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IP: Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 01:49:40 -0400
X\Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 20:01:56 -0600 To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu> From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat org> Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage by Dr. Norman Matloff Due to an extensive public relations campaign orchestrated by an industry trade organization, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a rash of newspaper articles have been appearing since early 1997, claiming desperate labor shortages in the information-technology field. Frantic employers complain that they cannot fill many open positions for computer programmers. (Footnote: Our focus on computer programmers here is explained in the section "Reason for the Focus on Software.") Yet readers of the articles proclaiming a shortage would be perplexed if they also knew that Microsoft only hires 2% of its applicants for software positions, and that this rate is typical in the industry. Software employers, large or small, across the nation, concede that they receive huge numbers of resumes but reject most of them without even an interview. One does not have to be a "techie" to see the contradiction here. If employers were that desperate, they would certainly not be hiring just a minuscule fraction of their job applicants. The hidden agenda of the ITAA public relations campaign which began in 1997 turned out to be to leverage Congress to increase the yearly quota of H-1B work visas, under which employers were importing tens of thousands of programmers to the U.S.... http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html
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- IP: Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage Dave Farber (Sep 19)