If there's a tech skills shortage, why are so many computer graduates unemployed?

Parents Forum
181

I don’t know how you come to that assertion.

My team members and I don’t interview that way. There are specific questions about some programming languages, some software technologies to evaluate the experience of the applicants. However, these kinds of questions don’t take more than 30-40% of the interview process. There are lots of questions about problem solving skills, creativity, adaptation, roll playing, leadership, vision, past accomplishments, failures, contribution,… We ask more about issues in software development process than about a specific programming language because software development is not about programming language.

182

The vast majority of our educated, hard working, highly skilled technical labor force will not be CEOs, top management, or entrepreneurs. What are we to do about them when their jobs are outsourced at age 45-55? Too bad, sucks to be them?

183

I have no sympathy for a person who complains about getting laid off and is unwilling to become an entrepreneur. The world does not owe you a job.

If you have valuable skills that your employer didn’t recognize, prove it to yourself and your old employer. You made lots of contacts throughout your industry over the years, right? Lots of people who would vouch for your skills and help you find a job or bring you on for a contracting basis? If so, you shouldn’t have any problem. If not, well…

184

I am over 60 and still working in software development. And to be honest, I have never been laid off.

185

The above comment is problematic for the following reasons:

  1. Not everyone has the personality traits and/or talent for being an entrepreneur. They are rare enough that they tend to stand out...especially the successful ones.
  2. Society and entrepreneurs need larger numbers of hard working non-entrepreneurial people to perform most of the nitty-gritty/"in the weeds" detail oriented work good entrepreneurs don't have the time to do on a regular basis. Well....not if they want to maintain enough of a big picture perspective of their business and spend time doing what they need to do to start, grow, and maintain their businesses.
  3. This will be viewed by many in the younger generations as a "bait and switch" message....and justifiably so.

Most in their formative years were bombarded with the following messages from their parents/teachers/older adults/society that if they studied hard and did well in school, got into college, studied/got into the “right” major/career fields, and “didn’t rock the boat” too much, there will be a great job/career path/future waiting for them upon graduation.

Heck, I got to hear some of that myself as a tail-end member of Gen X. However, that message seemed to have been amped up by a few orders of magnitude for K-12 kids from the time I started college until the 2008 recession.

In short…a society where everyone’s a CEO of sole proprietorships is unlikely to be sustainable or make for a great place to live and work for most people…including entrepreneurs.

That and giving the glib answers to folks who were laid off despite having a good sustained employment track record smacks too much of the “let them eat cake” attitude common among late 18th century French aristocrats before they were swept away by the French Revolution.

186

It is not remotely a glib answer. It is my way of looking at the world and IMO one of the important lessons that I have taught my children: “The world owes you nothing.”

By that I mean that each person interested in a career is responsible for making sure they have skills that the world wants, and that they build up a network of friends and associates that support them when times are bad.

I started my career in tech, and everyone knows that people get laid off in tech for many reasons often unrelated to skill. If you are in tech and are completely unprepared for that, you have been badly misled about how the world works in ways I can’t comprehend.

The reason that the strongest CS grads are making starting salaries of $100K+ plus an additional signing bonus at age 22 is because companies believe they generate considerably more value than that. Even though they don’t yet have the wisdom of what mistakes to avoid, they generate value through raw brainpower and by being able to work very hard.

The software people that stay at the top of their game can make $200K+ later in their career (and much more in finance). The industry needs these people who have the battle scars of seeing failed projects in the hope of avoiding future failures.

However, what the software industry doesn’t need is the person who is in their 40s or 50s, but not strong enough to move into the architect ranks, and not energetic enough to compete with the young kids just graduating from college.

Tech has always been a Darwinian world. It is the nature of the business–you are getting paid to solve problems for others to make their business more productive. How people get into their 40s or 50s without realizing this is completely beyond me.

187

In order to be a successful software developer, one needs to constantly learn and train oneself. A software developer cannot be complacent and stay with a company for a long time without learning any new skills. If there is no chance to move up in career then the developer should update resume and look for a new job. I have been pro-active in my career. I did not wait to get laid off. I gave 2 week courtesy notices and usually received counter offers. Many times I came back to the old companies to do part-time consulting.

I guess people in sectors other than software development would act similarly to keep career stable.

188

This is wrong for two reasons:

  1. If everyone followed this advice then there would be no new companies. Most new companies fail ... but those that survive and thrive result in the larger companies that you want, the ones that "need larger numbers of hard working non-entrepreneurial people to perform most of the nitty-gritty/"in the weeds" detail oriented work". I fail to understand why people can't see this obvious fact.
  2. It has never been easier for a small software company to start and thrive than it is right now. There are billions of customers for computer software (from PCs to phones), high quality free/low cost tools for developing software for those customers, and high quality means of distributing software to those customers (the "App" stores). Not to mention the recent proliferation of cloud systems where you can basically rent a supercomputer to do heavy computations, as-needed. Even a tiny company can look like a biggie these days.

My post a while back about starting your own company wasn’t a “glib” reply. I really mean it.

189

@droppedit

And that reply missed the entire point I was making which is that for a society to be viable, it needs to MAKE ALLOWANCES FOR BOTH THOSE WHO ARE INCLINED TO BE ENTREPRENEURS AND THOSE WHO AREN’T INCLINED AND/OR DON’T HAVE THE TALENT/PERSONALITY TRAITS TO BE ENTREPRENEURS.

Your and hebegebe’s posts advocate for a society where only the entrepreneurs should be accounted for while effectively omitting everyone else.

This is not only unsustainable, but also potentially dangerous as rising anger from those who have felt they’ve been left behind economically dominating the political discourse and rhetoric across the political spectrum in the last few election cycles have proven.

It may be easier than in the past…but you’re still forgetting a few key facts.

Starting up a company, even a small one takes capital not only for startup costs, but also to weather the inevitable downturns and unexpected contingencies which comes with starting up and running a business. Many of the majority of businesses which fail in the first 5 years fail because the entrepreneur aspirant failed to acquire adequate capital to cover those startup and sustaining costs before failing.

Unless one’s been fortunate to have a decent sized inheritance such as Bill Gates or Donald Trump or hired into jobs where they’ve been able to save up enough cash after basic living expenses(food, shelter, student loans if any, etc) for startup and sustaining capital for those downturns and unexpected contingencies, starting up a company isn’t nearly as easy as you’re implying.

This is especially a tall order to expect from a society where the vast majority of people…including those in the middle/lower echlons of the upper-middle classes have exceedingly little savings or worse, have negative equity due to factors such as student loans and serious family medical expenses.

190

Where did I state that I advocate anything of the kind? I explicitly stated, using your own words, that bulk of people will be working for the companies that the entrepreneurs start. I’m not exactly sure what you want. Do you want the government to pass a law that makes it illegal for a company to fire a 40+ year old employee?

How are you supposed to solve that problem without crushing those that will eventually provide the jobs that the people need? Are you going to tax the successful ones to death to cover the difference? If so, why would anyone risk their livelihood to break out on their own to create the companies where the “vast majority” will work? That’ll reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator (not surprisingly, the ones in government will be the only “elite” class at that point because they’ll be the ones deciding who wins and who loses).

191

There’s a false binary being presented here by all of these business perspective arguments. It is not, has never been, and will never be, “either completely crush every business or completely disregard employees as humans”. This is a spectrum with levels and steps in each direction.

This also applies to a lot of the responses - you need both new businesses and employees who have some sort of rights and level of security. Everyone seems to be assuming that you only get one or the other…

Again, the balance sheet is not the end all be all of life - business exists for a reason, and those reasons shape business, its role in society, and its function. You can’t just look at a single number and make decisions and have them work out in the larger scheme. Companies that do have that singular focus have both ethical and financial struggles. Walmart is a classic example that has been studied to death.

On top of all of this, most of this is moot given so many overdramatizations in this thread about the industry that end up morphing into claims and false dichotomies just flat out wrong. Tons of 40 and 50 year olds can still be successful in the trenches of tech without getting to management and executive level, even if it is slightly harder. Young people don’t have the magical power to be super productive over their counterparts, especially factoring in experience.

The actual reason that age is a problem is discrimination by it at some companies, particularly young startups. At many other large companies, who both pay well and offer a bulk of jobs in the industry, age is not such a negative trait, and they usually house many older employees.

While we’re on this tangent, I think the central problem here could be addressed, which is the difference in perspective. This all reminds me ever so slightly of the article below:

http://www.centerforneweconomics.org/buddhist-economics

The point of bringing this up is to show that a different perspective logically yields very different answers. This article is by no means perfect, but really highlights this point.

192

Ironically, this very endemic age discrimination in many corporations towards 40+ year old tech workers was one factor cited by a few HS classmates as a key factor in the massive computer network breaches in many corporate computer networks because the much younger and inexperienced employees left…especially recent graduates didn’t have enough real world experience to look out for and account for the multitude of ways those security breaches could occur.

Said HS classmates were the ones who were hired as computer/network security consultants by some of those corporations to investigate, clean up, and secure their networks from further security breaches.

In short, that was one case of “pennywise, pound foolish” where highly probable age discrimination ended up burning those companies.

193

I should have used the phrase “and not productive enough” instead of “and not energetic enough”. I do recognize that experience can make a seasoned developer with up to date skills more productive than a newly minted CS grad.

194

Forgive my chiming in, but I have run a constantly-evolving tech startup for 25 years.

The first part of your sentence may be true, but doesn’t mean capital has to be raised. The second part of your sentence applies to any business of any size. And it is very different between a SERVICE company (which is what I think is mostly being referred to here) and a product company. (Mine has been both).

No, they fail because cash flow is insufficient to cover expenses. Capital investments are for growth, if you can’t be profitable (or show a scale to profitability in your business plan) you can’t raise money to scale.

As someone who has done it, it’s not as hard as you make it sound either. It does, however, take a certain type of person, and I do agree with you that it is not for everyone. But I believe it to be a personality trait and not a result of circumstance.

Here is what it takes to start a service company: One paying customer.

195

I’ve known far too many people who assumed one or a few paying customers were enough for their service oriented startups* and then end up failing because the capital it turned out they needed for startup and unexpected contingencies was far more than the revenue those few paying customers brought in.

Also, it only takes one major unexpected contingency to wipe out the revenues/profits generated by a few or even many paying customers. One good example of this are the many small and medium sized contractors who took a major hit or were even wiped out by being stiffed on the substantial work they did in the 80s and early '90s for someone who is now a YUGE presidential candidate.

The successful ones who assume this are IME, like some genius-type students I knew in HS who wondered “how could you not get it?!!” regarding complex advanced academic/theoretical/mechanical/engineering topics without understanding the vast majority of people need far more step-by-step explanation to understand what they learned through seeming osmosis. This last part goes back to your point about personality traits being a key factor in being a successful entrepreneur which is a part I agree with.

  • I've worked for a few and saw this from the inside.
196

You quote one part of my post but then respond to another: “No, they fail because cash flow is insufficient to cover expenses.”

Again, this speaks to operational ability, and not related to the startup costs you were referencing.

I am (extremely) far from a genius, (as evidenced by my inability to understand the above paragraph) but I have done it. My business is not “Yuuge” but we have a double-digit number of skilled employees, big name customer and 25 years of making payroll. Stuff happens, I get it – the 2008 crisis was a big one for us when our financial sector customers did not fulfill their contracts, but we weathered it.

A big mistake people make is thinking, as you do, that it takes genius. Running a business is actually pretty simple at it’s core (“simple” - not “easy”). In fact, here are “Postmodern’s 10 most important things about running a business” for your edification:

1 - Take in more revenue than you spend.

2 - See #1

3 - Doesn't matter if you don't accomplish #1

's 4-10 Try and increase revenue while sticking to #1.

That’s about it!

197

Seemingly simple, but #1 can be impeded by a lot of unexpected complications and emergency situations by someone with limited to no experience running his/her own business. And those complications and emergency situations tend to be ones which have caused many businesses to fail…especially in the first 5 years.

Here’s some added nuts and bolts steps which may seem to be basic common sense to you and many successful entrepreneurs, but weren’t to the owners of the startups I worked for:

Don’t start projects with a new client…including large established corporate clients unless you’ve finalized the contract regarding project parameters and payment. The failure of one startup boss I’ve had to observe this point ended up burning him and most of the startup team. The larger corporate client realized and took great advantage of the startup owner’s cluelessness in this department to further negotiate down the final payment and broaden the parameters/scope of work far beyond what was initially proposed by the very same client at the first meeting. Since the owner had already started the project and sunk a substantial amount of time into this project, the client had more leverage…and boy did they use it.

Funny part was I ended up further ahead financially than the startup owner/startup because they needed to rent extra computers* which I had on hand.

I made sure to have them sign a contract which not only specified the conditions of use and rental payments, but also a decent sized cash deposit just in case. I got fully paid for those rental computers along with the salary as a developer employee in the startup.

  • Computers which effectively cost me nothing as they were abandoned by neighbors and friends who were fed up with hardware/software issues which I had the skills to diagnose and fix easily.
198

To the OP’s point, I do see a lot of bifurcation in Tech. The average salaries for a CS major at Penn is close to $100k, with top students getting $110k-$120k with multiple offers. Then I visit the Apple store and many of the people waiting on me are college grads with CS majors that I suspect are making a lot less than that.

I am surprised at the wide range or outcomes. It seems like the skill level really has a big impact.

199

Would not one of the big differentiators be the type of internships, if any, the student had before graduation?

200

this is the weirdest thread about jobs for CS grads I’ve come across in a while.

Nice stuff!