Why do Americans seem to shun tech jobs?

[Voyager]

@kunilou

From my perspective as an old school, low tech, face to face type of worker, IMHO it’s not because Americans are lazy, or even because there’s a bias against tech, it’s because tech (as most people define it) turned out to be a boom-and-bust industry.

In the 1960s and 70s “computer science” people were trained to work on huge mainframe computers. Then desktop computers were invented and all those people with mainframe experience weren’t wanted anymore.

You think minis in the '70s and dinky PCs in the '80s replace mainframes? They weren’t a hot field for new grads, but I don’t recall a bunch of mainframers losing jobs. Large corporations depended on them.

A few years later there was a big boom in networking all those desktop computers and “information technology” graduates were heavily invested in learning how to build and manage those networks, and connect them to the Internet. Then the dotcom boom blew up and those people got laid off.

The people laid off in 2001 were those in startups without a hope, those who jumped into companies without sufficient education when nearly anyone could get a job, and those in companies who had staffed up far beyond the needs of a realistic marketplace. This had nothing to do with any change in technology.

When the entire economy went south in 2008, it took tech jobs with it.

And all other jobs. We did better than the damn bankers.

When you’re going to college, particularly when you’re going to graduate school, you’re supposed to get skills that last a lifetime. The people who got marketing degrees seem to keep floating from job to job, while the technology people are told that their five-year old degrees are obsolete.

If you go to college and learn only the latest app, sure, If you learn the basics, you’ll be fine. As for marketing, I wonder how an old guy who doesn’t get social media would do today?

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@msmith537

So if you have a choice of being a gregarious jock frat guy who partied his way through college and ended up in a lucrative sales job entertaining clients or being someone who had to bust his ass getting good grades so you can be stuck behind a computer and barely tolerated as a potentially outsourcable “resource” needed to get a job done, which would you choose?

In this vein, I’d be interested in anyone’s comments on to what extent it’s possible for non-technical people to take over the reins of what are essentially technology companies. One certainly does see that happen. For instance, the founding CEO of DirecTV, Eddy Hartenstein, was an engineer as you might expect of a company which brought a new technology to the mass market. In the early 2000s (IIRC) they brought in a replacement with a customer service background, while Hartenstein stayed on as a member of the board. (EH is now the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, go figure.) It does seem there comes a break point when the investors don’t want an engineer running the show anymore, and they go to someone with a more conventional business type background.

During part of my time at DirecTV I worked in the old Hughes Electronics tower, and on occasion we’d have some meeting or other up on the top floor. One day I came across a memo pad, the kind you’re supposed to stick on a document or file to tell someone what to do with it. I think today you’d just scribble something on a Post-It, but this time I was amused to see about 20 different checkboxes, as in:

[ul]
[li] Take charge of this.[/li][li] Reply by letter[/li][li] Reply by letter, then show me a copy.[/li][li] Reply by letter, showing me a copy first.[/li][li] And so on.[/li][/ul]

I thought it remarkable that someone, at some point, had sat down to design this form. Equally remarkable was the fact that a historic aircraft company had evolved what seemed to have been a very stultifying corporate culture. By this time, there wasn’t much left to Hughes except for DTV, and the 18th floor was usually empty. Finding that memo pad was like finding a historic artifact.

[lshaw]

@zoid

Compare that with my friends who have BA degrees in business and are all making at least double what I make and work much fewer hours and it’s not hard to see why tech isn’t attractive.

I did not major in business, but I went into ibanking my first year out and definitely worked more than my friends in tech. I’d probably put in 20 hour days, while they’d roll into work between 9 and 10 (not unusual in the Valley) and peace out around midnight, latest. I’ve heard of select teams in certain tech companies working sweatshop hours, but in general, they do not work more than ibankers. Salary wise, they were starting at 100-130k entry level, and while I was making six figures after bonuses, the amount was certainly not double. Doesn’t matter if it’s Google or a startup, it not like techies get shirked much as they are the bread and butter of the company. If anything, it’s mostly SG&A getting shafted on bonuses and salaries when it comes to those scrappy startups. You know - finance, corp dev, analytics, what have you, if they have them at all.

@Crafter_Man

IMO a business degree is much more of a gamble compared to an engineering degree. Sure, you could end up quite wealthy. But there are plenty of business graduates who have trouble finding work, and take $11/hour jobs.

I think law degrees too. I am surprised people always seem to think lawyers make decent money. They make it if they graduate from a top 10 law school. And then they have to deal with billable work.

Anyway OP, you are forgetting an obvious reason. If you are American, born and raised, you can easily get hired for all sorts of jobs. If you are a foreigner and want to be able to gain entry to work in the US, you cannot afford to be choosy with the so-called perceived glamor of a profession. Your English language skills run the gamut from lousy to almost-but-not-quite-native-level. Tech jobs are forgiving in that respect. Not all, but a lot, as long as you convince companies that you have other skills to contribute that are worth their visa sponsorship. Many foreign-born workers can thrive as engineers, tech leads, or whatever at Google, Apple, et al because tech skills and work ethic can easily cross borders, while eloquent verbal communication is not of utmost importance to get the job done or command the respect of their team. Plus, it’s one of those fields where you don’t have to advance to management (where theoretically more soft skills are involved, both in getting the promotion and with the job itself) and still be able to pull in a decent salary plus bonus and options. “Decent” being subjective, but tech types are among those in the Bay Area these days who can afford to rent the $3-4k studios in SF straight out of undergrad.

I realize that growing up at Ground Zero at the height of the dotcom boom was one of those “moment in time” things and a bubble in every sense of the word, but it’s really bizarre how different my experience has been compared to those looking in. Not that it was ever as glamorous as, say, making it in Hollywood, but at the time and place, the stars aligned for many. Everyone and their mom in my circle had a tech background that they parlayed into an entrepreneurial endeavor. Starting their own companies or getting involved with it. Having it go public. IPOs left and right, and no one even blinked. One of the sayings back then was, “You know you are from Silicon Valley when the doctors and lawyers are the lowest paid people in your community”. No truer words then.