Economics Beating Out Computer Science

Nick Schulz at the American notes an educational trend of some interest, and possibly some alarm, especially with international movements in smart people restricted as they are today:

The number of new computer science majors today has fallen by half since 2000, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Merrilea Mayo, director of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable at the National Academies, says the drop-off was particularly pronounced among women. Meanwhile, elite schools are reporting that the number of economics majors is exploding. For the 2003–2004 academic year, the number of economics degrees granted by U.S. colleges and universities increased 40 percent from five years previously.

Link via Marginal Revolution

Comments

[Nobody Important]

FYI: I haven't read the article.

Could the drop in CS majors possibly be the result of the burst of the dot-com bubble around 2000, and the recession that followed?

[carrick]

Hillary will need lots of inexperienced economics majors to help implement her new health care program when she becomes president.

[JS]

I'm OK with that. More demand for me.

I think CS enrollment rates have two problems. The first is the stigma CS picked up after lots of tech people lost their jobs earlier in the decade. I think the that CS graduates face a dearth of jobs is still out there.

The second is lots of undergrads are now going into MIS and similar programs, because they want to get into "the management side of things". Kind of a foolish endeavor if you ask me, because such programs tend not to offer much in the way of actual marketable skills. But like I said, more demand for me, so shine on you crazy diamonds.

[VM]

yeaaaaaa!!!

now let's move those undergrads to grad school where the subject really gets fun!!!

[VM]

"not to offer much in the way of actual marketable skills"

transferable skills be damned. That's exactly why schools like Williams, Carlton, Amherst, etc. exist.

balls.

[Russ 2000]

Econ is the basket-weaving of business majors.

Looks like my CompSci degree just got that much more valuable. Supply and demand, ya know. And I didn't even take an econ course.

Could the drop in CS majors possibly be the result of the burst of the dot-com bubble

Probably. But at the time of the dot-com bubble several mid- and large-sixed consulting firms were taking any warm bodies they could find with decent college grades - comp sci was not a requirement to get hired. They figured the simpler jobs could go to these people and they'd get trained at a reduced billing price. (And those were the first people let go when the bubble burst.)

[QuietReaderGirl]

I work at a major public university, where economics is not a restricted major. While there are some students who are seriously interested in it as a discipline, for many of them it's what they turn to when the business school turned them down and engineering school kicked them out.

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

Russ is the jerk of the internets

[econ major]

"Econ is the basket-weaving of business majors."

Really?

My economics classes were rigorous and attracted some of the top students.

The business school (one of the top 5 undergrad business schools in the nation) was widely regarded as a joke - lots of group projects, PowerPoint, and grade inflation. Many of my friends who went this route easily landed six-figure entry level i-banking jobs, though.

[Lamar]

If criminal justice is just conservative sociology, then economics is just conservative political science.

[JBinMO]

I can't wait to see what "creative" financing options all these grads come up with 10 years from now.

[Episiarch]

I'm OK with that. More demand for me.

Bingo. And I don't even have a CS degree.

[Warren]

the drop-off was particularly pronounced among women.

Interesting. I've always envied the Comp Sci's relatively large female participation. I never had a good theory as to why it was so high, and now I'm curious as to why it's dropping off.

[Russ 2000]

My economics classes were rigorous and attracted some of the top students.

Of course there are a few schools with top-flight econ programs, but at most state colleges they are dumping grounds for people just looking to get a degree in anything. Comp Sci was and still is the same way at many schools, they never turn away anyone wanting to take it; but many students eventually hate CompSci and switch majors. Econ doesn't generate that much hatred in unmotivated students.

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

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[Sal Paradise]

Interesting. I've always envied the Comp Sci's relatively large female participation.

I had the opposite experience. The University of Iowa's comp sci department had almost none. I figured nerds just naturally repel women.

[Russ 2000]

I've always envied the Comp Sci's relatively large female participation. I never had a good theory as to why it was so high, and now I'm curious as to why it's dropping off.

CompSci used to be positioned as more of a business major than an engineering major until the last ten years or so.

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

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[Sean]

I'm going back in 2008 for my Phd in Computer Science.

My graduated class when I got my B.S. there were maybe 3 or 4 kids in my major - At the height of the dotcom boom.

It's a shame, too. Cause Computer Science kicks so much ass. Especially when you get into the cool algorithmic stuff and even the history with respects to the Babbages and the Turings.

[Sean]

that's why i didn't study english.

[Warty]

I've always envied the Comp Sci's relatively large female participation. I never had a good theory as to why it was so high, and now I'm curious as to why it's dropping off.

Is this a serious question? I think there were 6 girls in my my graduating CS class of ~100.

[MattXIV]

I'm in the same situation as Episiarch. My degree is in chemical engineering (the most advanced programming class I took was AP Comp Sci in high school), but the manufacturing situation wasn't that great when I graduated, so I got a job in software instead. I've come to suspect that having a Comp Sci degree isn't actually that important for a software developer. If you have some talent for programming, you can normally parlay an engineering, mathematics, or phyisics degree into a software developer job if you want to.

Warren - what do you major/work in? The only degree program that was more male-dominated when I was in school was electrical engineering, and both were

[Untermensch]

I'm going to agree with the negative assessment of economics as a major. At many universities it is one of the least-demanding majors in terms of credit hours, so you get all of the "I just need a collige dugree because my unkle's gonna give me a job when Im dun" students in econ, the ones who shouldn't be in college in the first place. In most cases all that matters is that the student has the degree, not what it was in or how the student actually performed.

(My apologies to anyone posting on H&R who is/was an econ major and actually cared about it. Most students do not. As a friend of mine puts it, the only demographic that insists on getting cheated of its money is the American undergraduate.)

If you want to see if econ is really picking up, watch grad school admissions and applications. If we see a drop-off in CS and an increase in Econ at that level, I'll think there's something to this change.

[Juan]

As someone who works for the largest software company in the world, and who has both an Economics degree and an MBA, I have a few clarifying points:

1. Business School has the easiest possible coursework imaginable. It's a joke (and I went to a top 10 school).

2. Economics is a real major for people are interested in math, but would like a job after graduation. The interest in Economics probably stems from the demand for quantitative analysis, which has resulted from the massive increase in information availability.

3. CS is not as attractive because the degree is unnecessary. We hire tons of software engineers, DBAs, etc. who are either self-taught or who have gone to some sort of technical school. Coding is a skill which does not require a college degree to verify.

[MattXIV]

< 10% female and the ratios in industry weren't much better. And who is the chimp who wrote the code for parsing comments? End users shouldn't have to use escape codes for entering special characters.

[Untermensch]

Also:

The number of new computer science majors today has fallen by half since 2000? (emphasis added)

Given the mobility of majors, what has the impact on graduation rates in CS been? In other words, just because more or less people are enrolling in a program to start with, it doesn't necessarily follow that the number of people graduating in that program will change if the same number of ones who will actually stick with it come in.

That said, I would expect some drop-off in this (more important) number for CS, but I don't know how much. The article linked to is a little short on real figures.

[Sam]

Duh. Just about all majors are basket weaving compared to math or engineering, but finance and business majors aren't being outsourced. Corporate America is telling us, "We need people with soft skills (basket weaving), communication skills (basket weaving), project mangement skills (basket weaving). Think group projects and PowerPoint are a joke? Those are the core skills of American corporate management. Finance and business majors (basket weavers) can end up as CxO's with all the perks and financial rewards that the management class gives itself.

Companies like EDS are getting rid of their technical staff in the U.S. to lower their "cost structure", not their management. How valuable are the geeks at the company you work for?

If you advise your children to enter a technical field, you are dooming them to a lifetime of low pay, job insecurity, and competition with third world labor. And please don't give me that crap about "we can't be afraid to compete". YOU can gamble with your or your children's future by competing with them if you want to, but don't blame everyone else for being practical.

And if you're a techie sitting there saying, "Great, more demand for me", you're an idiot. Corporate America will use the declining numbers as an excuse to flood the market with more H1B visa holders from India, putting downward pressure on your salary, and making it that much easier to offshore everything and eliminate you.

Women are just smarter than men. They can't be sucked into majoring in a declining field like CS or engineering by changes in the curriculum to emphasize "robotics" or "game development."

[SPD]

As a programmer, I'm thrilled with this news. This will mean less snot-nosed punks fresh out of school looking to take my job for less money.

Of course, there are plenty of CS students in India...

[Episiarch]

I've come to suspect that having a Comp Sci degree isn't actually that important for a software developer. If you have some talent for programming, you can normally parlay an engineering, mathematics, or phyisics degree into a software developer job if you want to.

Bingo. I've been programming since I was 10, and have never taken a computer course in my life. Runs in the blood.

All a prospective employer cares about is what you have done, and what you know. It's very libertarian in that aspect--having a fancy degree is just not necessary, just what you've achieved/learned.

[Russ 2000]

As someone who works for the largest software company in the world...We hire tons of software engineers, DBAs, etc. who are either self-taught or who have gone to some sort of technical school

And it shows in the end product.

[SPD]

Episiarch,

Exactly. I have an English degree, which made me virtually unemployable. However, I've acquired enough working knowledge of computer programming over the last 20+ years to make a good living at it. Each job allowed me to acquire more knowledge and experience, and in the end that's what an employer wants.

Sure, outsourcing is always an option (and always should be), but I think most employers would rather have someone that's not twelve time-zones away to handle the delicate in-hours operations.

Aside from the mathematical basics (which admittedly I struggled with), it's a constantly-evolving field in terms of technical knowledge. That means even if you graduated five years with a CS degree (or came here with an H1-B) you still have to catch up on the latest platforms just like the rest of us.

[Dave B.]

Of course a computer science degree isn't important to writing code. That's not really the purpose of a computer science degree. If you want to, say, design algorithms or make advances in graphics, AI, complexity and other computer-related fields, you may find it more useful. If you just want to write code, you won't need to learn much at all to do your job.

[AC]

Nothing to spice up a Friday like "Techies v. Other Majors" part 37. I see the obligatory references to basket weaving have already been made, so I guess it's time to start comparing the social skills of various majors.

[MRW]

I too am an econ major (BA) working as a programmer. I don't really know what the job environment is like for those just starting out now, but I would expect that for business application/database development a CS degree is not a requirement. I took one computer class in college which I barely attended, but the truth is (especially for business apps) programming is about logic, and if you have the proper kind of mind you can pick it up on your own - and demonstrate your ability in many different ways.

[x,y]

At my alma mater, the only required math for an Econ degree was calculus. If you wanted to do higher level math and econometrics, you could. But it wasn't required.

[Episiarch]

The best programmers I have worked with, including myself (natch), have not been CS graduates. They were people who had the right mind for programming, came to it naturally, and found themselves really liking it and thinking about it a lot.

It's like somebody with an econ degree being awesome at sales--if they have the right mind/personality, they are good at it naturally.

My experience with CS trained programmers is that they take a very dogmatic, propeller-head approach to things and don't innovate well. There obviously must be many people who both have the natural talents for programming and were perceptive enough to realize this and take CS in college, but many people go into CS who are not suited for it and are terrible programmers.

[SPD]

Episiarch,

Could it be that those not indoctrinated into the methods taught for CS are more open to looking at less traditional methods of solving problems programmatically? I did take computer science in college -- heck, majored in it -- but I couldn't keep up with the discrete mathematics and logic required to understand the behavior of memory buses.

I'm happy to say that my lack of such knowledge did not prevent from leaning how to write programs. I can even install hardware -- just don't ask me to solder a circuitboard. 🙂

[Ramsey]

I love the comment that companies are getting rid of technical employees.

I am a Chem. E. student at UW Madison. Guess what the bachelors degree with the highest median starting salary is? It rhymes with Stemical Mengineering....

Chemical engineers have helmed some of the largest corporations in the world as CxOs. I don't think that a solid background in science and math will fail to pay off.

[thoreau]

A few observations:

1) I know people who work in IT, programming, and other computer-related careers but didn't get a CS degree. It could be that CS enrollments are dropping because there is more than one path to a computer-related job.

2) Regarding Econ, I minored in Econ in college. I liked it. But I'll be blatantly honest about this: There is more than one path to an econ degree. There were econ majors who took the hardest classes (some of them very mathematical, some of them just plain hard) and then there were people who couldn't get into the business school so they majored in econ and took the easiest classes.

When a department offers a range of classes for a range of students, it's easy to either pillory it as a repository of B-school dropouts or laud it as more rigorous than the B-school. Both are over-simplifications.

[Episiarch]

Could it be that those not indoctrinated into the methods taught for CS are more open to looking at less traditional methods of solving problems programmatically?

That's part of it. My experience tells me that programming is something like music: some people are just naturals at it and "get it" inherently. I've seen natural musicians with no training be better than people with years of training. Same with programming. If you are not a natural, you will tend to rely more on your education and training, and are therefore more locked into a particular way of thinking.

[Mike Laursen]

You can get a job as a programmer without a Computer Science degree, but it is fairly rare at the major software companies for a developer not to have a degree in either Computer Science or Mathematics. All those discrete mathematics, logic, and traditional methods of solving problems programmatically really help out when you're writing heavy-duty software that works with massive amounts of data or trying to get your software to run quickly.

[Lamar]

Maybe computer science people see the writing on the wall in India.

[Mike Laursen]

The University of Iowa's comp sci department had almost none. I figured nerds just naturally repel women.

It's probably roughly a function of the Asian-American population at the school. If you had gone to, say, Berkeley, you would have had a lot more female Computer Science majors around, and most of them would be of Asian ancestry.

[Russ 2000]

It could be that CS enrollments are dropping because there is more than one path to a computer-related job.

That was my point at 11:31. But twenty years ago those majors were all lumped under the CS umbrella. They aren't today. Which makes the article that is the subject of the thread kind of meaningless as it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

[Edcoast]

Episiarch's music analogy is apt. Many music majors make fine programmers. But, non-sequitorially - my point is it takes all types. As an employee for the largest computer services company in the world, I know that everyone from semi-autistic nerds to ex-shoe salesmen are necessary to make IT happen. I'm an English major 30 years out of college who has made a very good career and living helping techies communicate. From the technology side of the house to the sales and marketing side (us), we don't pay a lot of attention to majors, just "what have you done lately?"

[Episiarch]

Well, if the minion of URKOBOLD isn't going to do it:

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Just kidding Russ.

[Lamar]

This is more of a melons to baby carrots comparison....

[MikeP]

If you advise your children to enter a technical field, you are dooming them to a lifetime of low pay, job insecurity, and competition with third world labor.

This statement can only be made by someone who has never worked in a technical field. ...or, perhaps a little less charitably, by someone who was incompetent at it.

The rise in outsourcing of technical drudgery is an opportunity for the higher value technical contributions, not a threat to them. There will be no dearth of technical jobs in the US in the future. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

If you want a potential cause for concern, you could worry whether entry level technical jobs will continue to be available when companies find it cheaper to have overseas labor do the light work that traditionally has offered collateral training for rookies. My impression is that the entry level jobs won't dry up. It takes less than a year to make a good technical worker useful. That is paid back quickly in the following months.

[Ska]

Espiarch -

You didn't link to a merkin website though.

[MikeP]

And if you're a techie sitting there saying, "Great, more demand for me", you're an idiot. Corporate America will use the declining numbers as an excuse to flood the market with more H1B visa holders from India, putting downward pressure on your salary, and making it that much easier to offshore everything and eliminate you.

Sam,

Has it ever occurred to you that, the more software that gets developed, the more software there is to develop?

It hasn't?

Maybe it should.

[Sam]

"I love the comment that companies are getting rid of technical employees."

So EDS is not dumping it's U.S. tech force for a cheaper Indian workforce?

We were discussing the fact that more people are entering Finance than Computer Science or IT type majors. Don't know the prospects for "Stemical Mengineering" and don't care.

If more students start majoring in Stemical Mengineering, you will still have the problem of dropping enrollements in computer science.

By the way, can you name one "Stemical Mengineer" that is CxO of a non-chemical related company?

[Lamar]

Sam, there's no reason to bring Indians here. Send the work over there. Heck, we'll hire a team of software engineers to write the program that eliminates their own jobs.

[Lamar]

Technical jobs are great, so long as when you're in your mid-30's you get an MBA, law degree or open your own business (effectively getting out of the technical job, but using the experience wisely).

[Lamar]

They tech'yer jobs. Ha! Nobody gets that.

[MikeP]

By the way, can you name one "Stemical Mengineer" that is CxO of a non-chemical related company?

How about two? Jack Welch and Andy Grove. Or are they chemical related companies because GE makes chemicals (among everything else they make) while Intel uses chemicals?

[NoStar]

I quit studying economics the day I realized that what I was learning was preparing me to work in government or to teach others on how to become an economist and not much more.

[engineer]

I work for a fortune 500 company that outsources extensively to both India and China. We send crap work there so that our engineers can be far more productive here. And we can't recruit engineers fast enough (all disciplines) to meet our current demand.

People losing their jobs to overseas competition are in the wrong business not the wrong profession.

[Mike Laursen]

Corporate America will use the declining numbers as an excuse to flood the market with more H1B visa holders from India

Awesome! It will be a pleasure working with them and I won't be threatened at all.

[MikeP]

Corporate America will use the declining numbers as an excuse to flood the market with more H1B visa holders from India

I'm with Mike Laursen. Someone better use some excuse to raise the number of H1B's above the trickle it is today. As it now stands, the US is shooting itself in the foot.

Or, to be more accurate, the US government is shooting the US economy in the foot.

[Mike Laursen]

Yeah, didn't Microsoft open a development center in Canada the other day just to get around the H1B laws?

[MattXIV]

Or, to be more accurate, the US government is shooting the US economy in the foot.

Yeah, especially considering most H1B visa holders I've ran into got their degrees from the gov't subsidized US higher ed system. "We helped pay for your education, now get the hell out" isn't a very logical policy.

[Sam]

MikeP.

I work in a technical field and am apparently competent enough to still have a job.

American students can all major in Chemical Engineering. You seem to think that will solve the problem of low CS enrollment.

You assume that third world labor will be satisfied performing our entry level jobs and is incapable of performing higher value tasks. Wrong again. They are doing those jobs now and will do more in the future. Believe it or not, they can even become "Chemical Engineers".

Your right, it never occured to me that "the more software that gets developed, the more software there is to develop?" Why? And assuming that is a true statement, why would more software being developed in India/China mean more software being developed in US rather than more software being developed in India/China?

Don't worry about the low numbers of H1B visas. Corporate America wants more and they always get what they want. The limits will be raised right after the 2008 elections no matter which party wins.

I love programming and hopefully I can last 10 more years or so until I hit retirement age.

If you think outsourcing and H1Bs are good for America, that's fine, but you can't then complain and worry about low enrollments in those fields by Americans. It shoudn't matter anyway as long as there is a continuous supply from somewhere right?

Like many people who work for large corporationgs, I steered my own children toward more secure (more difficult to offshore) professions and wouldn't hesitate to advise any college student to do the same.

I don't know why MikeP and Mike Laursen are even participating in this. It's realy a non-issue and everything is fine, right?

[Tim]

Sam, I'm a software engineer and I agree with you %100.

I've worked as a sofware engineer for 25 years and have an engineering degree. There's no way I can compete with someone in India, the cost of living is so much cheaper there.

Any job that doesn't involving being physically present at the job site can be and will be outsourced to the lowest priced labor. This is a race to the bottom.

[MikeP]

Sam,

Everything is not fine. Aside from the raw protectionists who argue (mostly unsuccessfully) for government action to prevent outsourcing and (mostly successfully) for government action to prevent high-valued immigration, there is a growing popular perception that technical jobs are in decline.

Parents are worried that their technically proficient children should find something else to major in because they hear that tech jobs will not be there when their kids graduate college. While this perception is founded in economic illiteracy and media hype, it is awfully hard to shake. And it therefore should be challenged whenever and wherever it appears.

[MattXIV]

Sam,

Brute force coding where all that is required is one-time generation of code for purposes that can be easily spec'ed out is easy to send overseas. Most other stuff isn't. Design, analysis, localization, technical implementation, administration, and anything else that can't be condensed to a simple spec will remain in the US. The US also does have higher worker productivity due to a stronger education system and better supporting trades.

Also, the labor pool abroad for programmers is much shallower than unskilled labor. A society that has the education infrastructure in place to create large number of programmers will be catching up in skilled labor wages overall from productivity gains. The workers in a mature software industry in India or China will probably be making just as much as comparable roles in the US do now once the industries mature.

[MikeP]

Tim,

Money magazine recently rated software engineering as the number one job in America for salary and growth.

Maybe I run in the wrong circles, but I don't know any unemployed software engineers.

[engineer]

Gee, I have a nice, boring job designing safety-critical systems. My brother, wrote code for Netscape during the dot-com frenzy and was making four times what I was to work on a fucking browser.

But 8 or 9 years later, I am still designing safety-critical systems. I'm not sure what he is doing now, but his salary has certainly come down closer to mine.

I don't have a lot of simpathy for software engineers that complain they can't find work. Either they're not very good, or their not willing to work in industries that have real needs and short falls in engineering staff.

[MikeP]

And assuming that is a true statement, why would more software being developed in India/China mean more software being developed in US rather than more software being developed in India/China?

In actuality, there will be more of both.

But to list a few reasons that development of software in the US is unlikely to decline...

(1) The greatest demand for new software comes from the US and the west, and those steeped in that culture and language have a leg up here. (2) The companies producing that software are largely located in the US, meaning the requirements will be developed in the US, meaning the highest-value, hardest-to-specify software will be developed in the US. (3) The fact that the lower-value, easier-to-specify software can be developed overseas means that the entire software development enterprise can step up and produce higher valued software and employ higher valued engineers. (4) Overseas wages are already rising at double-digit rates and will continue to do so until the price premium for outsourcing disappears.

Finally, (5) it is probably accurate to say that the entire planet is undersupplied by software workers: There is no reason to imagine that US software workers will be tossed aside.

[engineer]

There is no reason to imagine that US software workers will be tossed aside.

In aggregate, there is no reason to believe that the requirements for skilled software developers are going to decline any time soon.

However, individual engineers may be forced to make very difficult decisions about staying where they are at or moving on to greener pastures.

[Andy]

It's probably roughly a function of the Asian-American population at the school. If you had gone to, say, Berkeley, you would have had a lot more female Computer Science majors around

Regardless, the original post was obviously a joke. With Asians, you have maybe 10 females out of 100 as opposed to 6 out of 100. There has never been high female enrollment in the cs field in history.. ever.

[Mike Laursen]

Your right, it never occured to me that "the more software that gets developed, the more software there is to develop?" Why?

I agree that there is no reason that this statement is obvious a priori, but it is the case there has been more and more software to develop. Development of software like programming languages and tools, databases, reusable libraries, networking code have driven a lot of that growth.

Just wait until it become commonplace to have a robot around the home and workplace. There'll be plenty of software development work for anyone who wants to do it.

And assuming that is a true statement, why would more software being developed in India/China mean more software being developed in US rather than more software being developed in India/China?

An interesting trend is that there are Indian software developers, having learned how the business works, who are starting to produce products for internal Indian consumption.

I don't know why MikeP and Mike Laursen are even participating in this. It's realy a non-issue and everything is fine, right?

I comment on Hit & Run purely for entertainment. Every once in a while I learn something new from the other commenters.

[Mike Laursen]

There has never been high female enrollment in the cs field in history.. ever.

True that.

[Russ 2000]

[Russ 2000]

Maybe I run in the wrong circles, but I don't know any unemployed software engineers.

I knew several. Four years ago. They're all working now. One works out of her house in suburban Chicago. Puts in 60 hours a week, at $90 an hour. Her client is a bank. In India.

[Sam]

"there is a growing popular perception that technical jobs are in decline."

As someone who works in the industry, I can say without reservation that it is not just perception. The demand is down and the salaries are down. The H1Bs that I work with are not "high value", they are DBAs and .net programmers. I don't believe there is a shortage of these in the U.S. If you take the time to research it, you will find that the vast majority of H1Bs are reserved by Indian companies to facilitate outsourcing. They need onshore staff to drive the offshore staff. A very small number of the yearly allocated H1Bs are used by the Microsofts, Googles, and Oracles of the world.

"Parents are worried that their technically proficient children should find something else to major in because they hear that tech jobs will not be there when their kids graduate college. While this perception is founded in economic illiteracy and media hype, it is awfully hard to shake. And it therefore should be challenged whenever and wherever it appears."

You haven't convinced me, and I doubt if you convinced anyone else. I will continue to shout it from the rooftops. To keep quiet would be socially irresponsible. It's not just, "will the jobs be there when I graduate", It's will the jobs be there 10 or 20 years from now. It's hard to gamble with my children't future based on your flimsy arguments. Gamble with your own chidren if you want to (do you have any or are you only willing to gamble with other people's children?)

"Brute force coding where all that is required is one-time generation of code for purposes that can be easily spec'ed out is easy to send overseas."

It's been my experience that it takes more effort to create the specs and oversee this type of project than it does to just go ahead and write the code yourself.

And make up your mind anyway. Either these are brilliant computer scientists and we should import as many as we can or they are low level code monkeys that can only do "brute force" programming if we write detailed specs and tell them exactly what to do.

"Design, analysis, localization, technical implementation, administration, and anything else that can't be condensed to a simple spec will remain in the US"

No it won't and you are incredibly arrogant to think only we can do this. Somehow Indians are too stupid to do this stuff? They are doing it now and will move up the value chain to do more and more of it.

"The US also does have higher worker productivity due to a stronger education system and better supporting trades."

Doesn't matter if you can get 3 for for the price of one (I've actually been told that by a manager who told me that programmers are "just commodities now".

"Also, the labor pool abroad for programmers is much shallower than unskilled labor. A society that has the education infrastructure in place to create large number of programmers will be catching up in skilled labor wages overall from productivity gains. The workers in a mature software industry in India or China will probably be making just as much as comparable roles in the US do now once the industries mature."

When? 10 years, 50 years, 100 years? Again, I won't gamble my children's future just because you say that those workers will "probably" be making just as much "someday."

Don't trap yourself by using he usual lies to justify this stuff:

I'm not trying to stop any of this because I think it is too late to stop it. After the elections, the politicians will raise the limits to at least 200,000 while at the same time giving lip service to "training for Americans affectd by outsourcing" This will further depress the job market for IT workers and discourage even more kids from tech careers. There is just no compelling reason to choose CS as a major if there are more stable alternatives.

And Training for what? Truck Driving School? Barber College? It is ludicrous to think that if I lose my job to globalization, all I need is 6 weeks at a community college to prepare me for one of the "new" higher value jobs that outsourcing is going to create. Name one.

The computer revolution that has just really started is comparable to the industrial revolution. The jobs we are shipping offshore ARE the jobs of the future.

I'm sure everything will be ok in the long run. Someday, wages will be equalized around the world and where work is peformed will really be based on comparitive advantage, not just cheaper costs, or less regulation, or more lax environmental and labor laws.

Of course, the U.S. won't be number one at anything anymore, but does it really matter?

[engineer]

As someone who works in the industry, I can say without reservation that it is not just perception. The demand is down and the salaries are down.

Which industry?

[MikeP]

And make up your mind anyway. Either these are brilliant computer scientists and we should import as many as we can or they are low level code monkeys that can only do "brute force" programming if we write detailed specs and tell them exactly what to do.

You really don't get it, do you.

The issue with outsourcing is not solely the competence of the individuals: It is the entire chain of communication of requirements between the end consumer and the end producer. The same Indian-born software engineer working for a US company is much more productive, while of course costing much more, in the US than in India.

But it is also true that Indian engineers who make it to the US have been selected out of the population by schooling, Indian colleges, US universities, and themselves as being the most competent. It is odd that you wouldn't recognize that.

Doesn't matter if you can get 3 for for the price of one (I've actually been told that by a manager who told me that programmers are "just commodities now".

The manager who says that is -- to put it bluntly -- either not a software engineering manager, is an incompetent software engineering manager, or really does produce nothing but easy-to-spec software that admits itself to commodity development.

[MikeP]

I'm sure everything will be ok in the long run. Someday, wages will be equalized around the world and where work is peformed will really be based on comparitive advantage, not just cheaper costs, or less regulation, or more lax environmental and labor laws.

Of course, the U.S. won't be number one at anything anymore, but does it really matter?

I'm curious...

Do you think that the US software industry would be better off if Europe were an impoverished backwater that produced no software?

Do you think that the Californian software industry would be better off if no software were produced in Washington, Texas, or North Carolina?

Why do you think that adding new populations of software production will make the US software industry worse off? Where does this zero-sum thinking come from? Especially when considering that software may well be the least zero-sum product in history!

[MattXIV]

And make up your mind anyway. Either these are brilliant computer scientists and we should import as many as we can or they are low level code monkeys that can only do "brute force" programming if we write detailed specs and tell them exactly what to do.

You're missing the point. In order to provide a good product, you need a high degree of interaction with the client. I work in healthcare IT, and that means constant interaction with the IT shops of hospitals, insurance companies, etc to assess what our software needs to do. You can't pull this off if you have your business end in the US and your technical end abroad.

If you want to convince yourself the sky is falling, that's your business, but there's still plenty of opportunities as far as I can see. And if 20 years down the line there aren't, then I'll change industries to where there are. It wouldn't be the first time I have and it doesn't bother me if it doesn't end up being the last. What you major in in college is of little consequence compared to having strong and adaptable technical problem solving skills, which is exactly what good engineering or comp sci programs teach.

[Russ 2000]

I've actually been told that by a manager who told me that programmers are "just commodities now".

Some shops do run that way. They are the McDonalds of IT jobs. Dull work, average pay, but entry-level work just the same that gets someone experience that goes on a resume. My first IT job was just like thatt. Those shops are always managed poorly enough so that disasters are sure to happen. I was able to prove my worth by fixing disasters quickly enough which got me promoted and then I got the hell out and got a much better job. Every industry has jobs like that.

[Sam]

Wow, this is really bothering you guys isn't it?

"The same Indian-born software engineer working for a US company is much more productive, while of course costing much more, in the US than in India."

Dumbest thing I ever heard. Exactly how much more productive is an Indian programmer working in the U.S. than the same Indian programmer working in India? If he does the same amount of work for half the cost, then he is twice as productive when he is in india. He can do half as much work when he is in India and he is still just as productive as he would be in the U.S. Productivity is the amount of work produced for each dollar spent. If they were more productive here than they are in India, they would be here and there would not be any offshore outsourcers. American corporations outsource to lower their costs and therefore increase productivity.

When we are truly globalized, it won't matter where developers are will it? We won't be talking about the "U.S. software industry". It will be the global software industry and the best and the brightest will jump at the chance to be a part of it because it won't matter how much housing or health care costs in your particular country. (It also won't matter if the Fed adjusts interest rates up or down a fraction of a percentage because we can't control a global economy).

Programmers in the U.S. are on much more level footing with Europe. They have to compete based on quality work. They don't win automatically because they cost half as much unless you're talking about Romania or something.

I have no problem competing with programmers in California or any other state. They don't automaticaly get the job because they are cheaper.

I don't have to lower my standard of living to compete with programmers in western Europe or California.

"In order to provide a good product, you need a high degree of interaction with the client."

You took the words right out of my mouth Matt. Any good developer will tell you exactly the same thing, but not all management types agree and there are enough of those sending everything offshore that it causes the current "crises" in CS enrollment.

I don't know if all this is really bad or really good and don't care. I don't really know how all this is going to work out and neither do you (although you both seem awfully sure of yourselves). Outsource it all. Eliminate all the limits on H1B visas. Bring in millions of programmers from India, China, Eastern Europe, the Phillipines or wherever. You might as well because I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle anyway.

The issue here (and the whole point of the article) is, will you encourage your children to gamble with their future and major in Computer Science as opposed to finance or medicine or law or marketing or any other field that is more likely to require a presence in the U.S. and a U.S. level of compensation.

I have been asked about this issue by other parents snd students and I tell them the same thing I'm telling you. You can sacrifice your children at the alter of globalism, but I won't and I won't try to talk anyone else into it either. (Just curious, are your kids CS majors or planning to be? )

Obviously, my point of view is winning because all the smart kids are majoring in Finance (they are smart after all).

[MikeP]

Dumbest thing I ever heard. Exactly how much more productive is an Indian programmer working in the U.S. than the same Indian programmer working in India?

He is more productive in the US in proportion to the complexity and sensitivity of the requirements of the software he is developing. Some software plainly cannot be outsourced because the communication of requirements dominates the actual development. Some plainly can because the requirements are easy to convey.

Productivity is the amount of work produced for each dollar spent.

That is one definition. It is clearly not the definition I was using, as evidenced by my mentioning how much more the greater productivity cost in the US.

If they were more productive here than they are in India, they would be here and there would not be any offshore outsourcers.

Well, except for that little matter of limited work visas...

When we are truly globalized, it won't matter where developers are will it?

Of course it will. You keep missing the essential point of what is actually being outsourced and what can't be outsourced.

I have been asked about this issue by other parents snd students and I tell them the same thing I'm telling you.

What do you say when they hand you that Money magazine article?

[Pig Mannix]

Finally, (5) it is probably accurate to say that the entire planet is undersupplied by software workers: There is no reason to imagine that US software workers will be tossed aside.

One sticky point - Milton Friedman I ain't, but I do know that when the demand for something outstrips the supply, it causes the price of that something to rise.

So - where are the rising wages for I/T professionals, or for that matter, wages in general in the United States?

If there's any shortage of labor in this country, it sure ain't being reflected in it's cost. Wages have been stagnant for years.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003149781_gradpay25.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?ex=1314417600&en=c60dea87527e4510&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7f0c911a-1b35-11db-b164-0000779e2340.html

[MikeP]

Pig Mannix,

I looked for information on software engineering salaries in your cited articles. I didn't see any.

Do you have a point that actually addresses mine?

If your point is that the wages of people who aren't software engineers are not rising, you are kind of making my argument for me.

[Mike Laursen]

American corporations outsource to lower their costs and therefore increase productivity.

Also to find people with certain skills.

It will be the global software industry

It already is a global software industry.

I have no problem competing with programmers in California or any other state. They don't automaticaly get the job because they are cheaper.

Nor do programmers in India or anywhere else.

I don't really know how all this is going to work out and neither do you (although you both seem awfully sure of yourselves).

Of course. None of us really knows what's going to happen in the future.

You can sacrifice your children at the alter of globalism, but I won't and I won't try to talk anyone else into it either. (Just curious, are your kids CS majors or planning to be? )

I'm not sure. He's only three months old. But since a lot of his extended family lives in Hong Kong, he's sort of a globalized kid already.

[Alice Bowie]

No point in sending ur kids 2 college 2-day.

All professional jobs will go off-shore.

And Doctors and nurses will be shipped in on H1,

[David]

A degree in Economics from the University of Chicago is quite well respected because it is a very rigorous program. I didn't read the article, but could the increase in Economics majors also be coming at the expense of other "soft" majors such as Enlish? It should seem obvious that CS degrees would drop off around now as people graduating college now were planning what to major in during or directly following the dot-com bust.

[wayne]

Q. Why do more girls like Computer Science, as opposed to the other science/engineering majors?
A. Because it is not "messy". You don't have to muck around with voltmeters and soldering irons, etc. At least, that has always been my opinion on the matter.

Q. Why the drop-off in CS majors in the US?
A. Because students (rightly) view the job prospects of a programmer as poor. Off-shoring, H1B'ing, etc... Has there been a drop-off in the other science/engineering majors as well? I suspect there has been, and for the same reasons.

[Dave B.]

wayne - since when do girls prefer computer science to biology? Your theory doesn't hold up.

[wayne]

Dave B,

I did not compare CS to biology. I compared CS to Engineering, Physics, etc.

[grumpy realist]

If people think that getting a finance degree is going to protect them from outsourcing, they are in for a BIG surprise. There's already been a tizzy in London about companies outsourcing their finance stuff (yes, the grunt work) to India.

Anything where you end up not having to interact that much with the customer and doesn't require physical presence is going to end up being outsourced. As for me, if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably figure out how to do plumbing really really well.

[Sam]

MikeP

"Some software plainly cannot be outsourced because the communication of requirements dominates the actual development"

B.S. It all can be outsourced and it all is being outsourced.
Every single job that a computer science degree qualifies you for - and I mean every single one can and is being outsourced by American companies to cheaper labor (communication of requirements issues be damned). Programmer, Architect, Admin, game programming, you name it. It is being outsourced as we speak. You cling to this stupid belief that some programming can only be done here. You're nuts and lots of American CIOs will tell you so.

"That is one definition (of productivity). It is clearly not the definition I was using, as evidenced by my mentioning how much more the greater productivity cost in the US.

It's the only definition that matters to short term, bottom line obsessed American management.

The fundamental problem with your point of view is that is mistakenly assumes that some work just can't be outsourced. You are dead wrong, and American companies and the foreign companies they send the work to are proving it everyday.

"What do you say when they hand you that Money magazine article?"
I say, "Advise your kid to be a college professor or a financial adviser. They are ranked 2 and 3 and aren't being oursourced."

"I have no problem competing with programmers in California or any other state. They don't automaticaly get the job because they are cheaper.
Nor do programmers in India or anywhere else."

Yes they do.

I suspect that neither of you are actually heads down programmers. Your arguments sound to much like the canned propoganda of the ITTA, the American Chamber of Commerce and other corporate mouthpieces, i.e you say there is a shortage (there's not), that it's a breakdown in the American educational system (it's not). Why are all the H1Bs going to foreign companies, instead of American companies? Like the ITTA, you don't want to talk about that. How many H1Bs did American hi-tech companies actually apply for? How many did they get. Where did the rest of the 65,000 go? The truth is inconvenient, isn't it?

[MikeP]

You're nuts and lots of American CIOs will tell you so.

Why in the name of heaven would I be talking to a CIO? I would be talking to the VP of Engineering -- who would tell me that, so long as product management happened in the US, so would the high level product architecture and development.

I say, "Advise your kid to be a college professor or a financial adviser. They are ranked 2 and 3 and aren't being oursourced."

College courses are finding themselves more and more done remotely. The fact that American universities are far better than those of other countries is the only thing that will keep these outsourced professors in the US rather than overseas. On the other hand, everything about financial advising except sitting face-to-face with the client can happen overseas. That industry is far easier to outsource than software engineering.

I suspect that neither of you are actually heads down programmers.

You suspect wrong.

Let me try one: I suspect you don't work for a company whose main product is software.

[Sam]

Your ridiculous rationilizations and excuses have grown tiresome (college professors are going to be outsourced as much as programmers?).

The bottom line is that prospective college students and their parents (who work in corporate America) know what is going on and are making their choices accordingly. I understand and applaud that. I find it hilarious that the corporate powers that be have created this situation and are now surprised at the predictable outcome.

Screw Bill Gates.

Have a nice day.

[MikeP]

college professors are going to be outsourced as much as programmers?

Nope. Financial services are going to outsourced as much as programmers. College professors are protected by the superior reputation of US universities that will take generations to overturn even if they lose their superiority, as well as by the immense inflation of tuitions and student loans fueled by the education-happy government.

And just so I'm not misunderstood...

I don't claim that all 10,000,000 US IT jobs are safe from outsourcing. If your job involves web design, changing tapes, or answering the phone, your job might be outsourced -- or, more likely, simply mechanized away. My claim here is that the 600,000 US software engineering workers are safe. As others have noted above, even as their jobs go overseas, they can move into higher valued jobs that the offloaded now-cheaper drudgery makes more available in the US.

[OPUS]

I graduated with a double major in 1980 that being a BS in Cs and Econ. Oracle, Microsoft and all the rest said they wanted the higher quality professional graduates from India and china way back in 2000. They actively campaigned to make the H1B visas open-ended. Economics of the situation were to devalue degrees of Americans at home for the perceived notion they were not as technical proficient as graduates from India and China (even thought many graduated from American universities). From 2000 to 2004 IT Technical field shed 4 million jobs. They have yet to be rehired into the field but, the market still wants the H1B visas! Anybody who has followed the IT job market for 6 years would know not to declare CS as a degree! Also, all the software of the future by any vendor will be of MS quality.

[Sam]

P.S.

This should make it obvious that the H1B visa is not being used for highly paid computer scientists, but run of the mill business applications programmers/DBAs etc to facilitate offshoring, unless you believe that CitiGroup, Ernst&Young, PriceWaterHouse, JPMorgranChase etc are developing cutting edge software.

http://www.myvisajobs.com/company/summary.aspx?id=263060

If we just restrict H1Bs to what it was intended for (highly skilled, highly educated) and eliminate the H1Bs being used by Indian outsourcing companies like Satyam, Patni, (and American companies like IBM, Accenture, Cognizant, and KPMG which are essentially Indian outsourcers, American companies like Microsoft and Google etc would have plenty of visas without raising the limits.

[Sam]

Wrong link:

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Company/VisaRank.aspx

[han]

Interesting article.

[han]

This should make it obvious