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January 27, 2006

The Sounds of Schadenfreüde

There's an IT workforce gap looming, according to eWeek magazine.

Now that students are avoiding IT studies like the plague, it's not only safe to study IT again, it's also the smart thing to do. That, at least, is according to one of the most eminent professors in the field of IT education, John Rockart of MIT.

"There is a drop in IT enrollments. We are not turning out enough people to meet the needs," said Rockart during a panel discussion titled "The Changing IT Workforce" at the recent Forrester Research Executive Strategy Forum in Boston. From the maximum point of the dot-com bubble, Washington State University's IT enrollment is down 60 percent; the University of Virginia's is down 50 percent, said Rockart.

Why are students blind to this golden opportunity? Two reasons, said Rockart: the dot-com bust and offshore outsourcing. But, Rockart countered, "less than 2 percent of IT jobs are outsourced, and IT salaries are actually terrific."

Forrester analyst Laurie Orlov said in the same discussion that not only are young people not entering the IT field, but older workers, laden with knowledge, are retiring. "Business is at risk. Workers are retiring and will leave unfilled openings. Old people with knowledge are leaving, and new people without knowledge are coming in," Orlov said.

Lisa Tondreau, a partner in IBM Business Consulting Services, said one step that can help plug the looming gap is to encourage baby boomers to stay in the work force rather than retire en masse. Companies should also put solid succession plans in place, she said.

But already, the problem is serious. "One utility company has 460 vacancies they can't fill. It's a business-risk issue," said panelist Connie Moore, also a Forrester analyst.

One seemingly obvious response would be to reopen the H-1B floodgates. But the panelists said that won't be enough. H-1Bs, after all, are intended to be temporary, and the looming gap appears to be ongoing.

How should academia respond to the looming shortfall? "A new curriculum is needed," said Rockart, "a business-technology curriculum." More project management is needed, along with systems analysis, systems design, architecture and security, he said.

I still think it's fiscal suicide to drop $40 - $100K on an IT degree in this world. The U.S. is not doing spit to retain IT talent, and would outsource 100% of it tomorrow if the Bush Administration had it's way with the industry. Unfortunately, that means military IT goes with it, and when nations send their defense industry offshore, they tend to lose the next major war.

In the meantime, it's nice to see some stability in the IT job market.

Posted by Steven at 02:25 PM | Comments (2)

January 24, 2006

Just Walk Out

William Rivers Pitt has an excellent idea for the State of the Union address: walk out. Just get up, leave. On the steps of the building, give a Counter-State-of-the-Union address.

I have a wild and crazy idea.

George W. Bush's delivery of the State of the Union address will take place on Tuesday, January 31, a little more than a week from now. It is my strong belief that every single Democrat present in the House chamber for the speech should, at a predetermined moment, stand up and walk out. No yelling. No heated words. Every Democrat should simply stand silently and leave.

Crazy, I know. Crazy, and possibly the best idea ever put before a body of Democrats since the New Deal.

Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.

And you have been far too polite about this. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Back in 1995, Republican Senator Phil Gramm said, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." That was eleven years ago. If you listen close, you can hear the beasts baying in the distance, waiting to slip the leash. Your limp tactics in the face of the assault upon you, your vacillation, your strange hope that maybe the GOP will be nicer tomorrow, has left you all smelling like Alpo.

...

Or you can stand up.

It takes a spine to stand up. Find yours. Get up and walk out of the State of the Union speech. Turn your backs on the blizzard of lies and empty promises that are sure to pour forth from that podium. Give it exactly what it deserves.

Walk outside to the steps of the Capitol Building and hold a Counter-State-of-the-Union. Lay out your plans for a better future. Explain how you will reform the system that spawned Mr. Abramoff. Demand answers and explanations about what is happening in Iraq, what is happening over at the National Security Agency, and why this administration believes itself to be completely above the law.

I can even offer a bit of text for your opening statement. "Three years ago during this very speech," your leading spokesperson can say from those steps, "Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. He said all this three years ago, during this all-important annual address, and all of it was a lie. The American people deserve an explanation."

Hey, leaving almost worked for the "Killer D's" in Texas. Maybe it's time to start in the Congress.

Posted by Steven at 05:22 PM | Comments (1)

January 18, 2006

An Essay on the Abortion Wars

The New York Times Select has published an essay by the son of the Upstate NY physician who worked with Bernard Slepian, the Ob-Gyn wh o was murdered seven years ago by an anti-abortion nutcase. His essay carries us through the history of that event, the times and the place of Buffalo, NY. He finishes with a strikingly clear insight to the whole problem.

Why abortion doesn't play such a divisive role in countries like France and Italy may have something to do with the fact that, as The Economist pointed out in an article on the 30th anniversary of Roe, these nations didn't legalize the procedure by declaring it a constitutional right. Most European countries did so "through new legislation and, occasionally, referenda," decriminalizing abortion on the grounds of health rather than rights and leaving open the possibility that, should popular opinion back them, right-to-life advocates could reverse the status quo through conventional political channels.

Not a few commentators lately, including some who support abortion rights, have suggested that it would not be the worst thing if the availability of abortion were left to state legislatures to decide, which is what will happen if Roe is overturned. Overnight, they note, middle-class women who take their reproductive freedom for granted no longer would. Republicans who tailor their rhetoric to the religious right would have to consider whether, in a country where 70 to 80 percent of people favor keeping abortion legal all or some of the time, they really want to endorse a blanket ban on the procedure. At the same time, Democrats would have to contemplate what, in light of medical advances and popular opinion, reasonable limits on abortion are. (Most European countries have implemented limitations that in America would be deemed unconstitutional because of Roe.) A debate currently framed in absolute terms - the right to choose versus the rights of the unborn - may begin to reflect what polls suggest most Americans, including a majority of Buffalonians, believe, which is that abortion should be legal but regulated.

It might even become possible for Americans to have a more practical conversation about how to create a society in which fewer unplanned crisis pregnancies happen in the first place. According to Stanley Henshaw, an analyst at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the one exception to the trend of declining abortion rates in America is women below the poverty level, among whom the numbers have actually increased. Grappling with the reason for this, and how it might be addressed, would force both sides in the abortion debate to wrestle with things they might not like to. Among advocates of reproductive rights, it would mean acknowledging that in an ideal world, having an abortion is something that most women would prefer to avoid, and that the decision to raise a child is often the one that seems most impracticable to those who are disadvantaged. Among opponents of abortion, it would mean dropping the puritanical crusade against over-the-counter contraceptives and for abstinence-only sex education, as well as thinking seriously about whether they should support policies like those tucked into the recent Republican budget, which will leave states with billions of dollars less than what experts estimate they'll need to maintain child care for low-income working families in the years to come.

I'm dreading Alito ascending to the bench. It means my daughter will be losing reproductive rights just as she enters adulthood, a condition I equate with a third-world, backward nation hell-bent on fundamentalism. But Eyal Press may be right; millions of Republican women may (finally) leave the Hezbollah (Party of God: GOP) in reaction to their finally getting their cake and eating it in the Culture Wars.

As for me, I'm moving to a more enlightened nation when my kids leave for college. This nation cares not for it's women nor it's secular technologists. Time to move on.

Posted by Steven at 02:47 PM | Comments (1)