Posted on 11/07/2006 4:32:40 PM PST by AreaMan
By James Kilner
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A shortage of information technology graduates from Western universities is leading companies to call on developing countries to meet research demand, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia's internationally renowned education system became a cheap talent pool for the West. Now dozens of Russian language Web sites offer computer programming jobs in the United States, alongside visa support and language training.
"Worldwide, a lot of the developed countries are not graduating as many IT students as they were in the past, which is kind of ironic as it does mean it does increase the opportunities," Gates said.
Russia loses around 700,000 people each year -- about 0.5 percent of its total population -- to emigration, disease and alcoholism.
Many Western firms have also outsourced data management, software development and other high tech operations to lower cost operators in Asia, where education standards are high in some countries but wages are still comparatively low.
"There is a shortage of IT skills on a worldwide basis. Anybody who can get those skills here now will have a lot of opportunity," Gates said.
Gates spoke for about 30 minutes at the 2006 Microsoft Business Forum in Moscow in a speech in which he emphasized the need to retain the pace of research in the IT sector.
He said roll-up and stuff-in-your-pocket screens would be available in the next few years and students would study from portable computer tablets that act as interactive tutors.
"The curriculum will be redesigned in such a way around that device," he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gates attended a seminar on innovation and information technology for regional officials from across Russia alongside First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a man touted as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, whose second and final term in office expires in 2008.
(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov)
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Bill Gates says West not supplying enough Cheap IT talent.
Guess Bill is worried that the copy-cats in China and India won't be much help to him when our young 'uns no longer provide the bright ideas in IT.
Exactly. Not many people in the West can live on 20 Rubles a month. Thus, they're choosing other areas of study.
So, Bill, why do you support Democrats, then?
Cheap labor is right. There's plenty of U.S. talent, he just deosn't want to pay for it. Typical limousine liberal baloney talking out of both sides of his mouth. They're always liberal until it means something that affects them in the here and now...
Nice one Bill.
You expect people to fork out 100,000K for computer science degrees at US Universities, but then your company turns into one of the biggest outsourcers of IT jobs in the country so you can save a few bucks.
Hey Bill, Proud_USA_Republican, an IT career person who resides in your home state whose watched your outsource destroy thousands of US jobs is currently telling you to shove it.
This from one of the guys who pushed the Clinton administration to up the number of H1-B visa allowances so that MS, Oracle, Sun, IBM, etc. could hire cheap foreign IT workers.
All the American kids who were studying IT switched to law school.
Hmm...
Lousy pay, usually in non-cashable options in start-up companies that will go bust in a few years...
Mega-overtime, with virtually no free time for yourself...
Insane deadlines that can give you ulcers (or worse)...
And western students don't want that anymore?
WHO WOULDA THOUGHT??!
Bleepin' FReep. Baby-killer Gates. Go broke, already, and shut the deleted expletive up. God is not mocked.
I have heard the professors from my universities say how enrollment is down drastically over the last 6 years. Seems kids are not willing to sign up for $100k worth of education debt in exchange for a junior position paying $10-15/hr, if they get it. In the last 5 years, those junior positions have been going to offshore resources. And without that junior experience, that new grad will never progress to mid level.
on the up side, I have noticed a pull back in the last 6 months where American companies are looking to hire Americans over offshoring. I am not sure why that has occurred, but I hope it continues...
P.S. Its odd I don't see Linux blaming its shortcomings on lack of western professionals.
"In communist Russia... Windows crashes YOU!"
Hey Bill, I'll be glad to write RPG/ILE programs for one of the many IBM iSeries computers you guys have. *poke*
That would be because the industry "experts" have been blowing on the "outsource IT to Elbonia for 50 cents a day" bandwagon for the last several years that no one in their right mind wants to get into programming at the ground floor.
I've been outsourced myself .... and had the absolute pleasure of hearing that the outsourcing company cost my previous company about 5 solid years of my salary in revenue losses from outages.
PS Gregor Bailar is another one of your idiotic compatriots bill.
Bill Gates is a rich commie hypocrite. As long as he makes money, everyone else should be holding hands singing Bob Dylan.
He should have said this 10 or 15 years ago.
I used to think that and it used to anger me.
However, my last job, a software engineer at Liberty Mutual, MANY jobs went unfulfilled. They simply couldn't hire and maintain enough IT staff. Of course that place sucks and has a tremendous turnover rate (in a four month period they lost 1/6th of their staff...including me.)
The current insurance company I work for is based out of Florida. They implemented a policy of hiring talent where they can. They're having a tough time finding JAVA software engineers as well.
Yeah, I felt a little guilty after posting that.. but from what I can tell, they may have outsourced the IBM's to someone else as well. Actually, I'm a fan of both platforms, based on what the needs are. So that's my disclaimer if someone AT Microsoft chimes in to prove me wrong.
Agreed. They may have moved to WinTel by now. I saw a preview of Vista... very impressive.
I still say that 5250 is the most productive pure data entry interface in the known world.
Wait a minute, Bill. Are you trying to shift the blame here?
LMAO!
That's because Bill and his buddies shipped jobs overseas and talked down the domestic IT industry and its workers. Those who might be interested an IT career go to other careers because they are told that only a graduate of an Indian university can make the cut. This is a self-made problem that will eventually bite them in the arse when those outsource workers and their companies start demanding more money for the "great" job they are doing.
Put your money where you mouth is and start agressively promoting IT as a career to students in this country.
Umm, Bill. This has more to do with you trying to set the salary for software engineers at Bangladesh levels.
Thank you for correcting him....i agree.
Translation: "Go into IT. Glut the market. Then we megacorporations will have our pick of talent at Burger King prices. Oh, and we'll still yammer about a 'shortage of qualified workers.'"
"Qualified worker" in the IT business means 25 years of Java experience, ASP, .NET, Ruby, Python, SOAP, SQL, COBOL, CICS, Assembler, MVS Internals, every conceivable text editor, and Microsoft Office, and we're willing to pay you $10.50 an hour to start.
Look at their entrance criteria. I'll lay odds they're demanding 3 to 5 years of coding experience, plus JSP, JSF, Eclipse (or WebSphere or some other IDE), XML, Oracle, etc.. And yet there isn't an entry-level Java/J2EE job to be found.
Where was all that experience going to come from? And what's wrong with taking a little risk and investing in your company's future?
Oh, that's right. This quarter's bottom line.
...kids are not willing to sign up for $100k worth of education debt in exchange for a junior position paying $10-15/hr, if they get it.
Don't know what planet you're living on. At our school, all the CS grads get jobs starting at $50K+. The killer (which no one wants to talk about) is the fast pace of change in IT. You have to be learning constantly to not be obsolete. It burns people out.
Many kids at our school pay $100K to major in Exercise Science. Is that worth it?
Hey, our country is producing lawyuhs from New Yawk at astronomical rates! I'm sure having a society of litigous ambulance-chasers will be much better than a society filled with productive engineers and technically skilled workers.
And they expect you to walk to work, barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways. And get to your desk at 6am, and leave at 1am seven days a week, including Christmas.
That's because IBM focused on actual business use and intent. Metaphorically speaking, the AS/400 is a powerful pickup built for work. Windoze is a V6 SUV doing its best to be all things to all people. While it does a reasonably good job at many things, it will never be as good at any one thing as a more single-purpose approach.
Well, there have been too many programmers who were willing to do just that for far too long. So many of them so thoroughly enjoyed programming that it provided a strong incentive in spite of the low pay and stressful environment. As that generation has aged, and as the software market has matured, they have realized that they possess a very valuable, marketable skill set. Their patience with lousy working conditions has been drained. The love of programming isn't enough to overcome the downsides as much.
Also, many have realized that they can make themselves wealthy rather than making their employers wealthy. The capital costs for software development are comparatively minuscule when compared to other markets.
In short, more and more good developers are recognizing their value and acting accordingly. The market for programmer talent has adjusted.
Bill, If I were you, I wouldn't be making myself too visible in the near future. Ms. Nancy might decide you got too damn much money. Better get it the hell out of this country, cause you won't have much of it left when they get through.
Ubuntu (Linux) Christian Edition
I use the regular edition of Ubuntu on virtually all of my PCs (the one other uses PC BSD).
You don't need Windows. No one needs Windows.
Regards, Ivan
Thanks, good for you! I'm not allowed near operating systems (or anything else more complicated than the on-off switch) but I'll mention it to my husband.
I can tell you why from first hand knowledge. When one goes to India, one sees a place like 'Paul's Engineering School', which consists of some desks in an open air store with a pull down metal door, almost exactly the same size as the curry and lentil shop next door. Now, I ask you, what sort of talent does one get out of such an 'engineering' school?
Or, one sees those with the title of 'engineer' in China who graduated from the US equivalent of a 2 year technical program--I'm not denigrating this, but the expectations built up by stating 'we have all these engineers' belies a truth:
That in a lot of instances, American companies retain a staff of resources to clean up after the 'we can hire 8 for the price of 1' outfits. And, in a lot of cases, such adventures consume more time and resources than if the work had been done onshore. Oh, the initial numbers look attractive, and in the short term, the shareholders are all giddy with the reduction in overhead. In the long run, however, quality suffers, (and, I hate to say this) the litigious atmosphere in the US exposes companies to lawsuits when some of the end results are downright harmful to the end users.
You do get some bright lights (like IIT graduates in India), but in general, the quality and grounding in fundamentals isn't there.
Personally, I'd love to see some of the older guys who were let go from companies looking to turn over a quick buck, when asked to return, say, "sure. but you're going to pay me twice as much as before."
for your friends, have them check dice.com and craigslist. both are better then monster. also, tell them to make personal contact with the recruiters if they can... and to remember to be patient as the recruiters may be receiving hundreds of resumes per job posting. friends tell me of people, most overseas, that will send 20+ resumes for the same position. this makes finding the right candidate difficult. being personable on the phone will help your friends move into their next opportunity.
ok... since 'all' the kids are graduating into $50k+ jobs, then name the companies. we are talking about no experience, entry level.
'Paul's Engineering School' is nothing new. it's been that way since prior to 2000. i'm guessing they are starting to feel the impact of lower quality combined with little if any developer inspired upgrades (which use to be normal).
Sure: Voynage, Lockeed Martin, Boeing, AT&T, and Star Financial.
The last shat-hole I was at, I was told by the director that I was liable to on-call any time of the day or night, whether I was formally in the rotation or not, and that if Level I Support wanted to wake me at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning to ask me what time it was, I was bound to answer.
If you were joking, you haven't worked where I have.
No, they're NOT saying that. They're hiring those schmucks withOUT the experience. That requirement only applies to AMERICAN applicants ...
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