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I really hate it when people say that our wages are going down because we have let our skills become outdated and that we are being beaten by people with better skills.
I would put my skills up against anyone out there. Anyone who has been in IT for more than a few years knows that things change quickly and if you don't keep up with the changes you will lose out to the younger kids coming out of schools with more recent education. The IT field is almost unique in how quickly technologies change. I have kept up, at considerable expense, with the latest technologies and advances with the AS400 as well as PC and UNIX platforms. Yet my salary continues the downward slide each time I change jobs.
It isn't because I don't have relevant skills. It is because I'm competing with dozens of others for the same position.
During one interview I spoke with the HR person and asked how many people were applying for the job. She said she had 700 resumes for the position. I found out later that they hired a lower level programmer for 45k. As long as there are so many people competing for jobs it is inevitable that salaries will continue to drop. It has nothing to do with skill level, it has to do with supply and demand of labor. Sure, the higher skilled person will have an edge. But they will still experience the drop in pay. Because as U.S. companies outsource their IT work overseas they often lay off their entire IT staff. The skill levels of those laid off people will follow a bell curve, including some with very high skill levels. When they are all competing for the few available jobs they will very likely have to reduce their salary in order to "outbid" their competition.
As I said earlier, I have worked with, and gone to school recently with, many very bright and experienced programmers and IT professionals. My story is not unique. They have all experienced the downward trend in pay rates. If you haven't experienced it yourself, consider yourself lucky. But to protest that it isn't happening, you must be either stubbornly clinging to someone else's rhetoric, or you have your head very deeply buried in the sand.

Karl

----- Original Message ----- From: "Shadrach Scott" <shadrachscott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] FW: FW: FW: MIDRANGE-JOBS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 187


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Joe I hope you are enjoying the debate ..... I am enjoying it, and I
have read and looked at every fact sent. I especially enjoy when people
like Karl are willing to share real life. You are correct numbers are
cold and there is a human aspect to this debate and there are real
people being affected by it. Obviously there is a segment out there that
is feeling real pain or at least minor discomfort.

I enjoyed the article sjl sent from business week talking about
engineering, I read it 3 times. Mr Wadhwa presented some great
information and his conclusions are very interesting. He basic
conclusion is India and China still have a long way to go to catch up,
but they are trying hard. The US is doing better than people give us
credit for but we can do better. I love the final part of the article:

"DON'T RELAX. We could also be doing a lot more to encourage U.S.
companies to expand U.S.-based research, to provide ongoing
education and training for their employees, and to work more closely
with universities in commercializing research.

Bottom line: Let's be really worried about looming competition, but
let's focus on the right things—and make more effective of use of
our strengths. Because after all, Friedman is right, in the future
India and China may catch up to where we are today."

Joe rather than the protectionist society you keep advocating for we
need the competitive society Wadha talks about. Rather than
protectionism we need to encourage expansion, competition, more ongoing
training...... and as I obviously believe the more people who
participate the more competition there will be (even from china and
India) the better off we all will be. As those economies grow so will
ours and instead of the collapse your predict the world will see
prosperity like it never has before.

My final point is the technology field is very competitive, you can
never assume anything about your job or the product you sell. If you
employer is not providing ongoing training then you need to provide it
for yourself. The numbers tell us that real wages are growing so if your
wage is shrinking someone else's is growing and by your own admission
the h-1b wages are not the ones causing real wage growth.

Bring on the Insanity.

I'm done, not because it has not been fun but I don't think Joe's blood
pressure can take much more.

Shadrach

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