IMHO: Where Have All the Jobs Gone?

[David Abramowitz]

I believe that there are greater forces at work here. Most AS/400 shops do not have the resources necessary for effective outsourcing. The sort of systems developed on the AS/400 have already been developed. There are no bottom up efforts anymore. Any new installations will more than likely have a package implemented. H1-B and L1 have been devastating. By law these visas were limited by time. In practice, many have stayed, obtaining green cards. This was never the intention of the lawmakers, but it has happenned, and saturation of the job market has occurred. The jump from AS/400 to other platforms is certainly a factor. IBM tacitly encouraged this by its marketing absence. I started my job search last month, and found that after so many years of establishing a career, I can only command half my previous salary. A trash collector has a better career path, and perhaps greater dignity. Dave

[bharder@nlrha.ab.ca]

A lot of our desire to stay on the AS/400 (iWhatever) is predicated on our desire to stay with a familiar, reliable system. We know that it can provide business benefits. However part of it is the comfort level we have established with the technology. In order to make this happen, we need evolution of the system, not revolution. With revolution, everything is up for grabs. Why not change the operating system? Why not the hardware too? Why not outsource? Why not divest/merge & acquire/contract? Why not ASP/CORBA/NetBeans/Web Services/SOA/Java/.Net/buzz buzz buzz? Businesses seem to like to rip-and-replace these days. Everything is a commodity, but to truly have a commodity, you have to have low pricing, uniformity of services, and many suppliers. Particularly insidious, I would say, is the fact that it's difficult to build business and marketing differentiators when you are working with commodities. I am going to suggest that the problem is at least partly political. Many times in my career, I've noticed that management seems to like crisis. Getting funding is far easier if there is a crisis. Just try to get funding for an evolutionary change. What's the problem, the bean counters ask? We can't afford that! There's no crisis! Also, the mania to measure, and insist upon, direct Return on Investment feeds into this. It's often difficult to link a relatively steady funding stream, and evolutionary changes paid for by this stream, to organizational profit. Where's the ROI allegedly tough-minded CFO's ask? So instead you get funding bursts, interspersed with periods of funding drought. Each burst of money produces drastic change. You can certainly see the change. Heck, the entire computer changed! Hardware, operating system, software, business process, programming style, organizational philosophy, everything! Finally, I think CEO's and the rest of the C-level crowd think of themselves differently. They often want to be movers and shakers, real change agents. They want to be famous in their own way. If you can point to a completely different system, and you funded it, you can say with some legitimacy, "I did that." I think CEO's of days gone by were often satisfied with a different mind set. Many thought of themselves as stewards of their companies. They had a responsibility to the organization and the people. They were protectors. They renovated the structure, rather than the current crop of demolishers and rebuilders.

[Guest.Visitor]

Last year when we were advertising for an Iseries position we didn't even get a dozen applications and interestingly not even one from a woman. We advertised on Dice & several Iseries forums especially ones that had job postings. It seems most of the programmers do not want to relocate even if there are no jobs in their locale. Granted our salary offering wasn't on the high end but the position did include a good benefit package.

[padshore@optonline.net]

It's interesting when you have 2 different people looking at the same thing, but from differing perspectives. Not that I'm looking, but I would be interested to see what this position was, and what the salary that was being offered, along with the package. One mans meat is another mans poison, and with the expense and problems of relocation, unless I was really desperate (which I have come close to in the recent past) a position, with salary and benefits, would have to really blow me away. Alan

[Guest.Visitor]

Market forces drive these decision not a false perception of superiority. I'm sure it serves foreigners well to perpetuate this nonsense but that's all it is. Stack up born and bred USA engineers and their innovations with the rest of the world and the rest of the world has their ass kicked everytime. After all Toyota doesn't make a better car, they made a copy for less, put high end features in cheaper cars. And most of those are made here anyway. I have driven a Ford Explorer for 8 years now and no problems thus far. I have known people with Toyotas that get rid of them just like we get rid of American brand cars because they get old and rusty. I see few Toyotas on the road older than 10 years. Many people buy BMW's and Volvos and end up selling them because they are too costly to maintain. The Indians simply use their size and cheap cost to attract greedy corporate accountants and CEO's eager to earn their 100 million a year. It's not exactly rocket science now is it? Smarter -- BULL! I have worked with many foreigners over the years and still do in a large thriving US consulting practice, the Indians are the most egotistical and hostile to their US counterparts that I encounter and would be glad to never have to work with any of them, man or woman. I work with Hispanics, Asians, Russians, etc all who have integrated well and are much more personable and easy-going. The Indians are generally a pain in the ass. Outsourcing already is meeting many hurdles notwithstanding the type of work outsourced doesn't really threaten the bread and butter IT jobs in this country anyway. You can't outsource any job with intense client interface and that's most of ours in a 2 billion a year company in consulting. And neither is Gov't and/or defense going anywhere. You think IT and engineering is just VB and Java?! You don't think there's a back-lash already developing in this country? If all the real Americans left their IT jobs the industry would be destroyed, just being able to understand syntax and code what someone tells you too is not what IT is about. If Indians are so good then where's the server, where's the OS, where's the beef? Bunch of freaking copy-cats just like the Japanese.

[padshore@optonline.net]

Wow - don't let your bigotry hit you in your ass on the way out. Lets start from the beginning. Toyota's are definitely NOT a cheaper model. My 1990 Camry I gave to the son of a friend of mine after 12 years and 297,000 miles, and its STILL going. Egotistical and hostile people can be found in ALL walks of life, be they Indian, Pakistani, French, British, AMERICAN, Canadian, etc. etc. If you think you can't out source any job with intense client interface, then I'm afraid you are walking around with your eyes closed (or at least in a squint). Granted, "Gov't and/or defense" may not be going anywhere, but how many IT professionals can that support? If all the real Americans left their IT jobs where would they go? And what do you consider a "REAL" American? Is their name Geronimo, or Sitting Bull, or is it O'Reilly, MacDuff, Goldstein, Vonnegut. My point being that at one point in time, your ancestors were more than likely immigrants.

[R.Daugherty]

Hi Lori, I've been working for over a year now, but before that I was on the job boards for over a year. I was in Ohio but willing to relocate at my own expense to most anyplace. (There were a couple of places that I just wouldn't have enjoyed living there so I didn't apply.) I was jerked around for a year. Companies wanted not only a specific package, but a specific version with recent experience in it. Oh, and "locals" only. I would go to an interview with a company, or have a recruiter call, saying a company was hiring 3 or 5 or 10 or 15 RPG programmers, could I interview? Sometimes I would even make it as far as an interview. And then told to wait. And wait. And wait. This would go on for month after month after month, with company after company. As far as I can tell, none of them hired anybody. It smelled suspiciously like they had to do something to say there were no people available, they had to outsource to India. One company had a three month project. They had over 15 veteran RPG programmers apply, and had to pick 3 of them to interview to choose 1. They ended up not even doing that. Just one reason after another that projects were going to be done but didn't get the goahead. Then to add insult to injury, after a year of this I started being told by recruiters that I was no longer "current". This after 6 years of RPGIV programming, and 9 years of RPG/400 before that. But there were so many programmers available they had to start weeding somewhere. Ok, how many years of that do you think it takes to drive all the people to different careers? Long enough to lose your house and car, anyway. So ComputerWorld had an article recently saying there was a shortage of i5 programmers. Reason? Some CIO wanted them to know RPG and Java and Websphere. Then the CIO was quoted "it's hard to find Java programmers anywhere, they're just not to be found." So how does that make i5 programmers scarce? Then they quoted someone who actually knew what they were talking about, a veteran /400 recruiter, who said there are plenty of RPG programmers available. Obviously, just like with the "we only want someone who was just working on what we have" people, people who are clueless enough to specify RPG and Java as requirements are not going to find many available who fit the bill. And if there actually are RPG jobs again on the /400, we can do what we did in the early 90's when the /400 was taking off, and train RPG programmers in a few weeks. All the consulting companies did it. I learned it along with a large class in 6 weeks in '89. And I saw dozens do the same thing throughout the 90's. But they are going to move on to other things when there are no jobs. They have no choice. rd

[Guest.Visitor]

This will be fun. My experience with bleeding heart, all talk liberals like yourself is that when it comes right down to it as long as their job and security is not a stake the sky's the limit. But when it comes time for them to stand up they seem to be hiding somewhere with no cash to give. First of all, define a bigot. Just how would an American live and survive in China, India, Pakistan, Russia, France, Quebec, any of this countries where "real" americans are so loved. Clearly we're all missing something but maybe you can enlighten us a little. The fact is if I tried to live in India and work as an IT professional I'd be as welcome as you are right now and probably killed in many parts of the world. So whose the bigot, moron? Because I speak the truth about the Indians I have run across in the consulting world, excluding all other including Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tawianese, etc. you get your nose all bent and start whining like a child. Oh those poor Indian immigrants. Right, just exactly how much did you give in charitable contributions to third world nations last year? Mine, in the thousands, I also support real disadvantage children through World Vision. Your's, I mean you love them so much I'll bet it's a big fat zero. Give anything to the Tsunami victims for relief, eh? Second, your clear lack of knowledge about consulting is evident, where the hell do you think Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup, SAIC, etc,etc get billions in revenues from , India? A real American is any American born and bred in this country through it's own educational system and that includes second generation immigrants AND is LOYAL to this country. You can become a citizen of this country and as long as your loyalties are to this country and it's people then fine. But if you're Japanese and will only buy Toyota because it benefits the homeland and who you really consider your people then go back home! The fundamental difference between immigrants that are American and helped build this country to the whining saps like yourself is that they were men and women who really cared about others not just their own self-interests. Come to the country and assimilate. You're whining about the turn of the century immigration which has about as much relevance as your arguments. Hmmm, if you love immigrants so much why not go to France, they are having a wonderful time right now with the Muslim population, wanna fix that too, with your big heart. What immigration is left is those people who cannot or will not help change their own country for the better and in a large part greed is the main driver to come here. Come to America, displace workers, I work for pennies hire me not REAL Americans. You're an idiot, it happens to every sector not just IT. I have a friend in construction working for 30 years who has a difficult time now thanks to all the "immigrants", er I mean according to you "Americans" that will work for next to nothing. Name one outsourced job that requires intense client interaction from the ground up through the complete SDLC that has been off-shored and that is in the millions and last a few years. They don't exist, what is off-shored are all the routine maintenance tasks and development that can be done with little to no client interaction. Talk is cheap, NAME it! Yes, as long as it's clearly defined through documentation it can be built but that's not client interaction, that's just following a pre-defined blueprint that they of course did not create, smarter REAL American's did that. <>. Never said that, re-read the text. But of course wrong again, the context is that they WERE the cheaper and better equipped model when they rode ashore - got it now? My step daughters Camry had a large number of problems after 5 years or so that her husband got her another car. The point is(gee you're thick) that ALL cars have issues and are relative in price/performance so Toyota came in with a CHEAPER, better performing car at the time to capture market share from an apathetic, greedy automotive conglomerate but NOT through engineering they invented but instead copied. Again, I'm still waiting for that earth-shattering list of Indian engineering accomplishments that will rock the world, and I guess so is the world. USA, USA , USA , USA!!!!! Clearly you're Indian, so my advice is if you hate REAL Americans so much then go back home. Like it out not you're countrymen are bigots, egotistical morons who managed to murder the best thing that ever happened to them and his name was Ghandi. I have not met one nice assimilated IT Indian male, they all down to a man had major chips on their shoulders. Funny how none of the other immigrants act that way. Hmmm, gosh you're smart padshore, yes of course my family were immigrants many generations ago but not one of them ever came to this country to displace Americans but to help build this country and a better life. My parents were born and raised here and all had deep family roots but not one ever had issues as far as loyalties to this country and neither do I. IT: What IT project greater than 50 million have you been a part of? What IT project that lasted at least 5 years have you been a part of? Can you name any outsourced multi-million dollar contracts that actually build new software from the ground up for non-software engineering firms that are based in the USA? So enlightened and big-hearted one: How many foreigners have you ever worked with? Are you a 1st generation foreigner? Do you have any American friends that are considered the majority population here and I don't mean work buddies, that you are close too? How much money per year in the thousands do you give to the disadvantage that are not Indian or from your homeland? Do you have any pets, dogs, cats, birds? Indicates love of other life or do you prefer to eat them? Do you still speak your language especially at night from your homeland and not English? Do you eschew American values and still enforce you're homeland cultural values on your family? Do you honor and obey any American holidays? Do you belong to any American religion? Would you sing the National Anthem at a American event? Would you put your hand on your heart? Do you love America or just the money you can get? Can you recite the pledge of allegiance? Do you give a shi% about anything you mouthed off about at all, America or just really concerned about world bigotry and peace? In case you haven't figured it out we really don't need Indians here but if you'd like to stay then act like a REAL American. I'll take an Asian any day of the week, smarter, prettier, hard-workers and actually nice others. And BTW, <> It sure as hell ain't padshore!

[David Abramowitz]

Where are you? Dave

[David Abramowitz]

I find the concept of stereotyping most offensive, and the practice even more so. Speaking only for myself, I know that we are a nation of immigrants. In my case, My mother was English, My Father's mother Russian, and My Father's father Romanian. Despite how an American might be treated abroad, I would like to think that we are better than that and do not have to respond in kind. Each of us is an individual who should be judged by their merits only after they have had a chance. In all my articles, and posts I have severely attacked the visa process, and the willingness of visa holders to accept lower compensation, I have never once attacked the person who holds the visa, and have specifically stated that my stance is not anti-immigration. If you really would like a society where the homogenous population is protected against the invading hordes I suggest giving Russia, Kenya, or the Sudan a try. Dave