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Discrediting the Tech Labor Shortage


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2011 Oct 20, 12:25pm   2,548 views  12 comments

by HousingWatcher   ➕follow (0)   ignore (3)  

But, according to Obama, the Republicans, and virtually every CEO, we need more H1-B Visas because there simply are not enoguh people to fill tech jobs...

Notice this article comes from the Rupert Murdoch owned NY Post, which generally only publsihes conservative articles favorable to big business.

America's vanishing science jobs

The folks at Scientific American have launched "1,000 Scientists in 1,000 Days" -- a program to bring together scientists, teachers and students to improve America's "dismal" showing among wealthy countries (27th out of 29) in graduating college students with degrees in science or engineering. I'm sure they mean well -- but, at least as it applies to the field of chemistry, "1,000 Unemployed Scientists Living With Their Parents at Age 35 While Working at the Gap" would be a better name.

To trim expenses, companies began to outsource research to India and China. It started as a trickle, but soon became a tsunami, leaving many thousands of highly intelligent and well-trained professionals with nothing to do -- a shameful waste of talent.

My colleagues and I at Wyeth watched helplessly as one company after another shed employees in huge numbers -- 300,000 since 2000. When Pfizer -- facing the looming expiration of its Lipitor patent and a poor research pipeline -- bought Wyeth for its portfolio of products in 2009, it cut about 25,000 jobs, with more to come.

Most of the combined company's research sites have either closed or are in the process of doing so. Before long, the world's largest pharmaceutical company will be conducting very little research in the US.

And good luck finding a high-school teaching job. Last year, one of my old colleagues decided he wanted to teach science in New Jersey -- but found out that not a single position was available in the entire state. Previous industry casualties had probably filled the few openings.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/america_vanishing_science_jobs_V3TzWwPRZsmTh1sGmtVr8L#ixzz1bNZbMix9

But don't worry. The corporate owned Republicans still remain clueless:

"A Republican lawmaker has submitted legislation that would make foreign students who earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math at U.S. universities automatically eligible for a green card or permanent residency if they have a job offer.

Labrador, in a statement Friday announcing the bill, said his legislation addresses "the long-term problem of too few American students entering into math and science-based programs."

"When I practiced immigration law I regularly worked with high-tech companies in Idaho who had openings for workers with advanced degrees but, due to the small number of U.S. graduates in these fields, could not find the employees they needed," Labrador said."

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/404503/gop_tech_visa_bill_copies_literally_democrat_bill/

#politics

Comments 1 - 12 of 12        Search these comments

1   TMAC54   2011 Oct 21, 1:43am  

You would think it simple (for everyone) to understand why America's unemployment rate tripled in a couple years. I feel it was the end of the introduction of the computer. Peanuts compared to Discrediting the OIL shortage. Some believe the 90 degree turn in population growth was attributed to the introduction of fossil fuel (oil). What will this chart look like a few hundred years after it's depletion ?

2   zzyzzx   2011 Oct 21, 5:00am  

As a former engineer, it always bothers me when I hear people parrot stuff about the alleged engineer shortage, since it hasn't existed in more than about 30 years.

3   thomas.wong1986   2011 Oct 21, 6:49am  

zzyzzx says

As a former engineer, it always bothers me when I hear people parrot stuff about the alleged engineer shortage, since it hasn't existed in more than about 30 years.

They are looking for engineers under 40 Plus looking to have some ethnic diversity. If your a white guy over 40 with a boat load of experience and accomplishments, your out of luck.

Did any of this mattered when we had a tech boom in the 80s and 90s... nada.. its all about some Politcally Correct Agenda prick head 20-30 year old managers consider their ideal "culture".

That is what is ment by 'shortage"...

4   TPB   2011 Oct 21, 8:56am  

The tech shortage is real, and it's not just in America but world wide. The biggest fundamental problem has been frameworks, wizards, templates and WYSIWYGs has replaced a full breadth of understanding the underlying architecture and APIs. Programming has gotten to be convoluted task of understanding third party jargon, and software nomenclature, rather than the a full understanding of the Languages and compiler options.

This isn't just bound to just one platform or OS either. Microsoft, has wrapped much of their programming into foundation wrappers, that you make calls to, to display and manipulate data, rather than just programming out code directly.

This tends to lead to all software strategies looking identical.

It would appear to me, that JavaScript JSON, CSS jQuery developers have a greater command of the language to write the most customizable code of all of the languages right now.
And that's an interpreted language.

That's not to say you can't or don't write customized apps in C#, .NET, JAVA, ect but for the most part, you don't have to(for now). For the last few years, those that have been in the framework libraries. Have had a good run of being king of the IT room. The problem is, as most happens in IT, is when the languages paradigm changes. These folks that have been focused on template, wizards, and a automated framework. Find them selves tech ignorant, when those frameworks go out of fashion.

This is leading to a demand of old school programmers, that are proud users of the Notepad IDE. Not many youngsters fit that bill. They have been focused on the new. You can write an Android app(layout resource), with out ever once writing a lick of code. That's not to say it's not a huge daunting task of learning how to set up and use the Eclipse environment. But pretty much the whole app can be written just by configuring XML files and placing the graphics in the resource folder, and creating string resources for form(Activities) static labels.

That's a cool and good, but for the same amount of effort, or quicker for those keeping a library, it can be done just by coding out your forms and locations of the resources.

thomas.wong1986 says

They are looking for engineers under 40 Plus looking to have some ethnic diversity.

I am also in full understanding that for the first time in the IT world. Quality folks 40+ have absolutely nothing to worry about the young whipper snappers 30- coming along and taking your job. There is no new young fresh talent. They are all copying each others apps and designs. I haven't seen a 30- environment, since when I first started back in 97. Where the CIO of the company I was working for was ousted by all of the young developers, who went to the CEO and told him, either he goes or we all go. This turkey had bound to his 3 meg global mod, we had to use for every and any function we wanted to do. This was VB 6 then, and his module was written for VB 4.

But the young had that clout and talent to show, our routines were a lot more robust, dynamic and efficient than what that Turkey was trying to keep us bound to.

Indian programmers aren't all that either. They are good, at short cut and as they will say often, finding a hack to a problem for a solution. But make no mistake, those in India that are capable of writing a solid solution that will scale with the ages are in short supply there as well here.

The trick is to stay fresh on the lowest level of codding you can get, and learning or at least understanding new languages as they evolve, so that you know what their strong points as well as their short coming are, and you don't get trapped into some buzzword Mop and bucket technology, that is on it's way out, as soon as it came on the scene.

I expect to be programing well into my 70s. Unless my grand kids generation decides to get off their dicks, and don't look for shortcuts like the current generation has been.

5   HousingWatcher   2011 Oct 21, 10:00am  

Funny how shrek and mars attacks both have the exact same view when it comes to the tech labor shortage. I see you also both work in software development.

6   MisdemeanorRebel   2011 Oct 24, 1:58am  

Right, and you can't tell by looking at salaries.

Almost all specialties of engineer have a median salary below $100k. Exception being petroleum engineers, not a surprise when you consider the working conditions being more dangerous, and involving a lot of travel or being in a remote location (Alaska, Angola, off-shore rigs, etc.)

Even the top 10% of engineers - the elite, the highly experienced - make less than $130k for the most part.

Most Engineering fields in the US are slated to have "About as Fast as Average" over the next decade, according to the BLS. Exceptions include environmental and biomedical engineering. These fields are relatively "new" and require a more diverse range of knowledge, so that's understandable - and easily remedied by retraining.

There are 1.6M engineers, in a country with only about 130M people in the workforce. More than 1 in 100 people is an engineer by trade, which is close to the ratio of people in the US Military.

Keep these facts in mind the next time some industry jerk claims they can't find a "Competent" Engineer at $200k because of some non-existent shortage/laziness/lack of education/lack of Visas.

The GOP says

The tech shortage is real, and it's not just in America but world wide. The biggest fundamental problem has been frameworks, wizards, templates and WYSIWYGs has replaced a full breadth of understanding the underlying architecture and APIs.

Yes, according to the BLS, computer hardware engineers are getting hit hard by this sea change.

7   zzyzzx   2011 Oct 24, 2:03am  

thomas.wong1986 says

zzyzzx says

As a former engineer, it always bothers me when I hear people parrot stuff about the alleged engineer shortage, since it hasn't existed in more than about 30 years.

They are looking for engineers under 40 Plus looking to have some ethnic diversity. If your a white guy over 40 with a boat load of experience and accomplishments, your out of luck.

Did any of this mattered when we had a tech boom in the 80s and 90s... nada.. its all about some Politcally Correct Agenda prick head 20-30 year old managers consider their ideal "culture".

That is what is ment by 'shortage"...

Either that or "shortage" meaning that they are having trouble finding engineers to work for $6.50/hr. I'm not making that number up either. I used to work with a Russian whose first job in the US was $6.50/hr as en electrical engineer at a waste water treatment plant. And that was in the 1990's.

My last job as an engineer paid 45K when I left, and that was in Washington DC with a PE license and no 401K. The electricians at the plant made more than I did. A few years ago I was in Lowes when one of the electrical foreman from the plant spotted me and he told me that the reason he never bothered trying to become an electrical engineer was because on the occasions he had to hire one to do a small job, the rates were so low that he knew it wasn't going to pan out.

8   HousingWatcher   2011 Oct 24, 6:32am  

I found this piece quite informative:

"According to the IEEE-USA's analysis of Labor Department data," Hira continued, "there are more than 300,000 unemployed engineers and computer scientists" in the United States. And though Hira did not mention it, tens of thousands of the scientists counted as employed are trapped in low-paying postdoc "training" jobs that economists have long recognized as effectively disguising unemployment."

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2011_09_02/caredit.a1100089

10   corntrollio   2011 Oct 26, 8:04am  

zzyzzx says

My last job as an engineer paid 45K when I left, and that was in Washington DC with a PE license and no 401K. The electricians at the plant made more than I did. A few years ago I was in Lowes when one of the electrical foreman from the plant spotted me and he told me that the reason he never bothered trying to become an electrical engineer was because on the occasions he had to hire one to do a small job, the rates were so low that he knew it wasn't going to pan out.

Who'd you work for and what year? I know that people who worked as electrical engineers for big companies made more than that and had generous 401(k) matches 10-15 years ago, and that's without including overtime on top of that salary.

11   zzyzzx   2011 Oct 27, 5:44am  

corntrollio says

Who'd you work for and what year? I know that people who worked as electrical engineers for big companies made more than that and had generous 401(k) matches 10-15 years ago, and that's without including overtime on top of that salary.

1992-1995 for a small 8a contractor.

12   corntrollio   2011 Oct 27, 6:02am  

zzyzzx says

1992-1995 for a small 8a contractor.

Didn't mind your government cheese then, did you?

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