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| Is IT dead in the US? |
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| tleichen |
 Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 4:06 pm Post subject: Is IT dead in the US? |
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Yatiri
Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 663
Location: Center of the USA
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I'd like some serious opinions about both the MQSeries market and the IT market in general, as it relates to the United States. Given the extreme amount of offshoring that has taken place, it begs the question: Is either of them even worth bothering with anymore? Is the field dead in America?
Please state the reason for your answer. |
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| PeterPotkay |
| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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Poobah
Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722
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there's a few hundred IT people in my building
there's a few thousand IT people in my city
etc
etc
etc
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Peter Potkay
Keep Calm and MQ On |
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| jefflowrey |
| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Poobah
Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 19981
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Yeah.
Also, what good are opinions?
Particularly when asked for in an IT forum...?
Unless I'm the one interviewing you for a job, my opinion isn't going to help you get a job.
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I am *not* the model of the modern major general. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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I know a lot of people do not know what is going on in the industry as a whole. Most know little about anything beyond their own situations. After all, who has the time nowadays? But it is apparent to me, that software development in the US is going by the wayside. Maybe I did not make myself clear that this is what I wanted to focus on.
| PeterPotkay wrote: |
there's a few hundred IT people in my building
there's a few thousand IT people in my city
etc
etc
etc |
"IT people" can mean a lot of things in a lot of places. Administrative Assistants that work in an IT shop can be called IT people in some circles. System "baby-sitters" who are hired through outsourcing, because accountants no longer want to spend the bucks can be called IT people. But, I'm talking strictly about software development. Now, if there are a few hundred software developers in your company and it is on American turf, I would be interested in knowing what and where that firm is. |
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| kevinf2349 |
| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:14 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 28 Feb 2003
Posts: 1311
Location: USA
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| Quote: |
| But, I'm talking strictly about software development. |
So when you wrote....
| Quote: |
| I'd like some serious opinions about both the MQSeries market and the IT market in general, |
You really didn't mean it. I believe that those that answered thought you did. 
Now back to the point. I would have thought that 'software development' was on the decline in anycase. The market has lots of 'solutions' out there, and the real skills are in applying maintenance and integrating that software into existing systems. This is where the market has opened up to people with MQ skills (at least in my case). People want to integrate systems that run of different platforms. MQ gives them the chance to do this without coding a complicated communication layer.
I am fortunate enough to get a chance to develop software, play with MQ and install and support mainframe software....but the software development is not for profit...in fact just the reverse, I write my own programs because my company is unwilling to shell out for new 'system' products that don't show a really cost effective business case.
Just my 2 cents |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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At least in the world of startups, there is still a lot of development going on here in the US. When it comes to architecting a brand new product from scratch, it's harder to outsource that task. It is much easier for a mature company to outsource the maintenance of older products.
For example, we still have a relatively small development team ~20, with 3 in India, the rest in Silicon Valley. We have to be careful about what work we give to the overseas people. Not because they aren't good, but because it's much harder for them to work with marketing to agree on issues, write feature specs, etc. They are operating in more of a vacuum because of the distances involved. In QA on the other hand, we see ourselves growing mostly in India.
So for the foreseeable future, we are going to continue to hire engineers here as we continue to (hopefully!) grow.
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| bduncan wrote: |
At least in the world of startups, there is still a lot of development going on here in the US. When it comes to architecting a brand new product from scratch, it's harder to outsource that task. It is much easier for a mature company to outsource the maintenance of older products.
For example, we still have a relatively small development team ~20, with 3 in India, the rest in Silicon Valley. We have to be careful about what work we give to the overseas people. Not because they aren't good, but because it's much harder for them to work with marketing to agree on issues, write feature specs, etc. They are operating in more of a vacuum because of the distances involved. In QA on the other hand, we see ourselves growing mostly in India.
So for the foreseeable future, we are going to continue to hire engineers here as we continue to (hopefully!) grow. |
BDuncan,
I find your situation interesting, especially on one point. If you have a team of programmers here (you said about 20), what would make your company think they needed to have 3 in India? Are the 3 in India the latest additions? If so, I would surmise that your company has succumbed to the common greed of the industry, which is why the India thing got started in the first place. Sounds like as people leave your team, they will more than likely be replaced by one or more additions in India. Hopefully for you, that will be a long time. |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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Actually, no, they are not the latest additions. And presumeably the team in India will grow, but that is more due to the fact that we will have more mature products which are more or less in maintenance mode. We have realized that it is simply not feasible to outsource the initial design and architecting of new products to our overseas team. Again, not because they aren't capable, but because the separation makes it nearly impossible to do all the upfront design work (negotiating with marketing, talking to customers, sitting in on sales calls) that we need.
Honestly, our outsourcing has been a bit of a disappointment because we really did expect to be able to outsource some of our product design. But outsourcing could definitely be feasible for a more established company with more mature products. The problem is we're on the bleeding edge designing new stuff from scratch and we require a highly collaborative environment, so we can't have people 8000 miles away.
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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| tleichen |
| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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Yatiri
Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 663
Location: Center of the USA
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I too am really concerned about the outsourcing thing. I believe it's creating the same problem in American IT, as it did with other industries. As you have pointed out, even companies that still have some programmers (assumably doing the things upper management has not figured out how to outsource, yet) still are offshoring a lot of their IT. This is the very reason I posted this question to begin with. What I'm seeing is this growing trend to outsource whatever they can. Brandon is right that the more technical stuff is staying here, for now, but it is just a matter of time for any of it.
Brandon,
I wish you the best in your situation. But if your company follows the path of a lot of companies out there, it will only be infeasible to outsource certain things until some accountant from up on high says it is feasible. In the end, the bottom line seems to always prevail. Don't try to argue with them about any technical details, they just won't hear (or understand) you.
Getting back to my root concerns: How does anyone hope to retire in this field if they have over 20 years to go? Especially since IT budgets are being slashed to the bone, and new training becomes almost non-existent?
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| gorilla |
| Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:14 am Post subject: |
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Novice
Joined: 17 Nov 2005
Posts: 16
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IMO this could be a very interesting discussion so I'm adding a "teaser" in the hope of getting some more action here. If this is bad behaviour here please let me know and I'll desist.
The IT industry has some interesting chracteristics, especialy considering how much of the IT business case over the years has been based on replacing people and (supposedly) helping companies organizae bettr/smarter:
* It's labour intensive
* It has a long history of projects which do not deliver on their promises
* It's proven very difficult to manage (not least because of "IT people" and their wacky attitudes to work and their profession)
It's clear that "what can be outsourced will be outsourced", but this is not intrinsically more dangerous to an IT professional than using product solutions instead of writing all the code in 1401 assembler. The "problem" is that, because IT is labour-intensive, and small change on the way the business cases fall out affects employment directly, so IT people need to watch their backs (and their level of arrogance towards management all the time
All the same, if you take away all the over-investment in stupid projects, all the activities which can be performed effectively offshore, all the things which can be done effectively by product solutions, it's clear that there is a significant amount of work for people with good IT skills.
The big question is - in which area of IT?
FWIW I'm a big believer in process-oriented IT (currently being re-discovered for the Nth time under the name SOA). I like process-orientation (at least for admin support apps, where it works ok) because it's naturally focused on things which carry business value to whoever pays the bills, and it most likely to be unique to them.
The flip side of this is that all the "technical coding" in a process-oriented / SOA world becomes generic, and can be outsourced or (if SOA goes mainstream in terms of construction instead of just talk) be "productized".
Assuming this vision is correct, it also means the SOA world will be a friendly place for integration specialists, because building a proper SOA is clearly going to increase the complexity of "the spaces between the programs and systems" by a factor of 10 or more. |
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| tleichen |
| Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Yatiri
Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 663
Location: Center of the USA
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gorilla,
Some of your observations are obvious short-comings in today's IT field. I'd like to address some of these. The main reason many IT projects fail, is that they simply have the wrong people, both at the project level and the management level. I would have thought that, by now, this field would have matured enough to be dominated by computer scientists and other disciplined computer specialists. In reality, those in the field with a degree in computer science are by far the minority. In fact, quite often they have no degree to speak of at all.
I am not saying that only computer scientists can develop code or do process design and integration. But consider: How may corporations do you know of that would hire an engineer (non-computer) without an engineering degree? Practically none. And yet, people in IT want (and often demand) the same professional status that engineers and other professions have, but without the corresponding education. It really makes it difficult for us that do have the degrees and certifications to maintain nowadays. We can blame big business accountants and upper management for the history that has, IMO, really ruined this field. It would not have needed to be the hodge-podge of "talent" that it is today. It could have been more structured, more defined, and thus, more professional. But business did not want to pay for that, and thus they ruined it in the process.
A lot of today's outsourcing has evolved as a result of all this too. It has taken a number of years, but I think management came to realize that if a lackey that did not even have a degree could do some of this stuff, then why not an educated dude over in India that I can pay 10% of what I am paying for people over here? It became a "no brainer" (no pun intended) 
I think some of your theories about process oriented IT (SOA) are a bit extreme and hard to support. Particularly the statement that all the "technical coding" in a process-oriented / SOA world becomes generic, and can be outsourced.
This over-generalizes what IT is in any particular shop. Since the IT function and the environmental needs and requirements vary from one industry to another; the only way someone would come up with a statement like that is if they had only spent time in one industry. There are countless environments out there that, because of security requirements, etc., cannot even entertain the idea of outsoucing. As for other enviornments, this concept would only work if the shop was buying all products off the shelf and were doing no in-house development of any applications. Some businesses can get by with that. Others cannot, because of the nature of their business.
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IBM Certified MQSeries Developer |
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| gorilla |
| Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 2:07 am Post subject: |
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Novice
Joined: 17 Nov 2005
Posts: 16
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tleichen
Generally I agree on your analysis of *why* IT is a bit messed up - it would make me a bit depressed to write it all down though
Re my "generic services" comments - my comments were meant as a "teaser", and I didn't try to look at the whole picture because, as you point out, it's very complex.
FWIW I think:
* Company-unique technical coding (which I fully agree will continue to be required) will be easier to outsource than complete applications. OTOH the smaller the fragments the higher the proportional overhead for outsourcing. I don't expect application development to disappear, but I think it's safe to say that some of the changes caused by outsourcing are here to stay.
* Productized services (generic technical code) will (slowly) become possible, and their development will also be "outsourcing friendly". This will have the usual effects of taking away the need for certain kinds of coding, and, through improved programmer productivity, make new kinds of systems economically viable.
I've been in the IT business a long time, and I've seen many cases over the years where "company unique" or "industry unique" systems were replaced with product or framework solutions. For an example, take a look at the military, where the IT buzzword is "COTS" these days.
At any given time, some things have to be hand built, some things can be bought, some fit in between. When I try to figure out where I think the industry is going, one of the questions I ask myself is: how much of the "buy and customize" space will become "buy and install", and how much of "built it yourself" will become "buy and customize" - and of course, is there anything coming in from "wouldn't it be nice if" to "normal IT capability"? For example eBay V1 and Google V1 had to be hand-built - but you have to wonder how much of their code could be (or is) bought or outsourced today.
IMO Application Development has lived on the new workload coming in for a long time, but developers get attached to the technologies they know, and it skews the analysis. Personally, I try to keep my eye on the new things. It's one thing if the new stuff comes from the country you happen to live in, or if they have to be built as company-unique components. If, OTOH, all the new S/W technology comes from India or China then the US IT industry will indeed be in for some major shocks. |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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tleichen, I agree with your distinction that in IT we have people running around without the education level that you see in other advanced fields. For instance, I've never been to a doctor's office who didn't have his M.D. hanging on the wall. He wouldn't be a doctor for very long without one 
But I think IT (especially programming) has developed from a hobbyist culture where people did this stuff because they found it interesting, and making a career out of it was sort of an afterthought. And now that we've had a generation of people growing up with computers, a lot of the younger guys in the field tinkered with computers for fun long before they ever made money doing it. You don't see any 12 year old future doctors out there performing appendectomies for fun. But there are plenty of 12 year olds writing software.
And of course, there's a lot of people out there without the formal education simply because there was such a shortage of IT people back in the 90s. I was at a company hiring anyone with a pulse, and once they got their foot in the door, some performed well enough that they're still in the field today, and now companies weigh their industry experience more heavily than what college they went to (if any).
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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gorilla,
I think what you predict will come to pass. But it is important for us to realize why the industry has become the way it is. Your point about some hobbyists winding up programming in business, while true, should be a little disturbing to most people. But it isn't. If that had happened in engineering circles you can bet there would be a lot of screaming about it. But not so with IT.
The bottom line, is that IT in virtually any company is at the total control of the accountants, and since they have approaced IT as a non-professional field because they have allowed non-certified persons into it for over a generation, they will not spend a dime more than they think that they should. It has taken the path of a lot of things these days. America has sacrificed quality in practically every type of merchandise today, for lower prices. Try to replace anything that is 20 years old or more with an equivalent item today. The materials used and the overall quality is far less durable and will not last as long. If the original item was made in America, the new item probably is not. That's exactly what industry had done with IT, at least in most circles.
Given the current trends that you have pointed out, I would not be surprised to see development and many other parts of IT disappear from the U.S. By that, I mean that Americans will not be doing it. Oh, they will be using it, just not doing it. It will all be farmed out to the lowest bidder offshore. |
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| jefflowrey |
| Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 12:18 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Poobah
Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 19981
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| Anonymous wrote: |
| Try to replace anything that is 20 years old or more with an equivalent item today. The materials used and the overall quality is far less durable and will not last as long. |
Except for computers...
| Anonymous wrote: |
| If the original item was made in America, the new item probably is not. |
Oh, well, you got me there!
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