Totally fake high-tech "labor shortage"

[eridani]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-sorscher/labor-shortage_b_2362928.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications


We hear two views about the high-tech work force.

On one hand, employers warn of a dire labor shortage. On the other, recent high-tech graduates can't find jobs. Many face crushing student loans that they may never pay off. Mid-career high-tech workers are steadily being let go. Discouraged mid-career workers take lower-paid service jobs after months of searching for a job as good as the one they lost.

Employers get plenty of applications, but they can't find "qualified workers." Peter Cappelli, at the Wharton School studied this situation. He finds that employers are hiring more selectively, looking for the ideal match. It's not enough to be able to do the job. Employers want someone already doing that exact job.

<snip>

The IT industry is notorious for discarding older workers, and replacing them with younger workers who are lower on the pay scale. In 1996, Intel's chief operating officer, Craig Barrett, told his stockholders, "The half-life of an engineer ... is only a few years."

In the July 6, 2012 Wall Street Journal, 3G Studios CEO James Kosta said, "Engineers were outliving their usefulness from one project to another. When projects end, it's better to re-evaluate your entire staff and almost just hire anew."

This approach may have a certain logic in the motion picture business. However, it sounds harsh when you hear it from the NASA mission commander for the Mars lander, who guided his spacecraft to a successful landing, and is now looking for work.

[exboyfil]

1. Funny you bring this up

Because this is my daughter's video project. She has been doing a series of videos showing STEM education in our area, but she is also planning to show how STEM is not necessarily a panacea to our unemployment issues.

Thanks for sharing the article.

[eridani]

2. Will she put them up on YouTube?

If so, please post.

[exboyfil]

4. She is concerned about her privacy

but I will bring it up to her. She is only 16 but very talented as a documentary filmmaker. She is planning on majoring in Mechanical Engineering (already completed her first semester as a High School junior).

[jtuck004]

7. Might be a good link for some info

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/congress-betrays-us-stem-worker-once-again

[LarryNM]

3. It is not the Engineers that are obsolete

It is the Corporate business model that is Obsolete.

[eridani]

5. Sometimes it seems that the more useful you are, the more disposable you are

This can't go on if we are to survive as a society.

[ReRe]

6. K&R

..Because everyone needs to see this... Thanks for the the great post and discussion to come.

[AlbertCat]

8. So.....

It's not the "High Tech Labor Shortage" as much as it's the "High Tech and will work for crumbs Labor Shortage" that is troubling the industry.

[MAD Dave]

9. Exactly correct!

[djean111]

10. Yes.

Also, I have been passed over for an IT job that I was perfectly qualified for, had recommendations from the people I would have been working with, had completed several successful interviews for - to an H1b who had outright lied about his ability to do some of the required tasks. We were both from outside the company, so I wasn't passed over because my current job would have needed filling.
And I wasn't asking for much. One of my friends in the company ended up having to train the guy on things he had listed on his resume.
That I knew how to do. The decision came from upper management, not the people who interviewed me. This "technical knowledge" shortage is bullshit.

[MH1]

18. Well, I don't think experienced SAP programmers and analysts are paid "crumbs"

considering I am one and wouldn't characterize my pay that way.

I guess it depends on your definition of "crumbs". Nope, I don't qualify for the new highest income tax rate, so maybe I do only make "crumbs".

As I posted before, it is a little more complex. First of all, employers want people with experience. Not necessarily exactly what the job entails, but something showing you can do the job. (And as a former RF technician, I can see where the difference between the designs of 2.2 GHz and 1.9 GHz antennas makes not having the right experience relevant.)

The way you get experience in tech fields in today's world - at least in the IT fields I'm familiar with - typically involves getting internships in college and then taking temporary contracting jobs (probably at not-great pay, at least right away) to build up a resume. I guess a lot of Americans don't want to make those sacrifices though. But kids from India (and their parents) are quite willing.

And before anyone jumps on my comments, I really don't like this situation. I'd much rather work with coworkers with whom English communication is easy. But I am reporting my observations.

[jeff47]

19. So your plan is for me to go to college and do some unpaid interships

Great idea. I'm sure with my already-existing degree and 15 years experience, that would be an excellent plan for me to compete for entry-level jobs.

If you had actually read the story, or been involved at all in the hiring side of our industry, you'd realize that the problem isn't new grads without experience.

There's one "problem" - People with experience asking for pay commensurate with that experience.

So employers seeking to drive wages down get ridiculous in their requirements (Sure, he's got 10 years of SQL database experience, but not in our particular flavor of DB which he'd be up to speed on in 10 minutes), and are willing to accept lies from H1b companies.

As a result, our wages get driven down as unemployment lasts long enough for engineers to accept lower pay, and more H1b workers are paid pennies on the dollar.

[fasttense]

11. It's all about getting the CHEAPEST labor possible.

Corporations pay their executives so excessively that those executives would cut their own throats to keep their jobs. But this excessive pay has to be compensated for, so they pay the workers, the people who actually do the real work of the corporations as little as laws and society will allow.

This ensures corruption among executives and desperate serfs in the labor force.

Capitalism is eating their own and if/when the American people have had enough, they will rise up. I just wonder how bad it has to get before workers including engineers get to the that point.

Here in the poorest areas of TN people are still voting for RepubliCONS to screw them over. The unemployment rate actually got worse and is at 12.6% since they put the RepubliCONS in charge of everything. Yet the very poor have not put 2 and 2 together yet. They all just think RepubliCONS are wonderful.

[onlyadream]

12. Great article

And I've been saying this for sometime now. Totally bogus, just to get the forgeigner in.
Engineering is one of the hardest majors and, with no payoff, American students will not go into this field. What will this do to our country down the road?

[kwijybo]

14. Been that way since the late 80's, at least

Look for job advertisements that have excessive or impossible requirements, such as 5 or 10 years experience with a new language/process/software. It's there for one reason, to give the corporations ammunition when they go to congress to increase the h1b visa allotment.

[peacebird]

15. The foreign worker is paid little until their real green card comes in, which can take a year

The guys I worked with were frommIndia and Pakistan. Nice guys, living 5 to an apartment to make ends meet.

They are stuck with the company that got the h1b visa til their real work visa comes in. It was truly stunning to me that we were paying them so little.

Of course, i was expensive, so the layoff nailed me AND them, we think it was because their real work visas had just come in, so they could look for better paying jobs.

[adieu]

13. The irony, also, is that

It's the down-in-the-mud engineer who sees things directly on a day-to-day basis who will best be able to give expert opinions on how best improve a process or save money. That person has far more value than just doing the job. But no, the corporation would just as soon throw him or her out because of the existing salary scale rather than let that person develop and become an expert in that area, continually improving the system and saving money within that department.

Corporations think that they're just a long boat and the engineers are just the oarsmen. They don't realize that the corporation is an organic evolving entity and the engineers and other technical staff are there to help it evolve.

Hire people that will have the dedication to evolve with the company. In order to earn that dedication, the company has to offer assurances of continued employment. Not just to that person, but to all the colleagues of that person.

[onlyadream]

22. Astounding

How HR has become so glorified, when just about any engineer could do their job, but not the other way around.
The engineers should all band together and create a shared company and bury these horrible corporations. I'm sure there's enough talent out of work to do so, and with all the telecommuting tools, maybe it could be done.

[adieu]

23. Still need the marketing and sales people

They are a breed apart. Very few who can do the engineering can also do the sales. And you need legal and other strategic level people. Put a bunch of engineers together and they'll build a product that no one would use, but will be copied by other companies and then everyone will use that one.

[polynomial]

16. Recognizing who is who

My working career involved many small business operations. Without too much debate, many that have experienced this should understand the huge ego’s involved especially in a small family business. Money is always on the edge for someone in the family. Or, many can fathom the revenues coming in are adjusted to meet current legal demands still making it happen for the family. Can you blame them, no!

Those that have a hard time to survive the small business environment develop a curious management style over time. It’s called a tyranny with parsimony that is way too careful with money and resources. Actually it is just being stingy. That fundamental can take you to the top. It’s not unusual to figure when one is confronted by this management type. A simple question to uncover the ego maniac is to ask if they had a business of their own. The longer they are in their own business the worse your dealing with.

The mental illness that exists is that stingy ness and what some call CEO Narcissism, self-love, a business culture that thrives on the sucking up atmosphere everyone does for the boss. Its nuts but it’s true. The real kicker is those managers that keep the small business tyranny attitude in the department they have full domination in. In other words as soon as you understand the rhetoric is family stuff, we are a corporate family; one might get prepared to walk the plank.

If the department did not shut down because of this mix, or the manager was released usually showed the dysfunction in that corporate environment. Actually a lot of good guys fail the tyranny attitude, that stinginess, and the CEO narcissism. Far too many good managers and engineers are let go because they are just o.k. people, or have the potential to succeed, although that threatens the status quo.

The same reasoning is tightly held to politics. Especially in this filibuster debate. Money talks, the Supreme Court say so. Which is the most serious wack job of narcissism and parsimony stinginess? Image that lobbyist doling out huge amounts of money to creepy politicians all the while stifling the workers. Just incredible.

[MH1]

17. I would say "contrived" rather than "totally fake".

The issue in my specific area (SAP) seems to be the failure of US citizens to train for the positions and do the necessary "grunt work" (usually involving a few years where travel will be required, rather than the luxury of stable employment at one physical location) to build up a resume.

My observation is that employers don't want to hire low-experience programmers and business analysts for permanent positions. There is just too much overhead in bringing on a permanent employee, and the turnover would be too high. My experience is that many people just don't have an aptitude for this kind of work - or give up too easily, or something, I guess I'm not really sure what it is. Whatever the reason, I've seen A LOT of crappy programmers. I don't wonder why my employer doesn't want to hire anyone without a track record.

I've talked to American kids (usually related to me in some way) and they know I make good money at a relatively "easy" office job that I enjoy immensely, yet to them it sounds boring and I can't seem to recruit anyone to actually start learning it at an early age. In any case they would have to get that initial foot-in-the-door job which would probably mean travel and uncertainty for a few years. The investment would pay off hugely but it's an investment they don't want to make, apparently. Contrast this with kids from India who apparently have no qualms about this investment. And maybe they are steered more firmly to the proper training and maybe the proper training is more available, I don't know. But in any case, the result is that it is apparently relatively easier to find qualified SAP programmers from India than from the US. It still takes months to fill any position, though.

Re that last sentence: pm me if you are a US citizen with significant ABAP or SAP BW experience and might be looking for a job in the mid-Atlantic region in the next year or so. (I doubt I'll get any PM's.)

[eridani]

21. And why would they want to do the work if

"the half-life of an engineer is a few years"?

[Egalitarian Thug]

24. I have some specific experience in this, and what you describe is (probably unintentional) bullshit.

The City of Portland, OR. has been in the process of "merging all departmental systems" for over a decade and are no closer to accomplishing this than they were when they created this money sinkhole. They chose SAP. On its face, this was a decent choice, but SAP AG has adopted a model that makes implementation absurdly difficult. The disparity between what the people that can do the jobs can make and what the city can afford is the main roadblock.

Add to this the fact that SAP training in the U.S. is inflated beyond any reason, while it is heavily subsidized by the Indian government, and they have created a self-fulfilling prophesy. American companies will not pay the exorbitant fees that are demanded here, and any American workers that take the leap on their own are likely to find themselves buried under an ever-growing debt with little hope of repayment.

You wrote; "My experience is that many people just don't have an aptitude for this kind of work - or give up too easily, or something, I guess I'm not really sure what it is. Whatever the reason, I've seen A LOT of crappy programmers." Well no shit. This field is not something that most people can jump into, that's why we used to be able to make a good living doing it. But that was ended in the 90's and now the industry is left with kids that like to play video games and are told, point-click-and-drag, write a script, and you're a programmer.

Let me assure you that I have seen a lot of really crappy programmers from India, China, Russia, and the ME as well. The fact that none of our business managers want to acknowledge is that programming is a very difficult set of skills that comparatively few people possess, and if you want some of them to work for you, you will have to pay them a lot of money.

It's good that you have found a niche and are happily chugging away at whatever it is that you do. But understand that your situation is far from typical. If your company/organization was serious about hiring American workers, they could conduct instruction in-house, but I'm certain that isn't going to happen. They want to get some temporary workers that they can buy on contract for a grand a week with no benefits and no stability. This industry was destroyed so we could make a few billionaires and exploit the hell out of other counties with huge populations and no rights, and now we are all paying the price for that short-sighted idiocy.

[mother earth]

20. There's no labor shortage here at home for high tech, low tech & anything in between. We've got

enough people able & willing. Trouble is, the oligarchy wants a hand-out, entitlements, & they have bought & paid for politicians to do just what they want.

I don't mind people wanting to be wealthy, I do mind that the road to get there seems to be paved with the bodies of the poor & middle class...this is class warfare, through & through. They own US.