Too Old to Write Code?
The software industry's labor shortage may be a myth
The United States faces a critical shortage of computer programmers--there's something on which Microsoft and Netscape and the federal government can all agree. The software industry's top lobbyist sees a "fundamental threat" to America's continued economic growth, and the Clinton administration is worried enough to be entertaining a proposal to increase the number of temporary work visas for foreigners with high-tech skills. Five years ago, everyone was asking, "Where are the jobs?" Deputy Labor Secretary Kitty Higgins said recently. "Now, we've got the jobs--where are the workers?"
Meanwhile, in Benicia, Calif., Paul Peterson, 46, a self-described geek who used to earn $65,000 a year writing business-modeling software for oil refineries, is managing a Radio Shack store for less than a third of that income, having failed to land so much as an entry-level job in his own field. In San Jose, Calif., James Wick, 62, counts himself lucky to be employed, for now, as a contractor on the year 2000 problem (story, Page 42). Before that chance came along, Wick had left the profession, demoralized by his failure to convince a series of young job interviewers that a 30-year career with Control Data and General Electric, among others, had taught him anything of value. And in Queens, N.Y., a year-and-a-half search has netted Alan Ezer, 45, just one job interview, despite 10 years' experience and a nifty demonstration on the Internet of his self-taught virtuosity in Java, a programming language that is much in demand.
Frustrated job seekers are not the only ones who wonder how employers can be so hungry for talent and, at the same time, so picky about finding "somebody who can do whatever they need, has been doing it for the last three years, and is doing it right next door, this minute," says Steven Laine, a Los Altos, Calif., systems-management consultant. This all-or-nothing approach leads some hiring managers to let vacancies go unfilled for months, says Andrew Gaynor, a headhunter based in Redwood City, Calif., rather than consider an applicant who, with a little training, "could easily come up to speed in a few weeks." Another Bay area headhunter, Susan Miller, notes that while pay scales for programmers with hot skills have reached "insane heights," much of the money is spent "stealing people" from other companies. "Everybody wants the same person," Miller says. "This is one of the problems in Silicon Valley that's making me rich, as a matter of fact."
What shortage? Norman Matloff, a computer scientist on the faculty of the University of California--Davis, has made himself the scourge of Silicon Valley by depicting the programmer shortage as a piece of flimflam that diverts attention from two potentially unattractive software-industry practices: ageism and a growing reliance on foreign workers. Employers typically hire between 2 and 5 percent of the programmers who apply, Matloff says, drawing his numbers from the public statements of corporate recruiters. Even in the smaller subset of applicants who get called in for personal interviews, no more than 25 percent receive job offers. "There's just no way," he argues, to square such figures with the idea of a shortage.
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