Lack of Software Engineers Bears Risks

One thing they could do is to soft regulations on hiring foreigners.

I'm a software engineer, I have fluent English, native Portuguese speaker and I understand Spanish.

So why the hell is so damn hard to get a working Visa for countries like these in EU, or in the USA?

Sometimes I wonder where is the so called Globalization. :-)

Fifteen or so years ago many companies made it very clear what they thought of software engineeers: wherever possible the role would be outsourced to the lowest-paying parts of the world.

Now they're surprised that there aren't enough such engineers.

Managers always like to say that there is a shortage of engineers, even when they are laying off engineers.

There is no systemic evidence of a shortage of software engineers. What you've provided here is anecdotal evidence of specific skills in two places (London and Silicon Valley). Software goes through boom and bust cycles, but managers complain about shortages even during the bust part of the cycle.

If there was a shortage of software engineers you would see companies creating retention programs to retain - and retrain - their software engineers. Can you show me even one company with a retention or retraining program for their software engineers?

+1... Additionally, what exactly are the metrics that define "the skill set the companies are looking for"? Regardless of how much you are "trained" or where for that matter, we will always encounter less than stellar or not so self-motivated individuals who will actually take the initiative to be true engineers. Engineering is not a field that welcomes stagnation and complacency. I think today's management just want to play the numbers game to their advantage. A shortage exists...but only in the facts.

I could live to be 300 and hear this mantra over and over.

One should not speak of a shortage of a good or service unless they specify a price level.

At 10$/hour, yeah - there is a shortage of software folk.

At $100/hr, you could fill the Grand Canyon with software engineers.

Of course, the 'real' meaning of the mantra is that there are no software engineers willing to work for 1970's wages.

As Mr. Robinson said above, this is no surprise

Problem solved.

I applaud your English, but you are not fluent.

The average Software Engineering position pays a heck of a lot better than most jobs. So I wouldn't say our lack of engineers is due to wages. I would attribute the lack of western engineers to cultural issues (not interested in "coding", the required education is too difficult for the sedentary American, and emphasis on maintaining academically-agnostic [e.g.: not taking major into account] educational loans and grants).

> The average Software Engineering position pays a heck of a lot better than most jobs
Not true if you compare it with jobs requiring similar qualifications.
And it is a question of perspectives in your job. If as an engineer you want to make substantial money (same range like a lawyer or a doctor) you have to be "promoted" to some management position that has not much in common with thIe work an engineer does.

So if money is a major motivation for you working stay away from engineering, math or physics.

Urs

"The problem with scarce availability of well-educated software engineers is that many companies require more engineers then they can get and if that gap widens, this could damage the leading edge of some companies."

Software Engineering requires a level of natural capability as does being a competent mathematician. Sure most people can do math but are they competent enough for it to be a day job? No.

So, yes I think we need to spend more effort on education equally we need to focus on career/talent development within businesses and we should also accept that there's a finite pool of talent or accept that the quality of software produced will be reduced (which is fine for a number of lines of business but we can't complain about quality being reduced).

Urs,

But that's so not true! If you want to make a lot of money in computer science, start a company: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, HP, etc! All of these companies started out of someone's garage or dorm room. I only agree that the same is not true in mathematics and or physics.

Richard

Urs,

But that's so not true! If you want to make a lot of money in computer science, start a company: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, HP, etc! All of these companies started out of someone's garage or dorm room. I only agree that the same is not true in mathematics and or physics.

Richard

Being a good software engineer takes real work, focus and deliberateness. These are three things that are unfortunately out-of-fashion in society today.

What we need to be doing is teaching the importance of doing real, hard work, and delivering real, high-quality value in everything that we do. We need to teach this to both the next generation, but also to the people we already have in our industry, and we need to teach it both by words and by example.

There's just no silver bullet.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy | Oracle
www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/

This might be a disparity we are seeing between Europe and the US. Software Engineers in the US are being paid quite well compared to most other college degrees (I believe "Software Engineer" was recently declared the best occupation this year by a couple of business journals). Obviously Doctors and Lawyers get paid well, but in the case of Lawyers, the job market is saturated. Other professions that require a 4-year degree have considerably lower salaries. Teachers and social workers (even those with Master's degrees) are paid a fraction (40-50%) of what a Software Engineer makes.

Cameron,

I agree whole-heartedly with your position. Unfortunately, our culture (American) has some how shifted in the last few decades such that the majority of parents don't instill these values in their children. I really think it's going to take at least a decade of poor economic growth and hardship for the current generation to rediscover these values.

Richard

'Lack of Software Engineers Bears Risks' should be 'Lack of Software Engineers Bares Risks'.

Give us a chance to applaud your Spanish or Portuguese.

At least he speaks more than one language, Americans only speak (badly) her own language.

Why would I; I never claimed to be proficient in either. I also, by the way, am not seeking employment in Spain or Portugal.

Here's a generalization made on very little fact. Considering we are a country with an enormous population of emigrants (our own illegal immigrant population is larger than many European-country populations) and many of our "inhabitants" are multilingual. America is also a largely heterogeneous society. We don't benefit from the centuries of "cultural tempering" our European counterparts have. So, yes, our language gets "bastardized" by the simple fact that we have so many people with so many different background speaking it. But isn't this the point of language? It evolves with people.

What really makes me aggravated by your comment, however, is that if I were to come to any European country and proclaim that I was proficient in your language, your people would not only very flagrantly correct me, but would also be extremely rude about it.

If there is a shortage of experienced software engineers, why do companies (in the UK at least) keep firing experienced UK-based software engineers and developers, and replacing them with cheap, inexperienced offshore (or temporarily onshored) workers?

There is certainly a long-term problem with a shortage of people going into maths/science/engineering, but that's partly because the job and pay prospects are so poor. One in six UK IT graduates cannot find work after college, and even if they do, they know their prospects of still having a career - or even a job - into their 40s are pretty low. If these people are as smart as we would hope, it's hardly surprising they'd rather pass on all that hard work and hardship and go into the law, politics or finance instead.

Employers and politicians have complained about "skills shortages" in the UK for decades, but they don't want to invest in creating and retaining the skills they're looking for. They want somebody else to pick up the tab for providing skilled staff, just as they want somebody else to pick up the tab for the social and economic costs of firing those same skilled workers a few years down the line, to make a quick short-term profit by shipping work to the latest cheap offshore production centre. It's slash-and-burn agriculture applied to technology, and it's just as destructive in the long run.

At least he speaks more than one language, Americans only speak (badly) her own language.

Give us a chance to applaud your Spanish or Portuguese.

Adding to Urs' comment, I might mention that Richard has listed a handful of highly-successful companies, and has not mentioned the tens of thousands of start-ups that went nowhere. I think the example is not relevant to the topic.

+1 to Gordon. What goes around comes around. Perhaps there will now be an upswing in demand and pay rates for software developers.

With millions of people out of work in the US alone, and worse situations in some countries such as (for example) Spain, why would a cost-conscious manager create a retention program for any job role?

You and I might agree in principle that it's better to retain and retrain the good people we already have than to churn through an endless series of mass hirings and mass layoffs, but that doesn't mean the typical manager in the typical corporation thinks that way. History provides numerous examples of intelligent humans doing stupid things on purpose.

"If these people are as smart as we would hope, it's hardly surprising they'd rather pass on all that hard work and hardship and go into the law, politics or finance instead."

That reminds me of something Steve Balmer said several years ago. Paraphrasing: "The problem is that the average salary for a programmer is $75,000. If that were $50,000 you'd have less of a problem."

Balmer obviously never thought through the consequences of his "solution". If college students thought that pay in their field was going to drop by a third the best ones would change majors. Smart, capable people want to go where there is opportunity, not where opportunity is vanishing.

Balmer's approach would leave software engineering populated with people who weren't smart enough to do the job well.

Well stated Dan. While data is hard to come by it's safe to say that a great software engineer is measurably more productive than someone who lacks the sufficient talent or training. I've had the need to measure this very thing in the past so I say that with a high degree of confidence.

In Denver, Colorado I will say that finding these great software engineers, from a talent and company fit perspective, is a difficult task.

I just read another article in infoq about offices not being fit for people to program in that shows a lack of respect of software engineers. Maybe there is some relationship?

Bears -> Carries
Bares -> Exposes

I think the first word is what is meant.

Yes, but there are not too many starved software engineers. Engineers may fail to successfully start a company, but it does not mean that they have failed to succeed in their own careers. On the other hand, think about educators who have as much education as a software engineer, are paid half as much, and are frequently prone to layoffs.

Spot on.

These "journalists" will copy whatever press releases come from Oracle, Microsoft etc.

When outsourcing and H1b will happen as massively with the rest of professional categories (lawyers, accountants, doctors etc) as massively as they do it with us, then things will change, not before.

Problem is, we technical people are, on a non technical level, rather gullible. We start searching for "the solution to the problem of software engineers shortage" because this is what we do, solve problems.

The PR people that "ask the question to be solved" are very skilled in lying and mystifying, hence the fake question.

Totally agree and can say that the situation hasn't changed much. Technologies evolve so fast that it's almost impossible to satisfy the demand for IT-specialists. Of course, the number of graduates is bigger, but they are newbies when companies do not always have the time to give them the right experience. Thus, often companies are struggling to find the right expert and have to look abroad for one. There's a way this shortage can be resolved, here's an article that explains how:
mobilunity.com/blog/hire-developers-in-spain/