I just finished reading the Oct 15, 2004 issue [1] of SD Times magazine, which contains a good Guest Editorial by Ed Yourdon [2]. Yourdon is known for many things, but one of them has been his ongoing commentary on the state and outlook for the American programmer. Two of his most famous books are Decline and Fall of the American Programmer [3] and Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer [4]. No doubt Mr. Yourdon is pontificating on this current topic in order to promote his newest book, OUTSOURCE: Competing in the Global Productivity Race [5] (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Yourdon's primary message in this editorial is this:
While much of this anger is understandable, and some of it is justifiable, it’s time for us to stand up and tell these angry people: Stop whining. Stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Take charge of your own jobs, your own career and your own future. No one else is going to do it for you.
Yourdon takes a very Darwinian approach to the issue that I find it hard to disagree with. First, he says that the percentage of American programming jobs that will be lost will be on the order of 10% to 20%, not a total wipe-out of the industry as America has seen with industries like steel and textiles. Then he asserts that it is our responsibility as players in the marketplace to ensure that we're not one of the people that loses his or her job to outsourcing/offshoring.
If this seems unnecessarily cruel, think back to the manic period of the late 1990s, when the dot-com boom provided jobs to college kids who felt they were entitled to $100,000 jobs as Webmasters because they had mastered the arcane intricacies of HTML. When most of these innocent lads and lasses lost their jobs after the bubble burst, did we IT veterans shed a tear? No—because we felt that most of them didn’t really deserve to have high-paying jobs in an industry that traditionally required a specialized education and several years of apprentice-level work before moving into the high-paying ranks. In a Darwinian world, the same is unfortunately true for the hard-working, well-meaning veterans who today find themselves in that vulnerable 10 percent to 20 percent economic bracket: They’re not "entitled" to jobs if there is an alternative supply of lower-cost, higher-quality, higher-productivity people.
Notice also the Darwinian view of the "ageism" issue that affects all programmers eventually.
The view of career self-management that Yourdon puts forward is one that I've shared for quite some time. I first adopted this view back in the early 90's when I heard a speech by bestselling business guru Tom Peters in which Peters advised workers to avoid any thinking that assumes that employers a) give a crap about you, and b) give a crap about helping you manage your career, or c) feel like they owe you anything. Peters didn't put it in those exact words, but the implication was clear: We each are our own company. We are each competing in a marketplace, and just like you would not hesitate to switch phone companies to get a cheaper rate or better service, employers will do the same when it comes to your programming services. If we want to be offshore-proof or layoff-proof or dismissal-proof, we each have the responsibility to ensure we're achieving at a level that's commensurate with or (preferrably) above what the market demands. This means investing in ourselves, just as any company must invest in itself to become and remain competitive. Hence Yourdon's advice: "stop whining."
Another related issue that Yourdon only touches on briefly is that of how our choice of specialties affects our job security. Picking the most popular language/technology is a double-edged sword: there are more jobs available, but when a specialty skill becomes a commodity, there will be more outsourcing and offshoring of that specialty. For more on this issue, please check out Part One [6] and Part Two [7] of an essay I wrote awhile back called Specialties and Strategies [8].
I recommend checking out Yourdon's editorial [9] in full.