Battle of the Ages; Stereotypes Collide 319
JCOTTON writes "A CIO.com article By Phil Murphy explains that "The hype around the shortage of qualified legacy technologists grows each day. Pundits would have us believe that 1.5 million COBOL programmers will suddenly disappear one day, leaving any company with legacy technology in dire straits. The truth is that there are far more programmers with legacy skills looking for work than there are jobs for them, as evidenced by organizations like Legacy Reserves, which functions as a training and job matching service for unemployed or underemployed programmers wishing to modernize their skills."
This article explains many of the issues facing "the upper half" of Information Technology workers."
Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
It appears that they're hiring again (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, the PHBs will whine about the need for cheap H1-Bs that they can abuse, but I don't see Congress being all that sympathetic at the moment, or at the very least they're too fragmented on the issue of immigration in general to get anything done.
Boom times are here again! Well, no, but at this point somewhat better than average middle class employment will do.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Interesting)
If it's Not Broken... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've dealt with these guys. They are satisfied with what they're getting out of that type of system and will keep it till the power surge blows it away. Hell, I wouldn't be suprised if some of them checked Ebay [ebay.com] for replacement hardware. I'm sure they know were they put those 5.25 floppies.
U.S. Department of Labor says the same thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Pick just about any job and in the listing you'll find something like this:
Employment of XXXXX is expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations over the 2002-12 period. However, job opportunities are expected to be very good because a large number of XXXXX are expected to retire in the coming decade, creating many job openings.
Does anyone truly believe this? No. The only group of people that typically exploit this figure is someone trying to sell you something.
Read up... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It appears that they're hiring again (Score:1, Interesting)
Probably. But has everyone forgotten that the name of the game in high tech is *results*?
Personally, I don't care about offshoring. There will always be companies who have figured out how to best get things done, and done quickly. Yes, they will be in the minority, but that's how you get to the top. The trick is to be the best in your field and find one of these companies.
I know my competition well, and could care less about offshoring. I have NEVER seen it work, though I'm sure it must have, for someone. 1 Billion Indians can't all be screw-ups; and I've known a lot of bright Indians here in the States.
Of far greater concern are H1-B's. I don't have any trouble finding work myself, but what I see is that companies are hiring H1-B's over new college grads. I'm concerned about the next generation of workers, who aren't getting the skills.
Re:It appears that they're hiring again (Score:4, Interesting)
See my post here [slashdot.org] The parent post to yours is right, outsourcing is screwed up and the provided link to a previous article explains the reasons, in pretty good details. We will head into another boom here soon which will be called the "outsourced project clean up boom" or just "the Clean up Boom" (I get credit for that) in which we will be fixing the broken projects coming back from overseas. I personally am finding more work than I can handle doing exactly this, rescuing failed overseas projects.
Firms are building failure for the future (Score:5, Interesting)
What there is a shortage of is 45 year olds with 20 years of experience in a 5 year old technology and willing to relocate halfway across the country for a 50% pay cut on a contract basis for six months.
The COBOL jocks who are still around are not in it for altruistic purposes. They are in it to make a killing. Don't think so? Ok - more than half of the country's COBOL, etc. hands were fired in the mid 90's with 'consolidation' and 'modernization'. Then those same idiots who fired everyone freaked out when they simply couldn't answer their own auditors questions about Y2K.
It was magic. All the middle aged guys who got fired coming back to work and literally pulling a rate number out of their ass. $100/hr sound ok to you? $125? Good cause that's what it's to cost you.
Well here we are 4 years into a capital investment recession in IT and guess what? Those same old Mainframes are still around and COBOL and CICS and JCL are still running on them. Because that work NEVER got done ten years ago. It was too expensive and was crowded out by Y2K.
So second generation executards call in the oldtimers again, this time to 'fix' the mainframe problem because the leases are coming due and the CFO is absofuckinglutely convinced that and ICC capital lease iis more expensive than junking everything and starting over.
Hey I've heard this Opera before. It was called "Client Server Computer".
But make no mistake about it my fellow greyheads. They have about as much respect for you and your skills as they have for the beaker that collects bull semen. What you have to do is rape them on the contract.
And in 3 or 4 years and the progress is excruciatingly slow and they suddenly come back from Gartner executive retreats with the new found knowledge that mainframe is new paradigm they must strategize, optimize and leveragize they'll drop all the migration efforts and put their money back into mainframe system development.
Trust me, IBM would not continue to invest all that money in MVS and z/OS Large Systems if they thought there was a limited future in it.
Every couple of years there is the same old new revolution in commercial IT. It's part of the scenery like starving African children with automatic weapons. Sell them more weapons.
Re:Multiple Languages, Anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Businesses looking to hire IT staff may be but if you go to a company that specializes in solving software problems you will be turned down just for having certificates on your resume.
Just remember, there are jobs for IT specialists and jobs for Computer Scientists. They aren't the same thing. There are far more jobs in IT than there are in CS but there are still far too few good Computer Scientists for the number of jobs available.
Re:"Labor Shortage" yellow alert (Score:3, Interesting)
A. The companies did not get any qualified candidates.
This is possible, but not likely. The IT field in Seattle was hitting 10% unemployment for the last few years.
B. Companies are gathering resumes for future hiring.
The need to hire and the money to hire don't always coincide, so companies need to figure out the best time to bring on new people. These companies could be putting "feelers" out to gauge job demand. For example, if they get 1000 resumes one month, then just 10 the next month, then demand for jobs has gone down and they might actually run out of cheap, qualified candidates soon.
C. Companies are listing positions, but not actually hiring.
Companies could also just be using this as a ploy to go to Congress to get more cheap H1-B's. "Mr Senator, we were unable to find any software engineers with 10 years of experience programming
D. Companies are listing positions with inflated requirements to only get H1-Bs.
I've seen jobs that I've applied to get rewriten to include Indian speaking requirements. Employers generally have to prove that local candidates don't qualify for the jobs they post before they can bring in someone from overseas. Unfortunately, there's no law that states companies can't tailor their job description to one, specific, foreign candidate.
Re:It appears that they're hiring again (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure how professorship visas work, but no one I know in grad school seems concerned about getting one if they get a professorship in the US. You do, however, have to be careful about returning to your home country for a conference, as you might get stuck there. (My advisor has had this problem.)
Lea