IBM Linux Video

bob findlay fcsoft-rxKNY4w4koG3ikBYyZqyVg at public.gmane.org
Fri Nov 21 12:43:03 UTC 2003


On November 20, 2003 10:32 pm, you wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, bob findlay wrote:
> > Unfortunately, with the recent collapse of software development as a
> > viable career choice there soon won't be enough experienced developers
> > left (outside of those employed by the big boys - IBM, HP, SGI, Novell)
> > to keep the developer diversity that Linux needs to thrive.
>
> Plenty of people are still employed in software development, by no means
> all at big companies.  The software industry is thriving, by any ordinary
> standards; only by comparison with the dot-com hysteria of a few years ago
> is it in a slump.
>
>                                                           Henry Spencer
>                                                        henry-lqW1N6Cllo10IscgpWfJZA at public.gmane.orgnet

By some measures the software development industry has shrunk by 60% in less 
than 3 years.   Yes one could argue that there was a huge runup for the Y2K 
fraud and the dotcom hysteria.     Unfortunately, the "correction" has gone 
way beyond that in my opinion.    In my network of developers alone we 
currently have about 95% unemployment rate.   One promising 30 some developer 
is training to be a bus driver because he simply can't find employment.    
Young kids are shunning programming as a career option.

Yes plenty of people are still employed in IT,   but it is a far cry from 
being able to do PHP or JAVA webprogramming to being a kernel developer or an 
embedded Linux developer.

My point was simply that if we don't find a way to get the young kids back 
into software development as a career option then pretty soon we won't have 
the skills base to make sizable contributions to the open source code base 
from this country anyway.
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