America's Tech Talent Crunch 2013 - Dice.com

America’s Tech Talent Crunch 2013

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While the economic recovery in the United States has dawdled since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, the job market for tech professionals has stood as an entirely different story during the same time period. Headlines about the U.S. unemployment rate dipping to 7.5 percent in April 2013 meant little to IT pros whose tech unemployment rate hovers near three percent. And when it comes to job creation during the recovery, tech stands alone in contrast to previous economic downturns. Comparing recovery timelines for the past three recessions reveals that more tech positions have been created since the June 2009 “official” end of the Great Recession than at similar points following the recessions of 1991 and 2001. Two years ago, a Dice analysis of tech hiring and the state of higher education – the May 2011 publication “America’s Tech Talent Crunch” – revealed a shortage of computer science and computer information graduates entering the workforce in comparison to the number of available jobs posted daily on Dice.com, the nation’s leading career website for technology professionals. The gist of that report in a single sentence? The United States had a dire need to produce more skilled workers, and quickly, to meet companies’ exponentially growing demand for savvy tech pros. Now comes a follow-up report showing that the heightened demand for skilled computer graduates has in fact driven the supply of new grads upward across the tech marketplace. According to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, the number of computer and information science bachelor’s degrees conferred, which peaked at nearly 60,000 degrees granted in 2004, reached a recent low of less than 38,000 bachelor’s degrees given in 2009. But since then? The number of IT bachelor’s degrees earned in the United States jumped four percent between 2009 and 2010, then jumped another nine percent (to more than 43,000 bachelors degrees conferred) the year after that. Meanwhile, the number of computer-related associate’s degrees also has surged upward since hitting a trough in 2007 during the decade, when less than 28,000 such degrees were conferred nationally. According to federal statistics, 37,677 IT-related associates degrees were


Degrees on the Rise

Number of computer and informaon sciences and support services degrees conferred

+9% yr/yr

43,072

+16% yr/yr

37,677

40,000

20,000

2005

2006

= 5,000 bachelor’s degrees

2007

2008

= 5,000 associate’s degrees

2009

2010

2011

Source: U.S. Department of Educaon, Naonal Center for Educaon Stascs, Higher Educaon General Informaon Survey (HEGIS)

conferred in 2011, a jump of 16 percent year-over-year and an increase of 36 percent over the past four years. The increasing number of new grads entering the tech job market is no happy accident, according to a range of college-level computer science educators interviewed from coast to coast. At the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where the number of IT undergraduates earning bachelor’s degrees recently spiked 41 percent year over year, Dr. Yi Deng, Dean of the College of Computing and Informatics, describes a concerted effort to grow the size of the College to meet an increased demand for IT talent from the private sector and government – an effort that took place despite scarce resources available during the economic downturn. As Dr. Deng sees it, the growth in tech jobs isn’t likely to end any time in the near future, in large part because of what he describes as “major structural changes” not only within tech, but within the American workplace at large. “If you look back a couple decades, IT was pretty much a vertical industry driven by players from IBM to Microsoft to Google and so forth,” Dean Deng explains. “If you look at the industry now … I think it’s very fair to say that every industry has become an IT industry.”


As the growing demand for tech workers meets a growing supply – a higher number of new two-year and four-year graduates entering the work force – the result may well be more competitive pressure for job applicants and a tougher fight among the best and brightest for coveted jobs on the enterprise side of the tech world.

“If you’re headed out

to Microsoft or Google, you had better come with it. If you’re headed to the financial industry, you’d better bring it.”

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Assistant Dean Cedric T. Stallworth, a leader in the College of Computing’s Office of Outreach, Enrollment and Community, makes a critical distinction about job types and dreams.

“These companies, at least right now, they’re taking anybody who’s qualified,” says Dean — Cedric T. Stallworth Stallworth. “These companies need everything. Assistant Dean, Georgia Institute of Technology We (as a country) are not generating enough talent. … I see that every company, in just about every industry that I’ve seen, they can’t get enough talent.” But what about landing one of the best jobs in the marketplace? “If you’re headed out to Microsoft or Google, you had better come with it. If you’re headed to the financial industry, you’d better bring it,” says Dean Stallworth. “To get the best of the best jobs, to go out to Silicon Valley … you need to bring it. You have students there who study for their technical interviews … You had better be prepared if you want to fill the job.”


Skilled and Desireable When it comes to getting hired for a tech job, soft skills and cultural fit matter a great deal, but what still seems to rule the day in the IT meritocracy is a candidate’s technical skills – the languages and platforms mastered, the degrees held and the software and hardware one is able to create, operate or repair.

Most Desired Skills

Put another way, while communication skills and your ability to function as part of a bigger team often will make the difference between getting hired or not, or succeeding once you have the job, it’s your skillset that likely gets you through the door in the first place.

1

Java/J2EE/ Java Developer

2

Mobile

So which technical skills are the toughest to find in today’s tech workplace?

3

.NET

Dice put that question to nearly 900 hiring professionals and recruiters. Their answers were somewhat surprising, because they mixed “newer” skills like mobile and cloud development abilities with older, more established skillsets like .NET and SharePoint.

4

Soware Developer

5

Security

The takeaway here? It appears that while advanced technical skills and training to implement the latest in computer software and hardware trends can make a job candidate more attractive, training in core skills remains a must.

6

SAP

7

SharePoint Web Developer

Equally interesting is how that reality – the simultaneous importance of the traditional and the trendy in tech – plays out in academic institutions nationwide.

8 9

Network Engineers/ Networking

While scores of community colleges have taken to partnering directly with employers to turn out tech-skilled workers in volume (more on that later),

10

Cloud Source: 2012 Dice Hiring Survey


four-year colleges seem to fall into two distinct types: Those who strive to be responsive to the needs of the marketplace and those who aim to turn out highly evolved technologists, owners of a more generalized set of skills but with a huge emphasis on the ability to problem-solve. According to Tom Cortina, Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science falls into the latter category. “We generally tend to focus on the bigger principles of problem-solving, algorithmic thinking and formal reasoning,” explains Cortina. “We do use current technologies in our classes, but we don’t teach We believe that them as the ultimate goal of the course. Instead, we teach our students how to think, change teaching skills that will directions in a problem when things aren’t last an entire career is working, and how to formally analyze code, algorithms and systems that they design. We the most important thing believe that teaching skills that will last an entire we can offer. career is the most important thing we can offer.”

“

”

— Tom Cortina Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education, Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science

Of course, this isn’t to say that specialty skills have no place at Carnegie Mellon. Cortina says “special topics” offerings focus on new and emerging fields in computing. Recent classes have included courses on cyber-physical systems, computational methods for the smart grid, cross-platform mobile web applications, analyzing your own genome and cloud computing. At Georgia Tech, Cedric Stallworth, the College of Computing’s Assistant Dean, says the university comes at skill creation from a different direction – one very much attuned to the needs of tech businesses and government agencies. The Georgia Tech model termed “Threads” replaced a generalized curriculum with a four-year program tailored to a student’s interests and aimed at real-world computing opportunities. Stallworth favors a metaphor that will be familiar to ice cream fans everywhere. “Most colleges of computing, the way they offer computing is much like … if you


go into a Baskin Robbins and you want pistachio and all they have is vanilla and strawberry and chocolate,” he explains. “You sort of have to get your flavor of computing based on what they have.” But at Georgia Tech? “When we changed our model to Threads, it very much … aligned itself with your Coldstone or Marble Slab ice cream experience. You can chuckle when I say this, but the analogy is pretty good. When you go into Coldstone, instead of asking what they have, you ask yourself, ‘What do I want?” … We changed our curriculum so our students can tailor-make the curriculum to what they want.”


Two Years = Work Ready The value placed on community colleges comes less from the students paying for the two-year degree and more with local businesses who either work with their local schools or provide an “open door” to recent graduates eager to start their careers. Partnerships with the industry have become a musthave for two-year institutions, especially when the object is to teach STEM skills meant to provide private sector partners with a ready supply of “custom-made” tech employees. GE. IBM. UPS. Northrop-Grumman. Cisco. Microsoft. Each of these mega-companies has worked in tandem with community colleges to produce tech-savvy workers. Another entity at the forefront of this effort: The National Science Foundation, which funds and energizes the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, encompassing 39 community colleges across the country. ATE’s goal? To unite industries in need of high tech workers with education institutions, helping them to develop curricula and fund research projects to ensure a more advanced talent supply. This increased focus on community colleges perhaps explains why in 2010-11, the last year of reported data on associate’s degrees, some 19 states conferred more two-year degrees than bachelor’s degrees. Such states included some traditional tech employer and education hubs – Washington, Texas and North Carolina. In Arizona, at the Maricopa County Community College District, one of the nation’s largest community college systems and an ATE center, the creation of new tech workers is paramount, according to Randy Kimmens, MCCCD’s Director of Workforce Development.


More Associates Than Bachelors

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ohio Wisconsin Kentucky Texas North Carolina Washington Mississippi Louisiana Montana South Carolina

Source: U.S. Department of Educaon, Naonal Center for Educaon Stascs (NCES), Integrated Postsecondary Educaon Data System (IPEDS).

An October 2012 event sponsored by MCCCD, the Information Technology Workforce Needs Forum, drew more than 60 participants, including representatives from ON Semiconductor, AT&T, Oracle and General Dynamics. That one-day program underscored what Kimmens sees every other work day of the year: Big companies with tech needs don’t only covet four-year degreeholders. They’ll swoop in and hire students with associate’s degrees – or even a few community college courses – provided they have the relevant tech skills. “The bottom line is, employers want people to acquire skills per industry,” says Kimmens. “They hire them and then they train them further with the areas they really need to train them in. … They’re telling me, ‘I need somebody that’s educated enough, that has the soft skills and some of the (tech) skills, then let me take over.’” The two-year degree as “a foot in the door” is perhaps the biggest benefit available to community college students with an interest in technology. So says Anthony Carnevale, the Director and Research Professor of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Carnevale is regarded by many academics as an expert on the value of a college diploma. He sees a two-year associates degree as a prime talent mover for business – as he puts it, “employers tend to take what they can get and then turn that into whatever it is they need” – and as an income driver for employees. The Georgetown prof says that associates degree-holders are being hired in droves in tech, not only as entry-level technicians, but also for more advanced positions. There’s another path as well where an entry-level hire leverages his or her foot in the door for more training, or a bachelor’s degree, paralleled by a series of promotions. “Both are true at the same time,” Carnevale explains. “We do know, because of the wages, that companies are looking hard for these people. They’re bidding up the wages. They’re looking hard and they’re willing to pay more money to get what they’re looking for.” How much more? Speaking generally, for all skillsets including tech, Carnevale says that across a career, the average grad with a bachelor’s degree earns 84 percent more than the average high school grad. For the STEM-skilled graduate, that number would be even higher.


And in raw dollars? While 30 percent of workers with only a high school diploma earn more than $35,000 annually, that number rises to 50 percent for workers with an associate’s degree. For workers in STEM occupations that require education beyond high school and up to a two-year degree, 80 percent earn more than $35,000 a year, according to Carnevale. The trick to creating value by turning your education into a higher salary is to earn while you learn. Practically speaking, a would-be tech CEO starts by getting the bare minimum credential to get a job. Then you get hired, taking advantage after that of your employer’s tuition assistance and in-house training programs to acquire more skills and more credentials – up to or beyond an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree. “If you have to pay, this learn-and-earn strategy will work in tech careers,” says Carnevale. “It will allow you to move up the ladder while essentially paying your own way, or getting your employer in many cases to help defray the cost, so you have a sponsor of sorts.”


Education Anywhere You Can Find It If there’s one entity likely to save technology education and help produce more skilled tech professionals, it’s …Technology. Using technology to break down the traditional walls of brick and mortar tech education entities isn’t just happening in the digital ether. It’s also happening within a number of institutions focused on democratizing tech skills training and delivering it wherever it can be effective – in your living room, in a classroom at a local high school or at Stanford. CodeAcademy, a 2011 startup, drew $10 million from venture capitalists like Richard Branson, funds it has used to create free, crowdsourced classes in everything from HTML and CSS to Javascript and APIs. Another high-profile effort, Code.Org, is working on building a comprehensive database of programming courses and schools, and using star power – like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am – to spread the word about the need for increased proficiency in the language of tech. Then there’s San Francisco-based Udemy. Since 2010, Udemy has recruited experts from around the world – including tech powerhouses like MIT and Stanford and Ivy-Leaguers like Harvard – to create an extensive menu of video-based online courses on everything from introduction to algorithms to computer systems engineering to programming methodologies. “We want to enable any student, anywhere to access a top quality education,” says Dinesh Thiru, Udemy’s Vice President of Marketing. “Our courses are designed by trusted experts, the learning environment is rich with interactivity, you can access them anytime and anywhere (via your mobile device, online or with tablets) and our courses are either free or priced at a very affordable rate.” Thiru touts Udemy as a unique platform for training, since it can occur on the student’s schedule, and as the perfect way to fill out a resume with new skills meant to propel a career another level or two. The future will likely hold exponentially more quality content for Udemy, says Thiru, and more partnerships with universities and schools thirsting to expand online and educate more students in tech and other vital skills. “In 10 years, every expert in the world will be teaching online,” says Thiru. “This trend will be jumpstarted by the tech and STEM communities. We’re already seeing that happen with the abundance of programming, math and science-learning content on Udemy and other learning sites. Tech and STEM will continue to lead the way for the next few years, but we believe online learning is the future of all lifelong learning.”


For Tech, Some New Institutions Rise Up the Charts A look inside the numbers at which four-year universities produce the most computer science bachelor’s graduates reaffirms the dominance of institutions like Carnegie Mellon (168 bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2011) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (159 degrees). Stanford (86 degrees) and the University of California-Berkeley (101 degrees) also stand out as names one might expect to find prominently represented as top computer science institutions. But some less ballyhooed universities have not only made the list, but look to be ascending it with a bullet. North Carolina, where the Research Triangle and institutions like Duke University and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill command most of the headlines, UNC-Charlotte is quickly becoming a recognized supplier of tech talent, according to Yi Deng, Dean of the school’s College of Computing and Informatics. Dr. Deng says the growth spurt is the culmination of strategic planning, birthed in the midst of the recession, to meet what the College saw as a wave of need for

Degrees on the Rise

Universi es with the strongest year/year growth (2011) in awarding computer science degrees with at least 100 degrees awarded

+58% +41% +29% +25% +17% +11%

Berkeley

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TWIN CITIES


Source: U.S. Department of Educa on, Ins tute of Educa on Sciences, Na onal Center for Educa on Sta s cs

more tech-skilled professionals at both undergraduate and graduate levels, with a variety of interests and abilities. “We’re doing this with very close consultation with a number of industries,” says the Dean. “Our view, in terms of education, is that you’ve got to be marketdriven. You don’t want to create a degree way ahead of industry. In other words, you don’t want to graduate people when nobody is ready to hire them. On the other hand, you In response to the need do want to stay at the front curve of industry in an emerging datachanges, and meet the talent demands.”

“

This applies not only within the UNCC College of Computing and Informatics, says Deng, but also more broadly within the university in terms of advancing tech skills.

driven economy, we are now working with our College of Business to develop new degrees in Data Science and Business Analytics.”

“In response to the need in an emerging datadriven economy, we are now working with our College of Business to develop new degrees in Data Science and Business Analytics,” says — Dr. Yi Deng Dean of the College of Computing Deng. “We want to train people who not only and Informatics, understand Big Data and have deep analytic UNC-Charlotte and technology skills, but who also understand business processes and management, and have the translational skills to drive innovation.” At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, the growth in IT and computer science graduation rates stands as the result of a five-year plan, conceived and executed by their College of Science and Engineering. Paul Strykowski, the College’s Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs, points out that the College’s strategy to grow enrollments by 20 percent over five years will not happen at the expense of student quality. “During the five years where we’ve increased bachelor degrees, our SATs and ACTs have only gone northward,” says Strykowski, who calls the new crop of UM tech students the most motivated he’s ever seen. “I tell the freshmen to go to our career fairs. And I tell them, I don’t want a resume in your hand, I want you to introduce yourself to the recruiter and say ‘Hey, if I want to work for ‘Boston


Scientific,’ what do I need to do to be successful? Tell me what you’re looking for a year from now or two years from now?’” As Strykowski sees it, the responsibility of the university transcends mere education – the transmittal of information from teacher to student. Minnesota’s tech faculty is not simply in the business of filling empty vessels; at the College of Science and Engineering, they’re about creating the most advanced, most sea-worthy vessels possible, sending those vessels out into the world and then tracking their progress. Put another way – in language undoubtedly familiar to anyone in business in 2013 – it’s a matter of ensuring return on investment for students, their parents and their future employers.


Skills That Pay the Bills Looking at salaries in the tech world has long been a Dice specialty – long enough for us to be able to say that while a career as a tech professional can pay off, it isn’t necessarily a path to guaranteed riches, even once you have a bachelor’s degree and a full-time job. Discussing averages and median salaries isn’t the same as talking about the tech marketplace as a whole. There is a lower end of the tech payscale and it has to be occupied by someone. The (often) $100,000 question: How do you make sure the someone at the lower end of the payscale isn’t you? The most effective strategies to profit from a tech career as an employee seem to number three: Get the most education you can afford. Then find a necessary skill niche where you can excel and change your job regularly.

Average Tech Salaries

The annual salary for a U.S. tech professionals is $85,619 on average, a bump of five percent from 2011, according to the 2013-2012 Dice Salary Survey. Plus, a third (33%) of tech pros earn an annual bonus of $8,636 on average.

$ $ $

Earlier, we listed the skillsets that hiring U.S. ANNUAL WITH WITH professionals and tech recruiters tell Dice are the AVERAGE BACHELOR’S MASTER’S hardest to find. It’s no surprise that salaries for $85,619 $85,815 $97,811 these positions tend to outpace the median pay Source: Dice Salary Survey levels denoted above – and that they appear to be rising as the economic recovery continues and businesses remain at a loss to fill highly skilled tech positions. The average salary for a Java/J2EE professional? More than $94,000 annually. That’s a three percent jump in the past year alone, and an increase of about $10,000 in the past five years.


Remember those skilled mobile developers that few companies seem to be able to find? Mobile experts with Android skills are earning an average salary of $78,654 this year, up eight percent year to year. Mobile professionals with iPhone skills earn $82,963 annually, up nine percent year over year. Cloud computing professionals are doing even better, with an average salary of $96,117 currently, up four percent since last year. SAP professionals have also cracked the $90,000 level, at $93,995 for the year, up four percent.

“

Phil Lepanto may carry a heavyweight title today – he’s Chief Technology Officer at Connections Media, one of Washington D.C.’s premier digital marketing agencies for political and public affairs clients – but after graduating from Vanderbilt University in 1996, he was a front-seat spectator to the dot-com bust of 2000. His advice The first thing is today mirrors what he wish he had heard when he first entered the workforce.

figuring out what you really want to do. If you can figure that out and exhibit a lot of passion around it, the job market becomes a lot clearer and easier to navigate.”

“If I was talking to a grad today who wasn’t finding the type of job they wanted, my advice would be make sure you keep your skills up to date,” Lepanto advises. “Make sure you keep reading and trying stuff in whatever type of environment you can to keep your skills fresh and keep networking. Those are tried and true strategies.”

— Amit Shah graduate of University of Michigan and Stanford University

Achieving salary levels and beyond in the tech world can be viewed as a function of time, talent, education and perseverance. Amit Shah, a Denver-based graduate of the University of Michigan and Stanford, sees the proverbial “pot of gold” as the end result of a job search and an early career path that holds up two priorities as mission-critical. “The first thing is figuring out what you really want to do,” says Shah, the operations director for Paladina Health, a subsidiary of Davita. “If you can figure that out and exhibit a lot of passion around it, the job market becomes a lot clearer and easier to navigate.”


And then? “The second thing is realizing that you might not be able to do exactly what you want to do as soon as you want to do it,” Shah continues. “Exhibiting an ability to work hard, learn and grow in order to develop into a role you are passionate about is usually more important than proving you are the smartest person for the job. “If you do both of those things and you do them authentically and well in tech, it’s hard to believe that the money won’t follow. If that’s what you’re about, that’s what you’re going to get.” Houston-based systems and software engineer David Young, a graduate of Texas A&M, has experience being a face in the crowd. Young has weathered periods of peak competition for jobs – including his first days out of college, when he had a resume full of COBOL and C++ skills and had to compete against job candidates proficient in the same languages, but with 20 years more experience. Young says that while the programming language needs may have changed – today Java is king – the “newbie versus more experienced job candidate” equation has not. “If you want a leg up on all your fellow programmers,” says Young, “learn some other languages and technologies on the side. A basic understanding of SQL syntax is a must. Python, Ruby, even Haskell; these are languages that will be used well into the future along with Java.” The advice from long-time tech pros and academics alike, in nutshell – get educated, get working, get more educated, make more money.


It’s Not Just Tuition. It’s Investment. Just as companies don’t have to scour the East or West coasts to find skilled tech talent, students hoping to dive into tech don’t necessarily need to go for broke to find exceptional computer science programs. Looking at the top schools offering computer science programs, half are public, state universities—carrying a lighter price tag than their private counterparts. But ask the leaders of top-drawer institutions, the mid-majors and community colleges about creating ROI for students and they all talk about creating a range of payoffs for their graduates – empowering their passions, giving them current, saleable skills and helping them navigate the pathway to fulfilling employment.

Top-Ranked Computer Science Schools

1

2

MIT

2013-2012 ANNUAL TUITION

42,050

5

Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champagne


14,428

9

California Instute of Technology


39,588

Stanford

3



41,787

6

Georgia Tech

11,767

7


10,089

10

Univ. of California Berkeley

Univ. of Michigan Ann Arbor


Cornell


43,413

Source: U.S. News & World Report, 2013


13,437

4

Carnegie Mellon


45,124

8

Univ. of Texas at Ausn


9,792

At Stanford University, Beverly Principal serves as Associate Director of Employment Services in the Career Development Center. She says Stanford’s notion of value isn’t so much premised on sheer dollars and cents as it is on quality of work life and the creation of unique future opportunities. Part of that, says Principal, comes from Stanford’s commitment to financial aid, tuition assistance and scholarships, which takes care of much of the cost of an education for a high percentage students.

“ There’s a huge

“I think from our perspective it’s more like what are your skillsets and what do you love to do,” says Principal. “Let that guide you and the money will follow.” Nor does the mention of a Stanford bachelor’s degree hurt on a new graduate’s resume. “There’s a huge demand right now,” says Principal. “My guess is, there are not enough students graduating from Stanford to support all of the job opportunities that are out there. … That’s different than it was 10 years ago,” at the end of the dot.com explosion.

demand right now. My guess is, there are not enough students graduating from Stanford to support all of the job opportunities that are out there. … That’s different than it was 10 years ago.” — Beverly Principal Associate Director of Employment Services, Stanford University Career Development Center

At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities – where in-state tuition and fees is a comparative bargain at $13,022 annually and out-of-staters pay just a tick over 18 grand annually – Paul Strykowski, the Associate Dean in the College of Science and Engineering, cites an individualized approach to advising and career navigation. He also mentions how the College works in sync with the business community to fill skill gaps among would-be new hires.

“We’re seeing what is a struggle between what is a true academic venture and what is sort of a technology-video game venture – what is a tech skill and what is an academic pursuit,” says Strykowski, who then provides an example. “There was just a course put on the books in our aerospace department. It used to be that aerospace engineers were just traditional aerospace. But now they also need these tools like Javascript, some package which normally wouldn’t be tied to a bachelor’s degree. So, we offer these modules, which are great for students because they pick up these skills along the way. Our kids today are very, very hands-on.”
