I was honoured to have a comment that I left on the web log of Larry O'Brien highlighted in a subsequent post by him. Larry O'Brien is a former editor of Software Development Magazine, which, when it was in print, was one of the best magazines in this industry. I still have my copies all lined up on my bookshelves. You can read full text of his posting here.

My comment, in essence, was that "People out there simply don't understand software, but do understand hourly rates."

This equation has been a problem us software developers for a while now. But after leaving the comment I mulled over what I had written, and realised that this is not going to be an ongoing problem for us software developers. It is shortly going to become someone else's problem.

You see, I found myself wondering “Why would you want to enter this field?” With the misplaced waves of off shoring, out sourcing, and the accompanying retrenchments and redundancies being the public face of IT would any outsider want to enter a field where they are apparently so easily replaceable?

And indeed, there is a growing shortage of skilled IT staff, worldwide. And the number of people studying IT related subjects is dropping, apparently quite alarmingly.

And so the last laugh is with us already in the industry – as the demand grows, so that hourly rate must increase. Or could it just be: what goes around, comes around?

9:45:55 AM