US Programmers Endangered?

This is why people should go to college to get educated, not trained as a monkey to get their asses blasted out of a rocket.

It is only getting worse over time and will continue. The industry is streamlining and "programming" as a profession is your basic grunt work now.

Sure there are some (very small percentage) positions of actual programming as a science and R&D, but the majority of development jobs you have the non-grunt Engineer planning how things will work and the programmer just cranks out code.

The industry is streamlining right now and will continue to shrink throughout the US. I mean most American's working in the IT sector still think they are worth gold.. when supply & demand is what controls pay, and right now there is a hell of a lot more supply than demand.

So far the forcast is another 400,000 jobs in the engineering/development sector lost over the next year, along with major pay drops all across the board in IT.

I read that and had to wonder... a lot .. about the research. The article suggests the complete extinction of the US programmer will happen in a few years. Uh... wow.

I personally have been part of two small businesses that tried to hire foreign (specificially Indian) programmers. The attempt was a miserable failure. They needed exact, very specific instructions. Good for specifically delineated reptitive programming but definitely *not* good for the creative thinking requirement in game development.

[quoteI personally have been part of two small businesses that tried to hire foreign (specificially Indian) programmers. The attempt was a miserable failure. They needed exact, very specific instructions. Good for specifically delineated reptitive programming but definitely *not* good for the creative thinking requirement in game development.[/quote]

Two things:

A) India is not the only source of outsourcing. The US outsources a lot to Canada, Ireland, and others.

B) Game development isn't outsourced and most likely never will be. The companies just aren't big enough or bring in enough money to warrant it.


Remember outsourcing isn't always about the money. We have a lot of clients from the US that outsource to us and pay a HIGHER rate than when they used to have an in-house development staff. Although the quality of engineering and development work in Canada is simply amazing due to proper team work and not trying to "climb the ladder" so to speak.. which I've actually heard from clients quite a few times.

Yes, the market is over crowded with programmers -- hence anyone who studies **JUST** programming is doomed to an abysmal job market.

9 out of 10 "programming" jobs are listed as "programmer / analyst". They don't care how well you can hack out code -- they can hire some guy in China or India to do that for a quarter what they pay you -- they care about your ideas, your ability to plan, and your overall tech knowledge.

Of course, there will always be programmers in the U.S. To suggest otherwise would be silly. Will there be fewer? Of course. But there are fewer factory workers today than there were in the 1980s -- and yet there are still many factories.

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Original post by Etnu Of course, there will always be programmers in the U.S. To suggest otherwise would be silly. Will there be fewer? Of course. But there are fewer factory workers today than there were in the 1980s -- and yet there are still many factories.

Exactly.

The industry is just streamlining, just like the automobile industry, and industrial industries, etc.

I know for a fact that when hiring we look first for engineers, then people with math. If someone is a "programmer" that only studied comp. sci with no real experience.. they might as well just not send the resume :) Obviously it is much different with experience, considering education means absolutely nothing once you have 4-5 years of good experience under your belt.

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Original post by Integra Two things: A) India is not the only source of outsourcing. The US outsources a lot to Canada, Ireland, and others. B) Game development isn't outsourced and most likely never will be. The companies just aren't big enough or bring in enough money to warrant it.

I agree.

Actually, if game programming *could* be outsourced it would be quite good for my business. We could concentrate more on the (very fun) aspects of game design and top-level overview ourselves and let cheap workers crank out the repetitive aspects of the programming.

Of course, the wonderful utopia envisioned by the article isn't even close to really existing. :)

One thing I did notice is that the article is originally from The Christian Science Moniter, so I do take it with a grain of salt. I doubt there will be an extinction of US programmers, and I don't think it would effect game programming as much as other types of programming. However I do think the article has legit claims.

I remember in the 90's, when I was deciding on a college and visiting campuses, that I'd hear people saying, "I got job offers before I even had a degree!" Hilarious.

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Original post by The Frugal Gourmet I read that and had to wonder... a lot .. about the research. The article suggests the complete extinction of the US programmer will happen in a few years. Uh... wow. I personally have been part of two small businesses that tried to hire foreign (specificially Indian) programmers. The attempt was a miserable failure. They needed exact, very specific instructions. Good for specifically delineated reptitive programming but definitely *not* good for the creative thinking requirement in game development.

The reason they want specific instructions, I think, is because of the difficulty in communicating between languages and cultures. Don't make the mistake of assuming Indians are any less smarter than you are.

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Original post by Scint One thing I did notice is that the article is originally from The Christian Science Moniter, so I do take it with a grain of salt.

Why is that?

Also it doesn't matter what articles you read, the stats and future outlook on future job loss in the industry have been widely published by hundreds of sources, including the economy report.

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Original post by Tron3k The reason they want specific instructions, I think, is because of the difficulty in communicating between languages and cultures. Don't make the mistake of assuming Indians are any less smarter than you are.

Well, of course they're less smart. But not because they're Indian. :)

Still, I agree that language was *kind of* a barrier, but it's way, way more than that. I speak from first-hand experience.

I'm quite sure that Indian "developers" exist, but the cheap guys are the "programmers" and they don't have to be smart. Programming is easy and anyone can do it. It's also boring as hell. It is the "software development" that is the mentally stimulating and fun job.

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Original post by The Frugal Gourmet Well, of course they're less smart. But not because they're Indian. :)

I don't know where you get that from, as a good number of them have better education when compared to the US. Please note that the US is not the technology pillar and educational center that it once was. Especially when compared to Europe and Canada, the US education system has dramatically slipped.

I mean right now the major reason for outsourcing to Canada is quality of work. This also happens ALOT when outsourcing to Ireland, India, etc. I mean I personally know of some great Indian development firms, that will cost me less to source too and will do a better job than others in the US, Canada, etc. The country means nothing, the company does.

I think the problem is you are equating one or two companies to a whole country. I mean I will 100% gaurentee you that you could have found some companies in the US to outsource to that would have done an even worse job, and it would have cost more!.. but that doesn't mean the whole US does a bad job. If you go for the cheapest possible companies when outsourcing, of course you'll get crap, that's what you paid for.

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Original post by Integra I don't know where you get that from, as a good number of them have better education when compared to the US. Please note that the US is not the technology pillar and educational center that it once was. Especially when compared to Europe and Canada, the US education system has dramatically slipped.

Well, I get it from first hand experience only... first hand experience is always biased, of course, because it's limited.. I'll admit that.

As far as education, I'm not surprised. Education levels in any country correspond directly to demand for education in that country and demand for education was at an all time low during the tech boom (U.S. employees did not even need a college education). This caused the relative education rate in the U.S. to go down. It's of course all cyclical and balanced with the rest of the world, though.

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I mean right now the major reason for outsourcing to Canada is quality of work. This also happens ALOT when outsourcing to Ireland, India, etc.

I honestly didn't know that. But, I sincerely hope it's true. It means I can run the game development company of my dreams with much less cost and even greater quality.

I was looking through some job listings on washingtonjobs yesterday (considering a change of employment) and I was considerably surprised at the number of jobs listed as "outside DC metro region" and then in the job description they listed places like China and India. Btw, can't pay for moving expenses, sorry kids.

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Original post by Zul I was looking through some job listings on washingtonjobs yesterday (considering a change of employment) and I was considerably surprised at the number of jobs listed as "outside DC metro region" and then in the job description they listed places like China and India. Btw, can't pay for moving expenses, sorry kids.

Maybe the companies can, though, eh?

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Original post by The Frugal Gourmet Well, I get it from first hand experience only... first hand experience is always biased, of course, because it's limited.. I'll adit that.

I remain unbiased and have TONS of experience with outsourcing, going both ways. I have been outsourced to as well as getting outsourced work done. This being from many many firms, not just one. I mean half of the time I spend in my job I am moving jobs from the US to Canada, so I know a little on the subject :)

There is good outsourcing, and bad outsourcing. I mean I have had some REALLY bad run-ins with companies in the US (it can actually be cheaper to outsource to the US because of starving programmers), worse than with any others.. but just due to that I am not going to say that the people in the US are stupid... just that the companies were bad and employees really shouldn't have been working in development.

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I honestly didn't know that. But, I sincerely hope it's true. It means I can run the game development company of my dreams with much less cost and even greater quality.

You get what you pay for as I stated. I mean when we take contracts over (I'm in Canada) about 99% of the time the company is paying MORE money to outsource to us than to pay for the employees they had. We just provide better quality work than they could previously get from their inhouse staff.

So I'm not sure where you got the "much less cost and even greater quality", because you need to realize that country does not matter at all, and it's all about the company. I know or Irish and Indian companies that charge huge amounts of money, but they produce amazing work.

If you pay for cheap outsourcing, you will get cheap work. In some cases this can balance out (such as small grunt-work programming, phone support, etc) but in many cases in development you can't go with a cheap solution or you'll just get crap. It's not like some endless supply of AAA+ programmers just decided to start accepting lower wages.

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Original post by Integra You get what you pay for as I stated. I mean when we take contracts over (I'm in Canada) about 99% of the time the company is paying MORE money to outsource to us than to pay for the employees they had. We just provide better quality work than they could previously get from their inhouse staff.

Gotcha. That makes sense.

In fact, the whole thing seems perfectly fair to me.

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Original post by The Frugal Gourmet Quote: Original post by Zul I was looking through some job listings on washingtonjobs yesterday (considering a change of employment) and I was considerably surprised at the number of jobs listed as "outside DC metro region" and then in the job description they listed places like China and India. Btw, can't pay for moving expenses, sorry kids. Maybe the companies can, though, eh?

No, I meant the listing said the companies wouldn't pay for the moving expenses. I sure as hell can't pay for someone to go to India, let alone move there. [wink]

on these boards, i'm constantly getting impression that Americans have more problems with math than everyone else... but i don't assume GameDev it's really correct sample....