IP: Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> 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