Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of programmers required by the rapidly expanding EDP industry: “The
development of these machines is resulting in even greater recognition
of, and paying a greater premium for, the man who is above average in
training and mental ability.”
37
By 1961, industry journals such as
Datamation
were using crisis rhetoric to describe the looming “program-
ming gap” that threatened the “bright and rosy future” of the industry.
38
A year later, Daniel McCracken talked about the “software turmoil”
that threatened to set back the industry. By the mid-1960s, it was widely
estimated that there were at least a hundred thousand people working
as programmers in the United States alone, with an expected immediate
demand for at least fi fty thousand more. “Competition for programmers
has driven salaries up so fast,” warned a contemporary article in
Fortune
magazine, “that programming has become probably the country's highest
paid technological occupation. . . . Even so, some companies can't fi nd
experienced programmers at any price.”
39
The burgeoning information technology labor shortage of the late
1950s (to apply yet another contemporary term anachronistically) was
complicated by the general lack of consensus about what skills and
characteristics were required of a good programmer. The problem was
not just simply that demand for programmers far outstripped supply. In
fact, numerous attempts to ramp up the supply of programmers, either
through in-house training programs, private vocational training schools,
or academic computer science programs, generally failed to alleviate
the growing crisis. A 1968 study by the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Personnel
Research (SIGCPR) warned of a growing
oversupply
of computer per-
sonnel: “The ranks of the computer world are being swelled by growing
hordes of programmers, systems analysts and related personnel.
Educational, performance and professional standards are virtually non-
existent and confusion growths rampant in selecting, training, and
assigning people to do jobs.”
40
In part this critique refl ects the immaturity
of the industry, and the lack of established institutions for educating and
certifying programmers. That similar critiques have continued to plague
the industry to this day suggest a deeper structural problem worth
exploring. As with various other iterations of information technology
labor shortages (past and present), the problem was not so much an
absolute shortage of programmers but rather a shortage of a
particular
kind of programmer
. What this particular kind of programmer might
look like—what skills they need to possess, what level of professionalism
they aspire to, what wages they require, and how willing they are to
