Javalobby - Comments for "Java Jobs in Decline? Not So Fast!"

hello big guy,lucky me to

ahmer68 — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:47:47 -0400

hello big guy,

lucky me to find you here in Florida.

So how is life. I hear JOB market is very tough these days.

tell me about your family.

Aqil and Tanveer are also saying Hi.

Ahmer

Pls use me direct mail ahmer68@gmail.com

Jeroen I think you are

mrbigman — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:16:27 -0400

Jeroen

I think you are right.

<blockquote>The "top 10%" of people (which is what everyone claims to hire and look for, I wonder how that's possible) all have stable jobs and won't leave them easily, so they're hard to find.
At the bottom of the pile people are giving up, moving into other professions where they can still find a job. </blockquote>

The overall pool is shrinking. For the reasons you gave or for a number of other possible reasons.

My Chief Technology Officer or VP at where I am currently working, in a question and answer session, told us employees that he suggests that we discourage our children from getting into technology based jobs, like computer development, because the globalization of this market, will continue to drive the salaries down to the point, that it's not worth the pain and heartache for young Americans to get into Computer Systems. The work, complexity, and dedication effort to the payoff is just not there, as we known to be good at this job takes an enormous amount of effort that must be given throughout your entire career.

I both hate him and respect him for saying it. Head of IT (VP) He's a bit bold by his own admissions, blatantly told us IT works that we have it good and be happy. because he could replace each one of us, with 3-4 resources from his outsourcing source, and asks can I do the work of 4 people? Well, no one can really answer that question, because the people factor into that equation, and it changes over time, but his point was made.

So through job rifts, or the reduction of staff through some greatly named new business process, such as "Work Force Optimization" = grab the people that are not top performers, or the people who can easily be replaced by outsourced staff, and anyone else that can be talked into retirement or moving from one technology (or Language) to another or lured by a severance package, or host of other factors <b>to the pool of Unemployed Development Staff.</b>

Most HR Staff can Identify them and avoid them.

My only advise, is to try to stay a part of that top 10% or close to it as much as possible. Gartner suggests this as well.

Certifications, self study, anything you can to become truly great at the work you do. This sound obvious, be it takes discipline, dedication, and can be expensive(books, training, computers). But remember this. Companies have an interests in you doing what they want you to do, not what is marketable to other positions. You must always have your eyes on what the market is doing, and stay on top of that curve. Also remember, <b>Don't let your job, drive your career</b> As much dedication as you have to your company, you are only new company owners, a new manager, a new market downturn in your industry, or a host of hundreds of other factors from being on the job market again. Always be prepared for it.

I am an African America, and I am use to the idea of doing way above my peers to be noticed or promoted. The IT community is very poorly represented by African Americans which in my opinion is still second class, such as with woman in the America workforce as well. The notation of being a IT superstar is natural with me, and something I continually strive for in my career, because even if this unequal inferiority complex of the IT Community is real or not, competition is tough in the IT business world, and getting tougher.

I have only to look at my IT Director’s development staff which exists of about 60 white Americans, 85+ Indian based developers (Consultants and Full Time Employees), 2 Hispanic Developers, and 1 African America (Me). And the “Good Ol’e Boys network” is stronger now, because they are the minority to the offshore developers, so the community is very tough and changing.

I am fearful of the technology field as a carrer choice for all Americans.

Tony McClay , Enterprise Architect/SOA Architect/Developer
------------------------------------------------
Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP)
Sun Certified Web Component Developer (SCWCD)
Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD)
Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) (1 of 3)

yes, it's hard to find

jwenting — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:35:32 -0400

yes, it's hard to find qualified people. But that doesn't tell you anything about the growth or stagnation of the job market, or even its decline.

The "top 10%" of people (which is what everyone claims to hire and look for, I wonder how that's possible) all have stable jobs and won't leave them easily, so they're hard to find.
At the bottom of the pile people are giving up, moving into other professions where they can still find a job.
At the same time because of the bad prospects there have been for years (and which once again are looming after a year or 2, maybe 3, of growth) the influx of new people is low.
As a result the pool of qualified people (of any skill level) is shrinking, or at least growing at a smaller pace than available jobs. That tells you nothing about the growth of that job market itself, it could be shrinking by 10% a year (AFAIK it isn't) but as long as the availability of people to take on those declining numbers of jobs is dropping even faster you'd still have a lack of people to take on available jobs.

And I think that's what we're going to see later this year, next year at the latest. A shrinking market but a labour pool that's shrinking even faster, leading to a lack of people despite a declining volume of work.

JAlexoid,It is VERY true

Thomas1OF12 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:42:48 -0400

JAlexoid,

It is VERY true that being a technology worker is extremely volatile. Just a few months ago, I was happily working through a contracting company on a 10 year, 10 billion dollar VA project to modernize the Veterans Administration's key software programs.

As a U.S. Army & Desert Storm veteran myself, I figured that since we are at war and trying to care for a large number of new type of injuries, that this VA software project was safe. One day, the project manager at the VA needed to scapegoat some folks because of (choose anyone of the myriad of Project Manager failures), so he canned all of the technology help coming through 3rd party sources for this project (which dealt with Spinal Cord injuries, a very serious injury that needs the best of everything, including technology). One day I have a great and meaningful job, the next day I am FedEx'ing my laptop from Tampa to the SAIC field office in San Diego. Unbelievable!

I love working in Technology, so the advice I give to young IT workers is save about 3 months worth of bill money in your savings account. If you are a true & dedicated technology worker, you will find another job, it just takes a while.

Kind Regards & God Bless,

Tom Pridham

http://thomas1of12.blogspot.com

Located in LA on the other

wb110497 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:42:32 -0400

Located in LA on the other side of the united states. Its been a slow process, we've lowered the requirements bar in terms of knowledge in frameworks and focused on potential learning capability through problem solving to find candidates.

Phil you didn't get what I

alpha512 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:27:03 -0400

Phil you didn't get what I mean. Lisp who use Lisp?, Java 6 million of developers, in 10 or 20 years Java will still be the language of choice for IT, Enterprise development and Applications, so on. Maybe yes Python or Ruby is the next but it takes time. You have to move 6 million of Java developers plus another maybe 2 million of .Net and another bunch of C/C++ to a new paradigm and language in just a few years? I don't think so. Maybe it takes 100 years to move all the developers to the Lisp like language of the future, that is why I said maybe Java will be with us for 100 years as Paul Graham said that the 100 years language it will not change much almost it will be the same thing as we use now. For the record yes I know what Paul Graham said in his essays That he doesn't like Java, I read them all the time and I learned Scheme at University and I use Java everyday and is my language of choice and use little bit Python.

PS. The application that PG did for Yahoo they rebuild it in C++ and now I think is based on PHP so I think Lisp is only used in the academia at this times, same as Scheme beautiful languages but nobody use anymore.

Who cares...Does anyone here

jalexoid — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:20:51 -0400

Who cares...

Does anyone here plan their future?
And life sometimes throws a RuntimeException* to us all.
So noone has a catch clause with a backout profession to handle these exceptions?
C'mon... Developer is one of the most volatile profession ever! One day your're here the other you're out.

*- though my favourite is CoderMalfunctionError

peathal wrote:Good point

learnstatistics — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:02:13 -0400

peathal wrote:

Good point 'Statistics'.

...

Or do you really think that a decrease in job postings is a cause of a possible going south of Java? I don't think that Java will go south in the next years, but other languages gets more important.

Hi Peter,

I am glad you think I made a good point, however you seem to have missed it.

The graph actually shows a net increase of 10,435 Java jobs. So this graph shows more Java jobs, not less.

So I am puzzled by your question regarding a 'decrease in job postings' as I do not see any supporting figures for that, please clarify.

Here is a revised graph, as this is obviously harder than 9 dimensional long division:

Anthony,It has been my

Thomas1OF12 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:21:46 -0400

Anthony,

It has been my experience in the Tampa area (and I'm sure this is happening all over the country), the H1-B developers (with their 6 years of college) are being paid about 20 to 30k less than an American that may not have the college degree, but has 6 years of solid experience.

In the current environment, experience is worth it's weight in gold. Employers want their expensive developers up and running as soon as humanly possible.

Regards,

Tom

http://thomas1of12.blogspot.com

I too am in the Tampa

mrbigman — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:03:20 -0400

I too am in the Tampa metropolitan area. And the trends that I am finding is that there are alot of jobs, and few java developers are being let go, but the salaries are not moving. The pressure from outsourcing is greater and greater.

One drawback of outsourcing, is that most companies work out deals with the outsourcing companies to offer the outsource consultants jobs. So I see alot of jobs going straight to H1-B Visa sponseres, through the outsoucring company.

I have heard this from 3 of my other peers, that their comany is hiring, but only from thier outsourcing source.

This alows them to lower the starting salary significantly for new employees, so much that Native developers would not be interested in the position.

Such as a Sun Certified projrammer, with EJB, Spirng 3 years experience for 50-60K and H1-B sponsorship. Alot of oursourced oversees employee would jump at the chance, since this is significantly more than what thier companies are paying them.

A very very sad game. But I don't blame the developers, it's the companies we work for.

You really have to be much more than a strong developer in today's job market.

"nobody knows, maybe Java

philswenson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:21:56 -0400

"nobody knows, maybe Java will be the 100 years language as Paul Graham said in one of his essays."

Haha.... If you've read Hackers and Painters and follow his essays, you would know that Paul Graham thinks Java is an abomination.

PG thinks Lisp or a Lisp like language is the way to go. Or failing that Ruby, Python or another dynamic language.

I don't think that the 100 year language he talks about is around yet....

Good point 'Statistics'.We

peathal — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:59:39 -0400

Good point 'Statistics'.

We in physics say noise to it. But I think the signal-to-noise-ratio is sufficient for Java and .net. But not for the others, which have to small absolute values.

Nevertheless, I think it makes no sense to me to discuss those (theoretical) things. The only important thing is that every one gets a good job, right?

Or do you really think that a decrease in job postings is a cause of a possible going south of Java? I don't think that Java will go south in the next years, but other languages gets more important.

Regards,

Peter.

Walter, Where are you

Thomas1OF12 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:04:27 -0400

Walter,

Where are you located? The description of sparse (or no) valid Java Enterprise Developers is very much alive in the Tampa metropolitan area (which also includes St. Petersburg & Clearwater FL). It appears that the Orlando area (think Walt Disney World) is in a Java Developer drought

For clarity, when I mention either Java Enterprise or Java Developers, I mean that type of skilled labor with a bare minimum of experience!

As a side note, as strange as it seems, the entire Walt Disney World set of theme parks in Orlando Florida USA are very recession proof. I always was told that healthcare was the recession proof field of choice....just chalk it up to the strange land of Florida. We can't vote correctly, we called in "The Lone Gunman" (think X-Files) to snuff out Al Gore's dream of winning the Presidency....we have the Southern Command of the "Rush Limbaugh" show (east coast of FL)...and the list goes on!

Regards,

Tom

http://thomas1of12.blogspot.com

I don't know, I think there

wb110497 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:26:23 -0400

I don't know, I think there needs to be more data, because from my standpoint it's hard to find java developers as they are getting snatched up left and right. We interview a candidate and they run off with other offers by the end of a day or two.

I posted a follow-up on this

wjwj — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:49:22 -0400

I posted a follow-up on this on my blog: http://www.jroller.com/wj/entry/more_on_the_java_job.

In general, the whole set of diagrams was inspired by a post from Paul Kedrosky here: http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2008/03/26/checking_employ.html. On further review, the trends aggregator only claims to represent the US job market, so jobs even in the EU are not presented here.