Readers respond to alleged programmer shortage

5/17/2007 2:37 PM EDT

To start that column, I made reference to a chart that was part of an industry analyst presentation. You can see that chart here, which comes from VDC.

Some of your responses will appear in next month's edition of the print publication, and some have appeared in the on-line version. And finally, I'll share a few here:

One reader, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "With programming jobs being outsourced daily to India and China, the timing of this "shortage" is nothing more than a ruse to reinforce Intel's and TI's (judging from the locations of the Congressional sponsors of the legislation) "sponsorship" of the Bill, currently making rounds in Congress, to up the H1B "guest" visa quotas by a factor of three. This enables these corporations (read corporate executives) to continue their pressures for cheapened U.S. labor and to train foreign management in America, at tax payers' expense, for their overseas offices. Taxpayers' expense you ask? As long as foreigners' wages and benefits are tax deductible to corporations, taxpayers subsidize wages, and the US gets shortfalls in its treasury and Social Security because of the substandard payout. Meanwhile, if such shortages really do exist, all of your readership must eagerly look forward to double digit merit increases this review cycle, increased levels of respect, job openings for those programmers driving cabs for lack of available work, and immunity from layoffs."

Another reader send in this response:

"Too few programmers. Engineers. Designers. Shortages all over the place. Please.

If there is such a dearth of these talents, why has my company laid off thousands in the past few years? Why are there so few local job listings? If you want to shill for the multi-nationals and beat their carefully orchestrated "not enough local talent" drum, well, it's a free country. For now, at least.

The reality is that the only "shortage" is in the willingness to pay U.S. labor rates. I'm getting ready to shell out big bucks to send my kids to college. They aren't stupid - they're going to weigh the cost of their education against the likely reward for their money and effort. Engineering starts to look like a very bad bet in that light - no wonder engineering graduation rates have tanked. Which, happily enough for the multi-nationals, fuels the specter of "looming engineering shortages" that have so many politicians wringing their hands so emphatically. Keep beating that drum, and suddenly it becomes fact, and we all resign ourselves to hiring talent from China and India, because these are "jobs Americans don't want to do". Sound familiar? Anybody driven through Detroit lately? Rust Belt? Textile towns? What are those folks doing, now that some Chinese worker is doing the job "they didn't want"?"

J. Gammon, of Dallas, Texas, had this to say:

"Yes good tools produce good results in the hands of persons who understand the goals of good programming practice. That understanding allows a view that can lift both productivity and quality. So among the questions in need of answers is: why are programmers leaving programming behind following extensive layoffs? And why do many continuing programmers resist learning the mindset and skills to use more productive tools? Many human factors need consideration here.

Personally, I have left the field. It is too unstable for career employment in a country with a retirement system as unstable as its politicians. Why work for an entrepreneur when you can be one? If you are quality, know what you want, and understand logic and technology, the doors of opportunity are open everywhere for innovators in many areas outside programming. So why would any qualified and trained CS person want to be an employee programmer? Industry has deflated incentive while exporting jobs.

We may soon see a division between power programmers who design systems for auto-coder programs and routine based technician-style programmers produced by two/four year programs, perhaps very much like the division between graduate engineers and operating-engineers/technicians.

Considering tools, how many employers have tried tools to remove dead code? How many have not bought good error checking tools because of cash outlay? How much dead code (unreachable) is embedded in re-used code after major releases by major code sellers? These are quality control items that are easily detected by tools before first-test of code. What about spaghetti-code detection? Use of a detection tool can locate many defects automatically before taking time for test.