The death of software

Editor's Note: Whenever InfoWorld addresses the issue of outsourcing, our e-mail inboxes get a workout; in fact, no topic raises readers' hackles quite as predictably. The following letter, from reader Tom LaBelle, so eloquently encapsulates the arguments made by many of our readers that we've decided to reproduce it as a guest column, for everyone to read. Agree, disagree, have other reactions? Send e-mail to letters@infoworld.com and tell us what you think.

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InfoWorld recently published an article about offshoring, a sore subject with many people I know. As I read it, I was reminded of an interview Bill Gates gave back on July 18, 2005, in which he wrung his hands over the 60 percent fall-off in computer science graduates during the past five-odd years. While Chairman Bill deplored the lack of talent coming out of our universities and bemoaned his inability to hire enough highly skilled computer science graduates to keep Microsoft's talent pool fully stocked, I can't help but wonder why he isn't turning to the thousands upon thousands of unemployed U.S. programmers who have the very talent and experience he claims to need. Is it any wonder college kids with a lick of sense are running screaming from the software business?

I have been in the software development biz since the mid-1980s, and to tell you the truth, I'd have been better off weaving baskets. My little shop has at times done well; at other times it's done rather poorly -- especially during the Bush II recession that seems to never quite go away. The past four years have been ghastly. And not just been ghastly for me and mine; I have seen enough colleagues to populate a midsize city tossed out of their jobs with unseemly haste so some characters from India, China, or some other benighted country can get the work.

From what I have seen since the year 2000, I would tell any youngster who sought my council that he or she would have to be as crazy as a bedbug to get into the software business today.

In fact, I did tell exactly this to one youngster: my nephew, Larry. But Larry doesn't believe me. Larry comes from a rural area in south central Illinois, and all he ever saw of the software business was the hype and snazz. You know, fatuous TV shows and comic books where a boy genius hacker cracks a 64-character password in 15 seconds on his first try. Convinced his old uncle is all wet, Larry is doing just what Chairman Bill says is good for both Microsoft and the U.S. of A.; Larry is going ahead and getting a computer sciences degree. Poor kid. However, in a last ditch effort to save the lad, I did tell him to at least minor in a useful subject that has a future. Mortuary science, perhaps.

Larry probably wouldn't be making this blunder if he had lived around Seattle or in the Bay Area. But living in the outback, Larry never saw the thousands of people -- programmers and engineers, the very people Gates says he can't find -- given the sack during the Tech Wreck and who haven't cut a line of code since. Larry never saw the men and women who created the best software on earth applying for food stamps. He never saw people he knew having their homes foreclosed and their belongings hauled away. Larry didn't have neighbors who once made 80-odd thousand dollars a year now begging for jobs that pay a third of that. (Hey, ask your friendly Wal-Mart greeter what he or she did for a living back in, say, 2000.)

But a lot of kids have seen what’s been going on, and that is why we have this 60 percent drop in computer science graduates. These kids see all the talent, knowledge, and experience rotting on the vine and they understand this will be their own future, should they be so foolish as to get into the software business. They see the bald-faced disconnect between what Gates says and what he does and have figured out what's going on. Gates' concerns are just a bunch of eyewash to disguise the real issue, which is the shipment of more and more American jobs to India and China. The ugly truth is that no matter how many computer science graduates America produces, Gates and his ilk are simply going to send the work there anyway.

Young people are not blind or stupid; they see this. Consider what my neighbor's high school kid was telling me:

He sees his parents’ friend who was in the software business now working the afternoon shift at an espresso stand. The home is gone, the personal possessions are pawned, health insurance is a fading memory.

He hears of a local company up in Everett, Wash., that fired 100 percent of its American programmers (many with computer science degrees), replacing them all with Indians who are here on temporary visas. That’s about 150 programmers tossed out on their ears and looking for work right here in the Puget Sound area. (Are you listening, Chairman Bill?)

He reads that America’s premier manufacturer of networking devices has farmed out to India 100 percent of the code for its new product lines. That stunt accounts for several thousand more Americans turned out onto the streets.

Seeing all this, a youngster can't help but wonder: "What would happen to me in a few years? Having served my purpose, will Chairman Bill toss me on the dung heap too? After busting my hump to get that fancy degree, will I simply end up broke and working scut jobs like so many before me?" The answer: Yes, very likely. And so the kid decides on a better, more viable career.

Another factor to consider in the 60 percent decline, but one not mentioned anywhere, is family tradition. Throughout history a lot children have followed in their parents' footsteps. Look at the Bush family. Or the Rockefellers. Or the Fords. Less visible but no less important are the thousands of sons and daughters who went into the same professions as Mom and Dad -- medicine, law, the science ... even programming. Do you think for one moment that a fired, destitute, programmer is going to tell the kids to get computer science degrees? You have a screw loose if you do. If watching their parents’ agonies isn't enough to dissuade them, the folks will answer their children’s inquiry with: "For god’s sake, no, dear child! Don't touch software with a 10-foot pole. Look at what happened to me."

So the potential computer science student comes to the only conclusion possible: Software is a dead-end road. It is another industry going the way of textiles, watches, and TVs. Chairman Bill is showing today’s kids that software can be done cheaper elsewhere. Maybe not as good, but cheaper, and that is all that counts.

Young people might think differently about computer science degrees if Gates and the other nabobs had kept faith with their people -- done what they could to keep as many of them working as possible through the Tech Wreck and hired back those who got laid off ASAP. But they didn't. Instead, Gates and company broke their arms and legs exporting American jobs to foreign countries, hollowing out another American industry.

Bottom line: There is simply no worthwhile future in American software. Most kids today know it, and that is why computer science degrees are down by 60 percent. Frankly, I am surprised they are not down by even more.

Tom LaBelle is a software developer who lives and works in Snohomish, Wash.