No, The Tech Skills Shortage Doesn't Exist

[kt]

Originally posted by: her209

Originally posted by: kt
So you hire someone young and train them properly. They got all the skills they need to get better pay, what do you think they will do next? They will either ask for better pay where they are, or they will get better pay somewhere else now that they have the skills.

When you hire someone, they were given a list of roles and responsibilities. If they are assigned additional responsibilities, should they not be entitled to more compensation?

You're missing the point. And try to quote my whole message, not just the part that you want to hear. To train someone, you're dedicating the resources of 2 employees (the trainer and the trainee) and in the end you still end up where you are with just hiring someone with the necessary skills.

I could see where it would be more beneficial for companies that put less value on their time. But not all companies have that luxury.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: kt

Originally posted by: her209

Originally posted by: kt
So you hire someone young and train them properly. They got all the skills they need to get better pay, what do you think they will do next? They will either ask for better pay where they are, or they will get better pay somewhere else now that they have the skills.

When you hire someone, they were given a list of roles and responsibilities. If they are assigned additional responsibilities, should they not be entitled to more compensation?

You're missing the point. And try to quote my whole message, not just the part that you want to hear. To train someone, you're dedicating the resources of 2 employees (the trainer and the trainee) and in the end you still end up where you are with just hiring someone with the necessary skills.

I could see where it would be more beneficial for companies that put less value on their time. But not all companies have that luxury.

This is ignoring what I think is probably the more common form of training in IT: Practice. Formal training is a bit of a rarity. Companies either expect you to already know what they want or they expect you to learn what they want, and often so without any help. The degree to which an ITer succeeds in doing so ultimately determines their success beyond that company, imo. Sure, you might receive training on proprietary software used by the company, their processes, etc. but you're not likely to get formal training on something like Java.

Too many people sit in their little cubes for years expecting to be fed what's needed for their advancement, and when they're laid off they get a very rude awakening when they realize their peers are light years beyond them.

My advance to most people just beginning in IT is to stick their hands in as much as possible. Learn by doing, diversify the knowledge portfolio as much as possible and then use that as leverage at the next company. The only job security we really have, and I hate to offer the cliche here but it's necessary, is the ability to get another job.

 

[her209]

Originally posted by: kt

Originally posted by: her209

Originally posted by: kt
So you hire someone young and train them properly. They got all the skills they need to get better pay, what do you think they will do next? They will either ask for better pay where they are, or they will get better pay somewhere else now that they have the skills.

When you hire someone, they were given a list of roles and responsibilities. If they are assigned additional responsibilities, should they not be entitled to more compensation?

You're missing the point. And try to quote my whole message, not just the part that you want to hear.

The rest of the post was snipped because it was irrelevant to my post.

To train someone, you're dedicating the resources of 2 employees (the trainer and the trainee) and in the end you still end up where you are with just hiring someone with the necessary skills.

The dedication of company resources is none of the trainee's concern.

 

[dandruff]

haha ...
"To make matters worse, major news publications have falsely claimed that the H-1B program requires employers to demonstrate there's a shortage of U.S. workers before hiring an H-1B worker. The Department of Labor's 2006 Strategic Plan puts it bluntly: "H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."

no point in reading this article ... gimmickery and twisting of facts and quoting of reports and stats that suits his objective ... actually ditto goes for the counter POV article on the same site:

http://www.informationweek.com...VN?articleID=205601557

WSJ did an editorial last month or so ...

American Brain Drain
The Wall Street Journal: November 30, 2007; Page A16

One myth dogging the immigration debate is that employers are fibbing (or grossly exaggerating) when they claim that hiring foreign professionals is unavoidable because U.S.-born Ph.D.s are hard to come by. But a new report on doctorates from U.S. universities shows they're telling the truth, and then some.

Foreign-born students holding temporary visas received 33% of all research doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in 2006, according to an annual survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. That number has climbed from 25% in 2001. But more to the point of business competitiveness, foreign students comprised 44% of science and engineering doctorates last year.

"China was the country of origin for the largest number of non-U.S. doctorates in 2006," says the report, followed by India, Korea, Taiwan and Canada. "The percentage of doctorates earned by U.S. citizens ranged from lows of 32% in engineering and 47% in physical sciences, to highs of 87% in education and 78% in humanities." Given this reality, is it any wonder that 40% of Ph.D.s working in U.S. science and engineering occupations are foreign-born?

Immigration opponents still claim that the likes of Intel and Oracle merely want to hire Chinese engineers on the cheap. In fact, U.S. law already prohibits companies from paying these foreign nationals less than natives. And all other things being equal, the American job applicant has an advantage because employers are required to pay an additional $4,000-$6,000 in taxes and fees on every H-1B visa holder they hire.

A mere 65,000 H-1B visas for foreign professionals are allocated each year. And this year, as in the previous four, the quota was exhausted almost as soon as the applications became available in April. This effectively means that more than half of all foreign nationals who earned advanced degrees in math and science in 2007 have been shut out of the U.S. job market.

Economic protectionists oppose lifting the visa cap to meet demand. But it makes little sense for our universities to be educating these talented foreign students, only to send them packing after graduation. Current policies have MIT and Stanford educating the next generation of innovators -- and then deporting them to create wealth elsewhere.

Closing the door to foreign professionals puts U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage and pushes jobs out of the country. Worse, it does so at a time when other nations are rolling out the welcome mat. Earlier this year Microsoft, which is the third-largest sponsor of H-1B visas, announced plans to open a new software development center near Vancouver. The decision to locate the facility in Canada was based in part on the fact that it doesn't have access to enough foreign workers state-side.

"We currently do 85% of our development work in the U.S., and we'd like to continue doing that," says Jack Krumholtz, the company's director of government affairs. "But if we can't hire the developers we need, . . . we're going to have to look to other options to get the work done." Meanwhile, the European Union recently introduced its own new temporary work visa that's designed to reduce red tape and waiting periods for foreign professionals.

If the U.S. spurns this human capital, it will find a home somewhere else. And that will be America's loss.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Where I work, we've had multiple positions open for about a year because the right fit has not been found.

I have "open" positions in my department as well, but the only reason that they're "open" is because they can't find someone with the advanced level IT skills that we're looking for in India or China for $12 an hour.

The boss has basically given up trying to hire US employees anymore, since he has foreign hire quotas to meet first and therefore no budget for domestic employees

 

[hellokeith]

My opinion is that IT wages were more-or-less artificially high 7-10 years ago, and now they are artificially low. I hope they balance out, because going from good salary to low salary with high inflation is rough, and some have/will drop out of IT because of it. So you lose a "generation" of experience and are left with a bunch of degreed/certified idiots pissed off because they can't pay their student loans on $15/hour.

 

[Imdmn04]

Skilled, qualified, and experienced tech workers are pretty hard to find.

Sure, if you have a degree from ITT or University of Phoenix with no work experience, you will probably have a tough time finding a job.

But if you come from a reputable program of a top-50 university, with industry specific experience, you can expect companies to bid UP for your services. There are so many concentrations in IT, if you know one thing and know it really well, expect to be paid.

You are not gonna get paid well doing general IT work, like helpdesk or even windows admin nowadays. Good paying IT jobs lies in specialized jobs, i.e. Oracle DBA, SAP, telecom architects for a specific type of network, embedded engineers for a specific platform, expert developer of a specific programming language etc. Specialization is key in IT, jack-of-all-trade ITer usually ends up performing entry level duties on everything, which does not command high dollar amount.

 

[nageov3t]

we've been having a rough time trying to fill some basic noc hardware monkey positions for the past couple months

the pay also kinda sucks, though.

 

[Imdmn04]

Originally posted by: loki8481
we've been having a rough time trying to fill some basic noc hardware monkey positions for the past couple months

the pay also kinda sucks, though.

The other problem with IT is the range of skill across the industry as a whole varies too much.

You have desktop support that runs around all day to people's cube fixing menial problems.
Then you have NOC monkeys that sit there and stare at the monitor all day long (not all NOCs are like this though).

Then you have SAP specialists designing ERP solutions for a global company. Or you have software architects optimizing runtime operations through mathematical modeling. Or a telecom expert designing a next-generation network that requires a combined knowledge in EE, material science, and computer science.

The discrepancy of skill and education in IT is VAST, other industries don't have this problem, such as Law or Medicine. So many times the lowly skilled jobs gets lumped together with the highly skilled jobs in IT, and you have people whining on both side of the camp. The lowly skilled IT workers complain about the pay, while companies hiring highly-skilled IT workers are complaining lack of qualified workers.