Harris Miller Should Eat Crow on this One

Date: Monday, May 06, 2002 1:45 PM

*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

Get the Facts on H-1B at www.ZaZona.com

In the April 29th article below Harris Miller, president of the ITAA,
says
that more than 200,000, or up to 2%, of the country's estimated 10.4
million
IT workers are now jobless. Just a few days later (see newsletter "More
ITAA
Propaganda Reported as News") Miller is quoted saying that there will be
600,000 job openings in the year 2002. Why don't reporters ever ask
Miller
how we can have 200,000 jobless techies and 600,000 job openings - and
all
in just a few days?

Don't try to argue with Harris Miller though. Check out his smug picture
at:
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/images/photos/miller.jpg
(I have never been, nor never will, be a member of the Flat Earth
Society)

That picture was scanned from an article that has an interview of me:
"Huddled Masses Yearning to Write Java"
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,14508,00.html

The ComputerWorld article below has some very good graphics and
interesting
statistics. It's actually one of the few ComputerWorld articles that
don't
pander to corporate executives.

http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,70626,00.htm
l

Hard times

Tech workers trying to find jobs face a bleak future

By Julia King
(Apr. 29, 2002) In interviews, more than 50 CIOs, high-tech hiring
managers,
recruiters, consultants and out-of-work IT professionals in different
regions of the country told the same story: Two years of heavy corporate
merger activity followed by the dot-com bust and a general downturn in
the
economy have brutalized the IT job market, victimizing even veteran,
highly
skilled IT professionals.
The result is the largest pool ever of unemployed computer specialists,
who
are alternately bewildered, angry and, increasingly, bitter. A harsh
economy
has forced many into lengthy unemployment, fueling two urban myths: Jobs
are
being lost to less-expensive younger or foreign workers. The mere
mention of
the federal H-1B program, designed to enable foreigners to supplement
the
U.S. workforce, often triggers extreme emotions.

It's true that most H-1B visas are used to hire computer workers,
primarily
as systems analysts and programmers at vendor companies. And younger
workers
are clearly a budgetary bargain.

But efforts to gather the statistics needed to capture a full picture of
the
state of IT unemployment revealed that in many cases, the experts don't
agree, and in others, they don't even track the issue anymore.

Sobering Changes

What's certain is that IT employment is changing on all fronts, with the
advantage sliding over to employers. Experts don't expect employment to
climb back up to where it was in the heady dot-com years. The days of
big
perks and high salaries are gone. Job hopping is risky. Employees must
be
versatile and flexible.

Unquestionably, the brunt of the economy has come down full force on the
employee side of the coin. The reasons for that are many.

More than 200,000, or up to 2%, of the country's estimated 10.4 million
IT
workers are now jobless, according to Harris Miller, president of the
Arlington, Va.-based Information Technology Association of America. The
industry group, which has lobbied for H-1B increases, also maintains
that
there is a major shortage of skilled technology workers.

But that just doesn't fly with the swelling ranks of unemployed IT pros,
which include plenty of people like Mark Scoville, a 44-year-old
software
engineer with a computer science degree and 18 years of experience, as
well
as current Unix, Java and other skills. Since being laid off in November
after three years at Campus Pipeline Inc. in Salt Lake City, Scoville
has
sent out hundreds of resumes and landed five interviews, with no
success.

"I consider the situation rather bleak," said Scoville, who was told by
one
interviewer that he's one of more than 2,000 qualified but unemployed IT
workers in his area. "This is the most difficult period of my entire
career.
A year and a half ago, I could have gone anywhere and named a price.
This is
definitely not the case now.

"I don't think my age has been a factor," Scoville added. Instead, it's
his
experience level and his corresponding higher salary. "There are people
who
are very well equipped coming out of schools. They're fresh, with quick
minds, and they're very inexpensive entry-level people as opposed to
someone
like me who has been in the industry for 18 years and demands a higher
salary," he said.

A second sizable group on the unemployment line are IT workers who have
a
wealth of experience in a particular job or industry but whose skill
sets
are relatively narrow. Once a project is over or as their companies
evolve
their computing infrastructures to include newer technologies, they risk
losing their jobs.

For example, companies have severely cut back on large SAP projects.
Rather
than signing on for multiyear, enterprisewide implementations, the trend
now
is for companies to embark on SAP projects a small piece at a time.
Companies with mainframe needs want workers whose skills extend
significantly beyond the mainframe.

Dot-com job cuts also continue to add significantly to the unemployment
numbers. Many of those workers laid off in previous years have yet to
find
jobs. Rounding out the jobless ranks are tens of thousands of
consultants
and contractors who have lowered their rates after being cut from
projects.

And come next month, all of these unemployed groups will be competing
for
jobs with a flood of new computer science graduates.

Age Issues

Since younger workers are cheaper to hire, experts say the potential for
age
discrimination is greater than ever. Indeed, the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission reported in February that age discrimination is
its
fastest-growing type of complaint.

"It's true that when companies are trying to cut costs, they tend to lay
off
higher-paid workers, who also tend to be older workers,'' said Lisa
Guerin,
an employment attorney and legal editor at Nolo.com, a Berkeley,
Calif.-based legal publisher. "And when they bring workers back, they
tend
to bring in younger workers. The incentive [to discriminate based on
age] is
there."

Still, some IT managers acknowledge a preference for younger,
less-experienced workers who they can pay less and train in-house.

Looking Ahead

Even as the economy begins to bounce back, new IT jobs won't be added in
significant numbers. This is because companies have adapted to operating
with tighter resources and fewer employees and are reluctant to grow
labor
and the other costs they worked so hard to slash.

"Any hiring we're doing is primarily replacement hiring for people who
have
left the firm," said Mike Lowe, vice president of staffing at Newark,
N.J.-based Prudential Financial, which employs 5,200 IT workers. "We'll
keep
growth under control."

Where does this leave the unemployed? In addition to a broad array of
skills
and experience, management skills can help you get your foot in the
door,
even for highly technical positions. Having cut out middle managers,
companies need staffers who can self-manage, said Ed Jensen, a partner
in
Accenture Ltd.'s human performance practice in Atlanta.

In the meantime, many unemployed workers like Mark Scoville will
continue to
collect unemployment. What he's hearing on the street is "almost always
the
same story: When the economy comes back, there will be jobs. They just
started saying this at the beginning of April," Scoville said. But he
believes that people "are generally more hopeful than the reality
holds."

Reporter Brian Sullivan contributed to this story.

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