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Certainly times have changed the last year or two, with the huge tech bubble of the late 1990's breaking.

For a while you just could not find what you needed, and with all the hype, alot of not so good candidates were sucked up into the vacuum. There's at least a ten to one difference in usefulness between the top programmer and the bottom, and the ones who could deliver the goods were in hot demand.

Now most of the computer companies have downsized, and most of the dot-coms have vanished. Few are hiring. Those who got in late, and didn't have something special (luck, ability or drive) are hurting or collecting unemployment or adapting to a new, lower, life style.

This article, at least in the opening words I skimmed, tries to score rhetorical points by pointing out the contrast between the scarcity of good programmers in the late 1990's and the current overabundance of so-so programmers. No big deal. Just part of the usual boom and bust of this business, and probably of most other rapidly evolving business's.

Thanks christine11;

Question: The industry claims that if it cannot bring H-1B workers to the U.S., it will be forced to move software operations to where the workers are overseas. Is this true?

This is a bogus threat, an obvious contradiction: Why does the industry want to bring Indian programmers to the U.S. as H-1Bs in the first place? Why not just employ those programmers in India? The answer is that it is not feasible to do so.

The fact is that, although a small amount of work is done abroad (largely old mainframe software), this will not escalate to become the major mode of operation of the industry. The misunderstandings caused by long-distance communication, the problems of highly-disparate time zones and so on result in major headaches, unmet deadlines and a general loss of productivity.

Just look at Silicon Valley. This is the most ``wired'' place in the world, yet those massive Silicon Valley freeway traffic jams arise because very few programmers telecommute. They know that face-to-face interaction is crucial to the success of a software project.

Actually, this not a bogus threat. It is already happening and a growing trend. The number of H1-B's won't change it up or down.

Off shore development is increasingly feasible and the face-time is moved off-shore to where the bulk of the programming staff reside - Hyderabaad, India to name 1 key center.

What remains and growing in the US is small companies (startups, growth co's, etc.) doing original product development. The teams and efforts are usually too small to move, and too proprietary to entrust off shore.

Before I start, I guess I should mention that I am an unemployed programmer. My company sold software to dot coms, so we tanked shortly after they did. I saw the writing on the wall and had a chance to get out, but did not take it. I even got an offer a month ago, but chose to stay in school and finish my master's degree. The market is very tight, and for a guy like me with only 2.5 years experience, it feels like I got in just a couple years too late. Most jobs now require a resume that I do not have even though I have never found anything about software that was challenging for any more than a week or so.

So far, I have worked for 2 very different companies. One was in the mid-west and very white. The other was in New York and I was a minority among many H1B's from India and Taiwan. The company in New York was very disorganized, and I commonly found problems communicating and working with the H1Bs. A very few were bright, many were run-of-the mill, and some were unable to effectively communicate technical English, work alone, or keep from constantly shoveling their work on to the people below or beside them. I don't really see how they do anything but help a company's bottom line by increasing supply, containing salary growth, and nearly eliminating any training a company might have to invest in.

I think this is a very lazy solution to the problem that will eventually come back to haunt the companies and the politicians who decided to take this course. The first thing that will happen is an angry group of programmers will be created when they find themselves out of a job while some guys from the 3rd world work jobs they could easily do. Another angry group of recent graduates will be created when they see that the career they were told to jump into is toast for the next couple of years. The gov't will look like idiots when people realize that it constantly tells them to study math and science while it adopts one policy after another that insures engineers will live in a world of feast or famine throughout their careers. Finally, engineers will come to see that the democrats are right when they spew their rhetoric about the republicans favoring businesses over people. None of these results are good. The right way to handle the shortage, whether you believe there was one or not, is the same as it ever was; LET THE FREE MARKET FIND ITS EQUILIBRIUM! Had there been no H1B program, companies would have been forced to train their own workers. I can't think of a better way to bring back the old apprentice style training that transfers knowledge from generation to generation while advancing it, and building a sense of company loyalty that is almost non-existant these days. Instead you are left with oportunists that will ratchet up their salaries by pitting one company against the next while while abandoning one technological advancement for anther that pays better at the moment. Some may argue that this is a more competitive, dynamic environment, but it looks pretty chaotic and unorganized to me.