from the client site.  Yep, I get to sit in front of my PC, on average, about 1.5 hours per day.

I don't know where you are, but it sounds awfully peaceful to me.  CAn I come visit?

by goal120

Weird -- I went into desktop support so I could help people and be more social!  Sure I spend some time alone figuring things out, but I spend more time out visiting every single person here with a computer (or phone or copier or PLC or anything electrical) problem.  I am one of the few who knows almost everyone who works here.  It can be a very social and fun job/career. 

I don't see an overabundance of jobs though, so I think the "shortage" stories are just HB1 visa-pushers' propaganda, just like with engineers.

by jkameleon

Pretty much out of this world, huh?

http://www.informationweek.com/783/salary.htm

It's hip--and profitable--to be in IT. InformationWeek's
annual salary survey shows compensation packages continue to rise as
the demand for IT talent outstrips the supply--and technology workers
are enjoying newfound respect from the business community.
. . .

There are
three constants for talented IT professionals, says Daversa: passion
for the work, the prestige associated with it, and the prosperity it
offers. In the pursuit of ever-greater compensation and challenge, the
love of the work remains.

Enamics
Inc's Saltzman may echo other IT professionals' sentiments when she
says she just can't stay away. "When I started my career, I migrated
away from technology for a while, but I came back to tech because
things change so fast," she says. "Nothing ever gets stale. People who
end up in the field reflect that. It's very exciting, and a great world
to be in."

by jkameleon

http://www.silicon.com/ciojury/0,3800003161,39153795,00.htm

"So-called talent wars are trumped up by those that aren't thinking
long term, pay dirt and then complain when they lose staff. Train your
team, give them stretch assignments and interesting projects, work with
them to develop and they'll stay. Also, if we as IT leaders are doing
our job correctly we shouldn't be worried when we do lose talent to
elsewhere as we'll have nurtured other stars coming up through the
ranks."

by jkameleon

... save the failure of globalization, and new cold war.

Before globalization, techies employed in R&D invented stuff, that was to be produced for their domestic market, usually a couple of millions of people big. After globalization, the market became a couple of billions big, however, a couple of competing R&D departments are still enough for a particular class of products. Products are produced in a couple of hundred times bigger series, but ammount of work done by their inventors remains the same. Following this logic, demand for creative, inventive work is dropping as markets get bigger, and more homogenuous. If size of a market increases from 6 millions to 6 billions, demand for creative inventive work drops 1000 times. There will still be demand for techies of course, but only for routine jobs.

Guiding youth into technical professions is therefore pretty sordid way of doing things. Its something like sending spam, or worse.

Spammer sends out millions of emails. Never mind, if only a couple of people get swindled. Email is (almost) free.

Similarily, "tech tallent shortage" lobbyists constantly gripe about "talent shortage" "it workforce shortage", "labour crunch", and so on, unless tech labour market is totally, hopelessly and obviously glutted. In this case, they are warning and projecting future labour crunches. Never mind, if only a couple of youngsters get swindled by this, and average employer's tech labour costs drop only 13 dollars per year. Bellyaching is free.

by jkameleon

http://www.nitea.org/viewpoint.cfm?vpID=6

So, what can we do to combat the prevalent
and widespread misinformation regarding employment levels and future
opportunities in the CS and IT fields? I strongly believe that the IT
Industry, the National Science Foundation and industry groups such as
ITAA need to recognize the strategic importance of more effectively
communicating to our secondary school students and the general public
the facts regarding the many and varied career opportunities in our
field. Subsequently, these groups need to mount a major public
relations campaign featuring role models . . .

Role models? Like... Dilbert, for example?


Sadly, if students do not begin reentering,
and subsequently completing, college degree programs in the computing
science fields, companies in the United States will not have the
expertise and skills required to compete globally, and will have no
option but to begin outsourcing the many jobs that the Bureau of Labor
Statistics are projecting in the computer science and information
technology fields through 2020.

So, let me see... Because kids won't study CS & IT because
companies outsource, companies will have no other option but to
outsource.

*** rolling my eyes ***

by jkameleon

http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/326367610a01040800afaa8557d81d44/pg0.htm


In Alberta, for instance, despite a consistently high rate of
economic growth, the market for IT-related jobs has been
decreasing, according to the Intuit study. Demand for computer
professionals in that province in 2005 was about 27,938, while the
supply of skilled IT workers was higher, at 28,985. This is
discouraging students from enrolling in computer science and
engineering programs. At the University of Alberta, only half of
the 130 available spaces in these programs were filled last
year.

"Government and business should work together to help educational
institutions fill the computer science programs and provide
incentives there," says Stephen King, Intuit Canada
vice-president.

So: Supply of skilled IT workers is higher than demand, and enrollment
in
computer science conseqently drops, in accordance of the laws of the
market. And that is supposed to be the sign of the looming critical IT
skill shortage in the near future. Oh, dear. Somebody must have cut
Mari-Len De Guzman's oxygen supply while she was in the incubator. Or,
maybe... she's just trying to convey us a message in a very subtle way.

by jkameleon

I haven anything better to do yesterday, so I browsed to this famous
overhyped hype about the alleged skill shortage in the UK software
industry.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,39020648,39278217,00.htm

Here it is, in it's entirerty

http://download.microsoft.com/documents/UK/citizenship/Developing_the%20_Future2006.pdf

There's a whole lot of anectotical evidence, wise words from various
PHBs, and, lo and behold, on page 17, even some statistics. ?The
numbers have fallen off a cliff.?, dramatically announces Karen Price,
Chief Executive, e-skills-UK. But are they?

Figure 2 - UCAS Computer Science Applicants 1996 - 2005: Levelled on pre dot com bubble levels.

Figure 3 - UCAS Engineering/Information Systems Applicants 1996 - 2005: Falling, but still about 10 times pre dot com bubble.

Figure 4 - UCAS Software Engineering Applicants 1996 - 2005: Levelling slightly below pre dot com bubble level.

Fallen off a cliff allright.

There's only one thing that can and will kill the software industry: Halfwit PHBs, like the authors of "Developing the Future".

On the other side of the world, here's what Indians have to say about it:

Pink slip awaiting 21,000 Britons by 2008

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=139189

Looming IT labor shortage my ass.

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