Techies In The Money
from the what-bad-job-market? dept
While some techies still seem to be complaining about a tight job market, that doesn't seem to square away with two separate studies that came out today -- both suggesting techies remain in high demand. First comes a study looking at the hourly salaries of many different tech related jobs, which found that salaries have reached a record high in the last quarter of last year. And, in case you're wondering, the best paying job is being an "SAP Functional Consultant," paying a decent $75.09 per hour. Meanwhile, another survey found that IT contractors are at record low unemployment levels and salaries are rising. Turns out, as expected, offshoring hasn't killed off the tech industry just yet.
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Sucker Born Every Minute
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Re: Sucker Born Every Minute
The great thing about media services is that anyone can do it or try it, but it takes someone with enough concetration and training to make an event move flawlessly. People who know this pay a lot and those that don't quickly learn.
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Re: Sucker Born Every Minute
Survival of the fittest, the way that it should be.
Also, I hope that the business market starts moving to the same mentality, so that going back to grad school isn't a way to get a piece of paper that says you deserve more money for the rest of your life just because you did something several years ago. Don't get me wrong, higher education is a very important aspect of the business culture, the academic setting allows for learing and advancement of ideas that are rare at best in any other setting.
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Re: Sucker Born Every Minute
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Re: Sucker Born Every Minute
On a brighter techie note, tech in general is becoming more integral to more and more business areas, thus more jobs, etc. Hopefully the survival of the fittest approach to hiring and firing will be incorporated into these other areas (ok, maybe getting a little too carried away).
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Re: Sucker Born Every Minute
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Re: Sucker Born Every Minute
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we want ebay in a week mmmkay
Secondly, sure the money can be good relative to a fry cook, but seriously its probably the worst white collar job you can have. It's where marketing (fantasy) meets reality, the absolute worst place to be.
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What I want to know is..
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Re: What I want to know is..
As to these reports, rates might be going up but got a feeling that is because the amount of contractors still working in IT is going down.
Vast majority of contractors i knew during the dot com boom times have now either left the industry or gone permie
So basic market forces come into play, same or more jobs, less contractors = Higher rates
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Re: What I want to know is..
1. Your hours are dictated by the company where you do your job.
2. You have little to no creative input on what gets done.
3. You are told what to do.
4. The company directly determines whether or not you personally will continue working there. That is, the company is actually making the hire/fire decision instead of just contracting out the work to the consulting company who then could put whoever on it.
If any of the above are true, the IRS can reclassify you as an employee of IniTech, which means IniTech has to give you health benefits (which you buy on your own as a contractor) and can't fire you at a drop of a hat for no reason.
In practice, IniTech gets to use you as a regular employee but not give you benefits because the IRS just looks at who is filling out your W2 form. That's why IniTech loves consultants. They are just like permanent employees, but without the cost of benefits.
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No Subject Given
This whole "survival of the fittest" mentality has some merit, but it has its flaws.
The Consulting industry owes its existence to shortsighted managers who are unable or unwilling to keep their IT people. Too many personnel jockeys think that Geeks are disposable and should therefore work for peanuts, and are amazed when said Geeks pack their bags for greener pastures. The managers then hire consultantants for 3-5x more and congratulate themselves because the money is coming out of a different pot...
Outsourcing is also an issue - companies go after percieved cost cuts only to find that there are communication and quality issues in both IT and Customer Support.
Another major issue is that Western cultures have a far higher esteem of people who "manage" stuff than they do of people who build stuff. Those in the Far East have no such illusions.
I have been a contractor/consultant since 1989, and will probably be one until I die/retire. I love what I do, and I am good at it. I make a good living, but I am worse off than I was ten years ago.
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REAL RATES
When you start talking about a job with either a company or a consulting agency, they will make ask you how much you expect to make. If you ask first, they WILL NOT answer first. They will just ask you what you are making now.
They are not asking to see if your expectations are in line with the actual rate, they know they will try to lower your expectations if it is not. They are asking SOLELY to see if you are dumb enough to state a rate that is LOWER than the ACTUAL rate. In which case, they will say, "I think I can get the client to agree with that."
NEVER state the rate you are willing to work at. Always state a ridiculously padded rate. The agency or employer will then state the real rate they will give you. It will NEVER be $75/hr. It will be between $35/hr and $47/hr for a SENIOR developer/architect or team lead in most areas. In San Francisco or New York, where the cost of living in 50%-100% higher, it might be $55/hr to $60/hr solely because of the cost of living.
Either way, it will not be enough to afford the mortgage payments of a 30 year loan for a standard, middle class house. You'll need to marry someone with a descent job to be able to stop renting an apartment. For example, in south Florida, you have to have an income of at least $120,000/yr to afford the mortgage on a used middle class home.
The real income of developers has not gone up since 1998. In fact, it has plummeted. I would not let my children enter this field as there simply will not be ANY jobs for American or European developers in 20 years time.
I tell you, I WISH I could get a $75/hr rate. It ain't happening. And it doesn't matter how many years experience you have, how great your skills are, or how much you have proven your worth at EVERY SINGLE job you EVER had. Each time you apply for a job, they look at you as meat and they lowball you. They will promise that after 3, 6, 12 months they will increase your compensation after you've proven yourself to them, but they only need you for 3 to 6 months anyway, so they won't.
Also, if you get paid by the hour, most companies will not let you work overtime (except for the ones that illegally don't compensate you for it). If you get paid a fixed salary, those same companies will DEMAND that you work 60 hours a week. I prefer to work at an hourly rate simply so that I don't have to work unpaid overtime (usually).
Don't believe the rates quoted in the article. I have over 10 years of real-world experience and have been developing software since I was 9. I'm damn good at it, but that doesn't matter. Your income is determined by the market, not by what you produce. The market is saturated with Chinese and Indian workers, so Info Tech is a bad industry to work in if you live in an industrialized (i.e., not third world) country.
Remember, IBM has just replaced 40,000 American and European programmers with Indians. Every other company (even the small ones now) are doing the same.
If you are in your 30's-60's, then it's probably too late to change careers. If you're in your 20's, I think you'd be much better off finding something else. If you are majoring in C.S. now, then for the love of god switch majors! You're not invested yet. Don't think that just because you like programming, that you'll like the work you do as a developer. Companies don't care about quality or innovative code. They just want grunt work done, interfacing with free software they can download from Apache or expensive software they buy from Oracle/IBM/Microsoft/PeopleSoft/etc.
Program as a hobby, not as a career. That's the best advice you'll ever hear in techdirt or slashdot.
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Re: REAL RATES
Ive never worked more than 3 days a week, Ive paid off a million dollar house, raised a big family with my wife at home and have taken years of time off between jobs.
Dont listen to this negative view. He sounds like a sore looser.
If he complains and is as negative as much as this with his employers as he does in his email, its no wonder he has trouble.
Im a network security consultant/software developer in the SF bay area.
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Re: REAL RATES
"Ive paid off a million dollar house" but I haven't figured out how to type an apostrophe. I hate to break this to everyone, but there is no way a programmer is owning a million dollar house unless he was lucky enough to get in with a Microsoft, Apple, or Amazon -- which isn't easy because you never know which companies are going to be successful and which ones aren't.
Typical pompous flamer trying to blame the messenger. Don't believe a word he says.
Fine, don't listen to me. Listen to the literally tens of thousands of people who leave software development each year. Each one has a story. The idea that I'm making this up is ridiculous.
As I said, it doesn't matter what skills or experience you have. All that matters is the market. If Joe were a real hot-shot business guy, he would know that. Yet, he's suggesting that you can ignore the market if you have real talent. Hey Joe, want to bet that million dollar house of yours that I can produce code both better and quicker than you? Thought not. 'nuff said.
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Re: REAL RATES
I do not bet that you cant write good code, but you obviously have trouble turning your talent into money. Is that not the real talent that counts?
Building good contacts and providing a skill that solves real world problems are the key. Any monkey can code, its what you do with it that counts.
Stay in denial if you want, but dont forget that this whole story is about how the consultant biz is booming, not crashing!
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Re: REAL RATES
An independant consultant is the single best job in the world. Better than a CEO or high pressured exec any day.
The pay is better and you can choose your work schedule. You have all the tax rightoffs of a normal biz and you can keep your own work.
Its not for everyone, you must have full confidence in your abilities and have insight to what the market needs. You need to roll with the punches and ignore negative comments from regular employees and contractors that work thro agencies.
Form your own sole proprietorship in your town and open a biz account at BofA and start looking for work. Work 1099 directly with customers and prepare to sweat it for the first few years.
Then sit back and enjoy life. There is nothing even close.
The catch? You need to have a real skill thats in demand and be a likeable person that people want to work with. You can work by yourself and are willing to do all aspects of a job without complaining. Always be positive, talk to everyone about any ideas they have and never put people down.
You know if you have it, you dont need me to tell you.
See you out there ....
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Re: REAL RATES
I have yet to see a monkey code. I have rarely seen a human code *well*. Whoever posted that doesn't know crap about coding.
Writing software is something that less than 1 in 10,000 people in the world population can do at all. Writing software *well* is something that less than 1 in a million people can do. Still think monkeys can write code?
I suppose there are a lot of people who can write a simple for-loop. But if writing new, innovative software is so damn easy, then why isn't there a technological breakthrough everyday. Rarely does something come along like the WWW, napster, RMDBS, OO programming, a secured operating system.
Perhaps Joe meant that any monkey can write trivial code. When was the last time a company was interested in writing trivial code?
On an unrelated note, there seems to be a strong primate theme going on in this thread. Monkeys have been brought up more times than one would normally expect in a discussion of coding.
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Quit flamming and get the facts
http://books.mongabay.com/labor/earnings/110.html
Median annual earnings of computer programmers were $60,290 in 2002. The middle 50 percent earned between $45,960 and $78,140 a year. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $35,080; the highest 10 percent earned more than $96,860. Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of computer programmers in 2002 were:
Professional and commercial equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers $70,440
Software publishers 66,870
Computer systems design and related services 65,640
Management of companies and enterprises 59,850
Data processing, hosting, and related services 59,300
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More hard facts
http://www.cra.org/reports/wits/chapter_2.html
Table 2-4 shows the number of IT workers in the United States and the annual percentage change in employment, using data from BLS. 23 Over the period 1988 to 1997, employment in the IT occupations (as they define them) grew from 1,259,000 to 2,063,000 jobs-a 64-percent increase. This can be compared with an increase of 29 percent in all professional jobs and an increase of only 13 percent in the total workforce during this time. Over this period, IT jobs increased from eight to eleven percent of all professional jobs in the United States, and from 1.1 percent to 1.6 percent of all jobs in the United States.
As figure 2-3 shows, the vast majority of IT jobs as reported by BLS are in one occupational category (Computer Systems Analysts and Scientists). Over the period 1988 to 1996, this category has grown much faster (158 percent) than the category of Computer Programmers (9.8 percent), while the category of Operations and Systems Researchers has dropped by 4.3 percent. From 1988 to 1996, the number of Computer Programmers dropped from 570,000 to 561,000, but in 1997 the number jumped to 626,000 (an 11.6 percent increase in one year). This may be an artifact of the temporary demand created by the Y2K problem.
--------------------------------------------
Also, another quote from another source.
Phoenix Business Journal
"Programming jobs decline"
25 March 2005
The number of computer programmers in the United States of America (USA) fell from 745,000 in 2000 to 564,000 in 2004.
--> This quote is really scary. I suspect that there will be fewer people majoring in computer science (excluding foriegn students).
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Re: REAL RATES
That's a load of crap. Writing decent code is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. That's why so few people can do it. Heck, most people complain about how hard computers are to use. Image if they tried programming the computers.
People also complain about how hard VCRs are to program, and that they don't understand them. And let's face it, "programming" a VCR is much more like setting an alarm clock than programming a computer.
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I agree in many ways it is a crappy field
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No Subject Given
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6038661.html?part=rss&tag=6038661&subj=news
Consulting company Sand Hill Group last year surveyed executives from about 50 software companies and found that offshore software development has become standard practice. Eighty-four percent of companies said they use offshore developers, an increase from about 63 percent two years earlier.
"Core software development is done offshore, not just maintenance and testing," said M.R. Rangaswami, co-founder of Sand Hill Group. "These executives said they are more reliant on offshore development than ever before."
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Common sense observation
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