Dr. Dobb's Journal April 1998
It's a grand time to be a programmer, at least if you believe any of the recently released employment studies. Why, according to most of these reports, programmers are as scarce as snake's hips. In its second annual workforce study, for instance, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) claims there are nearly 350,000 jobs currently open for programmers, systems analysts, and computer engineers.
Fanning the job fires, the National Association of Colleges and Employers predicts that 1998 college grad hirings will increase 19.1 percent over last year, with computer-science graduates most in demand. In the Washington, D.C., area alone, says The Washington Post, there are at least 25,000 technology-related jobs going unfilled. Junglee Corp. (http://www.junglee.com/), which provides Internet-based database infrastructures for career-oriented content providers such as The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, recently scanned its database of 68,000+ total jobs for us, and reported that 18,000+ (or about 26 percent) were computer related.
With demand apparently outstripping supply, salaries are climbing fast, too. The National Association of Colleges and Employers projects that 1998 computer-science college grads can expect to pull in anywhere from $38,500 to $39,500 a year. Experienced programmers can benefit even more, if employment-placement firm Robert Half International is right, commanding anywhere from $50,000 to $97,000 annual salaries. In regions such as California's Silicon Valley, programmers with as little as three years experience are earning anywhere from $70,000 to $125,000 a year, depending on skills and specialization.
But even with the prospect of high salaries, supply isn't expected to keep pace with demand. Overall, says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the computer industry -- with job increases of about 108 percent -- will continue to top the employment charts in projected growth through the year 2006. (By comparison, jobs in the second-fastest growing industry -- health services -- will increase just 68 percent over the same period.) Other experts predict that demand for these positions will double over the next decade, creating more than 1.3 million new jobs.
At the recent National IT Worker Shortage Convocation, hosted by the ITAA, U.S. Departments of Commerce and Education, and the University of California at Berkeley, cabinet-level government officials implied that the IT worker shortage is a national crisis that can imperil billions of dollars in corporate profits. So what did they propose to do about this impending crisis? For starters, the government unveiled a cat's-cradle of grants from various agencies, including $6 million for expanding vocational outreach programs, $3 million to retrain laid-off workers as programmers, $8 million for a job-related web site, and four national townhall meetings to discuss work-force needs.
Gee, there's nothing like putting your money where your mouth is, especially compared to the $8 billion in congressional pork-barrels identified by Citizens Against Government Waste. Let's see, there's the $3 million grant from the Agency for International Development to the International Fertilizer Development Center, $300,000 to establish a commuter lane on a El Paso highway, $26 million from the defense budget for nondefense purposes, $800,000 for research on the Preble's Meadow jumping mouse and Alabama sturgeon, $150,000 for the National Center for Peanut Competitiveness, $3.3 million for shrimp aquaculture research in Arizona and other states, and $540,000 for agriculture-related research into hops and phytophthora root-rot. But then, the IT worker programs do have those four townhall meetings, and the $8 million web site. (Do you think the government knows how to spell L-i-n-u-x?)
Of course, there are skeptics, including DDJ's Eugene Kim, who suspect that there may be as much smoke as fire, at least when it comes to programmer shortages. Writing in Dr. Dobb's Software Careers Special Report (available at http://www.ddj.com/), Eugene points out the coincidence between the conclusions of the ITAA's report and the organization's support for increases in the yearly quota of work visas for non-U.S. programmers -- who would presumably work for ITAA corporate members at relatively low salaries. (It's worth noting that the Stanford Computer Industry Report project's Avron Barr and Shirley Tessler, who also contributed to the Special Report, see that relying on non-U.S. programmers to fill programmer shortages is only a temporary stop-gap, since the problem is worldwide.) Other job-watchers have argued that the waters surrounding programmer demand is to a large part being churned by job hoppers, rather than newly created positions.
Say what you will, it's hard to deny that for the time being there is a shortage of IT professionals. All you have to do is take a gander at the help-wanted ads in any newspaper in the country to see that IT-related jobs are going wanting. Overall, hardcopy newspaper-based classified advertising is up about 25 percent over previous years, with help-wanted ads leading the way over real estate and similar ads.
What would be interesting to find out is how the number of computer-related help-wanted ads measures up against all other job categories. Whoa Nellie... I can already see another employment study popping up in my mail box.
--Jonathan Erickson