I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Leaner and Meaner Still | PBS
I have a friend in the Midwest who runs a small job placement service specializing in programmers. He has an engineering degree and is good at spotting talent. A few years ago the people he placed made about $70,000 a year, but no more. Last year he placed someone at a big firm. This person had 20 years of programming experience and was really good. The job paid $21,000. Then the employer laid this worker off during his first week on the job, bringing in an H1B replacement. That employer was MasterCard.
So, if that’s what happens for somebody with 20 years experience…Â if anything were to happen to my job or to the company I work for, my probable career path would be: Fry Guy.
This seems like an isolated event to me. Where I work we routinely bring folks in (with and without CS degrees) fresh from college at about 40-50k depending on experience.
We continue to hire. We brought six more people in this year.
Rather than cite one case, what are the real trends?
I doubt most folks with 20+ years of experience in IT (unless it was all in COBOL) are making $21k. I also doubt “really good.” What does “really good” really mean?