No short term fixes.
Long term strategy:
1) End the H1B visas. No more foreign programmers.
2) Raise salaries of US programmers.
3) Update SW at the unemployment offices, the power companies, the IRS, and a host of other areas.
We have a lot of whizz-bang stuff, but the nation is a lot more fragile than some people think, and IT is really NOT a good career field — too much foreign competition, lots of age discrimination, and the salaries, while OK, are not nearly what they should be.
When this came out yesterday & trended on Twitter, the Governor was looking for COBOL volunteers. If New Jersey relied on Indian outsourcers to save money on maintenance, let them wallow in their mess.
My introduction to computers course in High School was done with COBOL. It wouldn’t be hard to pickup. As one of my friends at Accenture told me: “you’re more qualified than most COBOL resumes they’re seeing today.”
If state governments are willing to make a decent offer that includes a reasonable career path, call me.
For giggles, I stuck COBOL back on my online resume. I want to see what happens.
If you want to volunteer, look at this:
https://www.usdigitalresponse.org