Programmer/Developer Job Trends
'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' - Mark Twain.
Today (April, 1), the application window for next year's crop of H-1B visas begins. Companies will be flooding the the USCIS with applications hoping their applicants will snag one of the coveted 65,000 H-1B visas which will be chosen by lottery. If previous lotteries were any indication, the visa cap will be exhausted within days, and roughly 3 out of every 4 visas issued will go to Indian-born IT related specialists (most of whom work for outsourcing or offshore consulting companies).
Last April, roughly 120,000 applications rolled in, nearly twice the annual limit of 65,000. Given that it is a numbers game, it is not surprising that some companies would try to send in applications for all of their employees (regardless if they had an assignment in hand or not), or send in duplicate applications for employees. Note: this week, the USCIS implemented a rule to prohibit the practice of filing duplicate applications.
So dire is the need for H-1B that Bill Gates has ventured to Capital Hill with the same message for the last two years: let us hire more foreign workers. Executives from Sun, Oracle, IBM also decry the limits keep them from suffering a critical skills shortage-- there are simply too many open jobs that remain unfilled.
Unfortunately, most of the emotionally charged arguments relating to the H-1B visa issues are only half true -- there is not a shortage of people to fill those jobs, but there is a shortage of good developers to fill those positions.
And before you assume that I'm anti H-1B, most of the H-1Bs I know have been top notch developers and have nothing against them (only a few have been technically worthless). But quite frankly, I'm good at what I do, so I don't see them as a threat to my livelihood any more than I would see coworkers or other consultants as a taking away potential jobs from me.
Interesting Job Posting Statistics
With Bill Gates screaming to end or triple the visa cap, because of critical technological labor shortages, why is it that since July 2006, the number of programming jobs (C++, C#, Java) all decreased by more than 30%? And why has the number of jobs specifically advertising the words "H-1b" increased 23% during the same timeframe?
Check it out for yourself. SimplyHired (a job search engine) has a little application that will graph out trends derived from their own indexed jobs openings. Likewise, indeed.com has a similar web offering.
This graph displays the percentage of jobs that contain your search terms. Since July 2006, the following has occurred:
- C++ jobs decreased 37%
- C# jobs decreased 35%
- Java jobs decreased 33%
- H-1b jobs increased 23%
However, Ruby is still blazing hot (relative job growth):
... until you look at the absolute number of jobs:
Interesting, don't you think?
Labels: Business
