Comments on: Where have all the IT students gone? http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/ Metabolising caffeine into code Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:45:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Random walker » Blog Archive » Boom 2.0 - IT is back! http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-716 Random walker » Blog Archive » Boom 2.0 - IT is back! Thu, 03 May 2007 13:45:30 +0000 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/#comment-716 [...] alma mater Sydney Uni, my good friend Nick Carroll has recently asked the important question “where have all the IT students gone?” It’s a very good question, and I was drawn to comment on his posting. My plan at a few [...] [...] alma mater Sydney Uni, my good friend Nick Carroll has recently asked the important question “where have all the IT students gone?” It’s a very good question, and I was drawn to comment on his posting. My plan at a few [...]

]]> By: David Peterson http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-715 David Peterson Thu, 03 May 2007 12:58:28 +0000 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/#comment-715 Agree absolutely NIck, and I know this is something we have spoken about at-length in the past. Gnoll (above poster) is right, that booms come and go. Every 10-15 years or so there is a boom-bust cycle in Silicon Valley. Every time, just after the very bottom of the crash, some major magazine like BusinessWeek or Time runs with a front-page cover along the lines of "The Death of Silicon Valley?" [1,2]. Every time, like the mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes, the valley picks itself up, rebuilds and re-invents itself. I think the same thing has occured here. I'm a few years older than you, which meant I went through my undergrad at USYD in the late 1990's. This was the tail-end of the "glory days" of computing, back when the (now) School of Information Technologies was (rightly) called the "Basser Department of Computer Science" and when the School of Electrical Engineering actually did some! It was a heady time to be in software. As soon as I graduated (finished in 1997) I picked up work with a well-known global consulting company. When I decided (very quickly) that I didn't like the "billable hours" school-bus culture, moving out into a more focused technical job (software engineering for a military flight simulator in my case) was pretty simple. There were plenty of good and interesting jobs available. From there, I left along with the guy I shared an office with (hi Steve! - now at Atlassian) to start a start-up with 2 other guys (one who was the best man at my wedding - so friends _are_ more important than business it seems!) Everyone was doing startups, even in Australia it was relatively easy to raise capital, and we pulled $800k seed funding from a well-known CEO of a successful local listed company. Our startup, like many others, did eventually wind up (well, almost - that's another story) but we emerged much the wiser and more experienced for having had the chance to build a real IT venture from the ground up. We didn't do everything right (obviously!) but we did do many things right, or at least we avoided doing things wrong - like burning cash on Herman Miller chairs or 30 second adds at the Superbowl, etc. Was I "afraid" at the end of the startup, during the crash? Did I think the world was going to end? No way. I knew it would be back - and right now I think it just about is. So, what happened next? I agree with you. I think that basically the parents panicked. They saw the newspaper articles predicting "IT bust". They saw the fizzle-out of Boom 1.0. They got worried for their kids futures because someone told them all programming was being sent to India and there was no future in IT. I personally saw the effects of this, first-hand, when I taught at USYD from 2003-2006. I remember in one of the early EBUS units (a 3rd year course comprised of students who had enrolled for 1st and 2nd years while the "boom" was still going strong) we had 297 students enrolled. That's right, I taught 297 students Perl, PostgreSQL, Apache, DBI and Mason. (G-d forgive me for my sins!) Fast forward a few years, and class sizes had dropped well below 100. I don't think this was a reflection on my teaching, as course surveys were always pretty good, and the anecdotal comparisons between my enrolments and certain other courses were pretty startling. So what changed? By the time the 2006 students were hitting 3rd and 4th year subjects, they had enrolled around 2003, or post-boom, in the bust phases. I have no doubt that many of them were deterred from enrolling in IT careers due to parental and other influences. Even the ones who were enrolled were frequently despondent that there was "no future in IT". I could see them lift as I told them, honestly, that nothing could be further from the truth. Nick is exactly right. There is going to be huge demand as CIOs of major organisations bring critical strategic software projects back in-house as they can no longer tolerate the (high) risk (and associated strategic "opportunity cost") of software project failure associated with off-shoring to a cubeland development centre that follows traditional (read: non-agile) development practices. As anyone who's ever worked on a real software application would attest, it's hard enough to clear communication channels, get common understandings, and build a successful product on-time and on-budget even when everyone IS in the same room, never mind when your coders are located thousands of kilometres from your business analysts, and most importantly, the customer and end-user. Not a recipe for success. So what do we take from this? I guess there are a few points I'd like to make in summary (I have never been known for my brevity!): (1) software development as a business activity is not going away any-time soon, (2) there is already a large unmet demand for talented software developers and this is set to continue, (3) this demand is unlikely to be met anytime soon from the students coming out of software courses at university - (i) because their numbers are not that high, but (ii) more importantly, because the majority of them are nowhere near as skilled as their counterparts of a decade ago who make up the bulk of current professional software developers / consultants / engineers today, and (4) as a result of high demand and low supply, one would expect the time-tested laws of economics to swing into play yet again, with salaries for genuinely talented people hitting well into the high $100k's and beyond. There is one more question that needs to be asked. If all those students didn't go into software, then where did they go? I think a mixture of places: some went into "medicine", often via the round-about path of medical science, etc which took many of them (ironically) into the currently far riskier area of bio-tech startups (surely at least as scary a prospect for their parents as any IT job), some went into accounting and business (and the smart ones are presumably bored witless by running endless "reconciliation reports" and "accruals" by now. Some others went into the supposedly "safe" area of the law. It's just amazing how many law grads are pouring out of universities right now. I predict that corner-store legal services will be less than $30 per hour in 5 years! Again, supply and demand in action. So for all those who predicted the death of IT (in Australia or abroad), I can only suggest they cast their eyes over the immortal words once penned by Mark Twain in the face of a similar situation; "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated". -- Dave [1] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/25/INGFT4CVEU1.DTL [2] http://www.itweek.co.uk/personal-computer-world/analysis/2046179/silicon-valley-back-track Agree absolutely NIck, and I know this is something we have spoken about at-length in the past. Gnoll (above poster) is right, that booms come and go. Every 10-15 years or so there is a boom-bust cycle in Silicon Valley. Every time, just after the very bottom of the crash, some major magazine like BusinessWeek or Time runs with a front-page cover along the lines of “The Death of Silicon Valley?” [1,2]. Every time, like the mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes, the valley picks itself up, rebuilds and re-invents itself.

I think the same thing has occured here. I’m a few years older than you, which meant I went through my undergrad at USYD in the late 1990′s. This was the tail-end of the “glory days” of computing, back when the (now) School of Information Technologies was (rightly) called the “Basser Department of Computer Science” and when the School of Electrical Engineering actually did some!

It was a heady time to be in software. As soon as I graduated (finished in 1997) I picked up work with a well-known global consulting company. When I decided (very quickly) that I didn’t like the “billable hours” school-bus culture, moving out into a more focused technical job (software engineering for a military flight simulator in my case) was pretty simple. There were plenty of good and interesting jobs available. From there, I left along with the guy I shared an office with (hi Steve! – now at Atlassian) to start a start-up with 2 other guys (one who was the best man at my wedding – so friends _are_ more important than business it seems!) Everyone was doing startups, even in Australia it was relatively easy to raise capital, and we pulled $800k seed funding from a well-known CEO of a successful local listed company. Our startup, like many others, did eventually wind up (well, almost – that’s another story) but we emerged much the wiser and more experienced for having had the chance to build a real IT venture from the ground up. We didn’t do everything right (obviously!) but we did do many things right, or at least we avoided doing things wrong – like burning cash on Herman Miller chairs or 30 second adds at the Superbowl, etc. Was I “afraid” at the end of the startup, during the crash? Did I think the world was going to end? No way. I knew it would be back – and right now I think it just about is.

So, what happened next? I agree with you. I think that basically the parents panicked. They saw the newspaper articles predicting “IT bust”. They saw the fizzle-out of Boom 1.0. They got worried for their kids futures because someone told them all programming was being sent to India and there was no future in IT. I personally saw the effects of this, first-hand, when I taught at USYD from 2003-2006. I remember in one of the early EBUS units (a 3rd year course comprised of students who had enrolled for 1st and 2nd years while the “boom” was still going strong) we had 297 students enrolled. That’s right, I taught 297 students Perl, PostgreSQL, Apache, DBI and Mason. (G-d forgive me for my sins!) Fast forward a few years, and class sizes had dropped well below 100. I don’t think this was a reflection on my teaching, as course surveys were always pretty good, and the anecdotal comparisons between my enrolments and certain other courses were pretty startling.

So what changed? By the time the 2006 students were hitting 3rd and 4th year subjects, they had enrolled around 2003, or post-boom, in the bust phases. I have no doubt that many of them were deterred from enrolling in IT careers due to parental and other influences. Even the ones who were enrolled were frequently despondent that there was “no future in IT”. I could see them lift as I told them, honestly, that nothing could be further from the truth.

Nick is exactly right. There is going to be huge demand as CIOs of major organisations bring critical strategic software projects back in-house as they can no longer tolerate the (high) risk (and associated strategic “opportunity cost”) of software project failure associated with off-shoring to a cubeland development centre that follows traditional (read: non-agile) development practices. As anyone who’s ever worked on a real software application would attest, it’s hard enough to clear communication channels, get common understandings, and build a successful product on-time and on-budget even when everyone IS in the same room, never mind when your coders are located thousands of kilometres from your business analysts, and most importantly, the customer and end-user. Not a recipe for success.

So what do we take from this? I guess there are a few points I’d like to make in summary (I have never been known for my brevity!): (1) software development as a business activity is not going away any-time soon, (2) there is already a large unmet demand for talented software developers and this is set to continue, (3) this demand is unlikely to be met anytime soon from the students coming out of software courses at university – (i) because their numbers are not that high, but (ii) more importantly, because the majority of them are nowhere near as skilled as their counterparts of a decade ago who make up the bulk of current professional software developers / consultants / engineers today, and (4) as a result of high demand and low supply, one would expect the time-tested laws of economics to swing into play yet again, with salaries for genuinely talented people hitting well into the high $100k’s and beyond.

There is one more question that needs to be asked. If all those students didn’t go into software, then where did they go? I think a mixture of places: some went into “medicine”, often via the round-about path of medical science, etc which took many of them (ironically) into the currently far riskier area of bio-tech startups (surely at least as scary a prospect for their parents as any IT job), some went into accounting and business (and the smart ones are presumably bored witless by running endless “reconciliation reports” and “accruals” by now. Some others went into the supposedly “safe” area of the law. It’s just amazing how many law grads are pouring out of universities right now. I predict that corner-store legal services will be less than $30 per hour in 5 years! Again, supply and demand in action.

So for all those who predicted the death of IT (in Australia or abroad), I can only suggest they cast their eyes over the immortal words once penned by Mark Twain in the face of a similar situation;

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.

– Dave

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/25/INGFT4CVEU1.DTL

[2] http://www.itweek.co.uk/personal-computer-world/analysis/2046179/silicon-valley-back-track

]]> By: Gnoll110 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-708 Gnoll110 Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:09:17 +0000 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/#comment-708 Bubbles come and go, remember the tech bubble before last. That was the PC tech bubble, with companies like Lotus Software and Ashton-Tate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton-Tate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Software During the mid 80's stock market boom, a number of sectors boomed in turn, like Bio-Tech etc. Bubbles come and go, remember the tech bubble before last.

That was the PC tech bubble, with companies like Lotus Software and Ashton-Tate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton-Tate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Software

During the mid 80′s stock market boom, a number of sectors boomed in turn, like Bio-Tech etc.

]]> By: Cibbuano http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-703 Cibbuano Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:53:58 +0000 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/#comment-703 I think we'll see venture capitalists throwing wads of cash at Cibby. I think we’ll see venture capitalists throwing wads of cash at Cibby.

]]> By: Nick http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-702 Nick Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:41:28 +0000 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/#comment-702 Hey Bennett, I think we'll be seeing some organic growth in the industry from now on. I doubt we'll see venture capitalists throwing wads of cash around like they used to, so the industry won't get overly stimulated in the short term. PS. CIO = Chief Information Officer. Hey Bennett, I think we’ll be seeing some organic growth in the industry from now on. I doubt we’ll see venture capitalists throwing wads of cash around like they used to, so the industry won’t get overly stimulated in the short term.

PS. CIO = Chief Information Officer.

]]> By: Ben http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/comment-page-1/#comment-701 Ben Tue, 10 Apr 2007 01:53:34 +0000 http://ca.rroll.net/2007/04/08/where-have-all-the-it-students-gone/#comment-701 Didn't think you'd be so quick to get back to USYD Nick! Good to see you reimbursed the recruiters time with a few schooies though. Nice post, but do you really think the IT sector will ever reach the same lucrative glory as it had done previously? Either way, as you say, the field does seem to have stabilised a lot recently which can only be a good thing. What the heck is a CIO anyway? :-) Didn’t think you’d be so quick to get back to USYD Nick! Good to see you reimbursed the recruiters time with a few schooies though.

Nice post, but do you really think the IT sector will ever reach the same lucrative glory as it had done previously? Either way, as you say, the field does seem to have stabilised a lot recently which can only be a good thing.

What the heck is a CIO anyway? :-)

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