Tech Job Market: Dynamic or Disappointing?

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Once a Dynamo, the Tech Sector is Slow to Hire,” raises major questions about the ability of high-tech companies, once the most promising in the United States, to pull their own weight in helping the United States economy out of the recession.

It notes that job growth in this field has been lackluster, and the unemployment rate, while better than the U.S. average at 6 percent, is still larger than any other white-collar profession.

The article cites two major reasons for the poor performance: increasing automation in the industry and the improvement of overseas job pools in meeting many of the skills required.

While most analysts seem to believe that employers are still chasing after tech people rather than the other way around, it is still disappointing to see slow growth in this field, as it has kept the U.S. as the world’s leading source of innovation. The shipping of high-tech jobs overseas has been couched in the same misleading language as other industries — Oracle describes it as “rebalancing their work force.”

The main caveat in the article, for software engineers and computer pros, has become the same as other professions. A basic proficiency in the skills of your field is no longer enough, you need an edge over the other guy. Or, as the article puts it, if you just know C++, the programming language, you will be competing with professionals overseas with the same capability.