Re: MIDRANGE-JOBS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 187

American kids have never wanted to be programmers. They all want the cool jobs, myself included. Airline pilot, ER doctor, fireman, and of course liberal arts because that's where the chicks were.
But when they get down to actually choosing a career, science always won some of them over. Because the brainy kids knew that was how they would get the house and the car and the girl. With a high paying job doing the science for a big company.
It is no different now. The kids still want a career that will net them a high paying job. They can see that IT jobs are being outsourced and they can see that the salaries are dropping. Even if they don't see it themself, their guidance counselors will steer them away from IT, for the sake of the kid.
And if you think any of this is not true I suggest you check out the curriculum at a college in your area. Most of the schools have turned their IT coursework away from programming and into IT management. I asked a counselor at the local college why this was the case and she said "it would be unfair to send a student into a deadend career. All the programming will eventually be done in China and India. The only IT work done in the U.S. will be managing work that is done overseas." I told her that it could change if the government stepped in. She just chuckled.

Karl

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] MIDRANGE-JOBS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 187

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On 28-Nov-07, at 1:23 PM, midrange-jobs-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

American kids don't want to be programmers because they see the
jobs being off-shored and want to find something that they can be
assured of HAVING a job doing.

My (4) kids want nothing to do with computers because they have seen
the idiotic hours it causes me to work - plus phone calls at all
hours - nearly missing the birth of my third kid while handling an
emergency ...

Besides, if you think that most kids going into college think about
off-shoring you've met a very different bunch of kids to the ones I
have met. Tech is not sexy - it is for nerds and therefore boring.
For us it was an exciting new career opportunity - for them it is the
mundane stuff that drives their iPhone and they don't care. Probably
much the same as we might have felt about a career as a bricklayer.

If they were thinking this far ahead then how do you explain why they
are all seeking soft degrees in the liberal arts arena? The kids are
not _just_ abandoning Comp-Sci - they are abandoning _all_ science
related programs. Enrollment is down in all of them. The threat of
off-shoring doesn't explain that.

Anyway - this debate is going nowhere as it does every time it occurs.


Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com


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