Bruce Webster argues that there is not a shortage of IT engineers, there is, however, a shortage of talented ones. His graph of students studying IT related fields pretty much follows supply and demand as the tech booms of the 80s and 90s drew heavily upon anyone they could to fuel their growth, and then during their contraction students decided IT wasn't that good a career bet and enrollment dropped off.
Nothing mind bending in that.
The competency thing is bogus in my opinion, it is arguing for some Mozart inherent genius type aspect to IT as a career path. That is why people think IT and software people are assholes.
Software does have large disparities in productivity from developer to developer, though I consider that more a competency and training issue than anything else. Others also have better talents in visualising data in an object or non-contiguous manner, others have the resilience to hunt down a morale destroying bug to one line of code in an obscure library. There are always many talents on show in any development team.
Webster argues that even with the growth in supply and demand during the booms that there is not enough talented IT engineers to supply all the needs of modern business.
In my opinion, there is no shortage of IT engineers -- particularly not after the vast numbers drawn into the industry due to Y2K and the dot-com boom -- there's just a shortage of talented ones. This is why you get conflicting claims and statistics about "personnel shortages" in the IT industry (cf. here vs. here, as well as the battle over raising the limit on H-1B visas and the offshoring debate).He does not say whether talent is the same as competent. Presumably a tertiary education in computer science does leave one competent in the profession at the very least? I suspect the major reason of off-shoring, H-1B visas and even foreigners with greencards (ie me) working in the United States is because American companies are viewing the labor pool as a global one.
