Roy Vestal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11 Jun 2003 08:50:40 -0400 > Not a good market right now.
... and not likely to improve anytime soon :-( See
http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20030606S0024
Commentary from Norm Matloff (CS prof and IT labor market expert): > Here is a point to consider:
> Rather than using taxes and interest policy to stimulate the > economy, Tabarrok said a recovery will require time and patience. > "We'll come out of this in the next six months, although the job > market may take a little while to catch up," he added.
> The speaker is equating growth of the industry with growth in the > job market for American workers, which is a false equation. The > pattern in recent years has been that employers hiring workers in > the U.S. are increasingly turning to H-1Bs and L-1s. The Commerce > Dept. estimated that 28% of new programmer jobs were filled by H-1Bs > in the late 1990s; the Federal Reserve Bank reported that that > number had risen to 50% in 2001; and very rough estimates indicate > that the number has gone considerably higher than that in the last > year or so, possibly even to a staggering 80 or 90%. In other words, > if the tech sector does come back, those new jobs will go to H-1Bs > and L-1s, not to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
> Now look at this one:
> Michael Cusumano, professor of management at MIT's Sloan School > of Management, agreed that time, not government stimuli would do > the trick. Cusumano said the tech sector has mostly worked its > way through the inventory build up that began in 1999 and > improved geo-political stability has helped. However, changes in > the IT industry, including "a trend to move IT services sector > jobs offshore, will slow the tech jobs recovery."
> There is a lot more here than meet the eye. Cusumano does good > academic work (which I've quoted on occasion), but he is not just a > detached academic. He is a consultant to numerous tech firms, and > even on the boards of some. (See his home page at MIT.) Moreover, he > is an active promoter of offshoring; see his article, "'Made in > India': a New Sign of Software Quality." (Disappointingly, there he > trumpets the ridiculous CMM metric, which as I've said is nothing > more than a nontechnical set of homilies about how to manage a > project). Thus his assessment of the amount of offshoring comes with > some baggage.
> Cusumano's statement is rather contradicted by the following:
> Researchers Gartner Inc (Stamford, Conn.) estimated that > approximately 6 to 7 percent of the $240 billion U.S. IT services > sector, including everything from call centers to software > development, shifted offshore, mostly to India. That percentage > is expected to grow in the next few years as countries like China > become more important as an IT services provider.
> However, offshore outsourcing remains a small percentage of US IT > services revenue. Gartner analyst Rita Terdiman said losses to > overseas companies is "not huge numbers of U.S. jobs today nor is > it likely to be huge numbers in the future."
> Remember, even that 6-7% is an overstatement from the point of view > of programmer jobs, as it includes (as seen) call centers, etc. The > Gartner figure jibes, by the way, with the data from the Merrill > Lynch and ITAA surveys.
> But I don't understand this one:
> For IT professionals, however, especially those working as > contractors, "it's having an impact [on employment prospects]," > she said.
> As far as I know, the impact on contractors is no greater than for > others.
> This one is of course correct, though quite an understatement.
> Also contributing to high unemployment among IT workers is the > import of large numbers of temporary foreign workers by U.S. by > technology companies. Cusumano said "there are games played with > some visa categories."
> It certainly would be interesting to know what else he thinks of the > visa issue.
> Here is an interesting contention:
> He estimated it would be at least five years for new technology > drivers such as wireless, broadband or nanotechnology to > stimulate the economy. That means it will take a few years to > erase IT unemployment, said Cusumano, author of a new book " The > Software Business: What Every Manager, Programmer and > Entrepreneur Must Understand in Good Times and Bad," to be > published by Simon & Schuster in January.
> I am very doubtful of this. I don't think any of those has much > potential to stimulate the programmer job market, and as I said, > even if the market were to expand, employers would hire H-1Bs and > L-1s instead of Americans.
> This one is bizarre:
> "We need to go through the cycle because people have to sort out > their careers for themselves," he added.
> Is that misquote? The low-level of the current tech job market has a > beneficial "career-sorter-outer" effect?
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