

Offshoring is not making UK computer scientists largest unemployed group - bartwe
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing/2010/09/offshoring-is-not-making-uk-computer-scientists-largest-unemployed-group-says-bcs.html?sms_ss=hackernews

======
kolektiv
I know very well from trying to hire decent comp-sci graduates in the UK that
it's very difficult right now. They're either very poor candidates, or they're
being snapped up on very high salaries. If you're a _good_ comp-sci graduate
right now I would say that things are looking great.

~~~
kolektiv
Sorry, I am just going to reply to myself with a slightly contrarian viewpoint
- as the article points out, low skilled jobs are being outsourced. This might
make it more likely that it's graduate jobs being replaced with
offshore/outsourcing, in which case we'll be left with the classic "foot on
the ladder" problem.

Saying that, it's not my experience that this is having a noticeable impact,
for what personal experience is worth.

------
ajaxian
To my mind this is the key quote:

"If you have a low skilled job there is a higher chance of your job being
outsourced but if you are a software developer developing complex software you
are very much in demand."

The fact is that most new CS graduates are "low skilled" as real-world,
industrial programmers. A CS education can realistically only provide them a
grounding in the core theory of the field; it can't, and shouldn't, be
teaching them how to work within the context of massive, old, crufty programs
that are the norm in the real world. This is the _responsibility of employers_
, and IMO when employers complain about a lack of "good" CS graduates it just
shows that they have abdicated their responsibility to train their employers
in their own industry niche and somehow expect cheap programmers who are
subject matter experts with years of experience in a dozen hyper-specific
tools to drop from the sky.

But of course the outsourcing shops are perfectly happy to peddle the lie that
their own people are programming geniuses who are also subject matter experts
--and look at all the money you'll save! The IT managers get suckered into
hiring boatloads of consultants or sending everything offshore, their own good
employees, if they had any to begin with, get fired or jump ship, and the
cycle accelerates.

Sure I'm cynical, but I've seen it happen often enough, and heard the same
from friends who've experienced the same, to justify it.

~~~
ig1
I disagree, I've been at a company where we had ~1500-2000 applications for
graduate developer roles, so we had access to a substantial percentage of CS
graduates. About 20% got through CV screening (which is basically have
anything on your CV to show you're competent - good uni, an internship,
challenging uni projects, open source projects, etc).

Of that 20% most of them failed to be able to handle fairly basic CS questions
(implement a linked list, describe how hash-maps work, reverse a string, basic
algorithm questions, fizzbuzz, basic language questions on a language the
candidate claimed to know). About 5% were able to pass this stage, and of that
5% we made offers to most of them.

We weren't expecting people with a deep grounding in practical programming, we
were expecting a decent knowledge of CS and some basic ability to actually
produce code. There just aren't enough competent CS graduates on the market.

------
zandorg
Funny, I have a software development with AI degree, and I can't get anything
- not even tech support. Why do they come out with these stupid stories?

~~~
gaius
Why? Because despite surface appearances, the BCS is a lobbying group for
employers. They want talent to be a commodity. That means "cheap" and
"interchangeable". And it doesn't matter if engineer A isn't any good from
that point of view; what matters is that engineer B is a 1-for-1 replacement.

I saw this as well when I was doing Mech Eng at college: time and time again,
we were told, by the IMechE, our supposed professional body, that there was a
huge shortage of mechanical (and other) engineers. I gather from physicists
and chemists that they are told, there is a huge shortage of scientists. But
any fule kno, the laws of supply and demand apply. I still get contacted by
recruiters in engineering, offering me in some cases less than half of my
present salary to go back...

~~~
DrJokepu
I have cancelled my BCS membership after one year. My membership wasn't even
marginally useful for me in any way, their magazine constantly reminds me that
they have absolutely no idea what's really going on in technology and they
keep spamming me with their stuff I don't care about.

~~~
gaius
Lawyers and doctors professional organizations are more like guilds. But the
IMechE, the BCS et al actively work against the best interests of their
individual members! The IMechE at least has the basic function of granting
CEng to those that need it; there is no reason for anyone to be a BCS member
at all.

~~~
zandorg
Actually one of the magazines I got from the BCS (circa 2005) was saying how
great outsourcing is. I wasn't so enthusiastic and didn't agree with the
article.

------
arethuza
So if it isn't outsourcing then presumably it's because we are educating too
many people with CS degrees? That should be easy to fix....

~~~
jcromartie
The article quotes people who claim that there is a _shortage_ of CS
graduates.

~~~
DrJokepu
Oh no, as someone who regularly interviews CS graduates in the UK, there's no
shortage of graduates. There's a shortage of very good graduates, which is
incidentally exactly the same type of graduates I would like to hire.
Personally, I blame university admissions for that.

------
ronnier
What are examples of low skilled software development jobs?

~~~
ig1
The article talks about low skilled IT jobs (desktop management, support,
etc.) rather than dev jobs, but low skilled developer jobs could be consider
things like standard CMS customization, db migration scripts, web-scraping,
simple psd2html work. Basically legwork stuff that's pretty mechanical but
still needs a human to do it.

